by Lynn, Sophia
“I’m saying that you just . . . came into my house and started changing things to suit you. Can’t you see why that’s wrong?”
There was something plaintive in her voice, and Halil considered for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“No. Why would it be wrong?”
Myriah stared at him, and for a moment, he could feel her trembling on the edge of losing control. Then she took a deep breath and sat down on the stone bench by the path.
“Will you come down and sit with me?” she asked, and he tilted his head as he obeyed.
“Are you handling me?” he asked, and she smiled a little.
“I’m the mother of three little girls. Believe me when I say that when I think you need handling, you’ll know. It’s just . . . all right. Say that you’re at home at the penthouse, and you have a guest comes in. You care for the guest, you respect their opinion, but all of a sudden, the moment your back is turned, they start pulling down your favorite pictures and saying they’ve replaced the paintings with things that they’re sure you like better. Wouldn’t you be offended?”
“I would . . . wait, is that what you think I was doing?”
She looked about as confused as Halil felt, and he wondered if they were even speaking the same language anymore.
“Yes? Wasn’t it?”
“Myriah . . . no.”
This time he couldn’t resist. She looked so confused and sad that he reached for her hand. It was cold, and he cleaved it between his two hands, considering how in the world he was going to tackle this.
“Myriah, I thought it would please you.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because . . . aren’t they things that you need?”
He could see her struggle with her own emotions as well as her need to be honest.
“No,” she said at last. “They’re all things that I like or want. But I don’t need them, do you understand? It’s not like . . . I was waiting around for you to show up and to provide for me!”
“That wasn’t what I was trying to do.”
“Then what? What could you possibly have been doing that involved cataloging every way that I failed to measure up as a mother?”
“Myriah, no! No. I would never think that. I never could. Not after . . . Well. No. That’s not what I was thinking.”
Halil hesitated, wondering if he wanted to expose himself like this, whether he could stand to be this vulnerable to anyone. Then he realized that there was no one in the world like Myriah. She was, in a way that had never quite sunk in before, the mother of his children. If he couldn’t speak to her, there was something more deeply wrong with the world, something that he couldn’t bear.
“I thought . . . that perhaps it would be a good start for my daughters.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Halil wanted to call them back. They sounded ridiculous, and he wondered if it was too late to deny them. Then to his surprise, Myriah threw herself into his arms. For a moment, he felt ridiculously frozen, as if he were some sort of animal brought to bay who didn’t know whether to fight or to flee, and then it was as though something in him remembered that this was Myriah, and she would never, ever be a threat to him.
“Myriah? What’s the matter/? Have I upset you somehow?”
“No, no, nothing that wasn’t already my fault. Oh, Halil, I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve done nothing to be sorry for, I promise,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I just . . . I just didn’t know! I didn’t think, and I couldn’t imagine anything except my own foolish idea about what you had done. Halil, I had no idea that you felt that way.”
“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” he asked, and he couldn’t conceal the slight burr of bitterness in his voice. “I have not been much of a father to them.”
“That wasn’t your fault, you couldn’t have known . . .”
Halil shook his head, and when he took Myriah’s hand this time, he could sense that there was less reluctance than there had been before, less wariness. No matter what came of this, no matter what risks or consequences there might be, he could not bring himself to regret what he had said.
“We can’t keep going back to the past. If we are to have any kind of future at all, we can learn from the past and allow it to instruct us, but we cannot allow it to lead. That way lies disaster.”
“And we’re better than what we used to be,” Myriah said, and he was surprised by the resolve in her voice.
“I am glad you think so,” he said after a moment.
“I know so. I look at you, and I see a man who was different from the one that I knew. I might not have been willing to try to find you and to let you in on my secret back then, and this might be arrogant to say in the extreme, but I think I would know better now. You are someone I want . . .”
She came to a stop, and Halil squeezed her hand gently. It felt as though he was floating above, taking this all in with bated breath. They were on the verge of something, but she had yet to say it.
“Tell me,” he said, and his voice made her blink. She looked up at him through her long, long eyelashes.
“You’re someone who I would want involved,” she said finally.
Halil let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He felt as though a great weight had rolled off of his shoulders, as though he had been hiding in the dark for a long time, and now he was being welcomed to step into the light.
Feeling strangely humbled by Myriah’s naked words, he brought her soft hand, warmer now, up to his lips. She smiled when he kissed her hand, and she didn’t protest, and it felt like the sun had come out.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am . . . so glad to hear you feel that way.”
“I do,” she said. “Thank you for helping me realize that. Up until now, I had been looking at the past. I thought I needed to reach back and prevent two people from reenacting their mistakes. Now I realize that I don’t need to do that at all.”
“You need to look ahead at all the new mistakes we might make?” Halil asked wryly, and she laughed at him. God, how he loved her laugh. Since they had returned to each other’s arms, he had touched her, loved her, made her cry out with pleasure, but her laugh was something that felt even harder to win.
“Of course not, silly,” she said with a sweet warmth. “Only that we are different, so you’re right. We should stop looking into a path that only wants to harm us. And that means we need to talk about the things that you bought.”
Halil sighed, even if he knew that in this matter, he would have to give way. No matter how factually correct he was, there was a tangled morass of emotions here, so much and so fraught that he was almost afraid to tug at any one strand. He was ready to say that he would not do anything like that again, no matter what good or necessary idea he had come up with.
“I’ll get rid of everything,” he promised. “I can’t promise that Rose will be so happy to give up some of the things I have bought, but . . .”
“I would like to keep the things you bought,” Myriah said, and he looked at her warily.
“Are you trying to appease me?” he asked cautiously, and she shot him a brilliant smile.
“No, never. I have an idea of what it might take to appease a man like you, and we’re not doing anything in that line, right?”
Halil’s cheeks flushed with a heat he hadn’t felt since he was a young boy. He knew very well what it would take for her to appease him, and the simple idea of it was enough to make him want to take him in her arms and whisk her away to a hotel room, where they could shut the world out for just a little moment.
“Er, yes. Yes, we are not doing anything ‘in that line,’ as you say.”
“And when you first bought the things and I saw them streaming into my townhouse as if I had ordered them myself, I was angry because I thought it was an attack on my parenting, for daring to bring up my girls—our girls—in anything less than opulence.”
“That wasn’t what I
was thinking.”
“I know that now, and all I can do is to thank you for telling me, and for being patient with me and having this talk with me. So here’s what I’m thinking. Tell me if you’re on board.”
“All right . . .”
“So we’ll keep the things that you bought. At the very least, Rose might be traumatized by the new fact that she had to give up the new TV. She looked pretty well bonded to it when we were leaving, and it wouldn’t surprise me if by the time we got back, she had figured out how to surf and DVR and to ensure that everything that we want to watch has been programmed for us.”
“Talented woman, your sister.”
“Very. So everything that you bought stays, and it is your job to make sure that you know where it goes. I’m away from work for a little while, but I’ll still be doing some remote work, and that means I just don’t have the time to do any unpacking and construction.”
“All right, that sounds reasonable.”
“And when you think there is something that the girls actually need, that’s another thing. It’s just that this time, instead of trying to order the world through the phone, you will come to me and we will figure out a solution.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster if you just let me do what I’m good at? After all, you said yourself that you were busy.”
He thought he saw Myriah hide a smile as she held up a hand to fend him off.
“See, that right there is something to think about. We need to be moving forward as a team. We can’t do that while I’m worrying about what you might be choosing to install in the living room, and while you are worried that I might blow my gasket over something that, to you, is relative mild.”
“All right,” Halil said. “I concede. If I need to buy something beyond the scope of, say, diapers or food, I will come talk to you.”
“Or call me or come find me, or signal me. I don’t mean to be difficult, Halil, I really don’t.”
She sighed again, and he reached over to stroke her cheek. Somewhere in the back of his brain, something in him knew that she was telling the truth.
“Don’t worry about it,” Halil said finally. “Every family has some bumps and growing pains. Ours will be just fine.”
“We are, aren’t we?” she said, and there was an unexpected smile on her face.
“Are what, darling?”
She looked down, and for some reason, she couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Sweetheart?”
“We’re a family,” she said in a small, sweet voice, and in that moment, no matter what else was going on in his world, he knew he would give up anything to protect her, to adore her, to love her forever.
Chapter Fourteen
Myriah
Myriah briefly registered the sound of someone opening the door, and for a single moment, she thought about getting up to see who it was. Then she sank back down on the couch with a deep sigh.
It’s probably Rose. If it’s not, then it’s a serial killer who has arrived to put me out of my misery. I’m pretty comfortable with that.
Somehow, by her side, Halil heaved himself up from the couch. She heard him walking to the kitchen and then exchanging some quiet words with Rose, who responded.
Ah good. Not a serial killer at all. Glad Halil took care of that.
Halil came back to sit on the couch next to her, offering her a slight smile.
Two weeks of new-found fatherhood had left the once-immaculately put together sheikh far more competent with babies, but significantly less stylish. Instead of the slacks and designer shirts, he had opted for T-shirts and jeans, finding them far easier to deal with when wrangling a baby who was far too lively with her food or her paints. He had commented more than once that the people back in Ealim would be shocked by his appearance now, but Myriah suspected that there was at least a small part of Halil that enjoyed the casual clothes and the comfort.
Of course, it doesn’t change the fact that I still find him maddeningly sexy . . .
Case in point, Halil smiling after a long day looking after three incredibly active toddlers. He had been with her every step of the way, excluding when he had to go wash some butternut squash out of his hair. There was something that still sent a bolt of pure electricity through her, even if she had gotten pretty good at not letting on it was happening. Rose occasionally sent her a knowing look, but to her relief, Halil seemed mostly oblivious.
“Rose says she has a present for us,” he said, and Myriah looked up in surprise.
“Does she?”
“She does,” Rose said with a grin, coming into the room. “So you guys are going to get the night off tomorrow.”
Myriah blinked. Surely her brain had worked faster before she had kids. Rose’s words simply didn’t make sense.
“How are you going to swing that?” she asked.
“So one of my friends from school, Kayla, is in early child development classes. Problem is, she’s an only child, and she’s never even babysat for anyone before.”
Halil frowned.
“So . . . you are proposing to make our children some kind of . . . guinea pig for this random woman?”
“Yeah, that hardly sounds like a really good way to open whatever you’re going to propose,” murmured Myriah.
“Sort of, but not really! She got a few tickets to take the girls to that new toddler’s playground in Eastwick, you know the one?”
Myriah did. It was an enormous complex full of climbing gyms and play areas all dedicated to children between the ages of one and three. It was well-known in the area, and on the pricier side, so she had never had the opportunity to bring the girls there.
“Well, I would be along, and that’s not so different from me taking the girls out for a night on the town. And this time, I’ll have a charming assistant who probably really needs to figure out what kids are like before she continues in this particular career.”
“And what will she learn from my daughters?” Halil asked, and Myriah almost wanted to giggle at the slightly ominous note in his voice.
“That kids are a handful, and that they are amazing agents of chaos and can make a mess in a clean room inside of three minutes,” Rose said promptly. “And if you tell me I’m wrong, I’m going to call you a liar.”
Halil hesitated and then sighed.
“Leah rubbed her cereal in my hair this morning. I can’t really disagree. What do you think, Myriah?”
Myriah laughed.
“I think that a day off is probably exactly what the doctor ordered. As long as you are okay with it, Halil, that sounds amazing.”
She knew that there was a slightly wistful note in her voice about the idea of getting some time off, and for some reason, she was unsurprised when Halil seemed to pick up on it. He nodded.
“Yes, all right. Thank you, Rose, and thank you to your friend too.”
It had been surprisingly easy to learn to work with Halil over the last few weeks, Myriah thought. They worked well together, developing the kind of rapport that she thought circus trapeze artists must have, the ESP that allowed them to know exactly when to fling themselves through the air She knew that Halil would be there to catch her, and she suspected he knew the same thing about her.
Rose went to her room, presumably to talk about acquiring three little girls for her friend to learn with, and Halil stood, stretching out and startling her all over again with how very tall he was.
“And on that note, I should probably get back to my place. Is there anything else you need tonight?”
For two nights, Halil had slept without complaint on their couch. Myriah was just starting to think about getting a cot or some kind of bed for him to sleep in when he casually announced that he had purchased the vacant townhouse next door. Sometimes, especially when he was cleaning up juice that had somehow been sprayed all over the kitchen table, it was easy to forget that he was one of the richest men in the world. After the initial shock, Myriah was glad he had a comfortable place to stay, but there was perhaps a ve
ry small part of her that didn’t like him sleeping under another roof, even if that roof was just next door.
“Oh no, I think I’m just going to shower and hop into bed. What are you going to do with your day off?”
Halil looked surprised, and then thoughtful.
“Hm. There have been a few things I’ve been meaning to take care of. A few calls to Ealim I should make. Things like that.”
“Oh. That’s good. I’m glad you won’t get behind on your work.”
He grinned. “Don’t look so worried. I’ll be back and ready to feed three hungry babies and to keep them entertained the day after.”
Yeah, because that was what I was wondering about . . .
She tried to put that strange sadness out of her head when she climbed into bed.
It’s not like we haven’t been sticking to the letter of our agreement. It’s not like I really want to change things . . .
They had been resisting each other. Mostly. Once or twice, she knew she lingered a little, watching him in the kitchen or with the girls. More than once, she had caught him watching her, a glint in his eye that was banished the moment he saw her looking. Myriah told herself that this was what she wanted. She told herself that they were in a good place, and that what they were doing was right for the girls and their peculiar situation.
So why did she feel a tide of melancholy sweep over her?
***
The next morning, Myriah woke up squinting at the bright spring sunshine coming through her window. It was the first really bright day of spring, she realized, and she was no longer used to the way strong light looked coming into her room.
How pretty, she thought drowsily, and then she sat up bolt upright.
Oh my gosh, it’s a little after ten. I’m late, the poor girls must be starving and . . .
She blinked, her memory returning. It was fine. Rose had taken the girls this morning, and she had a day off. The adrenaline pumping through her system was finally dying down a little when she tilted her head in confusion. Why did she smell something delicious?
When she ventured into the kitchen, she was startled to see Halil there, his back to her as he moved something on the stove.