Harlequin Presents May 2017, Box Set 1 of 2 by Sharon Kendrick

Author:Sharon Kendrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460330302
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

JOHARA WRAPPED HER arms around herself, suppressing a shiver despite the sultry summer air, as she looked out on the steep roofs and steeples of Paris’s Latin Quarter. She’d arrived back in Nice that morning and she was still trying to ignore the icy panic creeping coldly over her—and to convince herself that she’d made the right decision.

In the end it had been both easy and heartbreaking. She closed her eyes against the look of icy disbelief in her father’s eyes when she’d asked him to delay the wedding. The memory of the conversation caused pain to lance through her again.

‘F-F-F…Father,’ she’d stammered, inwardly cringing at the look of barely concealed impatience in her father’s face. She’d caught him leaving a meeting, and the other diplomats and dignitaries had eyed her with cold disapproval, a woman trying to break into a man’s world.

‘What are you doing here, Johara?’ Arif asked. He glanced back at his colleagues. ‘She is to marry His Highness Azim next week.’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk about,’ Johara said, trying to gather the tattered remnants of her courage. ‘About the marriage…’

‘What is it?’ Arif grabbed her elbow and steered her to a private alcove. ‘You are humiliating me in public,’ he snapped, his eyes narrowed to dark slits, everything in him radiating icy disapproval. Johara shrank back, shocked. He’d never looked at her like this back in France, even when she’d dared to risk his displeasure.

‘Azim is…very cold.’

‘Cold?’ Arif looked nonplussed.

‘He seems almost cruel,’ Johara whispered, losing courage by the second. ‘I…I don’t want to marry him. I can’t!’

Arif stared at her, his lips thinned, the skin around them white. ‘Clearly I have spoiled you,’ he stated in a hard voice. ‘For you to be speaking this way to me now.’

‘Father, please—’

‘You have been petted and indulged your whole life,’ Arif cut her off. ‘And I have asked only one thing of you, something that is a great honour and privilege. And now you tell me to humiliate myself and my family, risk my career and livelihood, because you find him a little cold?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I will do my best to pretend this conversation has not happened.’

‘But, Father, if you love me…’ Johara began, her voice shaking. ‘Then surely you wouldn’t…’

‘Nothing about this has to do with love,’ Arif stated. ‘It has to do with duty and honour. Never forget that, Johara. Love is a facile emotion for fools and weaklings. Your mother is a testament to that.’ Without waiting for her reply he stalked off, leaving her reeling.

Love is a facile emotion. She could hardly believe he’d dismissed her concerns, her feelings so easily. And worse, seemed to have none of his own. Like a naïve child she’d believed her father loved her. Now she knew the terrible truth that he didn’t, and never had.

Baubles, presents, a careless pat or smile—these things cost her father nothing. They’d been sops to appease her, not expressions of his love. It was so obvious now, so awful.

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