by Dani Collins
But she didn’t want to marry him. She wasn’t looking at him and he couldn’t look away from her. Heat climbed in him, some of it embarrassment at his partiality for her, so wrong for him, but a fresh emotion brimmed inside him as he took in her fertile figure: determination. She would marry him. She would live in his house with his child. They would make this work.
He hoped they could make it work. A stealthy fear snaked through him that he was repeating history on more than one front, but he would not turn his back on his child.
“Fern, marriage is the only—”
“No it’s not,” interrupted. “You know it’s not.”
“I won’t be my father,” he insisted, growing annoyed as she vehemently shook her head. “This baby might not be heir and successor to Q’Amara, but I won’t have an illegitimate child. People would look at Tariq as my ‘real’ son and say this one is something less. No. We must marry.”
“You’ll hate me,” she stated. Then, with the quiet ferocity she’d used when demanding medical attention for the Bedouin girl, she added, “I won’t live like that again. I won’t.”
Anguish tortured her expression before she looked away, tears standing on her wide, unblinking eyes. She set her jaw, though, so obviously ready to hold her ground, he had to take her seriously.
“Again?” he prompted, disbelief scuffing his tone. Aside from this current streak of obstinacy, she was fairly compliant. Not someone difficult to get along with. He was furious with her, but couldn’t imagine anyone actively disliking her. “What do you mean by that? Who else hated you?”
“My mother,” she said in a small voice, looking at her wringing hands. Her pale brows crushed together and the corners of her mouth went down. Bright red lit her cheekbones while the rest of her was so pale her freckles stood out like stress cracks that warned she was on the brink of crumbling. “She got pregnant with me when she was seventeen. Her parents threw her out. My father disappeared. She barely scraped by trying to support me.”
“And she blamed you for that?” His heart took a sharp swerve. He distantly remembered her saying something like she didn’t like me much. He’d been distracted with making love to her, but now the hackles of his parenting instincts rose at the idea of a mother denigrating her child. His own had made a ton of mistakes, but nothing like that.
“She blamed me for all of it,” Fern said with equal parts incredulity and despondency. “As an adult, I can see it wasn’t really my fault, but this baby is.” She covered her bump with protective palms, turning up a face that was so anguished his gut clenched as though he’d been kicked. “She told me so many times that lust was bad and I slept with you anyway. I don’t blame you for hating me, but I can’t live with the glares and the snide remarks, Zafir. I won’t bring my child up in that. There has to be another way.”
The ground seemed to shift under him. Wasn’t really my fault, but this baby is...
“Fern...” He could hardly believe what she was saying. “Is that the reason you didn’t tell me about the baby? You thought I’d blame you for it?”
“Don’t you? You’re obviously furious.” Her hand came up as she choked out a helpless noise.
“Because you hid this from me!”
She jerked at the sharpness of his tone, but only pinched her mouth into a mutinous purse. “I shouldn’t have let it happen. I knew what I was doing was bad.”
She was ashamed to have slept with him, but not in the way he’d feared.
It struck him that all this time, while he’d been remembering the way she’d kissed him with abandon and taken him greedily into her, he’d been forgetting something far more important. Men don’t come on to me. How much experience do you think I have with refusing one?
Moving forward on feet weighted with self-reproach, he took a seat on the wingback chair that faced her. As he leaned his elbows on his knees, he resisted the urge to tuck the loose tendrils of hair that fell against her cheek behind her ear. He didn’t trust himself to let it end there.
And she had no idea.
“Fern, how many people were in that tent that night?” he asked quietly.
She lifted a baleful glance. “I know what I did, Zafir. I remember exactly who instigated this conception.”
Her skin radiated with color all the way down her neck. He would bet it went well into that belly and even into the thighs that had clamped around his hips with determination to draw his hard sex deeper into her welcoming depths. Not just offering, but begging. Insisting. She dropped her face into her hands as if she couldn’t bear to recall.
While it was all he thought about. Heaven had opened its gates and pulled him inside. He hadn’t even tried to resist. Not really.
“I meant to pull out,” he stated baldly. “I knew the chance we were taking before I let it go as far as it did.” As much as he would love to let her carry all the blame, he remembered precisely the moment when he’d stilled her hips and tried to maintain his sanity. Then she’d said, I want it to be you.
He had wanted it to be him. The thought of any man following where he was being invited had been unthinkable. She belonged to him. He remembered the way the word mine had echoed in his head as he had breached and possessed and imprinted himself so indelibly onto her body that they were now tied together for the rest of their lives.
“You might have been at your best fighting weight that night, but I could have pushed you away. I’m not a victim.”
She shook her head, keeping her face covered. “I knew better. I was reckless and this is the consequence.”
“My baby is a punishment?” he asked testily.
She flinched and scowled at him over her fingers. “No. I just mean that I’m no victim, either. I knew what I was doing.”
The hell she had.
He rubbed the tops of his thighs, hearing Ra’id’s condemnation of him. Accepting it. He never should have touched her.
But he had.
“Maybe we’re both casualties of a divine sense of humor, doomed to repeat our parents’ ill-conceived actions.” He let his brow quirk at his own bad joke. “We made that baby together, Fern. Literally.”
She lowered her hands, face red as a beacon, but a light of earnestness glinted in her wet eyes. “Do you really see it that way? Because I’m not blind. I know what a mess this is.”
“It is,” he agreed. “I’m not going to sugarcoat that part. Right here, the two of us working out what to do, this is the easy part. When we take it out there, it will get ugly. I know that and I’m angry that I’m in this situation, but with myself, not you. If that’s the reason you’re trying to keep your distance from me, because you think I’ll blame you, then stop. Coming here to take responsibility for my child means taking responsibility.”
She seemed to let that sink in, her body seemingly braced, shoulders set with wary tension.
“Is that all you feel?” she challenged in a way that punched his heart. Vulnerability widened her eyes as she hurried to add, “I mean toward the baby.” Her lashes dropped in a way that left claw marks down his insides.
He wished he could offer her love. He was starting to realize she’d probably never known it in any form.
“Because if you just feel a sense of duty...” she continued.
“No, that’s not all I feel,” he assured her, hitching forward on the cushion, willing to lay himself bare because on this topic, he felt no shame and he thought it might reassure her. Win her over. “The first time I held Tariq, I experienced such a rush of emotion. Something I’d never felt before.” He clenched his fist, experiencing again the knock of his heart punching the inside wall of his chest, extending itself outward to try forming a shield around the baby. It reached across the space between them now, trying to take in this new one. “I felt so protective and proud it was laughable, but terrified and overwhelmed, too.”
The intense vulnerability had been foreign and unnerving to a man who took for granted his health and strength and power, but he’d grown to accept this feeling as a part of parenting.
“He was mine and I knew I’d stop at nothing to keep him alive and well. There’s no word to describe that emotion except fatherhood. I already feel that toward this baby.”
Her jaw softened and her expression went misty and soft. “Really?”
“Really. You have to marry me, Fern.”
She brushed impatiently at the tears that brimmed at her eyelids. “But I feel so guilty. Mum warned me so many times not to have sex, not to get carried away, and I just let it happen. I couldn’t face telling you. I was so certain you’d look at me like she would have. Like I was so stupid.”
He wondered if she remembered why they’d let it happen.
She sat there, a ball of misery, not exactly encouraging him to believe she looked back fondly on their time at the oasis the way he did.
Which was neither here nor there, he told himself. Marriage was his priority. The rest could be addressed later. Maybe that was a shortsighted attitude given the hurdles they’d face, but he would marry her.
“You should pack. If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be driving in the dark.”
* * *
“Pack?” Fern was still absorbing the fact that he wasn’t pinning all the blame for this pregnancy on her when he made a suggestion that was more of a politely worded order. Her brain emptied all over again.
He smiled faintly. “We’ll stay with my grandfather until you’re cleared to travel. If that means waiting until the baby comes...” He shrugged.
She felt her world dissolving and pressed her lips together, trying to keep herself in control of her own destiny. “But...” There were too many arguments rising in her to find them and put them in order of importance.
“As comfortable as this flat looks, it’s not very secure. Do you even have a real bed here? Or are you pulling a mattress out of that thing?” He pointed at the sofa she perched upon.
She glanced at the blankets she folded each morning and set on the hassock before putting her bed back under these cushions. “Miss Ivy and I do it together,” she murmured. “It’s spring-loaded, not heavy. Just awkward.”
“Well, I don’t want you tripping around, rearranging furniture.”
“But I have work here. Students who are counting on me.”
“You left one teaching job without notice. Surely someone can step in?”
Fern had already talked to a few students about helping them over email or webcam, especially after the baby was born. The library had a modern setup and Zafir was right. Miss Ivy was retired, but she could take over until other arrangements were made.
“I’m not ready to change my whole life,” she protested.
“Your whole life has already changed,” he reminded her with a patronizing smile.
He was right, but she still scowled anxiously toward the small bureau where she kept her clothes. Her own photo stood upon it, showing her accepting her teaching diploma. That’s who she was supposed to be: a middle grade teacher in a quiet village here in the north of England.
“I don’t think you know what you’re doing,” she told him. Had he heard the bit about how she was illegitimate? She knew nothing about her father.
“My first marriage was arranged and we were even less acquainted than you and I. I’m already a father. I grew up the son of a sheikh and an Englishwoman. There won’t be many surprises for me in any of this.”
Right. His first marriage to a woman he always spoke about with reverence, according to Amineh. Did that mean he was capable of loving a spouse he acquired through an arrangement based on logic? Could he come to have feelings for her?
Worrying her lip, she glanced up to see him watching her and licked where her teeth had made her bottom lip raw, then swallowed as forbidden thoughts crept into the corners of her mind. Would they...?
The consequences of giving in to lust were bad. She was being slapped in the face with them right now.
Come on, Fern, a voice chided in her head. How much more pregnant could you get?
But even if he wasn’t angry with her, it didn’t follow that he liked her. While she was in love with him. What sort of future did that set up? Her pulse started to trip into a racing flight and clammy sweat broke out all over her skin. She’d never imagined she would marry anyone, especially a catch like him. This was surreal. He was going to wake up tomorrow and scream loud and long at what he’d proposed today.
He stood and glanced around. “Is there a case somewhere that I can fetch?”
“Can I...” Oh, he looked very tall and dapper and unreachable, standing over her that way. They were the worst match ever. She’d have to make him realize that before things went too far. “Can I just say that I’ll come with you and we’ll talk more about the marriage idea later?”
“If you want to say that, go ahead,” he said dryly. “But we’re marrying, Fern. As soon as I can arrange it.”
“I really do think you’ll regret it, when you’ve had time to realize what you’re suggesting,” she insisted.
“Your concern for me is cute. If I had an ounce of chivalry in me, I’d extend the same consideration toward you. Give you more time to talk both of us out of it. But even though I don’t blame you, neither of us is going to hide from this. We made a baby. We’re going to marry. Then we’re going to live in Q’Amara and raise it together.”
* * *
Fern ruminated in the car, aware that she was being a pushover. Did you call a woman easy when she couldn’t seem to say no to marriage?
His already having regard for their child had moved her, she couldn’t deny it, but she was letting him take complete control of her life and she knew that was wrong.
Part of her was relieved, of course. His plan would lift some huge worries off her shoulders, like where would the money come from? But she was a fairly independent person. She’d had to be. Emotionally and financially. And the fact was, she might have got to know what he liked between the sheets, she might be certain she was in love, but in many ways, they were still strangers.
“You’re sighing a lot,” he remarked, gearing down to take the off ramp.
He drove with smooth confidence, not like he had anything to prove, but owning the road regardless. Late winter rain battered the roof and swished under the tires. The wipers slapped at full speed. There was no use trying to listen to music so they’d been sitting in silence since she’d made him stop to let her use the loo at a fast-food place.
“How well did you know your first wife when you married her?” she asked.
There was a pause of surprise, then in a cautious and very neutral tone, he said, “Not well.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, a thin, transparent, bullet-proof wall had just slid up between them. It was disconcerting and certainly didn’t reassure her. It made her think she should leave things at that, but as much as she liked to avoid confrontations, this marriage idea of his needed more discussion before she could get behind it.
“How did you come to choose her? Or...how did it all work?”
He kept his gaze on the road, movements still steady and economical, but a hint of stiffness shaded his voice. “Given the situation with my parents, I knew when I took over that I would have to prove I was more Arab than English.” His mouth twisted in dismay.
“The expectation that I would reject my mother and the Western half of my life did not sit well with me,” he admitted with a sidelong glance. “We have our differences, but my mother is as much my family as my father. However, I knew that marrying a woman from Q’Amara, proving I was not given to blind passion for all things English—” another glance, this one filled with dry significance “—was necessary. Sadira was from an excellent family. Her father was known for his traditional values. Politically, the match allayed many fears that I would try to force change at the pace my father had. The fact that I thinned the foreign blood in my successor helps my approval rating and eases their acceptance of Tariq as my successor.”
A small “oh” of apprehension escaped her as she computed that his second child might not be viewed so charitably.
He covered her hand and squeezed with warm strength, pressing reassurance, but also a streak of sexual awareness, through her blood.
“We’ll make it work, Fern.”
She stiffened in surprise at the way his light touch flooded her with giddy warmth. Should she squeeze back? She was sure that continuing to behave like a teenager in heat would only cloud things. His people expected decorum, for heaven’s sake! Not some British nymphomaniac as their First Sheikha or whatever she’d be called.
“I don’t see how,” she protested, voice made husky by the weight of his hand on hers. “Did you have a happy marriage with your first wife even though you were strangers? Is that why you’re so confident we can prevail?”
He removed his touch and draped his hand on the stick, but didn’t change gears.
“She knew what was at stake,” he said in a level tone. “We both went into the marriage willing to make compromises for the sake of maintaining peace within the palace and beyond it.”
“See, Zafir? I can’t offer you that! I’m a guarantee of conflict for you.”
“My mother never once came to Q’Amara. My father didn’t think it safe, but from remarks I’ve heard over time, her actions were taken as a snub. I am hopeful that your willingness to live there, your acceptance of our culture, will go a long way to smoothing rough edges.”
“Yes, well, you have to know it’s one thing to take a contract in a foreign country, quite another to adopt one as your home. Especially one so patriarchal.”
“We visit my mother two or three times a year. You won’t be held hostage there,” he said with a twitch of impatience around his mouth. Then, somewhat defensively, he stated, “I know we’re behind with women’s rights, but change doesn’t happen overnight. I have learned from my father’s experience to take things one step at a time. And I can’t be everywhere, doing all things,” he added tiredly, then perked up. “But look at the work Amineh does. You could take up those same causes in Q’Amara,” he urged, warming to the topic. “You’re bright. A natural educator. I would like that, Fern. I would like that very much.”
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