He glanced at her, nodding, and she removed her hand from his and inhaled.
He took off, and she looked behind them for a moment. Another small car followed them, even when he drove away from the gates. Made sense—he couldn’t just leave without any type of protection.
“What brought your stepmother to my country?” he asked, slipping on a pair of sunglasses.
“I told you, she came to meet a man she met online,” she said. Maybe he asked her the question again to see if she’d stick to her original story. She folded her arms.
“She couldn’t meet someone in America?”
I asked her the exact same question. “I don’t know. Couldn’t you meet a virgin in your country?” she said, realizing the bitterness in her voice.
He fixed his sunglasses. “You care about her.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “She was the only constant I’ve had in my life. She meant well. Her husband—a good man who always wanted to be a father—adopted me, then he met her. He had a heart attack and died shortly after their marriage, and she could have given up on me, but she didn’t.”
“Mothers are important.”
She looked out the window. She supposed she could’ve called Mary her mother, but the word stepmother somehow gave her an odd sense of security. “They are,” she said, emotion thickening her voice. She kept on staring at the scenery, but not registering anything but a blur of green and gray. Her heart shrank, nostalgia creeping under her skin. Please, Mary, help me find out what happened.
“Let me rephrase the question: What was so important about this man to make her come all the way here?” he asked.
She arranged herself on her seat, facing ahead, and stretching her legs as much as she could. “I guess he told her all the sweet romantic things she longed to hear from a man. After my adoptive father Harold died…she wanted to find love again. She believed in love until the end.” And ended up making the wrong choices.
“You don’t?”
She scratched her head. Did she? “The people I loved either died, disappeared, or got hooked on drugs. So, yeah, love sucks.”
“I meant between a man and a woman. Or two men and two women.” He shrugged. “You catch my drift.”
“Do you? Are you going to love all your ten wives?” she asked, hating herself for her smart-assness. The idea of Nassor with any other woman, let alone a few, brought bile to the back of her throat, and she had to touch her neck to keep the nausea from floating up.
“I’ll vow to protect them, and cherish them. That’s love.”
“No. A golden retriever can protect and cherish you. Love…has to be different. Has to be more.” A strange sensation swept through her, warming her insides. She wasn’t sure if she believed she’d ever find love, but damn it, it had to be more meaningful than an arranged marriage to a handful of people. “Love is committing yourself to one person.”
“So you do believe.”
She wrinkled her nose, unable to give in. She’d believed in the past, so many times, only to get hurt. What would change now? What had changed? Nothing. “I believe people believe.”
He chuckled, a hearty male sound that almost made her smile too. “You can be a pain in the ass.”
“What are you trying to get me to say? Have you imagined what your life will be like with four or five wives? I mean, the practicality of everyday life.”
He gave her a sideways glance, then focused on the road. She noticed how he clasped the steering wheel, the relaxed expression from earlier disappearing. “I don’t know, honestly. I know people who have more than one wife, but until recently it’s not something I intended to do.”
“Then why do it?”
“It’s expected of me. I’m the king, and in our society, as backward as it may seem, marriage to nobility is a way to move up in life.”
“How altruistic.”
He skidded off the road, rolling the car onto the shoulder, bringing it to a stop. For a beat or two, he remained silent, looking ahead. She turned to study him. The vein in his neck pulsated. “My mom was the rebel of the family. She took off, raised me how she wanted.”
She cleared her throat. Tension crackled in the air, and a part of her warned her not to keep pushing him. Why did she care about the choices he made? His happiness or marital status were none of her business. She drummed her fingers on her leg. Shit. I can’t let go. “She doesn’t strike me as a rebel any longer.”
“She’s trying her best to make amends, and she wants what’s best for me.”
“She wants you to choose the path she didn’t. She wants you to be a better man than your father was to her.”
