Wrapped In Pleasure - Brenda Jackson [50]
Jamal leaned against the door. He couldn’t help but smile. When he was younger it seemed Fatimah had always been able to do that—make things better. Even if it pitted her against his father. She had never been outright disobedient, but she had definitely let the king know how she felt about certain things.
“I don’t think you can make this one better, Fatimah,” he said quietly. “This is something I have to work out for myself.”
Fatimah looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, accepting his right to request that she not interfere. For now. “Well, whatever has you in such a sour mood will soon be forgotten. I sent word to Najeen that you had returned.”
A frown covered Jamal’s face. “Najeen?”
Fatimah’s feminine chuckle bathed the air. “Yes, Najeen. Have you forgotten who she is?”
Jamal walked away from the door. He didn’t want to see Najeen or any woman for that matter. The woman he wanted to see was millions of miles away. “Najeen will no longer be my mistress,” he said softly.
Fatimah raised a dark brow. “Why? Do you have another?”
“No.” He sighed deeply, not in the mood to explain. But seeing the surprised look on Fatimah’s face he knew that he should. “I will be sending Najeen away, back to her homeland where she will be taken care of in the comfort she has become accustomed to until she takes another benefactor,” he quietly decreed.
Fatimah nodded as she studied him. Her distress level rose. He was acting in a most peculiar way. “Is there a reason for your decision?”
His lashes lifted and his dark eyes met her even darker ones. Fatimah saw anxiety in their depths. She also saw something else that alarmed her. “Jamal Ari? What is it?”
He crossed the room to the window. The view outside was magnificent, but for the first time he didn’t appreciate it. “While in America I met someone, Fatimah. A woman who stirred me in a way no other woman has. A Western woman who initially fought me at every turn, a woman who is just as proud and stubborn as I am, someone who was my complete opposite on some things but then my total equal on others. And…”
Silence. Across the room Fatimah watched his profile. She saw the way his hands balled into fists at his sides; the way his jaw hardened and the sharp gaze that was looking out the window without really seeing anything. “And what?” she prompted, hoping he would continue.
Slowly, he turned to face her and she saw the torment in his features. “And someone I fell helplessly and hopelessly in love with.”
Fatimah’s heart took a lurching leap of surprise in her throat. “A Western woman?”
He met her gaze thinking, my Western woman. From the moment Delaney had gotten out of the car that day she had arrived at the cabin, a part of him had known she would be his. He just hadn’t known that he, in turn, would become hers. “Yes,” he finally responded.
Fatimah studied him. “But you’ve never liked Western women, Jamal Ari. You always thought they were too modern, headstrong and disobedient.”
A smile forced its way to his lips when he thought of Delaney. In her own way she was all those things. “Yes, but I fell in love with her, anyway.”
Fatimah nodded. “So what are you going to do? You love one but are planning to wed another?”
Jamal inhaled a deep breath. “I must do what I must do, Fatimah. I am duty bound to do what is needed for my country.”
“And what about what is needed for your heart, Jamal Ari?” she asked, crossing the room to him. She had taken him into her heart as her son the moment she had seen him many years ago. “Your heart is breaking. I can sense it.”
“Yes,” he said, not bothering to deny it. “A good leader’s decisions should not be ruled by love, Fatimah. They should be ruled by what is in the best interest of his people. My feelings matter not.”
Fatimah looked at him, aware of the coldness settling in him. The bitterness, as