The Sheikh’s Stubborn Bride by Leslie North
18
Kadir strode through the palace gardens in search of his father. He stepped out of the shelter of the orange grove and into the vegetable patch near the far corner of the grounds, spotting his father’s profile through the greenhouse ahead. He should have known to look there first. Ibrahim was nursing his tomato plants when Kadir walked in and surprised himself by offering to help.
“You can give them some water, if you like,” his father said, showing him how the irrigation system worked. “Not too much. Just enough to dampen the soil to an inch down. Yes. There you go.”
They worked side by side for a while, moving down the row of plants, his father fertilizing while Kadir watered. Eventually, his father glanced over at him. “What brings you to me today, my son? I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve visited me here, let alone helped me work. Trouble on the throne already?”
Kadir shrugged, dripping water onto a plant. “Nothing’s going the way I’d planned with the development plans for downtown.”
“No?” Ibrahim raised a brow. “How so?”
“The people don’t like my ideas, not even my generation, who I thought for sure would embrace the modern, tech side of things.” Kadir shook his head. “I went on social media to gauge their reaction to my speech, and it was mostly negative. I thought the criticism and complaints would be the minority, but they weren’t. Everyone had something to say—students, business owners, all ages and economic levels. Many of them were angry because they see it as a dismissal of the work that’s already been done, of the efforts they’ve put in themselves, and the things that make Al-Fatha unique. Someone asked why the new king of Al-Fatha felt the need to bring in foreign money and influence when the country’s citizens were working toward their own innovations and ideas, ones that honored the culture they come from, not some other country’s way of life.”
He pulled out his phone to show his father. Ibrahim scrolled through it all, then nodded, his expression cryptic. “Tell me, my son, why did you feel the need to take things to this level? To change so much of our capital city?” Before Kadir could answer, he continued. “You know, I remember when you first developed this plan. It was far more modest at the beginning. Now, it seems as though you want to erase Al-Fatha’s past completely.”
Kadir shot his father an incredulous look. “Would that be such a bad thing?”
“What do you mean by that?” His father’s tone was not amused.
“It means”—he clicked off his phone and shoved it back into his pocket before moving on to the next plant—“that perhaps if this country were not so backward, my mother would not have fled at the first opportunity she got. And maybe she would return to visit once in a while.”
He was kidding. Sort of.
“You know nothing,” his father said in the low, level voice he used when he was trying not to get angry. “When your mother and I divorced, it was horrible. Painful. You were too young to understand. I loved your mother, but I was too tied to our traditions and my own vision of how things should be to let her pursue her dreams. I thought her acting was a scandal waiting to happen, her face splashed on movie screens all over the world.” He sighed and shook his head. “But it was my stubbornness, not her career that drove her away. She went to check it out once, before the end. Took a trip to Hollywood on her own to see what it was all about. I thought she would discover the truth of it—the long hours, the constant scrutiny—and see that it wasn’t for her, but the opposite happened.” He shrugged and sighed. “It only made her want to do it more. She told me she wanted to give it a try. But I said, ‘No. I don’t care if it’s your dream or not. I do not want you to do this. I forbid it.’” Ibrahim frowned. “She did not take that well. My Aziza said that I didn’t own her, and she was free to do as she wished, and she went ahead and started auditioning for things. When she landed a movie role I was furious. I told her that if she took the part, then we were done. She could have her career or our family. Not both. I made her choose, gave her an ultimatum. If she ran off to be in this movie, then she could not set foot in Al-Fatha ever again.” Ibrahim hung his head, his voice filled with regret. “It was my fault she left. Who would choose to stay with someone who so disrespected her? I don’t blame Aziza for going. And she would have returned if I had allowed it. Blame me for not seeing that she had to be her own person, separate from the royal family.”
Kadir was speechless. For a long moment, he just stood there, blinking at his father as myriad emotions roiled inside him—sadness, regret, self-recrimination, and anger underlying it all. Aimed partially at his father, for keeping the information from him for so long, but also directed at himself.
Because of his misguided views of the past and his parents’ relationship, he’d ended up doing the same things to Stella his father had done to his mother. Holding his own stubborn views of how things should be over her head, forcing the woman he loved to live by his rules and hell with everything else.
It was wrong. It was horrible.
And it was all his fault that she was gone. Worse, it had taken all of this pain and loss for him to finally admit that he loved her. Loved her more than he loved anything else in the world.
But she was gone. And if he wanted any chance to win her back, he would need to choose—between his resentments about the past or a future with his wife.
In the end, he really had no choice at all.
