by Dani Collins
They were ignoring the part where he’d thrown her into this pool, she presumed, but she was beginning to tentatively hope.
“You’re on my list,” she said with a lift of her shoulder. “Even when you’re sweaty and grouchy and uncivilized, you make me happy, so I had to come after you.”
Tender agony clenched across his grimy face for one moment, the way emotion overpowered him sometimes when he didn’t seem to know what to make of her.
“Even though I’m liable to be that way often?” He splashed the dust from his face. “I’ve thought about making my own list, you know. But you’re the whole thing. What else could I need?”
“Akin.” She dipped her chin, blinking more than water from her lashes.
“Why aren’t you keeping up, ya amar?” He nodded at the clothes she still wore. “Too angry? I’ve hurt you too much?”
Her hurt and anger were dissolving beneath the emotions he was making no effort to disguise. In fact, the gleam in his gaze was so intense she wound up shyly looking down to unzip the garment, trying to escape how monumental it felt to be the subject of that much admiration and value and regard. Something inside her was growing too big for her skin to contain it. Her throat ached in a good way.
“My top is white,” she said huskily as she let the abaya float away. She was using levity to keep herself from dissolving into emotive tears. “We could hold that wet T-shirt contest we talked about last Christmas.”
A brief pulse of surprise, then he said, “Let me see,” and drew her to him.
She was so buoyant it took no effort for him to draw her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist and reveal her soaked torso.
“It’s not ideal,” she murmured. Her nursing bra was clearly visible.
“It’s a preliminary round,” he allowed. “But you’re definitely on the way to the finals.”
“We could hold another qualifying contest later,” she suggested, linking her hands behind his neck. In the future, she intimated. The one they would have. Together.
His gaze stayed on her chest. “A tournament circuit. I like that idea.”
“Despite the lack of competition, I believe I have a shot at the title. One of the judges seems very biased in my favor.”
“The only judge,” he said in stern warning, “is extremely biased. He also has an uncanny ability to spot excellence. Eleven out of ten. Without the bra, your score will triple.”
“Hey.” She cupped the sides of his face. “My eyes are up here.”
“You started it.” He made no effort to disguise the lust simmering behind his love.
“I think I fell in love with you the first time you made a joke. Do you know that?”
“I have never made a joke in my life. I am always completely serious,” he assured her.
She gathered all her courage, even though this gamble wasn’t nearly as frightening as she had always feared. Happiness was right here. All she had to do was grab it.
“Do you love me, Akin?”
“I love you so much I cannot breathe, Hannah. I am terrified that something will happen to you, because I do not know how to face life without you anymore. But I am so glad to have you by my side. In my arms. In my head and in my heart.”
Her mouth trembled and her throat could only manage a thready whisper. “That is a much better reaction than the first time. For the record.”
“For the record, there is no contest. You are the most beautiful, perfect woman ever created. But as beautiful as you are, especially in the throes of passion, I am going to make love to you in your tent. Your body is very much my vision to enjoy and no one else’s.”
“So possessive,” she teased, secretly delighted.
“Believe it.”
A few minutes later, when their damp, naked bodies were coming together on the cushion-strewn bed in her tent, he paused to take in her pale curves. His reverent hand stroked the back of her shoulder, down her back and waist and hips to her bottom and her thigh.
“You really are the most beautiful, perfect woman,” he murmured worshipfully.
And she believed him.
EPILOGUE
“EXPLAIN THAT AGAIN.” Qaswar might only be seven years old, but his dark brows were perfectly capable of a thunderous frown of astonishment.
Akin loved him so much his chest could barely contain it sometimes. His son-slash-nephew had so many of Eijaz’s physical traits it was unquestionable whose son he was. He also had Eijaz’s outgoing personality and idealistic vision of how the world should run. All of that was tempered with glimpses of Hannah that showed up in an expression of curiosity or an incisive way of seeing things or a quiet moment of compassion.
Not that Qaswar was in any mood to hear about his inherited traits today.
Akin glanced at his wife. She was biting her lips together as she closed the children’s book that seemed to be prompting more questions than it answered.
“Which part is confusing you?” Akin asked. “Because you’ve always known that I’m actually your uncle.” They had made that clear from a very early age in ways that had been appropriate at the time, pointing to other blended families as examples. “And we talked a little about where babies come from when your sister was born.” That had been last year and Qaswar hadn’t been that interested.
“Yes, but—” A dimple appeared in Qaswar’s chin and he looked between them with disbelief. “You do that?”
Akin took Hannah’s hand. “Yes.” They special-hugged the hell out of each other as much as their busy schedules allowed.
“But I didn’t do that with your biological father,” Hannah clarified. “That’s why I wanted you to read the book, so we could explain that part.”
Qaswar had not been eager for a reading assignment when it wasn’t a school day, particularly one on reproductive science that included illustrations of smiling sperm and ovum with eyelashes.
“This is information we wanted you to learn straight from us,” Akin said. “We thought you were old enough to understand it, but we don’t have to talk a lot about it right now if you don’t want to. You can bring it up anytime in future, though. And when your brother and sister are old enough, we’ll explain it to them, too.”
Akin hadn’t known it was possible to love this wide and hard, but he would have ten more children if Hannah was up for it, he loved his existing three so much.
“Okay but tell me again how the doctors just mixed it up,” Qaswar said. “Because it’s not like when the maid accidentally puts your socks away in your brother’s drawer, is it? It seems like something that’s pretty important. Shouldn’t they have been more organized?”
“Yes,” Akin assured him. “And I am not one to excuse incompetence, but in this case, I can’t regret their lack of attention to detail. In fact, I think it was the best thing that could have happened for all of us.”
Qaswar shook his head in bemusement. “I guess.” In the next second, he had shrugged off one of the most profound, defining moments of his parents’ lives. “Now will you play hide-and-seek with us?”
“Sure,” Akin said dryly. “Go get Kamal.” Akin had promised to take them into the passageways where they slipped out of sight around corners then leaped out to scare one another from their skins. He had to warn security when they were going in, because their shouts alarmed the staff who heard it through the walls, but his boys loved it, and Akin did, too.
Hannah sagged into him before he could rise. Her shoulders were shaking. He realized she was gasping for breath, she was laughing so hard.
“What—”
“Am I the drawer?” she sputtered.
A crack of laughter left him. He hadn’t heard it like that, but now he absorbed Qaswar’s remark about the socks put away in the drawer and laughed so hard his eyes grew wet.
The boys came back and Kamal cocked his head, his grin the most endearing replica o
f Hannah’s cheekiest smile. “What’s so funny?”
Akin was too weak to speak. He squeezed Hannah. She was wiping her eyes.
“We’re just happy,” she said around her lingering chuckles. “Very, very happy.”
They were.
Coming next month
AN HEIR CLAIMED BY CHRISTMAS
Clare Connelly
‘I will never understand how you could choose to keep me out of his life.’
Annie’s eyes swept shut. ‘It wasn’t an easy decision.’
‘Yet you made it, every day. Even when you were struggling, and I could have made your life so much easier.’
That drew her attention. ‘You think this is going to make my life easier?’ A furrow developed between her brows. ‘Moving to another country, marrying you?’
His eyes roamed her face, as though he could read things in her expression that she didn’t know were there. As though her words had a secret meaning.
‘Yes.’
For some reason, the confidence of his reply gave her courage. One of them, at least, seemed certain they were doing the right thing.
‘What if we can’t make this work, Dimitrios?’
His eyes narrowed a little. ‘We will.’
It was so blithely self-assured, coming from a man who had always achieved anything he set out to, that Annie’s lips curled upwards in a small smile. ‘Marriage is difficult and Max is young—only six. Presuming you intend for our marriage to last until he’s eighteen, that’s twelve years of living together, pretending we’re something we’re not. I don’t know about you, but the strain of that feels unbearable.’
‘You’re wrong on several counts, Annabelle.” He leaned forward, the noise of his movement drawing her attention, the proximity of his body making her pulse spark to life with renewed fervour. “I intend for our marriage to be real in every way—meaning for as long as we both shall live. As for pretending we’re something we’re not, we don’t need to do that.’
Her heart had started to beat faster. Her breath was thin. “What exactly does a ‘real’ marriage mean?”
‘That we become a family. We live together. we share a bedroom, a bed, we raise our son as parents. It means you have my full support in every way.’
It was too much. Too much kindness and too much expectation. She’d thought he would be angry with her when he learned the truth, and that she could have handled. If he’d wanted to fight, she could have fought, but this was impossible to combat. The idea of sharing his bed…
‘Sharing a home is one thing, but as for the rest—
‘You object to being a family?’
He was being deliberately obtuse.
She forced herself to be brave and say what was on her mind. ‘You think I’m going to fall back into bed with you after this many years, just because we have a son together?’
His smile was mocking, his eyes teasing. ‘No, Annabelle. I think you’re going to fall back into bed with me because you still want me as much as you did then. You don’t need to pretend sleeping with me will be a hardship.’
Her jaw dropped and she sucked in a harsh gulp of air. ‘You are so arrogant.’
His laugh was soft, his shoulders lifting in a broad shrug. ‘Yes.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘But am I wrong?’
Continue reading
AN HEIR CLAIMED BY CHRISTMAS
Clare Connelly
Available next month
Copyright ©2020 by Clare Connelly
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