Shackled to the Sheikh(21)

He shook his head as if he didn’t know why he was here, standing outside her door in the middle of the night. ‘I don’t... No, nothing. I wanted to apologise for how things worked out tonight. For leaving you in the lurch when Zoltan arrived.’

‘It’s okay. I understand. Your friend would be wanting to catch up with you.’

He nodded. ‘And,’ he said, his lips pulling to one side as he struggled with the words, his eyes troubled, ‘I just wanted to see you.’

Her heart tripped and her breath caught in her throat. Her mind told her it meant nothing—but her heart...her heart wanted to believe the words he had said, just a little. ‘I had a good day today, thank you.’

‘Good. I didn’t have a chance to thank you. For your thoughts. I will speak to Kareem tomorrow.’

And she remembered that she’d wanted to talk to Rashid, too, about changing the arrangements for Atiyah, so that she wouldn’t grow too fond of her, but that could wait, because right now the night air wore a velvet glove that stroked her skin, bringing with it the scent of him, warm and musky, masculine and spicy, much like Qajaran itself.

And she remembered another night, and her head on his shoulder, drinking in that scent, thinking it would never get old, that she would never get enough of it.

‘What’s it like,’ he said suddenly into the silence, ‘when a baby smiles?’

She blinked at the question, wondering where it had come from when this was a man for whom babies didn’t seem to register. ‘It’s like sunshine in a hug,’ she said. ‘It’s like the world lights up and wraps you in love.’

He nodded, but his eyes looked as conflicted as ever, as if he was warring with himself, and she wondered what he’d made of what she’d said or what he’d expected to hear. ‘Good. I would like to see that. I won’t keep you any longer.’ He turned to leave, but he looked so tortured, this man who had the weight of Qajaran on his shoulders, that she couldn’t bear him to go like that, so she touched his forearm.

‘Rashid?’

He looked down at her hand as if it were a foreign object. ‘Yes?’

She pulled herself up, and pressed her lips to his fevered skin, a kiss that was tender and sweet, a kiss designed to soothe rather than inflame. ‘Thank you, for coming by,’ she said, before letting go and drawing back into the relative safety of her suite. ‘Goodnight.’



He was still too keyed up to sleep. Rashid lingered on the terrace under the soft dark sky lit with its sliver of moon and sprinkle of stars and breathed deeply of the night air, air that came scented with frangipani and the blossom of lemon and lime, the ache in his belly subsided for now, the factions raging inside him finding an uneasy truce.

Only the need remained undiminished.

Need for a woman who gentled away his fears merely by her presence and her own evocative perfume and the press of her lips gentle on his cheek. Need for a woman it had taken every ounce of his self-control not to pull her to him and forcibly satisfy.

The need—and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on.



He went to sleep dreaming of Tora and her honeyed voice that played in his mind over and over, so that he woke with it still in his head.

He asked Kareem when they met over breakfast if he knew it, a lullaby about oranges and apricots and fat pigeons. ‘It seems familiar but I cannot work out where I have heard it before.’

Kareem regarded him solemnly, his eyes a little sad. ‘You would have heard it, of course. It is a classic Persian lullaby, very popular, very beautiful. It is a song your mother used to sing to you when you were just a baby.’

Sensation skittered down his spine like spiders’ legs. ‘But my mother died when I was just a few months old. Surely I couldn’t remember that?’

The older man shrugged. ‘Perhaps your father sang it after she was gone. Who can say? But it is something left to you from your parents—a link to your past—something to be treasured.’

He sat back in his chair with his hand to his head. Treasured? For the life of him he couldn’t picture himself with his father, let alone imagine his father singing him a lullaby. He might have believed it once, but not now. It didn’t fit with a man who had hidden himself from his son for thirty years.

Kareem smiled sadly. ‘He loved you, Rashid. I know that it is hard for you to believe, but, for better or for worse, he did what he had to do. As you, his son, have to do.’

Rashid sighed.

His father loved him? Why did he have such a hard time believing it?



‘So when can I meet her?’ Zoltan asked after a heavy morning going through protocols and affairs of state with Rashid and Kareem and the Council of Elders.

Rashid’s first thought was of Tora. Her kiss had haunted him last night, as he had lain on his bed waiting for sleep to claim him, her kiss and the feel of her smooth fingers on his arm and her wide cognac eyes.

‘Why do you want to meet her?’

‘Well, she is your sister, isn’t she? You don’t have to keep her locked away in a cupboard somewhere. You do let her see the light of day sometimes, don’t you?’

‘Oh, Atiyah,’ he said, struck by Zoltan’s words, because once again Tora had said something similar.

‘Who did you think I meant?’ asked Zoltan, and his friend looked at him as if he thought he was losing it in the desert heat.

Maybe he was. He blinked. ‘I’ll send for her,’ he said easily, because it was a good idea, because it meant he would see Tora again, and after last night’s sweet encounter he yearned to.

But when Atiyah arrived, it was not Tora’s arms that bore her but Yousra’s instead, and he felt a piercing stab of disappointment.

‘Oh, Rashid,’ Zoltan said, ‘what a beauty,’ and he surprised the other man by taking the baby and holding her in front of him to look at her properly. Atiyah’s dark eyes were wide and uncertain, the bottom lip of her little Cupid’s-bow mouth ready to start quivering. But before it could, he had the child tucked into his arms and was sitting down on the sofa again, and Rashid blinked at the ease with which he handled the child. To him she was too small, too full of traps for the unwary. ‘You are going to have your work cut out for you when she becomes a young woman.’

Was he? Something else to look forward to. Wonderful.

The baby started fussing and squirming but Zoltan remained unfazed and uncovered her tiny toes and stroked the bottom of her feet with his middle finger. Tiny feet, thought Rashid, looking on, struck by life in miniature.

‘Are you ticklish, little one?’ Zoltan said, and Atiyah’s little legs started pumping, chuckles now interspersed with her complaints. For a while it looked as if Zoltan had the baby’s measure, but soon her face became redder and more screwed up and the chuckles gave way to her cries.

‘Whoa,’ said Zoltan, admitting defeat as her cries became bellows. ‘I think it’s time you went to your big brother, little one.’

And before he could say no, his tiny sister had been deposited into his hands. He stared down at the squawking bundle in his lap, wondering at the weight and her energy and the power of her lungs.

His sister.

His blood.

Who looked nothing like she had when she’d been sleeping.

And his gut churned anew as he tried unsuccessfully to quieten her.

There was no quietening her. The baby screamed and no wonder. Because what did he have to offer her? He knew nothing of what a baby would need. He had no experience—nothing but the shred of a lullaby...

‘Yousra!’ he snapped to the young woman who was watching helplessly on. ‘Take Atiyah. There is somewhere I have to be.’

Zoltan frowned as Yousra took the child. ‘Don’t we have the next meeting with the council coming up shortly?’

‘I won’t be long.’



Tora’s blood spiked with heat when she saw the name pop into her inbox. She had half a mind to delete the message straight away but the subject header stalled her—Good news.

What would he think would be good news to her—unless he’d had a change of fortunes or mind and somehow managed to recover her funds? She opened the message.

Dear Cousin Vicky

An opportunity’s just come up to make some quick money, so obviously I thought of you!

I’m expecting some funds to come in and meanwhile they’re promised elsewhere. I need half a million dollars fast, just to tide me over, and wondered if you might mortgage your flat for a couple of weeks to help me out? It’s only temporary until those funds come in, and the good news is I’ll be able to pay you a one-hundred-thousand-dollar fee guaranteed.

Let me know ASAP.

Your cousin

Matt

PS Like your folks used to say, blood is thicker than water after all!

Good news? Tora stared incredulously at the screen. Her cousin must think her stupid. First he screwed her out of her inheritance and then he wanted her home? Pigs might fly. And as for blood being thicker than water—after the way he’d betrayed the trust of her parents and of her, he was no family to her at all.

She was about to hit the delete button and send the message to the trash where it belonged. ‘ASAP’ be damned—let him wait for an answer that would never come.

And then she had a better idea. Much better.