And now he knew.
Aware of the sudden lump which had risen in his throat, he swallowed and raised his brows at her questioningly. ‘What did they want?’
Isobel stared at the brilliant gleam of the Sheikh’s black eyes, and the faint stubble on his chin which made him look like a modern-day pirate. Had she been out of her mind yesterday when she’d told him that he could accompany her to the doctor if he wanted to see her latest scan? What crazy hormonal blip had prompted that? She’d been expecting a curt thanks, followed by a terse refusal, but to her surprise he had leapt at the opportunity, his face wreathed in what had looked like a delighted smile. A most un-Tariq kind of smile. And then he’d acted the part of the caring father as if he actually meant it—clucking round her as if he’d spent a lifetime looking after pregnant women.
In fact, when he’d been helping her into the limousine—something which she’d told him was entirely unnecessary—his hand had brushed over hers, and the feeling which had passed between them had been electric. It was the first time that they had touched since their uneasy truce—and hadn’t it started her senses screaming, taunting her with what she was missing? Their eyes had met in a clashing gaze of suppressed desire and she had felt an overwhelming need to be in his arms again. A need she had quickly quashed by climbing into the limousine and sitting as far away from him as possible.
She sighed with impatience at her inability to remain immune to him, then turned her mind back to his question about the press. ‘They were asking why the Sheikh of Khayarzah was seen accompanying his assistant to an obstetrician’s for her scan yesterday.’
‘They saw us?’
‘Apparently.’ Her eyes were full of appeal. ‘Tariq, I should have realised this might happen.’
Maybe she should have done. But to his surprise he was glad she hadn’t. Because mightn’t that have stopped her from giving him the chance to see the baby he had never wanted? He still didn’t know why she had done that—and he had never expected to feel this overwhelming sense of gratitude. Perhaps he should have realised himself that someone might notice them, but the truth was he wouldn’t have cared even if he’d known that a million journalists were lurking around.
He hadn’t cared about anything except what he was to discover in that darkened room in Harley Street, watching while a doctor had moved a sensory pad over the jelly-covered swell of her abdomen.
Suddenly he’d seen an incomprehensible image spring to life on the screen. To Tariq, it had looked like a high-definition snowstorm—until he had seen a rapid and rhythmical beat and realised that he was looking at a beating heart. And that was when everything had changed. When he’d stopped thinking of Izzy’s pregnancy as something theoretical and seen reality there, right before his eyes.
His heart had lurched as he’d stared at the form of his son—or daughter—and the doctor had said something on the lines of the two of them being a ‘happy couple’. And that had been when Izzy’s voice had rung out loud and clear.
‘But we’re not,’ she had said firmly, turning to look at Tariq, her tawny eyes glittering with hurt and challenge. ‘The Sheikh and I are not together, Doctor.’
Tariq had flinched beneath that condemnatory blaze—but could he blame her? Didn’t he deserve comments and looks like that after his outrageous reaction when she’d told him about the baby? Even though he had been doing his damnedest to make it up to her ever since. Short of peeling grapes and bringing them into her office each morning, he was unsure of what else he could do to make it better. And he still wasn’t sure if his conciliatory attitude was having any effect on her, because she had been exhibiting a stubbornness he hadn’t known she possessed.
Proudly, she had refused all his offers of lifts home or time off. Had turned up her pretty little nose at his studiedly casual enquiry that she might want to join him for dinner some time. And told him that, no, she had no desire to go shopping for a cot. Or to have her groceries delivered from a chi-chi London store. Pregnant women were not invalids, she’d told him crisply—and she would manage the way she had always managed. So he had been forced to bite back his frustration as she had stubbornly shopped for food each lunchtime, bringing back bulging bags which she had lain on the floor of her office. Though he had put his foot down about her carrying them home and told her in no uncertain terms that his limousine would drop the bags off at her apartment.
Now, as she walked into his office and shut the door behind her, he realised that the Botticelli resemblance had been illusory—because beneath her pale and Titian beauty she looked tired.
‘We’re going to have to decide what to say when the question of paternity comes up,’ she told him, wondering why it had never occurred to her that people would want to know who the father of her baby was. ‘Because it will. I mean, people here have been dropping hints about it for ages, and that journalist was on the verge of asking me outright about it today—I could tell he was.’
His voice was gentle. ‘What do you want to do, Izzy?’
She gave a short laugh. ‘I don’t think what I want is the kind of question you should be asking, Tariq.’
What she wanted was the impossible—to be carrying the child of someone who loved her instead of resenting her for having fallen pregnant. Someone who would hold her in the small hours of the morning when the world seemed a very big and frightening place. But those kinds of thoughts were dangerous. Even shameful. Because wasn’t the truth that she still wanted Tariq to be that man—even though it was never going to happen?
To Isobel’s terror, she’d discovered that you didn’t just fall out of love with a man because he’d spoken to you harshly or judged you in the worst possible way.
‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said quietly.