Free The Sheikh's Destiny (Harlequin Romance) by Melissa James Page A

saviour.
    The irony was lost on him, but he saw one thing clearly: something had made Hana run from her world, and he’d tapped into it with his anger—and his believing the worst of her after she’d saved him so many times. That was what it came down to.
    What had he done ?
    Through a painful stone lodged in his chest, he forced out, ‘Hana, I—’
    â€˜Don’t waste time with an apology you won’t mean and I won’t believe.’
    Her cool words broke into the apology budding in his heart, stopping it dead. She was back on her feet, shouldering her backpack. ‘Silence would be best at this point. Let’s go.’
    Her face was remote, cool as ice water splashed in his face—and again, she’d treated him like she would any man who deserved her withdrawal. Despite recognising him, he wasn’t a figurehead to her. He was Alim, and she was showing him the consequences of his unleashing his foolish mouth on her.
    Since meeting her he’d butted in on her private world, hurt her and forced her to flee her village, destroying her fragile illusion of safety in Shellah-Akbar. And now he’d added humiliation to the list, treating her as a mercenary predator willing to sleep with him for what she’d get from it.
    The worst of it was he had a feeling that, no matter how ashamed he felt, Hana was shouldering a far greater burden from his unthinking accusations.
    Â 
    It was almost sunrise again. They’d been walking ten hours, and Hana had felt Alim’s remorse walking between them like a shadow-creature the whole time. She’d felt it hovering there, aching for release, for the past twenty-four hours.
    She’d felt his shame through the last of their night-walk last night, his anxiety to make it better through his care that she rest her head on his jacket as she slept today. She’d heard his worry in his insistence she drink first, and the bigger share of the energy bar he’d given her, saying with an uneven laugh that it held no appeal after the fourth or fifth bar. But though he didn’t push her or talk about it, she knew what he craved.
    Forgiveness. A simple word, but so hard to practise when people she cared for, people she trusted believed the worst of her, over and over; and now, with a weary acceptance, she knew Alim had been added to that list. People she’d trusted who’d betrayed her. People that she cared for, who believed she was …
    Oh, God help her, she cared for him, and that he’d been able to accuse her of those things at all meant he’d believed it. Whether he’d believed for a moment or an hour or a lifetime didn’t matter; whether it was based on his lack of self-belief didn’t change it. It was done, he’d said it, and her heart felt like a lump of ice in her chest. The only way she could survive the next few days and save him, and herself, was to close down until she said goodbye to him for ever.
    She couldn’t go through it again, couldn’t care, couldn’t trust and have it betrayed, leaving her—like this . All she could do was slam the shutters down on her heart, show nothing and hope to heaven she could survive this bleak emptiness a second time.
    As they prepared for breakfast the silence seemed so loud it screamed over the sounds of the creatures waking for the day in the scrubby hills to the west. The hope and the need for her forgiveness crouching beneath his compliant quiet filled her stomach with sick churning until she couldn’t swallow a single mouthful of her food.
    She couldn’t give him the absolution he wished for—but she had to say something, so she blurted the first thing thatcame to mind. ‘You haven’t used the oil on your skin for a while. It must be itching.’ She rummaged in the backpack, and thrust the oil for his scars at him.
    After a moment, he took the bottle. ‘Thank you. It is uncomfortable.’ With an