Chapter 34 The Art Of War

She looked up, her gaze unfocused as she recalled the way Abdullah had held her; the soft words he had spoken; the way he’d stroked her hair; the thud of his heart against her cheek.

She felt deep in her bones that he’d been sincere, and the realization both terrified and thrilled her. She didn’t have real relationships. She didn’t know how. She’d been shy as a child, her parents’ distant figures, her only company a nanny, and then a governess. Even if she’d wanted, yearned, for such things, she hadn’t known how to go about getting them—and then Paulo had broken her trust and destroyed her faith in other people and, even worse, her faith in herself and her judgment.

Was she misjudging Abdullah now? Was it simply her pathetic inexperience with men and life that made her crave more of that moment, more tenderness, more contact?

Nothing about their relationship, if she could even use that word, was real.

Yet it felt real. She felt as if Abdullah understood and even liked her for who she