Olivia Gates - Midnight on the Sands

“Zahir?” Her voice broke through the fog.

He opened his eyes again and saw only his office. And Katharine, sitting there, looking at him. He could see concern in her clear green eyes. She had noticed. What had he done? He realized then that his fist was clenched tight, resting on the desk, so tight that his tendons were screaming at him.

He had lost himself for a moment. Lost where he was.

It didn’t happen as often now as it had. Because he knew better than to let his guard down now. Than to let emotion take over control. She had distracted him. And now she’d seen him … She had seen his weakness.

“I don’t do that,” he said, his throat constricted. Dammit . “The crowd thing, I mean.” He took a breath and tried to reorient himself. “I have more of a face for radio.”

She smiled again, this time the expression was tinged with a bit of discomfort, as if she wasn’t certain what the appropriate response was.

“You can laugh, it’s okay,” he grated.

She did then, a soft laugh, but it brought that feeling back, the warm one, stronger, spreading. He stopped it this time, cutting it off with the force of a tourniquet on a wound.

“Well, I make a lot of appearances,” she said.

“I know. You always seem to be in the news. Your fashion sense is much written about.”

She nodded. “Of course. Although, I often wonder if anyone would care what color tie I wore if I was a man, but I can’t really complain. It’s nice to have my country featured in international news. Even if it is just for my shoes. It boosts tourism.”

“Do you have a lot of tourism in Austrich?” He reached deep for control, for total control, to find that kind of blessed numbness he was so accustomed to.

“Only recently. But that’s been part of what I’ve been involved with over the past five years.”

Since his brother’s death. She needed to stay busy, he supposed. If everything had gone according to plan, she would have married Malik on her twenty-first birthday.

She seemed to miss his train of thought, because she breezed on. “We have a tram system that takes people up into the Alps. You can’t beat the views. And then there’s various resort properties I personally have funded the development of. We were in need of luxury vacation spots, and now, Austrich has become a very popular spot for vacationing royalty.”

“And that is partly due to your personal campaigning, I would think.”

“Do you think I go to all those parties for the canapés?” She arched her brow.

“I did. But I would not think so now.”

Katharine swallowed, hard to do around the sudden lump in her throat. Zahir, who wanted her here about as much as he might want a root canal, had just had a longer conversation with her about what she did than anyone in her family ever had.

Not only that, he seemed to understand. To see her as more than just a peripheral. Oh, her father was counting on her, he’d made that very clear. But he was counting on her to marry someone. Not to do anything that required her specifically. This had nothing to do with her skills or talents.

You’re beautiful. Of course he will say yes .

Oh, yes, she was beautiful. Her father had been confident in that being her ticket to marriage with Zahir. Funny, but Zahir didn’t seem to care at all. And if she didn’t possess anything more than a pretty face she would have failed.

Something her father would probably never know. She loved him, she truly did, but he saw so little of her it was stunning at times. Heartbreaking at others. But she didn’t have any energy to waste on feeling sorry for herself. Dealing with Zahir took everything she had.

“You might be surprised that some people do invite me to parties, though. Seeing as you’ve spent the better part of two days hoping to evict me.”

“I have agreed to this now, Katharine, I will not back out. You have my word. My protection, as does your country. I don’t give any of those things lightly.” His hand tightened into a fist and she wondered if he was going to pound it on the desk again, as he had done a few minutes earlier. It had been so strange, as though he wasn’t looking at her anymore. Like he was seeing something else. And then he’d been back, she’d seen the change in him.

It had scared her a little. Not for herself, but for him.

“This agreement,” he said, “it is what my father saw as the right thing for Hajar. What Malik saw as right. Who am I to disagree?”

“Then I suppose it’s time for me to call my family with the good news.”

Zahir looked at her for a moment, those searing, dark eyes boring into her. “Why exactly are you doing this, Katharine? For honor? Truly and simply for the good of your people?”

“Yes,” she said. She thought for a moment about whether or not this was the place to speak words she’d never dare say out loud before. But why not? In this room she’d given him honesty, and he had listened. He hadn’t pretended there was no way she could have accomplished what she had.

“For that, and because it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.” She couldn’t believe for a moment she’d truly said it. Because it was something she’d hardly acknowledged to herself. She’d been too afraid to. Afraid that if she admitted she was becoming unhappy with a purely duty-filled life she would find herself unable to complete the tasks set before her.

“In what way?”

“After our marriage ends … Alexander will be king. And I’ll be … I will always feel responsibility for my people, loyalty to my family. I will always work for the improvement of my country, but … It won’t have to be my sole focus anymore.” Maybe then she would be free of that feeling. That gnawing sensation that no matter what she did, she wasn’t doing enough.

He only looked at her, his expression unreadable.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have a light you’re aiming for?”

His hands curled into fists again and his gaze shifted slightly, his throat working. “I’m glad you see a light, Katharine. For me, there is only darkness.” He looked down then, shifted his focus to the computer screen that sat on his desk. “Now that we have all that settled, I have work do to.”

KATHARINE hated being at a loose end. She never was back in Austrich. Her days were packed from start to finish. She reviewed their budget for charitable contributions, went to committee meetings and spent time volunteering at the largest hospital in the country. She never had a moment of her own, and that was fine with her. It made her feel … it made her feel useful.

But in Hajar there was nothing to do. No, specifically, in the palace there was nothing to do. She could only read for so long during the day before her eyes felt scratchy, and it was too hot in the middle of the day to do anything in the garden. She’d been out earlier, cutting flowers to add to the vacant vases she’d noticed when she’d first arrived. But the weather had moved past the point of sweltering, so now she was wandering the halls, staying cool thanks to the thick stone walls and that lovely air-conditioning they’d put in when they’d brought the palace out of the dark ages.

She was used to much cooler weather, crisp mountain air, not air that burned your lungs like fire when you sucked in a breath. Another part of the arrangement she hadn’t calculated. Not back when she’d been intending to marry Malik in the true sense of the word, and not when she’d come and proposed to Zahir.

Everything was so different. And she was starting to feel different.

A loud curse and shattering porcelain broke the lull of boredom she’d fallen into.

She quickened her pace, weaving through the labyrinthine halls until she saw Zahir, standing in front of the massive stone table that was placed against the wall there, the antique vase she’d place flowers in earlier shattered into uncountable, unfixable pieces. The flowers didn’t look like they’d survived the attack.