by Trish Morey
‘What things?’
‘Like you turning up with Zoltan and the others at Mustafa’s camp, for a start. I never expected that, not after you’d said you never wanted to see me ever again.’
His jaw tightened. ‘I did it for Zoltan and Aisha. I would have done the same for anyone.’
She gave a soft, sad smile. ‘Thank you for spelling it out so succinctly, but I’m under no illusions on that score, believe me. What you did was all about duty to your desert brothers. Just as seeing you made me realise that it was my very duty to tell you about your son, no matter how unpleasant that was going to be for both of us. You had a right to know, whether you ever wanted a child or not, whether I wanted you to know or not; it was your right as a father to know that your child existed. Why else would I have agreed to getting on that plane with you?’
‘So that’s how it happened?’
She paused, that tentative shadow of a smile back on her face. ‘Do you really believe I would want you to be the one to escort me home? You were the last person I wanted to be with, and I knew you felt the same about me but I had no choice. How else was I supposed to tell you?’
He sucked in air. ‘So Zoltan was in on it too? Did the whole world know before me?’
‘No. As far as I know, he knows nothing. Only Aisha knows, and I only told her because she was the one who came up with the crazy idea. She assumed that, because we knew each other before, we’d make the perfect travelling companions. I tried to talk her out of it. In the end, I told her why it wouldn’t work.’
‘But then you agreed.’
‘Aisha helped convince me of what I was already thinking—that you had to be told.’ She bowed her head. ‘Except, when I got on that plane with you, I still couldn’t find the words. You were so angry and I was afraid, and it was easier not to say anything. It was easier to send you away at Pisa and forget about telling you entirely. It was easier …
‘But then you insisted on driving.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s done now. And, in the end, it wasn’t about you. Not entirely.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I did it for Chakir. I did it for our son.’
He glanced towards the house. ‘You really think the boy cares?’
‘Maybe not now, but one day he might. One day he might want to know more about his father, about what kind of man he is. One day he might come looking for you to understand himself and try to work out his place in this world. You need to be prepared for that eventuality.’
‘And that’s all you want by telling me?’
‘Isn’t that enough for a man who never wanted a child? A man who already never wanted to see that child’s mother again? But now you know. I’ll leave it up to you if you want to tell your own family. And I guess …’ She crossed her arms, shrugging a little. ‘If, say, they wanted to meet him, or a photograph of him or something, you’ll let me know?’
‘They won’t bother you,’ he said with grim certainty. ‘I know they won’t.’
He sighed as he looked around at the wide expanse of view and then back up at the impressive villa. ‘Nice place,’ he said. Very nice place for a woman who’d partied on her shoestring allowance for years. ‘Did your father buy it for you? For the children?’
She seemed surprised by the question, blinked and shook her head. ‘No. It belongs to a good friend of mine.’
A good friend? The girl-child’s father? ‘How convenient,’ he said.
‘I guess you could say that.’
He hesitated, wondering what more there was to say. ‘So, that’s it, then?’
She looked up him, her arms around her belly, her eyes almost hollow. ‘That’s it.’
It sounded to him very much like a dismissal, one he was only too happy to accept. ‘I have to go. I won’t stay for lunch.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, as if she’d expected nothing less. As if she wanted nothing more than for him to be gone. ‘Thank you for seeing me home. Excuse me if I don’t see you to your car. I should go and see to my children.’ And she turned and walked briskly away.
He’d been dismissed. He sat there, the car idling in neutral on the gravel driveway. All he had to do was put the car into first and release the handbrake and he was out of here and away down the mountainside, and he could begin the whole forget-this-ever-happened thing.
That was what he’d intended when she’d calmly walked away. Because if she could calmly walk away from this encounter, then so could he.
Except that he couldn’t.
Because this time he wasn’t just walking away from her. He was walking away from him. The boy. His child? But of course it had to be his child. Just one look in the boy’s eyes and it was obvious all the paternity tests in the world would say the same thing.
That the child was his.
He’d seen his own eyes then, just as he’d seen those of his newborn brother as he’d lain in their mother’s arms, all baby wide-eyed innocence. And his father had chipped him on the chin and told him his new brother looked exactly as he had done as a baby. The same dark eyes that looked out at him from every mirror.
The same eyes he saw in the child.
His child.
He thought of his baby brother. Thought of the celebrations that had accompanied his birth, thought of the time with him he’d been cheated of when death had stolen him away with the rest of them. He thought of the amulet he’d found in the lawyer’s package, the amulet that had been around his brother’s neck when he had died.
And he thought of the child inside the house.
He’d never wanted a child. He’d never wanted family. Never wanted to risk losing what was so very close to him again.
And for so long it had worked. He lost nothing, and when he did, it was only money. He hated losing but it was only ever money.
But now, it seemed, he had a son. A child of his, inside that house, a house she had likely been left by the man she’d moved on to soon after leaving him, if the age of the girl was any guide. Did he want his child raised under such a roof, paid for by just another of his mother’s lovers? Surely it should be his money supporting his child. It should be him providing a home to his own.
He might have abandoned all thoughts of having a family, but that did not mean he had abandoned the tenets of the life in which he had grown up.
He was a Bedouin, born and bred.
Family was everything to his people.
So how could he just walk away?
He could not. It was as if Marina had given him a child and then stolen him away in the very next breath. Paying lip service to his parentage. Letting him know like it was some mere formality. That, once she had done her duty in telling him, his role was over.
And that sat badly with him.
Very badly.
He had never wanted a child, it was true.
But now there was this boy. Chakir.
And curse luck, chance, happenstance or however it had happened; curse the fact that he was now inexorably tied to a woman he wanted nothing more to do with. He could not simply walk away.
Marina closed the door behind her and leaned against it, taking a deep breath as she wiped the tears from her eyes, hoping to regain some semblance of normalcy before she joined her children for lunch or they would want to know what was wrong and why she was crying.
God, if he’d stayed a moment longer she would have turned into a walking fountain out there. When he’d reminded her of Hana’s mother, she’d nearly lost it. All that had kept her together was witnessing the play of expressions on his face. For one who prided himself on his poker face, it had only been too obvious what he had been thinking.
His mind had been working overtime imagining exactly what kind of ‘good friend’ had lent her this house.
But what of it if she had enjoyed the attentions of some rich sugar daddy? What was it to him if she had had other lovers who bestowed upon her gifts? She couldn’t imagine he had remained celibate all these years. A man of his appetites
? Not a chance.
No, all he’d succeeded in doing was giving her all the more reason to be glad he was gone.
And she’d needed that.
Her duty was now done. Bahir knew the truth and it was up to him to deal with it. No doubt, knowing him, he’d disappear back into denial and pretend today’s news had never happened.
One could only hope.
She blinked and swiped at her cheeks one final time. It was time to get on with her life.
Time to move on.
Time to put to bed once and for all any forlorn and pathetic hope that Bahir might one day change his mind. How much plainer could he make it that he’d only turned up at Mustafa’s desert camp site because Zoltan and his friends had been there? How much plainer could he make his position than by his rapid exit once he’d been confronted with the existence of their son?
Bahir was history. He had no part in her life. Not for the last four years. Not now. Maybe it was time to fully accept that.
From the kitchen came the sound of Catriona serving up lunch to two hungry toddlers, and she smiled softly. It was Bahir’s loss that he had turned his back on his child and walked away. Not hers.
She would not let it be hers.
The knock on the door came as they were finishing lunch. A sizzle of premonition down her spine came with it. Surely not?
‘I’ll go,’ said Catriona, watching her face, missing nothing.
‘No,’ she said rising from her seat where she’d been overseeing Hana feed herself. ‘I should go.’
‘And if it’s him?’
Marina gave a smile she didn’t come close to feeling. Catriona had asked nothing since she’d returned, though there were questions in her eyes, questions the woman wouldn’t ask until the children were asleep and they would have time to talk properly.
‘Then he’ll want to see me anyway.’
The knock on the door came again, louder and more insistent this time. And something in that knock told Marina that she didn’t need to see who it was to know.
‘Are you sure?’ Catriona asked, collecting plates and keeping her voice light as if nothing was wrong, blessedly keeping the atmosphere in the kitchen on an even keel when Marina’s world felt like it was teetering on the edge of a precipice. But the local village woman had a real talent for smoothing the atmosphere, Marina acknowledged, thinking back to when they’d both nursed Sarah those last few months, and how even at the end she’d kept the household together when they could so easily have all fallen apart.
‘I’m sure. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back. It’s probably just someone from the village.’
She knew she was kidding herself—anyone from the village would know to come to the kitchen door—even before she pulled open the heavy timber door.
‘Bahir,’ she acknowledged, stepping out and closing the door behind her as premonition turned to fear. One look in his eyes told her she needed to put as many barriers as she could between this man and her children. For when he’d left, he’d looked like a man defeated, as if he’d had the stuffing knocked out of him. But now he seemed taller and more powerful than ever and, with the cold, hard gleam in his eyes and the resolute set of his jaw, he looked more like a warrior. He looked like the real battle had not yet begun.
Her mouth went dry. He wasn’t back because he’d changed his mind about lunch. ‘Was there something else?’
‘You could say that,’ he said, and the chilling note of his delivery made her blood run cold. ‘I’ve come for my son.’
It took a while for the words to register. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said finally, finding no sense in the words; no sense that eased the turmoil inside her. ‘What do you mean you’ve come for him?’
‘It’s quite simple, really. You’ve had our son to yourself for three years. Now it’s my turn.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘NO,’ she managed, her entire body in denial. ‘No!’
‘You see,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t uttered a word, let alone that particular one, ‘I’ve decided it’s not enough for me to be some kind of absentee father. If the child is mine, as you are so happy to attest, then I have a responsibility as his father to see that he is raised properly.’
‘He is being raised properly! Did he look to you like he is being neglected or is suffering in any way? What are you trying to prove, Bahir? What do you really want?’
‘I told you. I want my son!’
She glanced at the house behind her, wondering if Catriona and the children could hear them arguing from inside. ‘There’s no need to shout,’ she warned him, before heading across the crazy-paved terrace, her arms tightly bound beneath her breasts.
‘Did you hear me?’ he said behind her, his voice lower now but no less menacing. ‘I want my son.’
‘No. This is madness. You’re just angry. You’re lashing out, merely wanting some kind of pay-back. Because you can’t be serious.’
‘I’m perfectly serious. You must have considered the possibility when you hatched this plan to tell me I was his father that I might actually want a hand in raising my own child?’
She blinked, momentarily struck dumb, because she’d never given a moment’s thought to the possibility. It was too fantastical; too unlikely. Too impossible. She spun around, hoping he would see the truth of her argument in her eyes. ‘But you never wanted children! You were so vehemently opposed to the idea that I was too afraid to tell you I was even pregnant. And now you’re telling me that you want a hand in raising him?’
‘It’s true, I never wanted a child. But what I wanted is irrelevant now, wouldn’t you say? Because that child exists. That child is here, and he is mine, just as much as he is yours!’
‘But you can’t just walk in here and demand your son like he is some kind of package—like a possession to be passed around to whoever it is whose turn you perceive it to be.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he is not a parcel to be handed from one person to another! He is a child. And because I won’t let you take my son.’
He laughed, a short, harsh sound. ‘Your son? You seem to have a short memory, princess. Such a short time ago you seemed determined to tell me the boy was mine.’
‘He is your son, but you would be no kind of father to him.’
‘Has anyone given me the opportunity? How can you be a father to a child you do not know exists?’
‘You didn’t want to know. You didn’t want a child.’
‘But the boy is here!’
‘His name is not “the boy”. His name is Chakir!’
He grunted. ‘Something else I was not given a hand in! What other things have you decided for our child, princess? Have you already chosen a school for him? Perhaps he is already enrolled? Have you already procured for him a rich and wealthy bride?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his face twisted, his strong features contorted. ‘It is ridiculous to have to ask when, as the boy’s father, I should already know these things. I should have been given a say in such decisions.’
She shook her head, determined not to give ground, no matter how shaky it felt beneath her. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested. I didn’t think you’d care, given you’d made your position crystal-clear.’
‘And so you neglected to tell me he’d even been born!’
She kicked up her chin. ‘You didn’t want to see me again. I got the impression that meant for any reason.’
‘And that …’ he paused, the look in his dark eyes damning ‘… is your pathetic excuse for denying me the knowledge of my own son’s existence? That’s your excuse for secreting him away for three years?
‘And now you think it gives you the right to keep him for ever and only offer me some token parental right, in case one day he might want to look me up?’ His chest heaving, he turned and strode away to the balustrade, where the land dipped steeply away below and the valleys and mountains formed his backdrop.
Such a maje
stic backdrop, she thought, that a mere man should fade into insignificance. No man had a right to look majestic before such a sight. But this man did. He was tall and broad like the mountains themselves, and just as impossible to scale, his true self just as unconquerable and as dangerously unattainable as the mountains’ dizzy heights.
And last night—no, this very morning—he had taken her to such dizzy heights with the magic of his mouth and his wicked tongue and she had tasted herself in his kiss …
She shivered. Now this same mouth, lips and tongue told her he wanted to take Chakir. Her son. Why would he want to do this other than out of spite? Because he felt slighted? But how could she make him see it, he who was as stubborn and impossible to move as that range of mountains behind him? How was she supposed to fight him?
‘It doesn’t give you that right,’ he said, spinning around, and she blinked and had to rewind the conversation to catch up. ‘And now it’s time for his father to exercise some of his rights. I want to take the boy home.’
‘Home?’ She shook her head. When they had been together they had lived in a succession of apartments and hotel rooms always within range of the casino of choice. ‘I didn’t know you had a home.’
‘I am planning to visit the home of my fathers in Jaqbar. I want the boy to come with me. I want to show him the land where his father was raised.’
Jaqbar? Shock punched the air from her lungs. He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d said he wanted to take him to Monte Carlo and teach him all he knew about gambling, for there was nothing in Jaqbar but endless desert. ‘You want to take him somewhere out in the desert? You must be insane! You can’t take him there! He’s just a child.’
‘He is my child. And the desert is his home.’