‘Oh, I don’t know. That you’d go back there one day. And live in a palace and fish in that silvery river you described.’
‘Ah, but my brother is King there now,’ he said, his voice hardening as he acknowledged the capricious law of succession and how it altered the lives of those who were affected by it. ‘And Zahid became King very unexpectedly, which changed my place in the natural order of things.’
Isobel looked at him. ‘How come?’
‘Up until that moment I was just another desert sheikh with the freedom to do pretty much as I wanted—but when our uncle died suddenly I became second in line to the throne. The spare.’
‘And is that so bad?’ she prompted gently.
‘Try living in a goldfish bowl and see how you like it,’ he said. ‘It means you have all the strictures of being the heir, but none of the power. My freedom was something I cherished above everything else …’ Hadn’t it been the one compensation for his lonely and isolated childhood? The fact that he hadn’t really had to account for himself? ‘And suddenly it was taken away from me. It made me want to stay away from Khayarzah, where I felt the people were watching me all the time. And I knew that I needed to give Zahid space to settle into his Kingship in peace.’ There was a pause. ‘Because there is only ever room for one ruler.’
‘And do you miss it? Khayarzah, I mean?’
He studied her wide tawny eyes, realising that he had told her more than he had ever told anyone. In truth, his self-imposed exile had only emphasised his feelings of displacement, of not actually belonging anywhere. Just like the little boy who had been sent away to school. As a child he’d felt as if he’d had no real home and as an adult that feeling had not changed.
‘Not really,’ he mused. ‘I go back there on high days and holidays and that’s enough. There’s no place for me there.’
Isobel sipped her drink as the waiter placed two plates of steaming pasta before them. His last words disturbed her. There’s no place for me there. Wasn’t that an awfully lonely thing to say? And wasn’t that what she’d thought when she’d seen him lying injured in hospital—that he’d looked so alone? What if her instinct then had been the right one?
‘So you’re planning on settling down in England?’ she questioned, and then gave a nervous laugh. ‘Though I guess you already are settled.’
There was brief pause as Tariq swirled a forkful of tagliatelli and coated it in sauce. But he didn’t eat it. Instead, he lifted his eyes to hers, a sardonic smile curving his lips.
It was always the same. Or rather women were. Didn’t matter what you talked about, their careless chatter inevitably morphed into thinly veiled queries about his future. Because didn’t they automatically daydream about their future and wonder if it could be a match with his? Weren’t they programmed to do that, when they became the lover of a powerful alpha male?
‘By “settling down”, I suppose you mean getting married and having children?’ he questioned.
Isobel nodded. ‘I suppose so.’
Tariq’s lips curved. She supposed so! ‘The perfect nuclear family?’
‘Well—’
‘Which doesn’t exist,’ he interjected.
‘That’s a little harsh, Tariq.’
‘Is it?’ Black eyes iced into her. ‘You experienced one yourself, did you?’
‘Well, no. You know I didn’t. I told you that I never knew my father.’
‘And it left a gaping hole in your life?’
‘I tried never to think of it that way,’ she said defensively. ‘Holes can always be filled by something else. It may not have been a “normal” family life, but it was a life.’
‘Well, I never knew a “normal” childhood, either,’ he said, more bitterly than he had intended.
‘Can I … can I ask what happened?’
He stared at her, and she looked so damned sweet and soft that he found himself telling her. ‘My mother almost died having me, and after I was born she was so ill that she needed round-the-clock care. Zahid was that bit older, and a calmer child than me, and it was decided that my needs were being neglected. So they sent me away to boarding school when I was seven. That’s when I first came to England.’
Isobel frowned. She hadn’t realised that he’d been so young. ‘Wasn’t there anywhere closer to home you could have gone?’
He shook his head. ‘We have a completely different system of schooling in Khayarzah—it was decided that a western education would be beneficial all round.’ He read the puzzlement in her tawny eyes. ‘It meant that I would be able to speak and act like a westerner. More importantly, to think as a westerner thinks—which has proved invaluable in my subsequent business dealings. It’s why the Al Hakam company has global domination,’ he finished, with the flicker of a smile.
But, despite his proud smile, Isobel felt desperately sad for him, even though she could see the logic behind his parents’ decision. She had been the daughter of a school nurse and knew how illness could create chaos in the most ordered of lives. Sending away a lively little boy from his mother’s sickbed must have seemed like a sensible solution at the time.
Yet to move a child to live somewhere else—without any kind of family support nearby—and what did that child become? A cuckoo in the nest in his adopted country. And surely he must have felt like an outsider whenever he returned to his homeland? Tariq had spoken the truth, she realised. He didn’t have any place of his own—not in any true sense of the word. Yes, there were the apartments in London and New York, and the luxury houses on Mustique and in the South of France—but nowhere he could really call home. Not in his heart.