LITMIR.BIZ

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three months later the sale seemed to have stalled.

      Alim needed the hotel gone!

      He sat in his sumptuous office in the palace and tried to take care of business with a mind that was elsewhere.

      Seeing Gabi again had proved to be his undoing.

      Temptation beckoned more with each passing day but never more so than now.

      A wedding was being held there this weekend and Matrimoni di Bernadetta was the company that had been hired for the event.

      The itinerary was open on his computer and Alim scrolled through it, hoping for a glimpse of her name, or a note that she might have left in the margins, as Gabi often did.

      There was none, though.

      ‘Do you want me to contact his attorney?’ Violetta asked, but Alim shook his head.

      ‘I will speak with Bastiano myself,’ Alim said.

      He might even speak with him face to face.

      Alim was sorely tempted to summon the royal jet, with the excuse of meeting with Bastiano, but really for the chance to see Gabi.

      He was dangerously close to breaking the diktat.

      ‘That will be all,’ Alim said, and, having dismissed Violetta, he attempted to deal with the day’s correspondence.

      He didn’t get very far.

      It had been months since he had seen Gabi again but the feelings had not faded.

      If anything, they had intensified for, despite the pressure his father and the elders exerted, Alim was no closer to agreeing to a wedding.

      His mind was in Rome, rather than here in Zethlehan, where it should belong.

      He thought of the days he had loved most at the Grande Lucia.

      Gabi, arriving early in the morning, and how she would become increasingly frazzled throughout the working day.

      And he thought too of the wedding nights, and how she would finally relax again and enjoy watching the show she had produced.

      He missed her.

      Not the risqué life he had once led, but the small moments that were now long gone—stepping through the brass doors and seeing her sitting in the lounge with Marianna. Knowing that there would be another wedding soon and the chance to see her again had brought him more pleasure than he had realised at the time.

      His times at the hotel had been made better by her—the scent of flowers coming from the ballroom and Gabi directing brass trolleys laden with gifts and arrangements...

      Alim missed those times.

      And they would soon be gone for ever.

      He had done all he could to sever his ties to Rome, yet it felt as if his heart had been left there.

      He looked up as his mother knocked at his open office door and he shook his head.

      ‘Not now,’ Alim said.

      ‘Yes, now,’ Rina said and came in.

      He had always been polite—if a little distant—with others, though now he was stone cold.

      The vast palace felt too small, and there was no company that he wished to keep.

      Unless it was Gabi’s.

      ‘How are you, Alim?’

      Alim didn’t even bother to lie and pretend that he was fine, he just gave a shrug. ‘I am trying to chase up the contracts for the Grande Lucia. I think I might need to make a trip to Italy.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘Soon,’ Alim said.

      He would be courting temptation if he went back this weekend, Alim knew, yet he had to see Gabi.

      ‘I have just held the morning meeting with your father. He thinks that a wedding would cheer Yasmin up.’

      ‘I am not going to marry to provide a remedy for my sister’s mood.’

      ‘What about your mood, Alim?’ Rina said. ‘You are not happy.’

      ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But I do not need to be happy to do my work.’ And there was indeed work to be done so he gestured for his mother to take a seat. ‘Kaleb’s thirtieth is coming up...’

      But his mother was not here about that. ‘I am concerned, Alim. I thought once you were home you might be happy, but it has been months now...’

      ‘I love my land.’

      ‘Yet you make no commitment to remain here?’

      ‘You mean a bride?’ Always the conversation led back to that. ‘A bride is not the solution.’

      ‘Then tell me the problem.’

      ‘No.’

      He did not share his thoughts, let alone his feelings, with others. In fact, until recently he had refused to examine them.

      Life had always been about duty and work and solving problems logically.

      Now, for the first time in his life, he could not come up with a solution to the dilemma he faced.

      ‘Alim,’ his mother implored. ‘Speak to me.’

      He did not know how to start.

      ‘I might understand,’ Rina insisted.

      Yes, she just might, Alim thought, for there was no doubt that hers was a loveless marriage.

      ‘Just before the diktat was invoked I met someone,’ Alim said, but, even as he explained things, he knew that wasn’t quite right. ‘I have liked her for a couple of years but I always stayed back. Things got more serious just before I was summoned home. I left her without any real explanation and when I returned to Rome the other month...’

      He didn’t finish. Alim could not explain the sadness in Gabi’s eyes, neither did he want to reveal the ache in his heart and the regret for the year together that had been denied them.

      Alim knew it could never have been more than a year; his father would never give his approval to Gabi.

      No, his bride would be from Zethlehan. In fact, his father had whittled it down to the final three—the one who would uphold tradition and best serve the country, and was deeply schooled in their ways, would be Oman’s choice.

      ‘I am thinking of going to Rome to see her.’

      His mother was quiet for some considerable time and when she spoke her voice was strained and laced with fear. ‘Have you broken the diktat, Alim?’

      ‘No.’

      He heard his mother breathe out in relief. ‘That’s good, then.’

      ‘How can it be good?’

      All that mattered to them was that he abided by the rules, no matter the cost to himself.

      ‘There is a desert out there, Alim,’ Rina said, and he stood and looked out the window; the reproach in his voice was aimed at himself, for of course he had considered it.

      ‘Gabi will not be coming to the desert. She would never even entertain the thought.’

      ‘She does not have to reside there,’ Rina said. ‘She could visit now and then and once you are married, once you have an heir...’ It was a difficult conversation to have. ‘Well, then the rules relax.’

      And he threw his mother a look. ‘Do you think I would do to my wife what my father did to you?’

      The poorly kept secret was finally being discussed.

      ‘I would never impose a loveless marriage on a bride,’ Alim said, and then he closed his eyes because that was exactly what it would be, and the reason that, despite mounting pressure,

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