More Precious than a Crown Read online

  ‘Go and have a shower,’ Zahid said. ‘I will have your things brought here.’

  He took care of all the details so easily, Trinity thought as she quickly had a shower and this time she did make a bit of effort with her hair, blasting it with the hotel hairdryer and doing what she could with Zahid’s comb.

  Now came the hard bit and for once she didn’t mean facing her family or facing her fears.

  It was facing the man on the other side of the door and pretending what had just happened had been little more than a very pleasant interlude.

  Now she had to give him up.

  Maybe she could go to the pharmacist and ask for Zahid patches, like Donald had when he’d tried to give up smoking, Trinity thought, making a little joke to herself, trying to lighten the load on her mind. But no gradually reducing dose was going to wean her off Zahid. Trinity knew that already.

  Cold turkey, here I come, she decided, opening the door and wearing a smile.

  Zahid lay in bed, watching as she put on some make-up and then tied up her hair.

  It was over.

  He just didn’t want it to be.

  Or rather he did, for these feelings that he had for her did not sit right with him, these feelings spelt danger.

  His mind flicked to his father, bereft on his mother’s death, scarcely able to stand, let alone lead a country.

  The same would not happen to him.

  The dress she had bought for this morning was colourful and floaty and did not quite match her threatening tears as she took the case to the door.

  ‘I’ll drop it in my room on the way down.’

  Zahid nodded.

  So this was goodbye.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he told her, for it was the truth.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She ached, not just from him but for him.

  ‘What time is your flight?’ Zahid asked.

  Trinity told him.

  ‘That is an hour before I am scheduled to fly,’ Zahid said.

  Their eyes met as they did the maths in their heads, as their brains raced to mental calculators to tap in more time.

  One more kiss, one more taste, one more time.

  ‘I could take you to the airport.’

  ‘So I...’

  ‘Leave your case here.’

  She almost ran to him. Maybe she did, for suddenly she was back on the bed and in his arms and responding to the fierce promise of his kiss.

  ‘Take as long as you need with your family,’ Zahid said as she wrenched herself off, ‘but not five minutes more.’

  They smiled because they both wanted that little sliver of time before they had to leave.

  ‘Are you sure that you don’t want me to join you?’ Zahid offered again.

  ‘I’d rather go down on my own.’

  She looked at Zahid and there was a moment when she truly wanted to tell him the truth but the very fact that she hadn’t meant that, no, he could not join her downstairs.

  If he did then it would be a huge disservice to Zahid for, yes, he would do the right thing and make polite small talk with her family, even Clive.

  She would not put him, even unwittingly, through that.

  ‘Penny for them,’ Zahid said, and Trinity just gave a pensive smile.

  ‘They’re not even worth that.’

  They weren’t, Trinity realised.

  Not a pennyworth of thoughts did she want to give to a man who had no place in this room.

  ‘Thank you,’ Trinity said, and Zahid’s eyes narrowed in a slight frown, for it had been a little joke that she might want to thank him but it sounded like she meant it.

  ‘The pleasure was mine.’

  One more kiss, and then just one more, before Trinity headed downstairs to where both Donald’s and Yvette’s families were gathered. Surprisingly it was a lot easier, knowing that if things got too difficult she could go back up to Zahid.

  Even not by her side, he gave her a confidence that she had never had.

  ‘I hear you’re working in a library,’ Yvette’s mother said, and she almost went to correct her but for the sake of peace Trinity lied.

  ‘In the reference section.’

  She was the perfect daughter, circulating nicely, even pretending that she was listening as her mind roamed several floors upwards. Finally, when she glanced at the clock for the fiftieth time, it was time to say goodbye.

  ‘I’m sorry I got so upset yesterday,’ Yvette said as Trinity kissed her goodbye and wished her well for the honeymoon. ‘I spoke to Donald last night and it was all just a miscommunication with the hotel.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  They spoke for a suitable time and Trinity was just saying her goodbyes to everyone else, silently congratulating herself on a job well done and about to slip away to spend a final, magical hour with Zahid, when Donald pulled her to one side.

  ‘Can I have a word, Trinity?’

  She felt her heart sink and just closed her eyes as history repeated itself.

  ‘You know how I hate to ask,’ Donald said.

  Except it didn’t stop him from doing so!

  ‘The hotel is insisting I pay for it all up front. How can I tell Yvette that I’ve messed up the honeymoon?’

  ‘I haven’t got it to give you.’ That wasn’t the issue, though and, not for the first time, she did her best to face it. ‘Donald, you need help.’

  ‘I need my honeymoon,’ Donald said. ‘It’s just been an expensive few weeks. If I can just get away...’

  Trinity was too worried to be cross.

  So, instead of heading back to Zahid and the bliss of his arms, after a lengthy discussion she sat in the business centre of the hotel and pulled up her account as her time with Zahid slipped ever further away.

  She didn’t need to ask for Donald’s bank details, she had already used them several times.

  Thanks to flying economy and saving what she could, Trinity had just over eight thousand dollars in her account. ‘How much do you need?’

  ‘Well, there’s the hotel, taxis, going out...’

  ‘How much?’ Trinity asked, and she couldn’t even manage a shrill edge to her voice.

  ‘Whatever you can manage.’

  She left herself one hundred dollars and she was too tired from it all to be angry and too scared for her brother to be cross.

  ‘Please, get help, Donald.’ She gave him a hug when she stood.

  Trinity truly did not know what to do.

  She’d begged and pleaded with him over the years, she’d argued and threatened, had offered him the chance to come and stay at hers and just hang out by the beach, but all to no avail. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want to be at one of these bloody family things without you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Donald, peeling her off, only she didn’t want to let go.

  ‘I’m scared I’m going to lose you.’

  ‘Honestly, Trinity, there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I love you,’ Trinity said, ‘and so I do worry.’

  ‘Well, there’s no need. Thanks for this.’

  By the time she’d calmed down and sorted out her make-up to look as if she hadn’t been in tears enough to go back to Zahid’s room it was already time for she and Zahid to leave for the airport.

  ‘I’m sorry, I got stuck...’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Zahid pulled her into his arms as their baggage was placed onto a large gold trolley. It wasn’t just sex he wanted from Trinity but this, that moment when he held her in his arms and she almost relaxed to him.

  He could feel her heart hammering in her chest and, despite a brilliant make-up job, he knew there had been tears, and from the way she clung to him now he doubted that they had been happy ones. ‘How was it?’

  ‘Same old, same old,’ Trinity attempted, forcing herself to pull back and smile, but she met very serious eyes. ‘It was fine,’ she said, adding another log to the fire of lies between them.

  The traffic wa
s light and in no time they were at Trinity’s terminal. Zahid would go onto the VIP section and so they said their final goodbyes in the back of his car. Zahid raised his hand so that no one opened the door to let her out but her luggage was unloaded and it taunted Trinity from the corner of her eye.

  ‘Take me with you.’ Trinity smiled. She was joking, sort of, and then she wasn’t. There was the threat of tears in her eyes again as she recalled the first time she’d asked him to take her with him. It was combined with this horrible feeling of impending doom.

  Zahid had no idea what had happened that terrible night and rather than him see that, she moved in for a kiss, but Zahid halted her, his hand cupping her chin.

  ‘I would love to take you with me,’ Zahid said. ‘You would be like a breath of fresh air in the palace...’ And so very dangerous to his heart. ‘You would be the biggest distraction, though.’

  Normally, Zahid had no trouble ending things. It was just proving more than a touch difficult now. He actually wanted to take her hand and tell the pilot that there would be another passenger, to take her home to Ishla with him and to hell with consequences.

  That was not him, though.

  With Trinity he barely recognised himself.

  Trinity too was having a lot of trouble remembering that she was supposed to be at ease with this, that it should be easy to simply kiss him goodbye, especially when Zahid started to make promises he surely would not keep.

  ‘Give me your number and I will call...’

  ‘Don’t.’ She pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t say you’ll call when you won’t.’

  He stared into very blue eyes and wished he was not going home to start the process of selecting a bride, wished for just a few more months of freedom...but wishes had to be denied when duty called.

  ‘No doubt I’ll see you in a few months at a christening.’ Trinity attempted a brave smile but it wavered when Zahid shook his head.

  Trinity was a luxury that even a married Zahid would find hard to deny.

  ‘I think that this has to be it.’

  ‘Such a terrible shame,’ Trinity said, trying to keep things light, trying to pretend this wasn’t breaking her heart. ‘You could almost make family functions bearable.’

  Zahid was struggling too as he tried to relegate it to a one-night stand, or one-morning stand, instead of lovers who were parting for good.

  His goodbye was distant.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The cause of death has not been released and the family have requested privacy at this difficult time.

  A small, intimate funeral is being held today, followed by a private burial.

  THEN THERE WAS the small spiel at the end of the report urging readers struggling with personal issues to ‘ring this number’.

  No doubt it would be engaged.

  Trinity folded the newspaper and put it on the table in front of her as the steward came round.

  ‘Can I get you anything before we start our descent?’

  Trinity shook her head and got back to staring out of the window as morning continued to arrive.

  She had always feared that this day would come but only in her worst nightmare had she thought that less than a month after the wedding she would be flying to the same church to say goodbye to her brother for the last time.

  It had been a terrible month.

  She had mourned Zahid, had ached to call him, to make contact somehow, though knowing that it was not what they had agreed.

  No-strings sex, yet her emotions were more than frayed when she’d found out that ten days into their honeymoon Yvette had walked out on Donald and after that her brother had gone spectacularly off the rails.

  It had from then on been a rapid descent into hell and Trinity actually couldn’t remember when she’d last slept for more than a couple of hours.

  Panic had descended when she had first taken the call and heard that Donald had died but it had been quickly replaced by numbness and she was grateful for that as she made her way through customs.

  Her mum’s family had naturally descended on the house. Her mother needed her sister but the thought of seeing Clive at this impossible time was more than Trinity could face.

  Tonight she would stay at the hotel where the wake was being held before flying back tomorrow.

  Yes, another flying visit.

  She’d learnt her lesson and so, when her father had transferred money to bring her home for the funeral, she had flown business class this time, but she still hadn’t been able to rest.

  Heathrow airport saw its share of tears but it didn’t glimpse Trinity’s today for she held them back, petrified that if one escaped, the floodgates would open.

  They nearly did.

  As she turned, there was Zahid, the very last person she had been expecting to see, for the funeral was being kept low key. Her mother hadn’t mentioned that Zahid would be there when she had spoken to her yesterday.

  ‘You will be okay.’

  It was a strange greeting. There was no embrace, just the guidance of his hand on her arm as his driver took her baggage and they were led to his car.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you.’ Trinity didn’t speak till they were in his car. ‘Mum said nothing about you coming.’

  ‘I only just found out. By the time I did you had already left for the airport...’ Zahid did not elaborate. Now was not the time to tell her that he had finally caved and, unable to get through to Donald, he had rung Dianne to ask for Trinity’s number, only to hear the news.

  His plane had touched down twenty minutes before hers.

  Trinity looked at Zahid. His lips were pale and his features taut. His thick hair was a touch too long and that tiny detail made her frown, for she had never seen him looking anything other than immaculately groomed.

  ‘Let’s first get you home.’

  ‘I’m staying at a hotel,’ Trinity said. ‘You?’

  ‘No hotel—I fly back this afternoon,’ Zahid answered. ‘When do you go back?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ Her voice was dull and she went back to staring out of the window.

  It was not his place to be angered by her lack of duty today. It was not his place to point out that surely she should be by her parents’ side, not just for the funeral but in the days that followed.

  It did anger him, though, for it just reinforced the fact that she bucked convention, that she refused to do the right thing, especially on a day like today.

  They pulled up at the hotel and as the driver removed her luggage Zahid noted the time as they needed to leave soon for the funeral.

  ‘You check in and change. I will wait in Reception.’

  ‘Why?’ Trinity said. ‘Or are we pretending today that you’ve never seen me naked before?’

  She was, Zahid decided as they headed to her room, the most volatile that he had ever known her and any doubt that he should be here today was erased from his mind.

  She needed him today, Zahid told himself, still fighting that he might need to be with her today too.

  ‘Your mother asked that I deliver the eulogy,’ Zahid said, as Trinity tried to plug in her heated rollers then realised that she’d forgotten her adaptor.

  ‘Great!’ Trinity hissed, and then turned and gave him a bright smile. ‘Great,’ she said again.

  ‘In what order?’ Zahid asked. ‘Is the hiss for the state your hair will be in, or that I have been asked to speak?’

  ‘You choose.’

  ‘Why are you...?’ He halted. Now was perhaps not the time to ask why she was so angry at him, now not the time to tell her just the hell this month had been for him too.

  ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ Trinity said.

  ‘A quick one,’ Zahid warned. ‘We have to—’

  ‘I’m not going to be late for my own brother’s funeral,’ Trinity almost shouted. ‘I do know how to tell the time.’

  He arched his neck to the side as the bathroom door slammed. Zahid walked on eggshells for no one, yet he cou
ld almost feel them crunching beneath his feet as he paced the room.

  Leave it for now, he told himself.

  Trinity was not his and so he had no right to insist on better behaviour.

  She was who she was and in truth he would not change her.

  Zahid made a quick phone call and when the adaptor she needed was promptly delivered he sat as she came out from the shower wrapped in a towel and watched her eyes fall on the blinking light of her hair appliance.

  Zahid did not expect her to thank him, so her silence came as no surprise.

  She flipped open her case and like a depressed magician pulled out black, after black, after black.

  Zahid turned his head as she dropped her towel and he heard her snap on her bra, then the sound of her pulling on her panties and then the tear of cellophane as she opened new stockings.

  ‘I’m sorry for the imposition.’ Trinity popped the tense silence with the tip of her anger. ‘I know that you never wanted to see me again.’

  ‘Of all your lies, and there are many, that is the biggest.’ Zahid looked at her now, appalled at how much weight she had lost this past month, how her skin had paled. He silently berated himself about how much he still wanted her. ‘How long did it take you to twist my words into my never wanting to see you again?’

  ‘You said—’

  ‘I said that this had to be it. I said my feelings for you would be inappropriate in the future.’ He watched as she started to crumple and he knew enough about Trinity to know that any crumpling would be spectacular and so couldn’t happen just yet.

  To embrace at the airport would have opened the floodgates but his touch might just hold them closed for a little longer now. ‘Come here,’ Zahid said, and when she did, he pulled her to his lap.

  Her skin did not arouse him this grey morning. Instead, he answered the tiny goose-bumps on her arms and her stomach in their plea for strength and warmth and held her tightly to him. ‘I’m here to get you through today,’ he said. ‘Our stuff can wait. I will call you in a few days and then we can speak properly.’ Zahid felt her nod on his chest. ‘Today you have enough on your mind without being concerned about us.’