The suggestion stunned her. She considered working with women to ensure the health of their children. It wasn’t bra burning, but it was something everyone could get behind and benefit from. Within seconds, her eager mind was leaping with excitement to get started. And it meant she could be an asset to him, not a detriment.
But the way he said it, like it had only just occurred to him, made her wonder.
“Did your first wife do that sort of thing?” she asked, already sensitive to wearing the woman’s shoes.
“No,” he said flatly. Something flashed in his expression, but she could only see his profile and whatever it was gone before she could identify it. “She was pregnant. Tariq was young.”
I’m pregnant, she almost said. And Amineh managed a work schedule around having two children.
He must have sensed her puzzlement because he added, “As I said, she was very traditional. Not complacent, but not like Amineh, who was educated here and exposed to different ideas. Sadira wasn’t interested in taking a public role.”
Sitting deeper into her bucket seat, Fern let that explanation sink in. “She didn’t really have time, did she? Amineh said she died of cancer.”
“She did.” The privacy field he’d erected swelled with thick layers.
“Did you come to love her?” she worked up the courage to ask, even though her trepidation of the answer was so strong her voice shrank.
His jaw worked as he took care to gear down and follow a curve through a gate and into a tunnel of wet, overhanging tree branches down a long graveled drive.
“Love—the passionate kind found in marriage—is a Western notion. Not something that served my father well.”
Zafir is more Arab than English, remember that, Fern. Her lungs shrank and hardened, squeezing her heart. But Amineh has love, she wanted to argue.
The boulevard of trees ended abruptly and the estate house, gloriously regal with spiking chimneys and a staid facade, struck her in the face. It perched on the highest hillock that overlooked rolling grounds, a pond and, farther in the distance, thick green woods, all of it curtained by a fey mist of rain.
The house itself was intimidating in its sense of peerage, and consisted of ancient bricks and tall windows. The north side was coated in ivy, the south held what she thought might be a solarium. The garage was its own building with seven double doors.
Zafir followed the circular drive around a fountain then parked before the wide front stairs, clicked off the engine and turned toward her while the rain pattered loudly on the roof above them.
“Sadira is Tariq’s mother. I love him with everything in me. For giving him to me, I will always have the utmost regard and respect for her. You already have the same from me, Fern.”
Meeting his steady stare was hard. She was afraid he’d see the shadows of wanting more in her eyes when she’d never realized how badly she did want more until this moment. He expected her to tie herself to him for the rest of her life, cut off any chance of meeting the man who might love her and settle for what was, quite possibly, more than she had ever expected before today.
“I’m worried you won’t respect me in the long run,” she admitted. “I’m not a good match for you. I don’t have a strong personality. You can, quite obviously, talk me into anything,” she said with a disparaging gesture at where they were. “I don’t want to be a doormat and I don’t want to see your contempt as I turn into one.”