The Desert Sheikh's Defiant Queen. Jane Porter
before they could fall. It’d been a long time since she’d talked about the accident, and still she carried the grief and loss in her heart. Jamila and Aman had been her best friends. She’d met them when she was ten, and they’d become instantly inseparable.
But the past was the past, she reminded herself, trying to focus on the present. She could only live right now, in the present time, a time where she could actually make a difference. “You’ve changed, too, but I suppose you had to, being a …”
“Yes?” he prompted when her voice faded away without finishing the thought.
Jesslyn shifted uncomfortably. “You know.”
“But I don’t. Why don’t you tell me.”
She didn’t miss the ruthless edge in his voice, and suddenly she wished she’d never said anything at all. “You have to know you’ve changed,” she said, dodging his question even as she looked at him, really looked at him and saw all over again how much harder, fiercer, prouder he’d become. Beautiful silver into steel.
“You don’t like me now, though.”
Her shoulders shifted. “I don’t know you now.”
“I’m still the same person.”
But he wasn’t, she thought, he wasn’t the man she knew. He’d become something other, larger, more powerful, and more conscious of that power, too. “Maybe what I should say is that I don’t see the man anymore, I see the king.” She could see from the hardening of his expression that he didn’t like what she’d said, so she hastily added, “But of course you’ve changed. You’re not a young man anymore. You’re now … what? Thirty-eight, thirty-nine?”
“Thirty-seven, Miss Heaton.” He paused, his voice deepening. “And you’re thirty-one.”
Something in his voice made her look up, and when she did, she stared straight into his stunning silver-gray eyes, eyes she’d once found heartbreakingly beautiful.
Eyes that seemed to pierce her heart now.
The air left her in a rush, forcing her to take a quick breath and then another.
Her prince had become a king. Her Sharif had married and then been widowed. Her own life with him had been a lifetime ago.
“You’re displeased with me, and yet it’s the opposite for me. You’re more than I remembered,” he continued in the same deep, husky voice, “more confident. More beautiful. More of everything.”
Once again her chest tightened, her heart feeling as mashed as a potato.
He made her feel too much. He made her remember everything.
Inexplicably she suddenly wanted to seize all the years back, the nine years she’d buried herself in good works and deeds, the years in higher-education courses and summer school and night school, arduous activities and pursuits designed to keep her from thinking or feeling.
Designed to keep her from regretting.
Prince Sharif Fehr, her Prince Sharif Fehr, her first lover, her only love, had married someone else only months after they broke off.
Shifting restlessly, she glanced out the window, saw they were less than a mile from her apartment and felt confusing emotions of disappointment and relief.
Soon he’d drop her off and be gone.
Soon she could be in control of her emotions again.
Sharif’s gaze still rested on her face. “So tell me more about your school, your current job. Are you happy there? What is the faculty like?”
This Jesslyn could answer easily, with a clear conscience. “I love being a teacher. I always end up so attached to my students, and I still get a thrill teaching literature and history. And yes, the school is very different from the American School in London, and the American School in Dubai where I taught one year, but I have a lot more control over my curriculum here and I get to spend more time with my students, which is what I want.”
“Your students,” he repeated.
She smiled, finally able to breathe easier. Talking about teaching put her firmly back in control of her emotions, and she wanted to keep it that way. She had to keep it that way. “I do think of them as my kids, but I can’t help it. I have such high hopes for each of them.”
“If you love children so much, why don’t you have any of your own?”
Immediately she was thrown back into inner chaos, her sense of calm and goodwill vanishing. Did his mother never tell him? Did he still really not know?
Her fingers balled into fists as she felt anger wash through her, anger toward his cold, manipulative mother, and anger toward Sharif. Sharif was supposed to have loved her. Sharif was supposed to have wanted her.
“Haven’t met the right person,” she answered tightly, looking into his face, seeing again the hard, carved features, the way his dark sleek hair touched his robe, and the shadow of a beard darkening his jaw.
That face …
His eyes …
Heat rushed through her, heat followed by ice because she could never have been his wife. She could never have been the one he married and cherished. She was, as his mother had put it so indelicately, a good-time girl. Someone frivolous and fun to pass the time with.
“You’ve never married?” he asked.
“No.”
“I’m surprised. When you left all those years ago I was sure there was someone, or something, you wanted.”
No, there was nothing else she wanted, but she hadn’t known how to fight then. Hadn’t known how to keep, protect, what she loved. “We’re almost to my apartment,” she said numbly, gesturing to the street.
“My girls need a teacher this summer. They’re home from boarding school and lagging academically.”
They were so close to her apartment, so close. Just another block and she could get out, run away, escape.
“I’ll pay you three times your annual salary,” he continued. “In ten weeks you could make three times what you make in a year.”
She wanted to cover her ears. She didn’t want to know about the job, didn’t want to hear about his children—children he’d had with his fabulously wealthy and stunningly beautiful princess—or their academic deficiencies. “I’m going on holiday, Sharif. I leave tonight.”
“I thought you cared about children. I thought you wanted what’s best for children.”
But these weren’t her children and she wasn’t going to get involved. “I’ve plans,” she repeated woodenly.
“Plans you could change,” Sharif said so pleasantly that Jesslyn felt a prickle beneath her skin. She didn’t trust Sharif when he used that tone of voice.
But then, she didn’t trust Sharif at all.
Maybe that’s because she didn’t know the real Sharif. The Sharif she’d dated and adored would have never married a Dubai princess just to further his career and kingdom, much less married that princess less than six months after they’d broken up. But that’s what he’d done. His wedding had been covered by virtually every glossy magazine in the UK, and in every article about the wedding, below every photograph the caption read, Prince Sharif Fehr Marries Princess Zulima of Dubai after a Year-Long Engagement.
Year-long engagement?
Impossible. Six months before the wedding Jesslyn was still dating Sharif.
The car had stopped but Jesslyn didn’t wait for the driver to appear. Gathering her things, she flung the door open. “Good luck, Sharif,” she said, sliding her legs out and standing. “Goodbye.”
And Jesslyn rushed