‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business—’
‘You’ve got it wrong.’ He paused so long she thought he wouldn’t say more. He looked down at her hands clasped in his. His thumb swiped idly across her skin. ‘It’s my mother who doesn’t approve of me.’
His face was a stony mask. Utterly still. Bereft of emotion. Yet she felt it, flowing from him, swirling between them.
Pain. Deep, soul-destroying pain.
Annalisa could barely breathe as the weight of his suffering bore down upon her.
Then his face changed. She watched the familiar twist of his lips, the raised eyebrow, the cool eyes. Yet despite his derisive expression she’d swear he looked haunted.
‘I’m hardly a model son. I was a disappointment to my parents from an early age.’
Annalisa’s heart wrenched at his arrogant attitude, certain it hid suffering.
Fleetingly she remembered he’d worn that same expression on his last morning at the oasis. Had his supercilious behaviour then been a smokescreen too?
She tugged her hands loose from his grip and dared to wrap them in turn around his powerful fists. They were rigid.
‘I don’t believe that.’
His glare could have frozen water in the desert sun, but she refused to look away. Annalisa didn’t understand the need to champion him. She acted on instinct. On emotion so powerful it wouldn’t be denied.
‘You’re hardly in a position to know, my dear.’
The casual endearment was laced with cool dismissal. In response she raised her chin and met him stare for stare.
‘I know your mother loves you.’
He jerked beneath her hold. His big shoulders rose and dropped, as if a massive earthquake had thundered through him. An instant later he was still, his look quizzical.
‘I appreciate your good intentions. But not all parents are like yours, Annalisa.’
An expression flashed in his eyes. Something so stark it stole her breath and made her more determined to persevere.
‘It’s there in the way she talks about you.’ Annalisa refused to be cowed. ‘She talks about you all the time now, did you know that?’ At Tahir’s amazed look she kept going. ‘She talks about all three of you. She’s so proud of her sons. Of what strong, honourable men they are.’
Tahir snorted in disbelief and Annalisa grasped his hands tighter, willing him to listen.
‘It’s true. She says you’re all different but you have traits in common. Strength, determination, passion, pride. Honour.’
‘You’re confusing me with someone else.’
She shook her head. ‘She said you’d taken on the kingship though you desperately didn’t want it. Because you felt obligated.’
Tahir’s eyes widened. She pressed on. ‘She says that even while you were out of the country you anonymously funded initiatives in Qusay for abused and disadvantaged children.’
‘She knew about that?’ Another tremor shook his big frame. Annalisa’s heart ached. She wanted to reach out and palm his cheek, stroke his hair, soothe him. He looked stunned. Shocked to the core.
Abruptly he dragged his hands from hers, leaving her bereft.
‘It’s easy to give money when you have a fortune.’ A slashing gesture emphasised the words. ‘It wasn’t important.’
It was on the tip of Annalisa’s tongue to say it was important to those who’d benefited from his generosity, but she bit it back.
‘So you haven’t noticed the way she looks at you? The way she follows your progress around a room?’
It had puzzled her at first, the coolness between mother and son, contrasted with the Queen’s avid interest when Tahir wasn’t aware of it. Till Annalisa had realised there was an unhealed breach between them.
Tahir’s brows furrowed. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.
Finally he shook his head. ‘Maybe once she cared. But that stopped long ago.’ His voice was clipped, testament to his discomfort. He surged to his feet, looming over her. ‘Until I returned to Qusay my mother hadn’t spoken to me for years. Not during my exile. Not before.’
His eyes glittered with an ice-cold clarity that chilled Annalisa to the bone. ‘She refused even to speak to me the day my father banished me.’
His voice throbbed with a passion that tore at Annalisa’s heart.
‘So you’ll understand why I find it hard to believe you.’ He turned abruptly and strode to the door.
Trembling, Annalisa stumbled to her feet. ‘I’m not a liar, Tahir. You know that.’ She forced the words out over a throat choking at the sight of his torment.
She didn’t have explanations, but she was certain Rihana loved her son. If anything, after listening to her discuss her children, she thought Tahir might even be her favourite.