Sheikh's Ex-Girlfriend (Khayyam Sheikh Series #1) by Sophia Lynn

offer was what you could give me, and I know that it was meant with all the … the love and care that you have for me.
    “It simply isn't enough. Thank you. I'm sorry.”
    Nasim stared at her, struck to silence by her words.
    Ella squared her shoulders and walked away. For a moment, she thought that he was going to call her back, to berate her if nothing else, but there was nothing but silence.
    Blindly she made her way through the mansion, at last finding herself in the garage. There was a chauffeur there polishing the headlights on a car, but he straightened when he saw her. She wondered if he was the same man that offered her a ride home five years ago. There would be a kind of stunning circularity to it if he was.
    “Miss? Can I help you?”
    “Yes,” she said. “I need a ride out of here. Down to the Old Quarter.”
    ***
    Nasim stood in the library, barely able to believe that she had left. Still, the silence in the air and the heavy atmosphere of the room confirmed it, and slowly he sat down at the desk again. Everything felt unreal, but he wondered if it had felt that way since he had met her.
    When she had appeared in Dalal, it felt as if he had entered into a beautifully strange world, things where nothing mattered except for love. Now reality had intruded, and left them both hurt. There was no way to reconcile their differences, there was nothing they could do to come together again.
    Without thinking about what he was doing, he balled up his fist and slammed it down on the desk. The ancient wood groaned, but didn't give, and he struck it again and again.
    By the end, his fists were bloodied, but his head no clearer, and he still had to face the reality of a world without Ella.

Chapter 8
    The first few days after she left Nasim were hard. The days after that became even harder. She woke up in the morning with a lead weight in her heart. Sometimes she could distract herself when the work got tough, but then she would see something that reminded her of him, or simply find herself thinking about him in the middle of the day.
    Somehow, she managed to find a calm inside her that she could show to the rest of the office, but when she climbed the stairs to her apartment late at night, all of those emotions were there waiting for her.
    Calls to Emmaline helped, and they Skyped nearly nightly, though sometimes Ella preferred to talk rather than to video. Her eyes were simply swollen with tears too often, and if Emmaline had seen that, Ella suspected that nothing would keep her sister off of the plane.
    “It's all right to grieve,” Emmaline said one night. “It's the only way that you can get better. Just remember that you need to take care of yourself when you do so, all right? You're doing a very hard job out there, and you're doing it when you've just taken a real shot to the heart.”
    “I'm doing my best,” Ella said defiantly. “It's just that it's … it's hard not to be reminded, you know? It's like everywhere I look and everywhere I go, there's something that reminds me of him.”
    “Maybe it's time to start looking?”
    Ella stiffened.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I think you know exactly what I'm talking about, honey. You said it yourself, he is his country. Since he's the sheikh, it makes perfect sense that you would see him everywhere. Now what that says to me is that if you need to get away from him, you need to get away from Khayyam.”
    “No. Out of the question. I have worked too long and too hard to create this space and this opportunity for myself. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing, exactly where I want to do it.”
    “Just listen to me. Yes, you are doing what you want to be doing, but as far as I can tell from what you've told me, you're doing it in hell. Maybe this will pass, but from what I've seen? I don't think it will. You love him, and if you want to grow, it might be best to go to a place where you just aren't reminded of it over and over and over