18. Chapter 18 The Wedding is Off
JULIANA
My heart beats so hard and fast my chest hurts.
"Explain about the deal with dad," I tell Bobby, not for a single second trusting Gabriel to do it.
Bobby looks like that's the last thing he wants to do, but isn't that why he's here? To tell me.
"In exchange for a long-term licensing and research partnership regarding the CRV-7 protocols and treatments with the House of Al Qadir, your father requested an arranged marriage between you and a man from my family.
" Gabriel says the words like they aren't the death knell to my hopes, to the dreams I was spinning around him and me… and the baby inside me.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Your Highness, but in an arranged marriage both parties are usually aware it's arranged." I had no idea.
He said he knew my father, but not well. That does not imply enough of a relationship to hatch a plan between them to hijack my life.
Gabriel's eye twitches at the formal address. I wonder if he realizes my choice to use it indicates a strong dislike just as his insistence on it being used.
No wonder he doesn't like my father. Franklin Caldwell strong armed Gabriel into marrying his introverted daughter.
"They could hardly tell you about it when the plan was to get you to fall in love with your arranged husband," Bobby says scathingly. "Dad thought you deserved to feel chosen."
"But not to be chosen?" I ask with more pain than I want to show Gabriel.
"I did choose you," Gabriel lies right to my face.
"You allowed yourself to be bought for me." With access to medical technology that would be ideal for treating his mother's dermatological breakouts.
Suddenly, it all clicks into place. The media scandal the year before where Queen Camille's private medical treatments and even photos had been leaked to the gutter press.
She'd been treated in a clinic in Switzerland. I have no idea which clinics and hospitals have licenses to use the CRV-7 protocols, but I'm betting that clinic is one of them.
Something else clicks in my brain, sending another shard of pain to pierce my already bleeding heart. "Your whole family knows about the arranged marriage, don't they?"
Gabriel's jaw might as well be hewn from granite, it's so tense and hard.
"Don't they?" I press, blinking against the stinging moisture in my eyes.
"Delphine is unaware of the details."
In other words, everyone except the seventeen-year-old. No wonder she was so shocked by her older brother choosing me to marry. He didn't.
"I'm nothing like the women you usually date, isn't that what she said?" How could I have been so stupid? "It was all a sham, wasn't it? The perfect dates, the patience with my discomfort socializing with strangers, the p-passion."
My stomach roils and I have to swallow against the urge to throw up. He had sex with me to cement the deal, not because he wanted me.
"Your father did not stipulate I be the man you married," Gabriel says, walking toward me. "He did not even demand that man be a member of my immediate family, only a member of my house."
"What does that matter?" I cross my arms over my stomach, trying not to bow under the pain buffeting me like a gale force wind.
"I chose to be the man that would become your husband. I chose you." His words ring with sincerity and power.
The desire to believe is so strong, I'm ashamed. I want it to be true, but it's not. Not the way he's implying.
"Of course you stepped forward. The clinic your mother is sponsoring is in Ayn al-Hayat. You are responsible for it." Just like he takes responsibility for everything from the airport to the goatherds.
A flicker of recognition in his stoic gaze tells me I'm right. Gabriel would not allow another man to fulfill what he thought of as his duty.
"What brought us together is not as important as the life we will build." He reaches for me.
Unable to bear even the thought of him touching me, I flinch away. "We aren't building anything together!"
The life growing inside me means I will never be fully free of Prince Gabriel Al Qadir, Sheikh Jabal al-Dhahab, but right now, I can't even begin to figure out what that means.
The only thing I know is that I have to get away from Gabriel. Away from Zahriya where every member of the royal family, people I thought were going to be my family, that I thought accepted me has in fact lied to me.
My skin is too tight, my mind too shattered, and my heart too lacerated to handle dealing with any of them, but Gabriel most of all.
I start backing up toward the still open entrance to the family tunnels. "I need to go."
"No!" Gabriel slashes the air with his hand in a familiar gesture. "You are mine. I am yours. That our marriage was arranged is no deterrent to the joy we can find in each other."
I just shake my head, my throat too clogged with tears to speak and turn to rush from the room.
"Juwayhira!"
The sound of Gabriel moving behind me spurs me on and I run.
His big hand lands on my shoulder and halts my progress.
Jerking from his touch, I spin to face him. "Leave me alone," I choke out. "Please! At least show me that much respect. You promised. Or were your promises a lie too?"
His face a mask of intense emotion, Gabriel steps back, his hands fisting at his sides, his body practically vibrating with the need to follow me. "As you wish, jawharat qalbi, but know this, you are mine in this life and the next."
Why call me the jewel of his heart? He doesn’t have a heart!
GAbrIEL
"My father is offering a new contract to yours as we speak," Bobby Caldwell says into the silence Juliana leaves behind her.
I turn to face her brother and say with vicious vehemence. "I do not care about the contract."
"I think you will when you hear the terms."
"No, I will not."
"They are the same as before without the marriage caveat," Bobby goes on as if I have not spoken.
I stalk toward the other man and loom over him. "The. Contract. Does. Not. Matter. Juliana will be my wife. She will have children by no other man than myself."
"Good luck convincing her of that." There is no sarcasm in Bobby's tone. "My baby sister is more stubborn than the rest of us combined."
"I will convince her." Whatever it takes.
"Good."
"You want her to marry me?" I ask in disbelief.
"Yes. But unlike my father, I didn't think my sister deserved to feel chosen, I believe she deserves to be chosen."
It is exactly what Juliana said only moments before and the question I asked Franklin that day in his office, uncaring at the time of his answer.
Now, I care. Not about what the older Caldwell man thinks is best for his daughter, but that my little jewel know she is my choice.
"She is my choice." And I need to remind her that I'm hers.
"I see that. Maybe tell my sister about the dirt you dug up on me."
"To what end?" I ask acerbically. "To show her what a ruthless bastard I can be?"
"To show her that you had leverage besides marriage to her you could have used to secure the contract and you didn't use it."
He is right. But even though I got the information on her brother before I began my courtship of Juliana, I did not use it to force Franklin into withdrawing his demands regarding marriage to Juliana.
"You do not care if your sister knows you operate in the gray areas of life?"
"She loves me, warts and all. Just like I love her as she is, not for what she could be."
"You are a good brother." One I will be honored to call family. But I'm not sure he knows his sister as well as he thinks he does. "Nevertheless, telling her the terms of the contract hurt her unnecessarily."
"If you think my father wouldn’t have boasted about fixing you two up sometime in the future, you don't know him very well."
The thought had never occurred to me. That lack of circumspection is an anathema to the way I was raised and he has a vested interest in his daughter not finding out.
"You believe he would risk being cut off from his daughter and future grandchildren with such a boast?"
"He wouldn't think he was risking it. Look, my dad loves Juliana, but he thinks he knows what's best for all of his children and he wouldn’t have been able to help himself telling her how he knew her better than she knew herself."
"That is good to know." I will take appropriate steps to protect my jewel from her father's thoughtlessness in the future.
Once I have convinced her that the only future either of us has is one together.
My phone vibrates with a text.
A smile creases my mouth as the first step in my plan presents itself.
"That smile doesn't bode well for someone," Bobby says with wry humor.
"Oh, it bodes very well."