Page 320 of The Skeikh's Games

“Sara, I’m married,” he said as he approached her. “I’m married. A couple of months now, and I don’t really know her. It’s my fault because I’m never there.”

“Okay. I was married. Divorced now. This isn’t about our past, Kamal. This isn’t about the other people in our lives.” The wind howled around them, and she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you. And if you’re thinking about me, then maybe we can see each other tomorrow.”

Kamal rolled his head around and caught her eyes. She seemed so sincere and so scared. “Sara, I’ll meet you tomorrow. We can talk. I’d like to talk.”

A smile broke out over her face, and she reached over to hug him. As her arms wrapped around him, he couldn’t help but lean into her. He wanted to feel the warmth and peace that he used to feel in her arms, but he was too tired. Keeping his hands to himself, he backed up and nodded to her. “Tomorrow, Sara.”

As he trudged into the hotel, he knew that’s he’d just made a mistake. But this was Sara. This was the women of his dreams. He owed to himself to at least try to find peace with the life he had now.

The beautiful wife who was waiting for him. That life.

Chapter Nine

Jada sat down at the table and stared at the phone Kamal hadn’t called since his crazy call earlier. He’d actually asked about her. He never did that. It should have made her ecstatic that he’d wanted to talk about her, but it just didn’t sit right with her. There was something about his voice that worried her.

It made her stomach turn. In all honesty, it was the aroma of her breakfast that was making her stomach turn. Panic set in as she hurried to the bathroom and hit her knees. It was the third day in a row that she hadn’t been able to keep her breakfast down, and it was starting to scare her.

After she emptied the contents of her stomach, she leaned back and stared at the pregnancy test on the counter. It had been there for days now, taunting her. She just needed to get it over with. She just needed to pee on the stick and get it over with.

Instead, she wiped her mouth and rinsed it over the sink. Ignoring the test, she left the bathroom and sat back down at the table. Feeling like an idiot, she stared at the phone. “Call me,” she whispered. “Call me and tell me what’s wrong. Call me so that I can tell you about my day. Call me so I can ask you what I should do. Do you want a baby, Kamal? We never talked about it, and I don’t even know. I don’t even know what I want. How am I supposed to know what you want?”

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. Tapping her finger on the table, she waited. She waited for Kamal to call her.

* * *

After squeezing in a few hours of sleep and putting in a few hours of work, he met Sara at the restaurant. She sat in the corner table and gave him a shy smile as she stood. He couldn’t help but smile back. That red hair. That creamy skin. How long had he wanted to touch her, and now was she sitting right across the table. He could reach out and take her hand. He could brush his thumb across her skin and feel her just one more time.

“How was your day?” she asked nervously after they ordered.

“Short, and I only say that because I slept longer than I should have. But I’ve been ahead of schedule for awhile, so I’ll probably finish up in a few months if nothing happens.”

“That’s good. You know I’ve looked up your home several times. I look at google images, and I wonder what you’re doing. I’ve missed you.”

Leaning back, he reached for his water. “Why the divorce?”

“Oh. Big question right from the start,” she said softly. “I married a couple of years after I left you. I think I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be everything that you gave me, but it didn’t work. We were broke. We were angry. We were fighting all the time. It was miserable. He slept around. I slept around. We made it two years. Two years. How disappointing is that?” She looked up and tucked her hair behind her ears.

“We all make mistakes.”

She kept looking behind him, and he looked over his shoulders. She was checking herself out in the mirror.

“Is your marriage a mistake?”

“What?” he asked sharply. “Why would you ask that?”

“You spent three hours with me yesterday, and you didn’t mention her. I generally take that to mean that you don’t want to talk about her.”

His marriage was none of her business. He bristled at the thought and tried to push it away. She had just talked about her marriage. It was only right that she asked about his.

“My wife is fine,” he said shortly. “What are you doing here? You said you’d never leave New York.”

“I do live in New York.”

“Sara, that’s twelve hours away.”

“I know. But I heard that your business was moving in, and I wanted to see you again. I came looking for you, Kamal. I came looking for you because I made a mistake, and I wanted to fix it. I wanted to tell you that I was a horrible person then, and I’m not anymore. I guess I came looking for forgiveness.”

The waiter came to drop off their food, and Sara frowned. “What the is this?” she demanded.

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