In Defiance of Duty (20 page)

“Your Majesty,” an attendant said respectfully as Kiara arrived back at the palace after another long day at hospital. “Your mother waits for you in your chamber.” Kiara had smiled automatically as the woman started to speak, but it took long moments for the words to penetrate. Even when they did, they made no sense.

“My mother?” Kiara asked, baffled. “Here?”

The attendant only nodded, and Kiara walked the rest of the way to her rooms rather more quickly than she might have otherwise, mystified.

Sure enough, Diana stood out on the private terrace that linked Kiara’s suite to Azrin’s, gazing out over the sea. Kiara blinked, unable to make sense of her mother’s presence in a place thousands of miles and halfway across the globe from where it ought to be. She repressed the urge to rub at her eyes.

Diana turned as Kiara walked out through the glass doors and smiled in her enigmatic way, looking as elegant and unreachable in a flowing caftan as she did in her denim jeans or occasional ball gowns back in Australia. The stars seemed particularly bright above them, as if in counterpoint to the jutting skyscrapers that trumpeted Khatan’s wealth and financial prowess from the city center far below the palace.

“It really is lovely here,” Diana said with a smile that seemed almost bittersweet.

Kiara closed the distance between them, frowning. She could think of too many horrible reasons for her mother to appear in person here, rather than simply sending one of her usual emails or even making a phone call. Too many to count.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, tripping over her words as her imagination ran away with all the possibilities. “Has something happened?” It was Diana who frowned then, her elegant brow wrinkling in apparent confusion. She shifted back as Kiara approached, and tilted her head slightly to one side, as if Kiara was behaving oddly and required observation.

“Azrin had me come,” she said. Her tone indicated this should have been common knowledge. “I didn’t think it was meant to be a surprise, was it?”

“Because of his father?” Kiara couldn’t remember her mother and King Zayed ever speaking, aside from a few formalities at the wedding. Why would she come to see him at hospital? More to the point, why would Azrin ask her to come?

“No, Kiara.” Diana’s frown deepened. “Because of you.”

Her gaze turned something very like kind then, and far too knowing, and Kiara felt a cold chill wash over her, into her, down deep into her bones.

No.

She could think of only one good reason that her mother would look at her like that. Only one. But it was impossible. Not after everything they’d been through.

Not now, when she’d finally stopped wanting exactly this.

“I’m fine,” she said, as if to stave it off, this thing that was happening here, but there was a deafening sort of buzzing sound, and it took her longer than it should have to realize it was only in her head.

Diana smiled then, with compassion—but no surprise. No surprise at all.

But it was impossible.

Kiara didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud, until her mother’s smile deepened.

“No, darling,” Diana said gently. “Don’t you see? He’s finally set you free.”

NO.

The word cracked in her like a thunderclap. Kiara stared at her mother for a single, stunned moment, then abruptly she turned on her heel and started for the doors to her room. Fury and purpose coursed through her blood, heating her from the inside out.

“I’m sorry you came all this way,” she said over her shoulder, but there was no helping it. Not when everything inside her was focused on what Azrin must have said—what he must have been thinking—to get Diana to come here. And here she had been trying to give him distance to deal with his father’s condition! “I’m afraid it was a wasted trip.”

She was almost to the door that led back out into the main part of the palace when her mother caught up with her.

“Kiara!”

The way Diana said her name suggested she’d said it more than once. Kiara stiffened, but she turned back around anyway—though it went against everything inside her to do it when adrenaline was pumping through her, making her feel jittery. Making her want to run through the palace and find him. Fight him.

No, she thought again, furiously. He is not doing this. He is not doing this.

“Perhaps you should take a moment,” Diana suggested, in that carefully neutral tone of hers that indicated she expected Kiara to erupt into temper. Or that she thought Kiara already had. “And really think things through.”

“What do you think I need to think through?” Kiara asked, fighting to keep all that adrenaline out of her voice, all of her mounting tension to herself. She saw her mother’s expression and accepted that she’d failed.

Diana pulled in an audible breath, and a wave of sadness—or perhaps it was regret—washed over Kiara as it occurred to her that her mother was nervous. That they were both so eternally nervous around each other.

“It seems to me that your relationship with Azrin has been, since the start, based very much on spontaneous, emotional decisions,” Diana said, her voice neutral as ever—only that quick breath before to betray her. She held up a hand as if staving off an argument. “That is not a judgment. Merely an observation.” She took another breath. “Perhaps you have an opportunity here to pause and reflect. To think about what you really want.” Kiara remembered, then, the way she’d left things with her mother. The terrible thing she’d said to her—even if, a small voice whispered, it might have been true.

And yet despite that, Azrin had called her and she had come. Kiara supposed that said more about her mother than she had ever been willing to admit to herself.

That Diana loved her in her own way. That she always had.

It made her profoundly sad that it was such a novel thought. And there was no reason at all that she shouldn’t face this relationship with honesty, too. No reason she shouldn’t try to see if she could make it that little bit better between them. If it was possible.

“You and I are so much alike, aren’t we?” she asked softly. Diana’s eyebrows shot high, and her careful expression melted away into something … honest, at least. If wary. Kiara lifted a shoulder. “Neither one of us was asked if we’d like to take over Frederick Winery. You felt you had to live up to the Frederick legacy.

So do I—except I feel I have to live up to all of that and your expectations. The sacrifices you made for me.” So do I—except I feel I have to live up to all of that and your expectations. The sacrifices you made for me.”

“My sacrifices were my choice,” Diana said stiff ly. “But it was never my intention to force you into a role you hated. I could have sworn you enjoyed what you did, Kiara. I know you did.”

“I did,” Kiara agreed evenly. “I like the business world. I like working. I particularly like the wine business.” Diana had begun to nod, as if Kiara was making her argument for her. Kiara shook her head. “But I am the Queen of Khatan.”

It was the first time she’d said it like that. As if she was claiming it. She felt a deep kick of something like power, as if she was connecting, finally, with what this new life, this marriage, would entail. As if she was finally accepting that this was hers.

He was not doing this to her. Not now.

“Kiara …” Diana began, frowning the way she did when she was searching for another line of argument. Another approach, another rationalization.

“Why do we both have such a narrow view of things?” Kiara asked then. “Why do we both assume that because something has always been done one way, it can only be done that way? That’s not how we make our best wines, is it?”

Diana only gazed back at her, no doubt trying to figure out where she was going, what she meant. Kiara wasn’t sure she knew, but she pressed on.

“I can’t be the vice president of Frederick Winery and also the queen of Khatan,” Kiara said, and she knew it was true. Some part of her mourned that deeply.

Some part of her wanted to cling to that old life out of fear, just as she always had. But the rest of her wanted whatever came next—as long as it came with Azrin.

“But that’s not to say I can’t sit on the board of directors. I just can’t be as involved in the day-to-day running of the winery as I used to be. It’s not all or nothing, is it? As if without me as vice president, Frederick Winery will fall off the face of the planet?” She laughed quietly. “It’s been running just fine without me these last months, hasn’t it? Too well, one might say.”

Diana let out a small breath that could have been a sigh. She was still impossible to read. Kiara reminded herself that she would always be Diana, no matter what understanding they might reach.

“Do you think this will make you happy?” Diana asked after a moment, shaking her head as if Kiara had disappointed her yet again. But, Kiara thought, if she had—that was all on Diana. There was nothing she could do about it. And she could no longer tear herself apart in the trying. “Disappearing into this world of his?”

“Did it make you happy when you did it?” Kiara countered, and then felt a sharp pang of instant regret when her mother blanched. “I’m not trying to be cruel,” she continued, though she felt uneven, off balance and wasn’t entirely sure what she was trying to do. “I promise you, I don’t want to disappear. And you don’t have to, either, you know. If you don’t want to anymore. You can choose something else.” And so can I, she thought, and it was as if she was finally giving herself permission. Or forgiveness.

It was Diana’s turn to blink. To stare at Kiara for a long moment, as if she didn’t know who Kiara was—or had no idea what she was talking about.

“You had dreams,” Kiara reminded her, her voice urgent with emotions she couldn’t name—she could only feel the long overdue truth of them. “You can still make them come true.”

“Because you think the fairies will come and run the winery, do you?” Diana asked, but Kiara heard the thickness in her voice that she was trying to conceal beneath that touch of asperity.

“Go find a bed-and-breakfast on a lonely spit of land somewhere and see what happens,” Kiara suggested in a voice gone hoarse. “The winery will be fine. We’ll make sure it’s fine.”

She felt the surge of heat at the back of her eyes, and could see an answering brightness in her mother’s, and for the first time in her life, wished that they were the sort of women who embraced.

But maybe this was where it all started, the relationship they should have had all these years. This moment, right here.

“You don’t have to prove anything in those vineyards any longer, Mum,” she whispered, using the familiar name she hadn’t said out loud since she was a child.

And there might have been tears that they were both too stubborn to let fall, but they were both smiling, too. “And neither do I.” She found him in his private study, hidden away in the diplomatic wing of the palace, where she had never known him to go except in the daytime. She stood in the doorway for a moment, taking a breath or two to simply drink him in.

He looked far too tired, if still so beautiful, his fierce face looking more weary than ferocious tonight, his hard mouth a firm, grim sort of line. He was sprawled back in the oversized armchair that sat at an angle before a fireplace. He was wearing one of his exquisite dark suits and he hadn’t even bothered to loosen his tie.

He was staring straight ahead, as if he saw ghosts standing before him in the empty room. As if he was the loneliest man alive.

“You should be gone by now,” he said without looking up. Kiara’s heart gave a great thump in her chest.

“I’m not being sent off in the night,” she replied tartly. “Under cover of darkness, as if I should be ashamed.”

“Tomorrow morning, then.” Still, he did not look at her. Though she saw the way his mouth tightened, and she could sense the way his temper coiled in him, raw and close to the surface.

“What happened to the two of us doing this together?” she demanded. “With no one running away?” She thought he meant to speak, but then he seemed to think better of it. She moved farther into the room. “Instead you called my mother?” she asked, her tone one of utter disbelief.

He made a noise then that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh.

“I imagined her triumph at the end of our marriage would make the long flight seem to race by,” he said in a voice too dark to truly be dry.

Kiara kept moving until she stood before him, looking down at that marvelous body of his, long and lean and sleek. What was wrong with her, she wondered, that he could order her away with every appearance of sincerity and she could still want him so badly?

He took his time raising his gaze to hers. She felt the heat of it, the way he dragged his eyes along every curve of her body. The tailored dress she’d worn to the hospital suddenly felt unduly confining. The modest neck and fashionably cinched waist seemed impossibly constricting, as if it was shrinking against her skin as she stood there.

But she knew better. She knew it was Azrin.

He finally met her gaze, his own dark, stormy. His harsh mouth betrayed no curve, not even the faintest hint of one. He looked edgy and dangerous tonight, too much a warrior, too unpredictable a man.

“Do you need to hear me say it?” he asked, in a tone she hardly knew, harsh and almost cold. “I release you.” His voice was distinct. Precise. “Go. Be whatever

“Do you need to hear me say it?” he asked, in a tone she hardly knew, harsh and almost cold. “I release you.” His voice was distinct. Precise. “Go. Be whatever you want, wherever you want. This time I will not follow you. This time I will let you be. You have my word.” She would have been heartsick to hear him say such things, she recognized from some distant place, had she had any intention at all of obeying him. As it was, she only stood there, staring down at him—challenging him.

“You’re giving up?” she asked. Her brows arched up. “After all your talk at the pools. Is this is your revenge?”

“The pools are not reality.” His voice was frigid, but his eyes were hot. He sat forward as if to emphasize the point. “And neither are we.”

“But I thought—”