She heard a sigh from behind her. “You think your clothes will protect you from my questions?”
“No,” she said, deliberately dropping the awkward cover to pull on her top. If he thought he could side-swipe her with difficult questions, sheknewshe could divert him with one simple movement.
And, if his silence was anything to go by, it had worked. A shower would have to wait. Only when she was dressed did she turn around. And, yes, from his expression, she knew his thoughts had strayed. His eyes were dark, liquid and his lips were parted as if he imagined pressing them against her. She shivered.
He jumped up. “I’m sorry, you are cold. Please, drink your coffee.” He went and got a soft throw and gently pulled it around her shoulders. “Your clothes might not have protected you, but your nakedness very nearly did.” He kissed her gently and then withdrew back to his chair. “Nearly, but not quite. I repeat you’re acceptable to us both—my country and me—and you must see that now.”
“Acceptable,” she repeated with a soft grunt. “Now, that’s quite a word. Practically guaranteed to make a woman change her mind.”
He frowned, the darting shadows falling heavily now around his eyes and below his cheekbones. He looked… dangerous. But it didn’t matter how dangerous he looked, she wasn’t about to surrender herself to a man who found her simply “acceptable”.
“And what word, Gabrielle, would you prefer? Something suitably sentimental, like love?”
She shrugged, as if nonchalant, as if that word wasn’t the fulcrum of her life and her future. “It certainly has the ring of tradition about it. It’s usually mentioned when a man tells a woman she should stay with him.”
“Not this man. You should know by now that love is irrelevant to me. It has no meaning.”
She approached him. “It does if you have a heart.”
“Ah,” he said, his eyes still hard, despite the way she drew her head closer to his. “Now there is the crux of the problem. I have no heart. Only a body and a mind—both of which want you, no,needyou to stay.”
She shook her head. “Youhavea heart, Zavian, whether you like it or not.”
He shook his head. “Only one which pumps blood around my body. It’s a functional heart, not a sentimental one. And why do you insist on this point? You are a scientist and believe only what can be proved.”
“And love can be proved,andit endures when all else fails.”
He grunted in disbelief and shook his head again, shifting in his seat. She knew he hated to discuss such things. She decided to press her advantage. “Thoughts and beliefs change, lust burns out—”
“But you think love lasts forever, hey?” He drank back his coffee. There was movement now from outside the tent. People had risen and were going to pray. He stood up. “You are innocent to believe such a thing.”
“You’re wrong. I have seen and felt too much in my life to be innocent, too much tonotbelieve in love. It’s theonlything I have faith in. I might belong, but only to the country, not to you. I can’t be with you. I cannot trust someone who doesn’t love me, someone who I don’t even know can love.”
A tense silence fell. “I don’t know if I can love, either, Gabrielle.”
“Then you need to find out. Because, while I might stay here in this land—because you’re right, itismy home, and last night showed me that people I respect and admire, believe it to be my home, also—I can’t be with you, not with a man who doesn’t know his own heart.”
She stepped away and opened the flap to the tent where the sun rose at the same time as the call to prayer filled the air. She looked back. “You’re afraid, I get that.” He shook his head, incensed at the idea that he might be afraid. She held up her hand, something she never did, and his words died in his mouth with surprise. “But until you face your fears and figure out your feelings”—she tapped her heart—“what you have, here, then there is no way forward—for either of us.”
She didn’t wait for an answer but swiftly left the camp and secured transport for her return to the city. He might have got what he wanted from the trip into the desert, but she’d left him with something to think about.
Part of her had wanted to cave in and be with him. She loved him, and she loved this land. But she’d done enough soul searching over the past year to know that it wasn’t enough. Until he allowed her into his heart, their relationship had no future. He’d got it quite wrong. It was the other thing, lust, which was ephemeral. That could end, and if and when it did, so would their relationship. It was only love which endured. Her grandfather had taught her that.
It hadall gone spectacularly wrong. For a man who prided himself on careful calculation, he’d completely misjudged the situation. Zavian picked up a pen and tapped it on the table, irritated beyond belief that instead of ridding himself of an obsession, being with Gabrielle had only increased it, creating a panic inside of himself which he’d managed to tie into a knot since he’d returned from his night in the desert. He refused to indulge it.
The tapping increased in intensity until he slid the pen away from him and jumped up from the table and strode to the window. He was suddenly aware of a silence which had descended on the room. He turned and glared at the people seated at the board table, aware that he had no idea what they’d been talking to him about.
“The meeting is concluded.”
There was avoidance of his gaze and some mutterings. His vizier frowned and picked up his papers. The others looked to him for guidance in their confusion but he gestured for them to leave. Naseer watched the door close and only then approached Zavian.
“Your Majesty,” he began.
Zavian raised his eyebrow. “Formality. This must be serious.”
“When you cannot concentrate in a policy meeting, itisserious.”
Zavian grunted and continued to look straight out to the distant horizon, toward the desert where his thoughts remained. “There was nothing being discussed that needed my comment.”