by Dani Collins
She swallowed, falling into lust all over again.
Pathetic. She was in the middle of her third trimester, about as sexy as a cow ready to calf, but she wanted to lie with him. Naked and joined.
“Let’s get out of this mess,” he said in the voice that had been raising the hairs on her scalp since the first time she’d heard it.
Out of the rain? Or the situation?
Her heart kicked into gear as he nudged her into movement. His free hand grazed her elbow and he pointed her in the direction of the steps. She began to tremble as the enormity of his being here hit.
Did he know? Of course he did now. She wasn’t the size of a house, but her coat was tented over her bump like a tarp over the bow of a boat. That radiation of umbrage from him was unmistakable. She’d grown up with those sorts of vibes directed at her. She knew all too well this sense of disapproval jabbing into her like the point of a sword.
But had he known? Had he come to see her? Or because he’d learned of the baby? How?
As they stepped into the small space beneath the overhang of the stoop, he stole the umbrella from her nerveless grip, lowered and shook it, then followed her through the door that her numb fingers could barely unlock. He dropped the umbrella into its stand and paced his footsteps into hers as they climbed the two narrow flights to Miss Ivy’s door.
Her mind raced, but she couldn’t seem to catch a solid thought. Bring him into the flat? Take him somewhere else? Where? Why was he here? What was he going to say?
How much did he hate her for this?
“Fern?” Miss Ivy called from the tiny alcove of the kitchen as they entered. “A woman called for you. She didn’t leave her name, but I told her you’d be back about now so I expect—”
Miss Ivy trailed off as she emerged with a glass and a tea towel in hand. “Hello,” she said with a lilt of curiosity in her tone, eyes going sharp as she looked into Fern’s face—which had to be ghostly pale. Her brows pulled together with concern.
“That was my assistant,” Zafir explained. “You must be Ivy McGill? Thank you for saving me the trouble of waiting in the rain any longer than I had to. You’re well? Our family was given to understand you were quite ill.”
His tone dripped sarcasm. Fern tried to ignore it.
“Miss Ivy, this is Sheikh abu Tariq Zafir ibn Ahmad al-Rakin Iram. Or you might be more familiar with him as, um, Mr. Zafir Cavendish, grandson of the Duke of Sommerton, who sits in the House of Lords. I did—” she cleared her throat “—give the impression that you were in need of care when I cut short my teaching contract with his sister’s children.”
“I see.” No doubt Miss Ivy saw very well. No one had ever accused her of lacking math skills.
“Let me take your coat, Fern,” Zafir said, stepping behind her so her heart nearly leaped out her mouth.
You don’t live here. It’s not your job to take my coat, she wanted to protest. Don’t stay. Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me.
Then she felt the brush of his fingertips against her shoulders and the sensuous memory of his stripping her clothing from her body came back to her like sunshine breaking its warmth across her face. She suppressed a shiver of mixed longing and mortification.
He stepped away to hang the dripping coat on the hooks over the rubber mat. Fern balanced a hand on the wall and unzipped her boots, taking extraordinary care with placing them so the insides wouldn’t be filled by the rivulets off her coat, afraid to turn and face him.
“Why don’t you make us some tea,” Zafir suggested behind her, but Fern suspected he was looking at her, not Miss Ivy. He was willing her to face him and own up to what she’d done. “Fern and I need to talk.”
Hugging herself, as if that could disguise this huge evidence of her carelessness that stretched the knit of her oversized jumper, Fern forced herself around.
Miss Ivy looked worried. She had pressed Fern many times to tell her who the father was and now there was such anxiety in her small dark eyes.
Fern managed a tight smile. “It’s fine,” she assured her.
Miss Ivy nodded jerkily and slipped into the alcove, where she’d be able to hear the murmur of their voices while she filled the kettle and brought out her good china.
Fern dared a glance at Zafir and saw a puzzling mixture of emotions on his face. He aimed his hard stare at her belly. Something fierce yet angry gripped him. Not dangerously threatening, but deeply primal.
She swallowed and edged toward the sofa, where she lowered to perch on the edge of the cushion, facing him, facing up to all of this that she’d mostly been denying. Visiting a doctor and reading ads for flats was only the tip of the iceberg as far as fully accepting her pregnancy went.
A rush of despondency hit as the biggest part that she’d been avoiding—the fact her baby had a father—confronted her with ominous silence.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Zafir.” Her voice was husky with self-castigation.
“It’s mine,” he said, more statement than question, but the demand for confirmation made her choke out a shocked laugh.
“Who else?” she asked, askance.
“I needed to hear it.” He looked away, his profile carved sharply from granite. His hand fisted at his side and his jaw worked, but the news didn’t seem to please him.
“Are you surprised?” she asked as she realized how much easier it would be for him if she’d been promiscuous. And even as her mind told her to change her answer—make things easy so maybe he wouldn’t hate her— she blurted, “Sorry I’m not a slut with a list of possible fathers—”
He swung his gaze back. The hardness in his aqua eyes buttoned her lip.
She felt enough of a slut as it was, whether he wanted to call her one or not. She clenched her pale fingers together, rather wishing for the warmth of a blush to take away this bone-deep chill.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his tone so tight with fury she flinched.
“I didn’t think you would want to know,” she answered, hating how thin her voice had gone.
Again with the glare that encased her in ice.
“Was there something in the way I treat Tariq that suggested to you I would take no interest in my child?”
“No.” She bowed her head under his stark condemnation. His relationship with his son had actually tempted her to tell him, But I didn’t want you to think I did this on purpose. We both know this is... She couldn’t bring herself to call her baby a mistake, but the situation was far from ideal. “You’re not happy, Zafir. You’re barely holding on to a civil tone.” She squirmed her fingers together. “It seemed better not to tell you.”
“And do what instead?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you keeping it?”
“Obviously.” She waved at the size of her belly.
“I mean, are you thinking to give it up for adoption or something?”
“No!” The suggestion astonished her, never once occurring to her as a realistic possibility.
He looked away again, not giving her a chance to read his eyes, but some of his animosity seemed to ease as he said with a husk of emotion, “So you want this baby.”
“Yes! Why would you imagine anything else?”
“You tried to keep my child out of my life, Fern. It follows that you might want to purge it from your own.” He swung his attention back to her and the force of his gaze kicked her low and hard.
Maybe that was the baby, scolding her. She had worried, for about ten minutes, that she would begrudge her child for coming along when she’d finally been free of family obligation. But it wasn’t as if she had had high career plans or wanted to live fast. While her mother had felt cheated as a single parent and had made sure to let Fern know it, Fern viewed raising a child alone as a challenge, yes, but a fai
rly common one. Many women managed this. Yes, she worried about her future, but because her baby would depend on her. Taking care of another life was a responsibility she wanted to get right. She didn’t want to mess it up.
But while she’d glossed very quickly past any thoughts of not keeping the baby, Zafir had obviously convinced himself she wouldn’t.
“I knew almost from the moment I realized I was pregnant that I’d keep it,” she told him quietly. “But when I looked at all the factors...” She frowned at her twisting fingers, still unable to bring all the dangling threads together into anything less than a messy, painful knot. “It seemed like putting you in this position of acknowledging your child was more unfair than keeping you ignorant of it.”
“You were offering me plausible deniability? How kind.” His voice peeled a layer off her, astringent as paint thinner.
She jerked her gaze up, not liking the acerbic response when she’d honestly been trying to put his needs ahead of her own. “I won’t pretend to be an expert on your country’s politics, but I know this is the last thing you need. I’m doing what I can to keep the baby secret—”
“Obviously,” he said with a bite. “But I’m not here to pay you off. I’m here to claim my child. I want him or her in my life.”
Her heart shook in her chest, quaking with both intimidation and the ferocity of a mother whose child was threatened. “Did you miss what I just said? I have no intention of giving it up. Not even to its own father!”
“Then you’ll marry me,” he stated, like it was as easy as snapping fingers.
And her nerves twanged, mind skewing in a thousand directions because in all her scenarios of what could possibly happen if he learned of this baby, none of them had included his proposing. Even as coldly and flatly as that.
“I...” Her heart, already taxed with stress and emotion, pounded extra hard. The feeling was nearly painful, making tears spring to her eyes. Live the rest of her life under that baleful glare? After the first twenty years of her life had been blistered by the same? No thanks. “I can’t. Or do you mean just to make it legitimate? And I’d stay in England while you—”
“No,” he interrupted, adamant. “You’d live with me and Tariq, in our palace.”
Which sounded like a fairy tale except for the part where she’d be treated like a troll.
She realized she was biting her lips together and forced them to relax, soothing them with her tongue. But he made her so nervous, standing there like a—well, like a damned sultan who could demand she give him a baby. She’d seen this uncompromising side of him at the oasis, when he’d taken control and insisted on treatment for the Bedouin girl. It wasn’t a level of command she wanted to pit herself against.
Especially not when he was demanding to be part of his child’s life. Her own father hadn’t even bothered sticking around to find out if she was a boy or a girl. There was a huge part of her that melted beneath Zafir’s show of fatherly interest.
But what about her?
Now she began to understand her mother’s sense of lost entitlement. Sure her baby would force her to make certain compromises, but for the most part, alone as a single parent, she controlled their fate. With Zafir in the picture, she faced huge concessions.
See, Mum? You were actually lucky not to have this dilemma.
“Marriage isn’t on my radar,” she murmured.
“Put it there.”
She shook her head.
“Why the hell not?”
Had he listened when she had introduced him? “Think about who you are—”
His head snapped back like she’d struck him.
“That wasn’t—” What she’d meant...
Miss Ivy clattered her tray into the room, killing Fern’s chance to explain.
A hoar frost coated the room as Miss Ivy set everything out and poured. Into the condemning silence, she said, “Shall I take mine into my room?”
“Please,” Fern said through a tight throat. She needed privacy to straighten out Zafir’s wrong impression.
* * *
Fern’s roommate was the homeliest woman Zafir had ever seen. Small and hunched, she had dull brown hair streaked in gray, definitely a home cut, teeth like an old cemetery and beady brown eyes that were deeply set.
But as she left, she touched Fern’s shoulder with a maternal hand. Fern covered the woman’s gnarled knuckles and the glance the two exchanged was complex. Sheepish and forgiving and reassuring. The kind of unspoken communication women had when they were very close.
As one of the two doors off the main room closed, Zafir swung his gaze around the flat. It was charming, he supposed, in the way of modest, dated rooms kept tidy and warm. There was an odd collection of photos showing young men and women in graduation caps and gowns, accepting awards, waving from the window of a pilot’s seat and standing at a podium.
“Who is she?” he asked, still reeling from Fern’s gross insult, not ready to deal with how deeply she had cut him.
“A teacher. She made me a member of her Shyness Club when I was nine.” Her freckled face tinted. “Zafir, that’s not what I meant. About you being who you are...”
Her voice trailed off as she twisted her fingers. It would be a wonder if the digits remained attached at the rate she was torturing them.
He wouldn’t ask what she had meant. Wouldn’t wheedle to understand. He didn’t even want to face her, there was such an agony of rejection coursing through him, but his gaze snagged on the bump of their child swelling her middle. It continued to stun him. His wife had kept to herself in hundreds of ways, including an almost complete retreat when she became heavily pregnant. If she had been in his presence, she had draped herself in oversized garments that hadn’t really let him see evidence of the child she was giving him.
The heir she had hidden like something unwanted and merely endured because her husband was something unwanted and endured. Lower than her. Not good enough.
Still deeply scarred by that disdain, he focused instead on the way Fern let her bump sit so prominently in her lap. He itched to set his hands on her. All of her. She was fuller everywhere, from her cheeks to her breasts to her bottom. It suited her.
Her hair was longer, drying and starting to spring out from its catch at the back of her neck. Her skin was as much a display of cinnamon and cream as ever. She was tempting and as sweet as almonds and honey, he’d thought when he’d stood under the umbrella with her outside. Her scent had mingled with the rain and wind of English storms and struck him as oddly familiar. Heartening.
Everything about her was the same and more, especially her ability to enthrall him.
But she hadn’t told him about the baby because of who he was. Didn’t she mean what he was?
Funny how dozens of women had overlooked his birth and half-caste status, wishing to marry his money and blue blood, but the two females he’d actually proposed to had been unable to get past it.
Misery lined Fern’s expression. “I meant that a man in your position could have anyone.” Her bottom lip disappeared as she pulled it between her teeth, while her brows crooked and trembled.
“Anyone except you,” he challenged, fighting the tightness that gripped him.
Couched hope glimmered in the gray depths of her gaze, but dimmed as he returned her look with one that refused to give anything away.
Obviously struggling to hold on to her composure, she looked away, her voice scraped raw. “You didn’t come here for me.”
“No,” he agreed, aware it was cruel to be so bald, but what did she expect? Declarations of love? They’d had an affair. That was all. He still couldn’t believe how many times he’d thought about her. How he’d wanted to set her up in London.
But as he watched her flinch and nod, absorbing his slight, he realized that the woman who had welcomed him each
night to her tent was not the sophisticated mistress he had let her become in his mind. The one confident in her allure and ability to drive him mad. No, Fern didn’t seem to have any idea the hold she still had on him. The depth of want he felt even more intensely now, when she was within reach. His desire, his ability to rationalize making her his, was greater than ever.
And she made no effort to draw him back. The slump of her shoulders spoke of hopelessness.
He supposed her ignorance was a relief, but it seemed to open a huge gap in the small room, one he didn’t know how to bridge.
“How is Amineh?” she asked.
The sudden change of topic threw him.
“Fine,” he replied. “According to Ra’id. That was a few days ago. You?” he asked, as it belatedly occurred to him. “Everything is normal with the baby?”
She gave an absent nod. “The supplements make me feel a bit off and I can’t stand the smell of sausage or bacon, but we’re both healthy and fat.” Her doll’s mouth pursed in a self-deprecating smile. “That’s what the midwife said.”
“When are you due?”
She told him.
It was strange to imagine himself a father again and so soon, but as he mentally counted down the handful of weeks, a rush of eagerness to get there and see his son or daughter unexpectedly slid through him. A girl? With kinky red hair and a pert little mouth like her mother? What would Tariq think?
He skimmed a hand over his damp hair. He hadn’t even told his son, being totally focused on confronting Fern and discovering if there was a baby on the way. The minute he’d seen her, he’d needed to know it was his. Had needed to claim it.
He wanted to claim her, lies to the contrary and discomfort with the truth notwithstanding. His mind was exploding with the simplicity of it. Of course he would marry her and bring her back to Q’Amara. His personal ethics would accept nothing else.