He sighed, feeling little enthusiasm for rescuing what would inevitably turn out to be some damn idiot tourist—they averaged about ten a month—with no respect for the elemental environment. Zain loved the desert but he also had a healthy respect for the dangers it presented.
He sometimes wondered if the deep emotional connection he felt with the land of his birth was made stronger by the fact that, growing up an interloper, he’d had to prove his right to belong.
Things had changed, though sometimes an overheard comment or knowing glance would make him wonder just how much.
Admittedly, no one called him names these days, no gangs egged on by his brother threw stones, excluded him or simply beat him up, but scratch the surface and the prejudices were still there. His existence continued to be an insult to many in the country, especially those members of the leading Aarifan families.
He was more of an annoyance than his mother, who at least was living on another continent. It would have been easier in many ways if he had been a bastard, but his parents had married, not letting a little thing like his father’s already having a wife and an heir get in the way of true love.
Love...!
A growing noise of distaste vibrated in his throat as, with a creak of leather, he heaved himself back into the saddle and turned the horse. That word again. In his mind it was hard to be sane and celebrate something that people over the centuries used to justify...well, pretty much anything from bad choices to full-scale war!
Love really was the ultimate in selfishness.
He didn’t have to look much farther than his own parents to see its destructive power—there was no doubt of his father’s enduring love for his mother, but it was as if their love story had been perfectly designed to increase tabloid turnover.
The sheikh of a wealthy middle-eastern state—married to a wife who had already given him an heir—had fallen for the tempestuous Italian superstar of the opera world, a diva in every sense of the word... Zain’s mother.
Despite its progressive reputation, setting aside a wife was not unheard of in Aarifa—in fact, there were circumstances, even in these more enlightened times, when it would be positively encouraged, and even by the discarded bride’s family if brought on by the need for a male heir, especially when that heir would one day be the country’s ruler.
But Zain’s father had already had an heir and the wife whom he dishonoured by setting her aside came from one of the most powerful families in the country. The humiliation of the sheikh’s betrayal of the family with impeccable lineage was compounded by the unsuitability of the bride Sheikh Aban al Seif took in her stead, and the fact that the unsuitable bride had won over all her critics with her charm and smiles.
A nation had loved her and then fell dramatically out of love with her when she had walked away from her husband and eight-year-old son to resume her career.
The irony was that her humiliated, proud husband, the leader who had never dodged making tough decisions, the man known for his strength and determination, had not fallen out of love despite her betrayal. He’d have taken her back in a heartbeat and both his sons knew this, which perhaps accounted for the fact that they had never been what anyone could term close.
And in many ways, just like their father, Khalid was stuck in the past. His eyes still shone with pure malice when he looked at the half-brother whom he still held responsible for every bad thing that had happened to him and his mother. He still wanted whatever Zain had, be it success, accolades or, now, the woman on his arm. Ultimately it was about depriving not possessing and, once he had whatever it was he coveted from Zain, Khalid usually lost interest.
Would he lose interest in Kayla now he had her?
Zain shrugged to himself in the darkness. It was no longer his concern.