The Sheikh’s Bargain Bride(31)
“I don’t know. I think so, yes.”
“You need to tell me everything.”
Anna swung her legs off the bed and walked around the room, avoiding getting too close to Zahir. “OK. Abduallah, he—” she looked at him once and then sighed heavily, as if unsure, “he knew it couldn’t have been him. There was no possibility. He never asked me who the father was and I never told him but I think he knew. And I also think he believed, from your attitude to me, that you had no further interest in me.”
“And so you didn’t consider I’d be interested to know I’d fathered a son.” His voice was quiet.
“It wasn’t that.”
“What was it?”
“I didn’t want you to know.”
Zahir’s turned away from her, stiff with anger. “And so because on a whim—”
“No whim. I knew you’d take him away from me, away from us—”
“Of course I would.”
“Then you can hardly blame me for not telling you.”
“I blame you. I blame you for having me believe you to be two months pregnant with Matta when we met that night in Paris. You had me believing that Matta was a full-term baby, whose father was Abduallah.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to understand but from the moment I felt Matta move in my stomach I knew that I would do anything for that child, but most of all I would love him and keep him close. I couldn’t let you take him.”
“I did anyway.”
They fell into a deep silence then, one that nothing could fill. He felt Anna’s tentative touch on his shoulder.
“Zahir.” Her voice was soft to his ears and he closed his eyes, wanting to reach out to her but knowing that nothing could be said or felt or done to take away the lies of the past.
He stepped back, his hand in the air, making a barrier between them. “No. I have to go.”
“It’s up to you now. You know the facts. You have to either come to terms with this—or not.”
Or not. Her words stayed in his mind as he closed the door behind him and returned to his empty room.
“No!” Matta said irritably, frowning at his mother who wasn’t concentrating as well as he expected her to.
“I’m sorry, honey. Right, show me again.”
Anna was trying to concentrate on the song and actions that Matta was showing her, but failing spectacularly. Three days had passed since she’d seen Zahir. No sign. Not a word.
She was living in some surreal state of limbo from which she couldn’t seem to surface to function normally.
“Hmm,” Matta said, his mouth twisting and his brow lowering in a characteristic movement she recognized from Zahir. “Mom, that’s no good.” He smiled with sympathy at her. “Perhaps you’d better leave it to me.”
Anna laughed at his adult words. He was like a sponge, absorbing something from everyone around him: the language from the adults and the fun from his cousins and friends. She ruffled his hair and he shrugged from her reach.
“Perhaps I better had.” At least the three days had allowed her to spend her undivided attention on Matta, admiring the new talents he was learning, taking extra pleasure from his love, a love that hadn’t seemed to diminish, despite her fears, but seemed to grow. She needed that now more than ever. “Come here and give me a hug.”
A resigned Matta shuffled forward and bent his head to be kissed and hugged. He patted her on the back in a gesture she knew to be dismissal. She couldn’t help but laugh. She hugged him tight and, teasingly, wouldn’t let him go.
“Mom, I have to go now. Ab Zahir is going to take me out with the falcons.”
Her heart thudded at the mention of Zahir and she let Matta slip from her arms.
“I don’t like you playing with the falcons.”
“Mom, it’s not playing. It’s part of our culture, that’s what Ab Zahir says. Besides he will be there.”
Quite, Anna thought. For the first time since their return she knew where he would be.
“And so will I.”
Anna paused for a few moments, struck by the image of loneliness that Zahir made, as he stood with his back to them, his white robes, rippling in the breeze, outlined vividly against the blue sky and the wide empty expanse.
He turned suddenly at the sound of Matta’s running feet and lifted him into the air before pulling him into a bear hug that brought a lump to Anna’s throat. She knew that Matta had been spending time with Zahir but hadn’t witnessed first hand their increasing closeness.
On some level, Zahir was coming to terms with being a father. And Matta certainly saw Zahir as his second father. From what Matta called him—Ab, or Father, Zahir—she knew that he saw him as such.