‘I can’t seriously mean for us to be together again?’
Kat looked at him, horrified and excited in equal measure. She half shook and nodded her head.
Zafir’s face suddenly took on a harsh aspect. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. I want you back in my bed, Kat. We have unfinished business. When you walked out—’
‘You mean when you cast me aside!’ Anger flooded Kat’s veins again, giving her the impetus to move back out of Zafir’s dangerous proximity, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.
‘We’re not going to rake over that ground again,’ Zafir said harshly. ‘Suffice it to say that our engagement might have been over—there was no way I could have presented you as my future Queen after those headlines and pictures—but our relationship didn’t have to be over.’
Shock mixed with affront, and hurt poured through Kat, making her tremble. She was back in time, standing before Zafir in far more luxurious surroundings saying incredulously, ‘You don’t love me.’
He’d slashed a hand through the air. ‘This isn’t about love, Kat. It’s never been about love. It’s about mutual respect and desire and the fact that I believed—mistakenly—that you were the perfect choice to be my wife and future Queen.’
‘Perfect...’ She’d half-whispered it to herself, never hating a word as much as she had then.
Her whole life she’d been told she had to be perfect. To win the next competition. To get the commercial over the other pretty girl. To get enough money to save her mother... Except she’d failed—miserably.
She’d looked at Zafir and said in a hollow voice, ‘Well, I’m not perfect, Zafir. Far from it.’
And she’d walked out, leaving her engagement ring on the hall table. And now she was glad—because clearly he would have demoted her from the position of future wife, but kept her in his life as his mistress.
And she’d never been further from perfect than she was right now.
‘Get out, Zafir, this conversation is over.’
But her words bounced off him as if an invisible shield protected him.
‘Think about what you’re turning down, Kat. A chance to restart your life and return to where you belong. Have you thought about what you’d be turning down?’
He mentioned a sum of money and it was literally life-changing. Kat felt her blood drain south.
He reached into an inside pocket and took out a card, holding it out to her. She unlocked her arms from her chest and took it reluctantly.
‘That’s my private number. I’ll be staying at my penthouse apartment. I’ll give you till tomorrow morning, Kat. If I don’t hear from you I will find someone else and you will never hear from me again.’
She looked at him and marvelled that she’d once believed that he loved her because he’d asked her to marry him. Because she’d always had a romantic notion that that was what people did when they loved someone, in spite of being brought up as the only child of a single parent with no clue as to her father’s whereabouts.
But Zafir’s motives had been so much more strategic than that. She’d been scrutinised and deemed suitable. Perfect. And now he was asking her to step back into a world that had chewed her up and spat her out. Not only that, he was asking her to lay herself bare to him again, to let him carve out the last remaining part of her heart that still functioned and let him crush it until there was nothing left.
Kat was stronger now than she’d ever been, considering the trials she’d faced in the past eighteen months, but she was still only human and she wasn’t strong enough for this. No matter how much money he was offering.
Without taking her eyes off Zafir’s, as if some small, treacherous part of her wanted to commit them to her memory, she held up the card and ripped it in half, letting the pieces fall to the floor.
‘Goodbye, Zafir.’
His eyes flashed and his jaw clenched. Kat could feel the waves of energy flowing like electricity between them, but after a tense moment he just stepped back and said, ‘As you wish. Goodbye, Kat.’
But to Kat’s dismay, when Zafir finally turned and walked out, picking up his overcoat as he did so, and when the door had shut behind him, the last thing she felt was triumph.
She found her feet moving towards the door instinctively, as if to rush after him and beg him not to go. She stopped in her tracks, shocked at the profound sense of loss that pervaded her whole body, and she wrapped her arms around herself as if that could hold back all the turmoil she was feeling.
Zafir had devastated her once before. She couldn’t let it happen again.
So she stayed resolutely where she was, and after she’d heard the sound of his vehicles leaving from outside the apartment she breathed in shakily and sank down onto the couch behind her.
She looked around her, as if seeing the space for the first time again. She’d grown used to the bare furnishings and the sparse décor. It was all she’d been able to afford after the accident and her lengthy rehabilitation, even though the largest part of her debt had finally been gone.
And the reason it had been gone was because once those pictures of Kat had gone public, her blackmailer—the photographer who had taken them in the first place—had had no further means with which to blackmail her. After all, everything he’d always threatened her with had come true—her career had imploded in spectacular style.
Perversely, Kat had been grateful to whoever had found and leaked the pictures, because they had freed her from a malignant threat she’d had no idea how to deal with.
On numerous occasions she’d wanted to confide in Zafir, but then she’d feel too intimidated, or too scared of his reaction. How could a man like him, who had grown up in such a rarefied world, possibly understand why she would do such a thing? The thought of revealing all that ugly poison had pulled her back from the brink each time.
And in the end hadn’t she been vindicated? She’d never forget the look of disgust and horror on his face as he’d confronted her with her past.
Kat stood up again, restless, as Zafir’s visit sank in properly. She told herself that it was his arrogance that still left her breathless, but really it was the knowledge that he still wanted her, and the even more shattering knowledge that she still wanted him. The core of her body felt hot and achy, and her blood felt thick and heavy in her veins.
Damn him.
She paced back and forth, and as she did so her eye snagged on something in the corner of the room and she stopped. Zafir hadn’t noticed them. Crutches and a folded-up wheelchair. She hadn’t needed the wheelchair for some time now, but she would never not need one to hand. And she’d always need the crutches.
To Kat’s shame, she knew that this was as much of a reason as any other as to why she’d all but pushed Zafir out through the door. Because she couldn’t bear for him to know what had happened to her. Because she couldn’t bear to think about the fact that, even if she was to ever be with Zafir again, he would not want to be with her.
Because she was irrevocably altered.
Kat picked up the crutches and went into her tiny bedroom. She took off her sneakers, undid her jeans and pulled them off, then stood in front of her mirror, inspecting herself critically.
At first glance Zafir might not notice anything different about Kat—after all she stood on two legs, and was the same height she’d always been, with the same straight back. But then she imagined his gaze travelling down and stopping on her left leg. Specifically on the prosthetic limb that now made up her lower left leg, with its mechanical ankle and fake foot.
Even now Kat couldn’t recall anything about the accident itself on that fateful night. She only knew that one minute she’d been crossing the street and