Sally crossed her arms and Tora could see her fingernails clawing into her arms. ‘Damn. I knew I shouldn’t have asked you that. I don’t think I could bear to hear bad news today.’
‘Oh, no,’ Tora lied, doing her utmost to smile. ‘Nothing like that. Just paperwork and more paperwork.’ She shrugged. ‘You know how it goes with these things. I’m really hoping it gets resolved soon.’
Sally glanced at her watch. ‘Well, sorry, but I’m going to have to leave you with some more paperwork if I’m going to make this appointment.’ She reached into her satchel and pulled out a folder that she left on the seat behind her as she rose. ‘I’m really sorry to leave you like this when we still don’t know all the details. Will you be okay to handle everything yourself?’
‘Hey, I’ll be fine. If you’re going to be disappearing offshore soon,’ she said, trying to stay positive and not wanting to dwell on how big that ‘if’ was right now if she couldn’t secure the funds to make it happen, ‘we’re all going to have to get used to doing more paperwork here at home. Don’t worry, I’ll email you when I know where this baby is going and scan all the documentation for you before we go anywhere. You just worry about you and Steve right now.’
Sally smiled, giving Tora a kiss on the cheek as she bent down to pick up her bag. ‘Thanks.’ She curled a fingertip under the baby’s tiny hand. ‘Look after this little poppet, okay?’
‘You bet. Now get going. And give my love to Steve.’
Sally was gone by the time the receptionist returned with her iced tea, and Tora’s was half drunk when the door to the office opened then, and an older gent with bushy eyebrows and a shock of white hair peeked out. ‘Ah, Joan,’ he said. ‘We’re ready for our guests now.’ He looked at Tora and the bundle perched over her shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but Sally Barnes couldn’t stay.’
‘I quite understand,’ he said kindly. ‘This has all taken rather longer than we expected. Thank you for being so patient, Ms Burgess. Do come in. It’s time for the little one to meet her guardian.’
She stood up with the baby in her arms, and the lawyer surprised her by shoving the folder Sally had left under his arm, before picking up both the baby capsule and baby bag.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said as he shouldered open the door and ushered her into the room, ‘here is Atiyah at last, along with Ms Victoria Burgess, who comes to us highly qualified from Flight Nanny, the number one Australian business that transports unaccompanied children all around the world. Victoria will be caring for Atiyah and accompanying you both to Qajaran.’
Tora raised her eyebrows as she digested the news. So that was where she was headed? That would be a first. She’d been to many ports in Europe and Asia but so far she’d never had an assignment that took her to the smaller Middle East states. A tall, gentle-looking man wearing Arabic robes came towards her, a warm smile on his creased face as he looked benevolently down upon the child in her arms. He reached a finger to her downy cheek and uttered something in Arabic that sounded very much like a blessing to Tora. If this man was the tiny Atiyah’s guardian, she was sure she would be in good hands.
‘Excuse me,’ he said with a bow. ‘I will inform the pilot we will be on standby.’ And with a swish of his robes, he left the room.
‘Victoria,’ someone else said from a chair in the corner of the room behind her, in a voice as dry and flat as a desert in summer—a voice she recognised as one that had vibrated its way into her bones last night with desire but that now set off electric shocks up and down her spine with fear. ‘Most people would shorten that to Tori, wouldn’t they?’
Please, God, no, she prayed, but when she looked around, it was him all right. He rose from his chair then, the man she’d spent the many dark hours of last night with naked, the man now looking at her with storm-swept eyes. Her heart lurched and she clutched the baby in her arms tighter, just to be sure she didn’t drop her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, trying and not sure she was succeeding in keeping the tremor from her voice. ‘Is it relevant?’
The lawyer looked strangely at Rashid, questions clear in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what does it matter? Come, Rashid, and see your sister and your new charge.’
His sister? Surely that didn’t mean what she thought it meant? And Tora felt the cold tea in her stomach turn to sludge.
He hadn’t been in a rush to get up—he might have agreed to go to Qajaran and take the child with him, but he was in no desperate hurry to meet her. He was glad he’d hung back in his chair now, glad of the time to let incredulity settle into cold, indisputable truth.
Because it was her.
The woman who’d stolen away from his bed like a thief in the night.
The woman he’d never expected to see again.
She looked almost the same as she had last night in the bar, in a beige short-sleeved shirt and hair that he now knew fell heavy like a curtain of silk when pulled out of that damned abomination of a bun, but with black trousers this time, covering legs he could still feel knotted around his back as he drove into her.
She looked almost the same in that bland mouse-like uniform she wore that he knew hid a firebrand underneath.
And it seemed that twenty-four hours of being blindsided didn’t show any signs of letting up yet.
‘Rashid?’ the lawyer prompted. ‘Don’t you want to meet your sister?’
Not particularly, he thought, and least of all now when she was being cradled in the arms of a woman he hadn’t begun to forget, though he supposed he should look interested enough to take a look.
He rose to his feet. Was it his imagination or did the woman appear to shift backwards? No, he realised, it wasn’t his imagination. There was fear in her eyes even though the angle of her chin remained defiant. She was scared of him and trying not to show it. Scared because he knew what the nanny got up to in the night time.
She should be worried.
In spite of himself, he got closer. Close enough that the scent of the woman he’d spent the last night with curled into his senses, threatening to undo the control he was so desperately trying to hang onto. Didn’t he have enough to contend with right now—a father who’d removed himself from Rashid’s life, only to leave him this tiny legacy, a country that was floundering where he was expected to take up the reins—without a woman who had the power to short his senses and make him forget? He needed his wits about him now, more than ever, not this siren whose body even now seemed to call to him.
He shifted his head back out of range, and concentrated instead on the squirming bundle in her arms. Black hair and chubby arms and a screwed-up face. Definitely a baby. He didn’t know a lot about babies, but then he’d never expected to need to.
‘Would you like to hold her?’ the woman he knew as Tora ventured, her voice tight, as if she was having trouble getting the words out.
It was his turn to take a step back. ‘No.’
‘She won’t break.’
‘I said no.’ And neither, when he thought about it, did he want this woman holding her, let alone accompanying them to Qajaran. Not that he was about to take the child himself. He turned to the lawyer. ‘Is there no one else you could have found for this role?’
The woman blinked up at him, her brown eyes as cold as marble. Too bad. Did she expect him to greet her like a long-lost friend? Not likely.
‘Excuse me?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Someone more suitable to take care of Atiyah. Couldn’t you find someone better to take care of my sister?’
‘Ms Burgess comes to us highly qualified. She has an exemplary record with Flight Nanny. Would you like to see her credentials?’
‘That’s not necessary.’ He’d already seen her credentials, in glorious satin-skinned detail, and they qualified her for a different type of position entirely from the one she was required for now.
‘If you have some kind of problem—’ she started.
‘Yes, I have “some kind of problem”, Ms Burgess. Perhaps we should discuss this in private and I’ll spell it out for you?’
The lawyer looked at them nervously. ‘If you excuse me, a moment, I’ll see how Kareem is going,’ and he too was gone.
Rashid took a deep breath as he strode back towards the wall of windows.
‘What are you doing here? How did you find me?’
‘What? I didn’t find you. I was asked by my boss to take this job on. I didn’t know you had anything to do with Atiyah.’
‘You expect me to believe it’s some kind of coincidence?’
‘You can believe what you like. I was retained to care for Atiyah on her journey to wherever it is that she is going. Frankly, I’d forgotten all about you already.’
His teeth ground together. Forgotten about him already? In his world, women had always been temporary, but he’d been the one to decide when he’d had enough. He’d been the one to forget, and it grated...
‘So you’re a qualified child-care worker?’
‘That’s my primary qualification, yes, though I have diplomas in school-aged education and childhood health care along with some language skills as well.’