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“You still looked after her.”
“Is it friendship if we only show up for the good times?”
Hesitation flickered in her eyes before she took a deep breath. Steely resolve hiding a fragile heart—he was beginning to understand her now. And himself clearly, too, in her words. He had had all these rules and plans and conditions for his marriage and not a single one had served them well. Not with Jacqueline and definitely not with his own daughter. There was no way to shut himself out of the world without making his daughter think he didn’t love her, either. Without the risk of losing her.
And here was this woman he’d thought he’d pushed to the margins, gloriously in the center of it all, lashing him with truth after truth. Instead of gentling his pain, all the rules he’d lived his life by had only alienated him from Zara and his father.
“And since we’re on the topic,” she said, straightening her shoulders, “I had no idea she was considering filing for solo custody of Zara. You spent little enough time with Zara back then. But she talked so much about you whenever she returned from the trips you took her on, and she sounded so happy that I knew whatever your complaints about Jacqueline, you were trying your best to be a good father.”
Her words were a vindication to Nasir’s ears.
Or maybe even a benediction and approval that he hadn’t even known he needed. From the moment he had learned that Jacqueline had been planning to take solo custody of his daughter, using his alleged indifference to his own child, he had wondered if there was any truth to it.
He’d never planned to be a father, something Jacqueline had been fully on board with when they’d met. And he’d done his best to keep their marriage together even as they’d grown apart by the time she’d conceived.
So many sleepless nights, and he’d even wondered if he’d done such a good job of turning himself into stone that he felt less than he should for his own child. He’d wondered if Zara would be better off with her mother.
“I think Jacqueline never told me what she was planning because she must have known that I’d never agree to it,” Yana added.
Nasir forced himself to meet her eyes. “I should have known that, too. My entire world felt upside down when I realized how I’d made my own child doubt my love for her. I was so angry and scared that I’d lose Zara that I lashed out at you. Not that it’s an excuse.”
He ran a hand through his hair, marveling at how wise she was even as she thought herself messy. But that was the magic of Yana, he was realizing.
She lived her life fully, loved so thoroughly that it was like watching a thunderstorm. Both spectacular and dangerous at the same time. And Nasir remembered when he’d lived life like that once, when he’d loved freely, lived dangerously close to the edge. And suddenly, he wanted to be there again.
There were two things he had to do. The first came easily enough.
“I’m sorry, Yana. On so many levels. For all the sins I heaped at your feet, when they were all mine. For being a beast to you.”
But the second—to let her go when he knew what she wanted out of life was something he could never offer her—felt impossible to even contemplate. For the first time since Fatima died, he felt an overwhelming need to lose himself to his selfish desires. To drown himself in pleasure. To live dangerously just once more, even if that meant Yana would burn him through.
CHAPTER TEN
YANADIPPEDHERHEAD,unwilling to let him see her confusion and the little flicker of fear. Nor did she feel any vindication or relief from his apology. It was disconcerting to discover that his compliments had more than their fair share of an effect on her, though. Disconcerting to discover that all of her defenses were falling away, like the castle Zara had made out of rainbow-colored sand.
No, he was attacking her defenses, laying siege and shredding the lies and half-truths she’d surrounded herself with. To what end, though? Did he simply want to clear the air between them now that she was going to be a permanent part of Zara’s life? Or was there more?
“What other secrets and half-truths are you using as ammunition against me, then?”
“Demands and more demands,” she said, deploying her silken protest even as she was quivering inside. “And here I thought you were not the usual predictably powerful man who wants what he wants when he wants it.”
“You’ve no idea what I want, Yana.”
His angry tone was like a shot of adrenaline. When he treated her as his equal, when he took her on as she was, there was no bigger high. She tilted her chin, letting him see her fighting spirit. “You have not earned the right to my secrets, Nasir. Nor to my dreams or fantasies.”
“And yet, if I cover this last foot between us and touch you, I’d bet I’d find you far too willing and ready to voice at least one fantasy,habibi.”
She watched him, every word acting like a leaping pulse within her body. Every step of his creating an ache between her thighs. “And why would you want to do that?”
“Because I have this insane urge to corner you and catch you and strip you bare until I know all of you. You’re a maddening puzzle I want to unlock.”
“This is about your ego, then? Because I managed to trick you—”
“You and I both know this isn’t to do with my ego or pity or friendship or Zara or the past. It’s about you and me.” Another step and she could see the scar that bisected his upper lip and raked its finger upward toward his cheek. And she saw the naked desire in his eyes and the steely resolve of his mouth, and every cell within her reverberated.
“So will you dare let me test my theory?”
He was close now, so close that she could breathe in the heady scent of his aftershave—another weapon in an arsenal full of them. Her breath was a shallow whistle in her ears.
