Page 27 of To Tango, with Desire

Crazy.

“Maryam, she’s younger than I am for starters. And I . . .”

Why was I holding back?

Never in my life had I allowed fear to dictate my decisions. When I wanted something, I went after it with the tenacity of a hound on the hunt.

But this was different. She was different.

“Zane? Are you there?”

“I’m thinking.”

“God help us all.”

I smirked. Maryam had a way of cutting through the bullshit. She was so different from my mother, who’d been a dreamer. Even when she’d been scrubbing toilets, Parisa would sing as if she were smelling jasmine flowers and not the fetid stink of human waste.

But Maryam was a practical woman with a heart as big as the ocean. She’d been there when I’d barely had a hot meal as a young child. She’d given my mother the strength to leave my drug-addicted father. To start over even when it had been hard.

“Listen. You’ve been through your share of heartache, Zane. But I’m afraid instead of making you wiser, you’ve become stupid.”

I sputtered, “Excuse me?”

“If you know there’s something between you and this woman and you want her, then stop being such a baby and go get her. And before you tell me, Maryam this or Maryam that, I want you to sit with yourself tonight and have a good, long think about your future. You’re not getting any younger. You wake up in that big mansion all alone . . . for what?”

“I like my life.”

“But you need to love it. You have the world at your feet but no love in your heart, habibi.”

“I’m not looking for love.”

I heard her titch of disapproval over the line and couldn’t help but smile.

“Maryam, not everyone needs to marry for love.”

“So why marry at all then?”

I shrugged. I wanted a wife. A companion. A lover, yes, but not a woman to give my heart to. I wanted a life partner, not grand passion. What was wrong with that?

“What’s wrong with having a companion?”

“Ya allah! You want a companion, get a dog.”

I laughed. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“Why are you denying this?”

I shuddered, gripping the pen in my hand.

“I don’t know,” I murmured.

But that wasn’t true.

Not entirely.

I knew that Amira Hadid was the worst possible candidate for a wife. She was argumentative, stubborn, unyielding to common sense. And someone whose passion had the power to bring me to my knees.

God, the things I wanted to do to her . . .