by Sophia Lynn
With a laugh, Myriah dropped to her knees, opening her arms and gathering her babies close.
“Oh my little sweeties, it’s so good to see you! I missed you so much!”
For a moment, Halil felt a brief pang of remorse and sadness as he watched the three adorable girls, all three with hair as dark as his own, all three beyond pleased to finally see their mother. They were so small, so beautiful and small, and he couldn’t help but feel as if he had already lost an irreplaceable amount of time with them. Despite that, there was still something inescapably beautiful about watching Myriah on her knees, all of her reserve and worry forgotten when she gathered her babies into her arms. It was a strangely perfect moment, one where Halil felt as if he were intruding.
He hung back, not sure if he was welcome, but then he was startled to see that there was a pair of dark eyes peeping at him over Myriah’s shoulder.
Even as he watched, one of the little girls, black haired but with Myriah’s brilliant blue eyes, detached from the cuddle to take an uncertain step towards him.
How is she so small? Halil thought, almost awestruck.
He must have spent time with small children before this. He must have held them and watched them. The difference now, he realized, was that this was his child. His baby. She was so beautiful, and so achingly small that he felt a rush of protective instinct flow through him, as if someone had opened a dam.
She’s just so small . . . anything in the world could hurt her . . .
Even as he watched, the little girl, bright as a sunbeam in her yellow dress, stumbled, her bare foot catching on the carpet and pitching her forward.
Halil muttered a swear he hoped the girls were too small to pick up and dove for his daughter. The panic that he felt he might be too late, that he might see her with a split lip or a cut or even a skinned knee, overwhelmed him, and in that moment he was certain he was too late.
He came down with all his weight on one knee, but the sudden jolt of pain was secondary to the fact that somehow, incredibly, he managed to catch the little girl in his arms, one arm under her round belly, and the other bringing her close to him.
“Oh!” she said in a voice of surprise, and Halil couldn’t stop himself from laughing at her, his heart beating faster.
For a moment, he only held her, turning so she could look up at him, wondering at her weight and her warmth, feeling as if there should be angels singing in this moment or perhaps that there ought to be cannons fired.
“Hello, little one,” he murmured, and then to his surprise, there was another pair of hands patting at his arm, and another adorable face looking up at him. This little girl, however, had brown eyes as dark as his own, and her gaze was sharp, almost startlingly piercing in one so very young. A gentle pat along his side revealed the third little girl, brown-eyed like the second, and he wondered how he could tell them apart.
“Well, you certainly are making an impression,” said Myriah, coming to sit next to him.
“I was afraid she was going to hurt herself,” Halil said softly. “It . . . terrified me.”
“I remember that,” Myriah said with a slight smile.
“Do you?”
“I do. It was a thought that troubled me a great deal when they started toddling. Had I baby-proofed everything I could? Had I taken care of all of the rough corners? Had I done this or that, and if I hadn’t, would the girls be hurt?”
“How in the world did you ever cope with that?’
She laughed, and the sound sent a shiver of a different kind up his throat. Myriah was beautiful, she was gorgeous, and she could make him feel things more than any model or actress he had ever slept with. In this moment, though, in her home with three beautiful little girls falling over him, he realized that he was getting to know her in a way that no one else ever had before, that this was a rare and special thing. He swallowed hard.
“Tell me who’s who,” he said. His voice was harsh in his own ears, but Myriah, for a miracle, seemed to understand. Halil felt at once stretched too thin and full to bursting. The moment he made the request, he felt as though he had to know the names of the three beautiful little girls who were looking at him with such curious eyes, such sweet smiles.
“All right, Little Miss Clumsy, who you caught there is Leah. You can tell Leah apart, of course, because of her eyes. They all had blue eyes at first, but you could tell from the beginning that hers were going to stay blue.
“Over there on your right is Katie. She would really like it if you picked her up next. She loves it when Rose lifts her as high as she can get, especially if it makes me squeak in terror. And on your left is Mina, who will take a little longer to warm up to everything, but will generally dive in once she is good and ready to do so.”
“How do I tell Katie and Mina apart?”
“Look at their hair. You see how Katie’s hair has red undertones? Mina’s hair has blue ones, like my hair does. Katie has warm tones in her hair, like you do.”
For a moment, Halil couldn’t quite speak. The idea that these girls had anything of him in them felt like a miracle, and that was before Katie stumbled into his lap, too impatient to wait her turn.
“Ah, my little whirlwind,” he crooned. “So sweet and curious . . .”
He looked up while Myriah stood up. For a moment, he was convinced she would take his daughters away from him, and he had to fight down a sudden fury. He could not be a lunatic about this. He could not do anything that would damage the fragile truce he had built with Myriah.
“Is everything all right?”
She shot him a wry smile.
“Yeah. I just got off of a plane, and I would like a few minutes to freshen up.” She hesitated for a moment. “Can you keep an eye on things here while I take a few?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Despite what a minor thing it was, Halil felt something inside him warm at the idea of her trusting him with the girls, even for such a short amount of time.
“All right. Back in just a few.”
As he watched her go, he saw Katie bat at Mina with one flailing hand. He had no idea if it was malice or just childish clumsiness, but he grabbed her hand gently and gave it a little kiss.
“No, sweetie, don’t do that . . .”
Suddenly his arms were full of three little girls, all of whom wanted to cuddle close, to get to know him, and Halil started laughing.
So this is what love at first sight feels like . . .
Chapter Ten
Myriah
Myriah found her sister upstairs on the landing, looking down at the scene in the living room. She had to admit, it was an appealing scene. Halil, all of his dignity and reserve cast aside, was sprawled on the ground, three girls bouncing all over him and crowing as if they had vanquished a monster.
Well, they have certainly made a conquest, that’s for sure, she thought with a slight smile.
“Hello, Rose. Is everything going well?”
“Of course, big sister. If anything was wrong, I would have told you about it. So that’s the guy, huh?”
Myriah had, of course, told Rose the bare outline of what had been going on over the past few days. Rose had accepted the news with a fair amount of calm, but there was something in her younger sister’s gaze that told Myriah that she wasn’t as calm as she might have seemed.
“It is. And before you even say it, yes, I’m being as careful as I can.”
“Right. And what does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that we are talking about everything as much as we can, before it becomes a problem. It means that Halil is going to be respectful of my home and the girls’ lives . . .”
“And do you have any guarantee that he’s going to keep his word?”
“Rose!”
“Look, I know that . . . that he gave you the girls. But I’ve spent about three years with this guy affixed to my mental dartboard, and that’s not going to change that fast, you know?”
Myriah winced. Rose was the one who
had been there for her when she realized she was pregnant, the one who held her when the days felt too long and too hard, when she was achy and foul-tempered and furious with the world. Rose was the one who had always been there for her, who had shored up her strength, and more than once, Myriah had been wryly amused that her younger sister had taken on such a protective role with her.
Of course, Rose was curious in the way all little sisters were, and at the end of the day, Myriah had told her everything—or well, enough of it that she wouldn’t be too embarrassed to look her little sister in the eye, anyway. She supposed that at the end of the day, she hadn’t had all that many good things to say about Halil over the years, and it occurred to her not for the first time since she had run into him in Ealim that this might be a problem.
“It’s going to have to, Rose. He’s their father”
Rose snorted.
“No, he isn’t. Not like you’re their mother. They owe him half of their DNA, but at the end of the day, he’s not the one who stayed up late with them every night, who went through three cases of colic in a row and who made sure that they were safe and happy and fed . . .”
Myriah rubbed her forehead, wondering if she was feeling a headache coming on.
“Rose . . . I know. All right? Things are different now. I don’t know how they are, but he’s different. And honestly, so am I. Things change. People change. And . . . and I want to see if he’s changed enough.”
Enough for what was difficult to say. Enough to be with the girls? Enough to earn himself a place in their lives? She didn’t know. At the bottom of it, she wondered if he also had to change enough so that the thing in her soul when she looked at him would be replaced with something else again.
For a moment, it didn’t look as if Rose was going to relent, and if she didn’t, Myriah didn’t know what she was going to do. Her sister was famously stubborn, and once she set herself against a thing, there was very little that much of anyone could do about it. For a moment, Rose frowned at her, but then she nodded reluctantly.
“Your house, your rules, sis. But . . . please. Be careful, all right? I know that you always have the girls first in your mind. I know you do, But I think when it comes to this particular man, you need to protect yourself too.”
Myriah nodded, but she couldn’t say what a turmoil those words woke in her. Her entire body wanted to protest them. It felt as if there was no on the world she wanted to protect herself from less than Halil. At the end of the day, however, she could still remember what she had been like after he had left, that last terrible morning.
“I’ll try to remember. Thank you for looking out for me, Rose.”
Unexpectedly, Rose grinned.
“It’s okay to want to claw my eyes out too for speaking out of place,” she said. “Just as long as you’re careful.”
Impulsively, Myriah reached out and dragged her younger sister in for a tight hug. “I will be. I promise.”
As she washed her face and changed into a soft knit dress, however, Myriah thought of Halil’s sweet kisses and wondered all over again if this was a promise she could keep.
***
Dinner was strained, or at least as strained as it could be with three squirming and excited toddlers. The girls were excited to have Myriah at home, excited to have a new friend to play with in Halil, and all in all, utterly uninterested in eating the food that had been prepared for them.
Myriah wondered if there was a part of her that had thought Halil would rather observe, perhaps sit back and let her and Rose handle the nitty-gritty of getting three such excited girls fed and cared for. Instead, Halil watched everything with a bright and interested eye, and when the time came for dinner, he asked earnestly and eagerly if he could take part.
“I don’t think I’m going to do anything terribly wrong,” he said, “and of course I want you to tell me if I’m doing anything I shouldn’t, but I would like to jump right in.”
Myriah laughed a little, slightly baffled but delighted.
“Well it’s hardly rocket science, but sure. Come on, and I’ll show you how to help.”
To her surprise, Halil shook his head.
“This isn’t helping, Myriah. Well, maybe it is for a little while, until I learn how to do things on my own. But . . . this isn’t helping for me. This is just caring for the girls, something that needs to be done.”
For some reason, there was something about Halil’s determination that struck Myriah to the heart. There was a big difference between helping and simply doing what was required, and it seemed as if Halil was doing the latter.
She and Rose handed him Leah, who was usually the most placid of the three, the one who was the most likely to get through dinner without wearing it or making sure that the person who was feeding her wore it. On another day, it would have been a good choice, but today, it seemed as though the arrival of a stranger had bewitched her. The little girl was far more fascinated with Halil than she was with her dinner, and more than once, she grabbed at Halil’s hand holding the spoon, grinning and babbling with pleasure at Halil’s startled sound.
“Am I doing something wrong?” Halil asked plaintively, and Myriah had to laugh.
“No. Sometimes . . . sometimes, you just end the day wearing some pureed beets. You pretend it’s a fashion statement and move on. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”
Belatedly, it occurred to Myriah that Halil was wearing a shirt that likely cost as much as a month of rent. The fact that he had simply rolled up his sleeves and set off to feed Leah like he was wearing an ancient T-shirt was touching even if it was a little silly, and Myriah resolved to find him some clothes that would be more suitable.
She caught herself in the middle of the thought, shaking her head slightly.
I’m thinking as if he’s for sure going to stay. One day is one thing. One day playing with the girls and feeding them . . . that’s just one day. I should probably hold off on planning more before he shows his true colors.
She made a face at Katie, who was actually eating her banana chips with a surprisingly peaceful goodwill. She stayed tuned to Katie to hide some of the turmoil that was going on in her mind.
True colors? It isn’t like he lied to me . . .
Ah, but he had, hadn’t he? She had never dreamed that Halil would appear in her life again, and she had never dreamed that he was the Sheikh of Ealim. In many ways, the man who was feeding Leah right now was entirely different from the man she had once known. Was this the man who was hidden by the other, or was there some other masquerade in place? Had he changed or had been hiding all the time? Was it possible he was still hiding?
Rose retreated to her room in the basement after dinner, grimly tucking her homework under her arm. She shot Myriah a rather opaque look, and as much as Myriah loved her sister, she felt a vague relief when she was alone with the girls and with Halil.
Myriah half-expected Halil to say something about Rose’s obvious distrust, but he only nodded after Rose had disappeared into her room.
“She’s protective of the girls. That’s a good thing.”
“She was all I had for a long time. I worry sometimes that she’s given up too much to come and help me, but she never lets me talk about that too often with her. She says that there’s nowhere else she would rather be.”
Halil turned to her with a soft smile.
“I can understand that. She is devoted to her nieces, and to you.”
Myriah had no idea what to say to that, and the silence stretched between them. There was a kind of warmth between them that she wasn’t sure had ever existed before. It was something that made her feel strangely at peace, strangely safe, and she was almost grateful when Mina reached out all unprovoked and pulled hard on a handful of Leah’s hair.
Leah squalled with displeasure, reaching for her sister’s hair in return, and moving almost with one mind, Myriah and Halil reached for the girls, separating them.
“That came out of nowhere,” said Halil in surprise, looki
ng down at Mina as if she might have the answers he needed. “Why in the world would she do that?”
“Because the wind was blowing from the east? Because she remembered something that happened a few days ago? Because Leah was just sitting there minding her own business? It’s something kids do, and these girls are just beginning to get to the stage where we can start explaining to them how things should work and why they need to be kind to each other.”
“How do we do that?” asked Halil, and she grinned at him.
“By telling them no. By pulling them apart. Right now, they’re not up for long talks about what we owe to each other and why you shouldn’t pull hair. Explanations can come later.”
Halil started to ask her something else, but of course that was when Mina, held securely in Halil’s arms, started to bawl. It started as a few soft whimpers that made Halil look down in concern, and then she opened up into a full-body wail, arching her back and lashing out with her fists.
Myriah sighed, because of all of the girls, Mina was the one who could have the worst tantrums.
If she had thought of it, she might have thought that Halil would be shocked by the toddler’s cry, possibly turning to her with an expression of shock and a plea for help. She wouldn’t even have held it against him. It was one thing to play with the girls or even feed them, but tantrums were something else again.
Instead, to Myriah’s surprise, he wrapped his arms around Mina, holding her firmly but not painfully tight. He whispered in her ear, something in Arabic, and he rocked on his heels slightly, letting the gentle motion and his soft words soothe her.
Mina was inclined to hang on to her rages once she got going, and while tonight was no exception, she didn’t scream as long as she might have. While Myriah kept the other two girls calm, Halil calmed Mina until she was quieted down to angry hiccups. She went limp against Halil’s shoulder, one fist curled up next to her face, and Halil rubbed soft circles into her back, still speaking to her with a sweetness that made Myriah’s heart ache.
“You handled that well,” Myriah found herself saying, and Halil winked at her.