The Sheikh's Prize(15)

Topsy rolled her eyes. 'Emmie always does her own thing and she has   friends up there and a job,' she pointed out breezily. 'I also think   that just at the minute Kat and Mikhail being so lovey-dovey makes them   hard for Emmie to be around.'

Even while Saffy adored the fact that Kat had found happiness with a man   who so obviously loved her, she too had felt like a gooseberry more   than once in the couple's company. If her twin's solo pregnancy was the   result of a recent relationship breakdown, Emmie was probably feeling a   great deal more sensitive to that loving ambiance.

'Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,' Cameron announced.

'I've got time to get changed, then?'

'Yes. Let's go into your room,' Topsy urged, tugging at Saffy's arm.

A frown indented Saffy's brow at her sister's obvious eagerness to get   her alone. 'What's up?' she asked as she closed her bedroom door.

Topsy, all liveliness sliding from her expressive face, sank down on the   edge of the bed, hunched her shoulders and muttered, 'I found out   something I wasn't prepared for this week and I didn't want to bother   Kat with it,' she admitted.

Saffy dropped down on the stool by the dressing table. 'Tell me...'

'You'll probably think it's really silly,' Topsy confided.

'If it's upset you, it's not silly,' Saffy declared staunchly.

Topsy pulled a face. 'I don't know if I am upset. I don't know how I feel about it-'

'How you feel about what?' Saffy prompted patiently.

'A few weeks ago, my dad, Paulo, asked me to agree to a DNA test. I'm   eighteen. We didn't need Kat's permission,' Topsy explained as Saffy   raised her brows in astonishment at the admission. 'Apparently Dad had   always had doubts that I was his child and since he got married he and   his wife have had difficulty conceiving-'

'Your dad's got married? Since when? You never told us that!' Saffy exclaimed.

Topsy sighed. 'It didn't seem important. I mean, I've only met him a   half-dozen times in my whole life. With him living in Brazil, it's not   like we ever had the chance to get close,' she pointed out ruefully.   'Anyway, his new wife and him went for testing when she didn't fall   pregnant and it turns out he's sterile.'

Saffy stiffened at the news. 'Hence the DNA testing...'

'And it turns out that I couldn't possibly be his kid,' Topsy confided with a valiant smile. 'So, I went to see Mum-'

Saffy gave her a look of dismay, for Odette was a challenging and devious personality. 'Please tell me you didn't!'

'Well, she was the only possible person I could approach on the score of   my parentage,' Topsy pointed out ruefully. 'First of all she tried to   argue that in spite of the DNA evidence I was Paulo's kid-'

'I doubt if she wanted the subject dug up after this length of time,'   Saffy remarked stiffly, cursing their irresponsible and selfish mother   and hoping she had dealt kindly with her youngest daughter.

'She definitely didn't,' Topsy admitted with a grimace of remembrance.   'She just said that if Paulo wasn't my father, she didn't know who was.   Did she really sleep with that many men that she wouldn't know, Saffy?'

Saffy reddened and veiled her eyes. 'There were periods in her life when   she was very promiscuous. I'm sorry, Topsy. That was an upsetting  thing  for you to find out. How did Paulo react?'

'I think he had already guessed. He didn't seem surprised. Let's face   it, I don't look the slightest bit like him. He's over six foot tall and   built like a rugby player,' Topsy reminded her companion ruefully.  'Now  I'll probably never find out who my father is but why should that   matter to me? After all, you and Emmie have a father who lives right   here in London but who still takes no interest in you.'                       
       
           



       

Saffy groaned. 'That's different. Mum and him had a very bitter divorce.   She dumped him because he lost all his money. When he built a new life   and remarried and had a second family he didn't want anything more to  do  with us.'

'Does that bother you?'

'No, not at all. You can't miss what you've never had,' Saffy lied, for   that was another rejection that still burned below the layer of   emotional scar tissue she had formed. When she and her twin had been at   their lowest ebb, their father, just like their mother, had turned his   back on them and had said he wanted nothing to do with them.

'You're evil...just like your mother. Look what you've done to your   sister!' he had told Saffy when she was twelve years old, and even the   passage of time hadn't erased her memory of the look of dislike and   condemnation in his gaze.

'Sorry to land you with all this,' her kid sister muttered guiltily.

Beyond the door Cameron called them for dinner and Saffy seized the   chance to give her kid sister a comforting hug, wishing she had some   clever reassurance to offer Topsy on the topic of absent father figures.   Unfortunately, not having normal caring parents left a hole inside you   and even Kat's praiseworthy efforts to fill that hole for her sisters   had not proved entirely successful. Saffy had simply learned that when   bad things happened you had to soldier on, hide your pain and deal with   the consequences in private.

Only when Topsy had returned to Kat and Mikhail's home for the night   with her spirits much improved did Cameron turn with a concerned look in   his shrewd eyes to ask Saffy suspiciously, 'What-or should I say   who-kept you unavoidably detained in Maraban?'

Saffy visibly lost colour. 'It's not something I want to talk about right now.'

'You know that's not a healthy attitude,' Cameron, who was a firm believer in therapy, warned her.

'Talking about anything personal will never come easily to me,' Saffy   admitted tightly. 'I spent too many years locking everything up inside   me.'

She was extraordinarily tired and she went to bed and lay there with her   eyes wide open in the darkness, struggling to suppress the images of   Zahir stuck inside her head. Fighting thoughts teemed alongside those   unwelcome images. She would get over that little desert rendezvous in   Maraban and leave Zahir behind her...in the past where he truly   belonged.

* * *

Ten days later, Saffy wakened because while she had slept she had slid   over onto her tummy and her brea**sts were too tender to withstand that   pressure. With a wince, she sat up, wondering if it was time to use the   pregnancy kit she had bought forty-eight hours earlier, but she was   still strangely reluctant to put her suspicions to the test. Could she   have enjoyed intimacy just one time and conceived when her unfortunate   sister, Kat, had been trying without success to fall pregnant for many   months? It struck her as unlikely and she had only bought the test in a   weak moment of dreaming about what it might be like to become a mother.

Such silly dreams, childish dreams for a grown woman to be indulging in,   she scolded herself impatiently, dreams full of fluffy, fantasy baby   images and not a jot of reality. Somewhere deep down inside her a voice   was telling her that a baby would be one little piece of Zahir that she   could have and cherish, but she was intelligent enough to know that  the  reality of single parenthood was sleepless nights, cash worries and   nobody else to share your worries and responsibilities with.  Frustrated  by her own rebellious brain, she got up and did her morning  exercises,  desperate to think of something else. When that didn't work  she changed  into her sports gear and went out for a run, returning to  the apartment  drenched in perspiration and on legs wobbly from  over-exertion.  Stripping, she walked into the shower and washed. She  was towelling  herself dry when she heard the doorbell buzz. She pulled  on her robe and  padded across the hall to answer.

She looked through the peephole first and froze, looked again, her heart   rate kicking up a storm. Zahir? Here in London? Her teeth gritting,  she  undid the chain and opened the door.

'What do you want?' she demanded sharply.





CHAPTER SIX



'INVITE ME IN,' Zahir commanded.

Saffy was uneasily aware of the two security men standing by the lift,   of the status and level of protection Zahir now required as the ruler of   Maraban, and the very idea that he was now at risk of becoming a  target  for attack gave her stomach a sick jolt. She swallowed hard,  mustering  her defences such as they were. 'No.'

'Don't be juvenile,' Zahir urged, his handsome mouth tightening, his air   of gravity lending a forbidding edge to the smooth planes of his lean   dark absolutely gorgeous face. 'We have business to discuss.'