Czytaj książkę: «The Desert Lord's Love-Child»

Family is all that matters to these proud and passionate kings of the desert, so discovering they’re fathers means claiming their children at any cost…

THE

Desert LORD’S LOVE-CHILD

Three intensely emotional stories from favourite authors

OLIVIA GATES KATE HEWITT MEREDITH WEBBER

The

Desert Lord’s Love-Child

The Desert Lord’s Baby

Olivia Gates

The Sheikh’s Love-Child

Kate Hewitt

The Sheikh Surgeon’s Baby

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Desert Lord’s Baby

Olivia Gates

About the Author

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued many passions. But the time came when she had to set up a “passion priority", to give her top one her all, and writing won. Hands down. She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters and then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heartache and hope and heart-pounding doubt until she leads them to their indisputably earned and glorious happy ending. When she’s not writing she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat.

Please visit Olivia at http://www.oliviagates.com.

To an incredible lady, my editor

Natashya Wilson, for her belief in me, her

constant encouragement and spot-on guidance.

And to wonderful Melissa Jeglinski for

opening up a fantastic new path for me.

Prologue

“Do you know what it felt like, being trapped for two days in those hellish negotiations, away from you?”

Farooq’s voice swept over Carmen, dark and fathomless like the night sky she was staring into, the exotic accent turning it into a potent weapon, an irresistible spell.

She’d felt him the moment he’d entered the penthouse. The skyscraper. Long before that. Probably the moment he’d stepped out of the closed negotiations that had taken him away from her every day for the past six weeks. The nights had been all hers. All theirs. Madness and magic’s.

She’d thought she’d braced herself, was ready for her first exposure to him after forty-eight hours of deprivation.

After she’d found out something that had changed her life forever.

She wasn’t ready. His approach felt like that of a hurricane. Her teeth chattered with the convulsion of emotions ripping through her. How she loved him.

It had happened so fast, so totally. When she’d thought she stopped believing in love, wasn’t even equipped to feel lust. Then, everything inside her had shuddered with the first sight of him, stumbled with the first hours in his company, crashed with the first night in his arms. She’d been hurtling deeper ever since.

She’d known that, when her time with him was up, she’d keep on plunging, hadn’t cared what would happen then, had only been desperate to experience every minute afforded her of him.

Until today.

She gazed blindly through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass overlooking Manhattan, which sparkled beyond the sprawling darkness of Central Park. Each quiet step of now-bare feet on the luxurious carpet echoed inside her, along with the hiss of cashmere sliding off silk, then silk off living velvet steel, his masterpiece body slowly revealed, not in reflection, but in her memory, where his every nuance was etched in obsessive detail.

She still couldn’t turn to him. The scalpel edge she’d been balancing on began to slice into her, cutting slow and deep.

This would be their last night.

She wanted to cram a lifetime into it. Tear open every second and fill it with him, with them. She wanted to consume him, needed all his contradictions, patience and arrogance, tenderness and ferocity, all devastating, all at once.

“Wahashteeni, ya ghalyah.” His croon dipped into the bass reaches of her torment. Hearing him say he missed her, the endearment he favored—precious, treasured—hit a chord of blind yearning inside her. Her breasts heaved, her nipples hardened to points of agony. She couldn’t bear the crush of cotton over her inflamed skin, the chafing emptiness inside her. Then he made it far worse. “I shouldn’t have stayed away no matter what. Now I’m almost afraid to touch you, afraid that when I do, it will take us to the very edge of survival.”

He was half a breath away now, and inside her a tornado tore everything apart. She gasped for air. It screeched down her lungs, riding a scent of intoxication, the musk of tension, virility and desire. Of him. A phantom touch moved her cascade of burgundy hair to one shoulder, exposing her neck. He leaned a fraction closer … and breathed. Inhaled her. Drew her whole into him.

Then his hands moved over her, hovering an inch away, creating a field of sensual friction. He brought his lips to her ear and his soft rumble hit her with the force of a clap of thunder. “I couldn’t even call you, knew I’d lose every ground I’d won if I heard your voice, felt your desire. I would have dropped everything and come to you.”

And she knew. She couldn’t take even tonight with him.

If she did, she’d stay. And in six more weeks, he’d know.

He’d know she was pregnant.

And she couldn’t let him know.

She’d promised him it was safe to make love without protection. And it hadn’t been. He’d see her as a liar, a cheat. He’d be incensed. Or worse. Far worse.

He might have behaved magnificently with her, but she had no illusions about what she was to him. She was a diversion to let off steam during negotiations that taxed his soul and psyche. After that first night together, his offer had been clear. Be his lover during his three-month world tour to broker peace and relief. She was certain he intended to end their arrangement with all the largesse of the prince that he was, probably with an ultragenerous settlement. A settlement she would never have accepted.

But fate had given her something far more precious than anything he could have offered her, the ultimate gift …

She shuddered. She’d been so lost in misery, she’d left it too late to move away. Now he took her, wrapped her in his cabled arms, her back to his chest, her head in the curve of his neck as his towering body encompassed her, sending her reeling with wave after wave of such craving, she almost risked everything for one more taste of heaven in his arms. Almost.

She lurched out of his tightening embrace, tottering, trying to pretend it was a natural move, and croaked a distraction, “Did you manage to propose your relief projects without the Ashgoonian prime minister screaming that your monarchy has some nerve, criticizing his ‘democracy’s’ internal affairs?”

It took him a moment to answer. A moment during which he tried to pull her back into his arms. A look of incomprehension stained his overpowering beauty when she evaded him again.

Then he seemed to dismiss her action as nothing to analyze, shrugged his Olympian shoulders. “He did better than that. He gave me unconditional access into Ashgoonian territory for a hundred-mile zone across the borders with Damhoor.”

A surge of pleasure and pride in his extraordinary achievement, something the UN itself hadn’t been able to manage, overtook her, momentarily suppressing her misery. “Oh, Farooq, that’s incredible. You’re going to save so many lives.”

His sensuous lips twisted. “Let’s not count our saved lives before they’re saved, Carmen. In diplomacy I project only worst-case scenarios. But enough of that. I’m not Prince Aal Masood now. I’m the man who has untold pleasures in store for the woman who’s his most magnificent gift for his life’s best birthday.”

His birthday. She’d found out only yesterday, and it had been during her shopping trip for supplies to make the man who had multitudes of everything a handmade gift that she’d collapsed, ended up in hospital and found out that what she’d thought impossible had happened. Farooq’s baby was growing inside her.

He reached for her again. This time when she dodged him, his arms fell to his sides and bewilderment flashed over his sculpted face. Then comprehension dawned in the honeyed depths of his eyes.

He exhaled. “It’s that time of month at last?”

He thought she was having her period? God, how ironic.

She grabbed at the excuse, nodded.

He sighed again. “It has been longer than expected coming, hasn’t it?” He didn’t even know how long it had been. And why should he? He wasn’t counting the moments with her, counting down to the moment their time together came to an end. A wicked gleam suddenly entered his hypnotic eyes. “It’ll never stop stunning me, how delightfully wanton you are at times only to squirm with shyness at others.” She looked away from his teasing. A finger under her chin dragged her aching gaze back to his. “I may be burning to possess you, ya ghalyah, but I’ll take equal pleasure in comforting you. You look so tired, so pale.” He took her arm, pulled her toward the gigantic, circular bed draped in midnight blue silk. “Are you in any pain? I’ll summon my physicians.”

She shook her head, faltered. “I’m just … cramping a bit.”

His smile was all indulgence. “Then I’ll give you a massage. And under my hands, rubbed down with my kingdom’s magical oils, all your aches and discomforts will dissolve.”

The images he provoked speared through her loins, his thoughtfulness through her head and heart. She lurched away. “No.”

The rugged majesty of his face stiffened with confusion. He approached her again, his hands spreading in solicitude that became bafflement, then frustration when she jumped out of reach again.

He finally rasped, “What’s wrong?”

She had to do it now. Before she weakened. Before she succumbed. She blurted it out. “I’m going back home.”

He stared at her, all expression frozen on his face. At last he inhaled.

“Again I ask, what’s wrong?” His voice was measured now, careful, as if he were talking to a frightened mare.

“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to go back to L.A.”

Puzzlement and watchfulness still hovered in his eyes as he persisted. “And the reason is?”

Her gaze wavered, her lungs closed. She hadn’t thought for a second that his response to her declaration would be anything beyond a sigh and a shrug, before he moved on to the next conquest. His unexpected probing cornered her, made her blurt out the first thing that came to her. “I thought I was free to go whenever I wanted.”

Imperiousness, something she knew was innate in him but which he’d never subjected her to, blazed in his eyes. “You’re not. Not without justification for your abrupt demand.”

Floundering, she said, “It’s a decision. And it’s not abrupt. I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time.”

Harshness crept into his eyes, into his voice when he drawled, “Oh, yes? Were your cries for more forty-eight hours ago part of telling me you wanted to cut our time together short?”

She turned away. She’d collapse where she stood if she tried to hold his gaze one more second. He didn’t let her get far, his hands clamping her shoulders, his lips feathering along her neck.

“Enough of this, Carmen.” His groan jolted more longing and misery through her. “Whatever this is. If you’re angry with me for some—”

She jerked out of his hands, rasped, “I’m not.” His jaw muscles worked. “There must be something. You can’t just want to leave. I won’t let you—”

And she cried out, the shrillness of panic creeping into her voice. “I’m not asking you if I can leave, I’m informing you.”

His face became implacable. “You’re going nowhere until you tell me the truth. If you’re in any trouble—”

“I’m not.” God. She’d underestimated his sense of entitlement. She’d forgotten he was more than the man she loved with everything in her. He was a prince of unlimited power. He expected, and always got, his way. He’d probe and press until she broke down, gave him what he asked for. And she couldn’t.

One way out flashed inside her mind. Desperate. Dangerous. She could think of nothing else.

Suppressing tremors of anguish and anxiety, she murmured, “Contrary to what you’re used to in your native Judar where your word is law, this is a free country, your highness. A woman has the same rights as a man here to take her pleasure where she pleases, and change her mind when she pleases.”

He flinched as if she’d slapped him. “And you’ve changed yours? When you can barely stand with wanting me?”

She felt the twitches of loss of control seizing her. God. She’d made her life’s worst mistake coming back here, being so weak she’d needed to see him one last time. She should have just disappeared.

Feeling crazed with desperation, she taunted, “That is what you’d like to think, isn’t it?”

He stared at her, his eyes deadening.

When he finally spoke, he sounded smooth, tranquil. “How about we drop the charade? I have nothing but games everywhere in my life. But in my bedroom I allow only sexual ones. You think the remaining six weeks should carry a more substantial price tag than sharing my bed and privileges? How remiss of me. I should have put an offer you can appreciate on the table. So if you have demands …” He suddenly yanked her to him, bent her over a potent arm, his other hand pressing her hips to his, his erection grinding against her long-molten core, the refined man she’d known receding fast. “Make them. I’ll meet them, whatever they are.”

Her heart crumpled.

Oh God. This had gotten uglier than anything she could have imagined. He thought she was bargaining with the unstoppable desire that had raged between them from the first glance. Though his repugnance was total, he seemed willing to pay anything for more of her.

She tore herself out of his arms. She had to end this. Now.

Only the ugliest lie would do.

Feeling the resignation of a death sentence settling over her, it flowed from her in a lifeless voice. “I thought I owed you the courtesy of not disappearing without saying goodbye. But it seems I should have spared myself the unpleasantness, should have known you’d react with the barbarism of your culture and the conceit of your inherited status. You may be good in bed, Farooq, but so are a hundred other men. I like variety, and I always leave when my lovers start to bore me. I thought it best to go before I was sick of you. I didn’t want to spell it out, but it’s clear I shouldn’t have bothered with civility.”

Before she collapsed at his feet in a weeping mess, she staggered around him, snatched up her handbag, images of a baby who looked like him fueling her march out of his bedroom, out of his world.

But the image that would remain imprinted on her retinas for the rest of her life was of his face. The face of the hostile stranger she’d managed to turn him into in mere minutes.

The hostile stranger she’d never see again.

One

“Bagha … bagha …”

Carmen paused in the middle of hanging the nursery’s new curtains. She looked down at Mennah, listened to her chirping her latest “word,” her heart in a state of expansion.

She’d gotten used to feeling her heart filling her whole chest, her whole being, since she’d given birth to her daughter.

She’d demanded Mennah the moment she’d come out of her womb, disregarding the doctor’s grumbling that he had to close said womb first. He’d succumbed, though, had placed the smeared, nine-pound miracle on Carmen’s bosom. And for long moments, as she’d first touched her baby, felt her precious weight, her flesh and heat and reality, Carmen had been afraid she wouldn’t survive the explosion of emotions raging through her.

She’d searched for the right name long and hard. She’d found the perfect one, what this baby was, in her father’s mother tongue. Mennah. Her gift from God.

Now her gift was latching chubby fingers onto her playpen’s railings, hauling herself up to a standing position. She then tried to stand unsupported and landed on her diaper-padded bottom with a cry of chagrin-mixed glee, tearing a laugh from Carmen’s depths.

“Oh, Mennah, darling, you’re in such a hurry.”

And she was. At only nine months, she’d been sitting unsupported for almost three, crawling for almost two and was now clearly on her way to overtaking another milestone.

Carmen slotted the last hook, climbed down the ladder and headed to the playpen. Her sunny angel grinned at her, good nature brimming from golden eyes, displaying her newly acquired set of teeth, her dimples flashing in the perfection of her cherubic face. A surge of emotions clogged Carmen’s throat, rising to her eyes.

Could she have been so blessed?

Mennah held up her arms. Carmen obliged at once, bent and cradled the robust little body that was her reason for living. Mennah mashed her face into her mother’s neck, and Carmen’s arms convulsed around her. It was a good thing Mennah loved fierce hugs. Carmen bore down on the flare of love, rocked Mennah in her arms, one hand luxuriating in the raven silk of her locks. Hmm, the bald patch from before Mennah started rolling around was totally gone.

Suddenly Mennah pushed away, looked up expectantly. “Bagha bagha.”

Carmen tickled her nose. “Yes, darling, you’re trying to tell me something and your mommy is so dense she hasn’t figured it out yet. But that’s a new word. Give me a day and I’ll figure it out. Say—could it be you’re telling me you’re hungry? It has been a couple of hours since you’ve eaten.” Carmen started to undo her shirt only for Mennah to slap her hands on top of Carmen’s, squealing, part playful, part admonishing. Carmen sighed. “No mommy-produced sustenance?”

Mennah giggled. Carmen sighed again. She’d been hoping to prolong nursing. But this was another area where Mennah was in a hurry. She’d been refusing to nurse more and more ever since she’d been introduced to solid foods, decreasing Carmen’s milk flow. This was the second day with no nursing at all. During that time Mennah had even given her grief about eating previously much-loved foods. And Carmen could guess why.

“I shouldn’t have given you a taste of my filet mignon, darling. Seems you share more than your looks with your father. He, too, is a big panther who relishes red meat—”

Carmen stopped. Mennah was looking up at her with such absorption, as if she was memorizing everything her mother said.

Carmen had been indulging in the heartbreaking pleasure of constantly talking to her about her father. Maybe she should resist giving in to the urge. There was no way Mennah understood now, but maybe before Carmen realized, she would. And she didn’t want to explain her father’s absence for years. Not that she’d ever have enough time to come up with an adequate explanation.

Exhaling, shaking off a resurgence of the despondency that had suffocated her all through her pregnancy, she walked out of the nursery, headed to their open-plan, sunlit kitchen.

She secured Mennah in her high chair, dropped a kiss on top of her glossy head. “One bagha bagha coming up.”

She placed plastic toys in front of Mennah, set the iPod to a slow rock collection and started preparing the dish that had converted her baby to gourmet cuisine. Amidst singing along with her favorite songs and Mennah’s accompanying shrieks of enthusiasm, she stopped periodically to gather the toys with which Mennah gleefully tested gravity, giving them back to her so she’d restart her experiments over and over again.

She was finishing the mushroom sauce when she noticed it had been a couple of minutes since she’d fetched for Mennah, since her daughter’s squeals had disharmonized with her singing.

She turned around and her heart overflowed with another gush of love. Mennah was out like a light on the high chair’s tray.

She always did fall asleep without warning. But she couldn’t have been hungry after all, if she could fall asleep among all those mouthwatering aromas.

Sighing, eyeing the meal that had to be served hot to be good, Carmen turned off the music, unbuckled Mennah from her seat then went to put her down in her crib.

The singing had stopped.

The crashing of Farooq’s heart hadn’t.

And it wasn’t only his heart that manifested his upheaval. Every muscle in his body was clenched, every nerve discharging.

He’d been standing there for what felt like a day, listening to the sounds coming from inside. Wistful love songs accompanied by the gleeful noises of an infant. And the overpowering melody of a siren.

He’d willed himself over and over to ring the bell. Better still, to break down the door.

He’d just stood there, his ear almost to the door to catch every decibel of a slice of life of the tiny family that lived inside, his hands caressing the door as if it were them.

He felt as if he’d disintegrate with an emotion so fierce he had no name for it, no experience and no way to deal with it.

It had to be rage. An unknown level that made what he’d felt when Carmen had told him she was leaving pale in comparison. It dwarfed what he’d felt when he’d pursued her, bent on erasing the ugliness, the madness of that confrontation, on bringing back his Carmen and the perfection they’d shared, only for more betrayal to tear at him when he’d seen her getting into his cousin Tareq’s car. It even eclipsed what he’d felt when he’d confronted Tareq and discovered why she’d really left.

His cousin and arch nemesis had confessed that he’d sent Carmen to seduce Farooq, to get pregnant and create a scandal large enough to stop Farooq’s rise to the succession. Tareq had snickered that their uncle’s latest decree had thrown a sabot in the cogs of his treachery, turning a pregnancy into an asset, not a liability, forcing him to order Carmen to leave, going back to the drawing board to think of something else to eliminate Farooq from the running.

It had all made sense to Farooq then. From the moment he’d seen her to the moment she’d walked out on him.

Or he’d thought it had.

It had been only hours ago that he’d learned the full truth.

Another tidal wave of emotion crashed over him.

Ya Ullah—he’d never struggled for control, had never even contemplated its loss. He’d been born in control, of himself before others. His urges and desires were his to command, never the other way around. Then there was Carmen.

He’d lost control with his first sight of her, had lost his discretion while drowning in her pleasures, had almost lost his restraint upon her desertion.

Now he was a hairsbreadth from losing his reason.

And it was her doing yet again.

He leaned his forehead on the door, forced inhalations into his spastic lungs, order into his frenzied thoughts, willing the blinding seizure to pass.

It took minutes and the nosiness of two neighbors to bring him down. He regained at least enough control to settle a semblance of composure over the chaos, smothering it. Enough to make him reach a resolution.

He’d never let her affect him that deeply again. Ever.

He’d go in, take what he wanted. As he always did.

He straightened, set his teeth with great precision and almost drove his finger through her doorbell.

Carmen jerked up from watching Mennah sleep. The bell!

Though it almost never rang, she’d been waiting for her super to come fix the short-circuit in the laundry room. He’d said within the next two days. Four days ago.

But it was the way the bell rang that had made her jump. It had almost … bellowed, for lack of a better description. Maybe it was about to give, too, and that sound was its dying throes?

Sighing, she checked Mennah’s monitor and the wireless receiver clipped to her jeans’ waist. On her way to the door, she smoothed her hands over her hair but gave up in midmotion with a huff. A disheveled greeter was what her super got for coming unannounced, catching a single mother with a dozen chores behind her and a shower still in her future.

Fixing a smile on her lips, intending her greeting to be thanks for his arrival if no thanks for his delay, she opened the door.

Her heart didn’t stop immediately.

It went on with its rhythm for a moment, the kind that simulated hours, before it lost the blood it needed to keep on pumping. The blood now shooting to her head, pooling in her legs. Then it stopped.

And everything else hurtled, screeched, into consciousness.

Denial, dread, desperation.

She’d changed her career to work from home, had relocated to the other side of the continent, had still remained scared that he’d find her. But he hadn’t, and eventually she’d believed he hadn’t tried, or hadn’t been able to.

But he had found her. Was on her doorstep. Farooq.

Filling her doorway. Blocking out existence.

She found herself slumped against the door, her fingers almost breaking off with the force with which they clutched it. Some instinct must have remained functioning, saving her from crashing to the ground. Some auxiliary power must be fueling her continued grip on consciousness.

“Save it.”

That was all he said as he pushed past her, walking into her apartment as if he owned it. And his voice …

This wasn’t the voice etched in her memory. The voice that echoed in every moment’s silence, haunting her, whispering seduction, rumbling arousal, roaring completion, always charged with emotion. This voice contained as much life as a voice simulation program.

God, what was he doing here?

No. She didn’t care what he was doing here. She didn’t care that her insides were crumbling under the avalanche of emotion the sight of him had triggered.

She had to get rid of him. Fast.

She had to regain control first, of her coherence, to think of something to say, of her volition, to be able to say it.

She leaned against the door she didn’t remember closing, feeling as if the least tremor would shatter the tension keeping her upright. She watched his powerful strides take him into the formal living room, felt him shrinking it, converging all light on him like a spotlight in the dark.

And even through her shock and panic, everything inside her devoured each line of his juggernaut’s body, even bigger and taller than she remembered, the sculpted suit worshipping it from the daunting breadth of shoulders, to the sparseness of waist and hips, to the formidable power of thighs and endless legs.

Memory was a sadistic master, lashing open festering wounds with images and sensations, of those shoulders dominating her, those hips thrusting her to a frenzy, those thighs and legs encompassing her in the aftermath of madness.

She tore her gaze and memories away, choking on longing. Then he turned, and everything in her piled up with the brunt of his beauty, the rawness of her still-burning love.

His heavy-lidded gaze documented her reaction before he raised both eyebrows, a movement rich in nonchalance and imperiousness. “Finished with your latest act, or shall I wait until you’ve delivered the full performance?”

It wasn’t only his voice that was different. This wasn’t the Farooq she remembered. This wasn’t even the hostile stranger she’d walked out on. That man had been seething with harshness, with emotion. This man was even more forbidding, as he eyed her with the clinical coldness of a scientist dealing with inanimate matter.

His lips pursed as if he were assessing a defective product. He finally gave a slight shake of his awesome head, lips twisting on his unfavorable verdict. “As an unbiased viewer, I must tell you, your acting abilities are slipping. Exaggeration is not your friend.”

Before she could even process his dispassionate comment, let alone find words to answer it, he relieved her of his focus, cast his gaze around her space.

She could see his connoisseur’s mind adding up the worth of every square foot, every piece of furniture, brush stroke and decorative article and felt defensive. Though she’d made this place chic and cheery, it could well be derelict compared to the opulence he was used to. Which was a stupid thing to feel and think.

She had to make him leave. Now. Before Mennah woke up. Before he saw the childproofing she’d begun installing.

He finally returned those empty eyes to hers as he walked back toward her. She watched him cross the distance between them with the fatalism of someone about to be hit by a train.

“It cost a bundle, this place,” he murmured. “I would have wondered how you afforded it. If I didn’t already know.”

She almost blurted out “What do you mean by that?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t locate her voice. Her heart had long invaded her throat. She could barely breathe enough to keep from passing out. And his indifference and disparagement were encasing her in frost, hurrying her descent. Everything was taking on a surreal tinge. She began to hope this was a scenario out of her Farooq-starved imagination.

Then he was within touching distance. And she had to prove to herself he was—or wasn’t—really here.

She reached out a trembling hand, half expecting her fingertips to encounter a mirage. Instead they feathered over black-silk-covered flesh, the layered sensations of softness and steel, heat and hardness. Her fingers pressed into him, shudders engulfing her, like an electrocution victim unable to break the deadly circuit.

And she saw it, in his eyes. A response, blasting away the ice, mushrooming like a nuclear cloud before the wave of annihilation followed. Before he clamped onto her intruding hand.

A moan punched out of her as he squeezed awareness from her flesh and bones. Then, with scary precision, he removed her hand from his chest, let it drop like a soiled tissue.

With his eyes empty again, he half turned, raising his head as if sniffing for an oncoming storm.

“Hmm … filet mignon with mushroom sauce?” He turned his eyes to her. They weren’t back to impassivity at all, the harshness she’d seen in them that night in his penthouse polluting the amber. “Expecting a guest? Or is it a sponsor?” She gaped at him. His voice dipped into an abrasive bass. “I hope you’ve had enough of the shocked routine and will contribute to what started as a monologue and is now bordering on a soliloquy.”

Contribute. He wanted her to contribute. She had exactly four words to contribute. The sum total of what was left of her mind.

“Why are you here?”

Something feral flashed in the depths of his wolflike eyes. “So, you deem to end the mute show. If only to put on the dumb one.”

Each word was a lash on her rawness. “Please … stop.”

He inclined his head, a predator at leisure, his prey cornered, with all the time in the world to torment it. “Stop what? Critiquing your below par performance? You have only yourself to blame for that. It seems you haven’t been honing your craft of late.”

“Please … I don’t understand.”

“More acts, Carmen? Don’t you know the key to a successful acting career, especially an offstage one, is sticking with your strengths? My advice: never try the particular roles you just churned up for my benefit again. They neither suit nor work.”

“For God’s sake, stop talking in riddles. Why are you here?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Intent on dramatizing to the end, aren’t you? Or are you just intent on testing the limits of my patience? The reason I’m here is self-evident.”

She shook her head. “Not to me. So please, drop your act and just say what you came here to say, and then—please—leave me alone.”

He seemed to expand like a thundercloud about to hurtle down destruction, a beam of the day’s dying sun striking a solar flare of rage in the gold of his eyes.

“I once told you that I have my fill of games. I thought you had enough intelligence not to join the would-be manipulators who swarm around me. At least not to try the same trick twice. Evidently I’ve overestimated your IQ. This will be the last time I take part in one of your games, so savor it while you can. Try another at your peril.” He inclined his head at her, sent her heart slamming in her chest. “You want me to pretend I don’t know that you know why I’m here? Zain. Fine.” He gave a pause laden with the irony of someone about to deliver something redundant, the disgust of being forced to play an offensive game of make-believe.

Then he drawled, smooth and sharp as a razor, “I am here for my daughter.”

Two

Farooq’s words shot through Carmen, pulverizing the framework holding her heart in place. Yet something kept her on her feet and conscious. Probably hope that she was hallucinating. “W-what did you say?”

He exhaled, the icy armor not back in place, the underlying volcano seething through the cracks. “Spare me further theatrics. You had my daughter. You have my daughter. I am here for her.”

He knows about Mennah.

How could he know about her?

He somehow did, had said … said …

I am here for my daughter.

What did that mean? Here for her … how? It couldn’t mean what it sounded like. It couldn’t mean he … he …

He wanted to take Mennah away from her.

The ground softened. An abyss yawned beneath, pulled at her …

But no. No. Not even he could take a baby away from her mother. This wasn’t Judar, where he was the law. This was America.

But how did he find out? Had he had her investigated, found out she’d had a baby, done the math and come to the conclusion Mennah might be his? Why would he want her even if he realized she was? He couldn’t consider her anything but a disastrous mistake.

That first night he’d had no protection, and even in the inferno of arousal, he would have stopped if she hadn’t assured him she was safe. She’d been certain she was. She’d had a dozen reports from as many specialists declaring her infertile.

He’d told her in blatant detail how he wanted to invade her, feel his flesh inside hers without barriers, to pour himself inside her. It had sent her up in flames in his arms …

Stop. Stop. She couldn’t let those memories assault her now. He hadn’t been risking repercussions, had believed her assurances. That was why she’d known his reaction would be violent if he found out about her pregnancy. He would have looked upon it as an ultimate breach of the trust he didn’t give easily. Most important, she couldn’t have projected how damaging it would be to him, a prince in line to the throne of one of the world’s most conservative and richest oil states, to have an illegitimate child.

Suddenly her heart nearly fired out of her ribs.

Could he be here to make sure Mennah disappeared, so she’d never compromise his position?

Out of her mind with dread, she asked, “What makes you even think my daughter can be yours?”

His answering stare was long and pitiless, lava coursing beneath the dark, hard surface.

Then he dipped one hand inside his jacket, as if he were extracting a gun.

Next moment she wished he had pulled one out, had shot her straight through the heart with it.

He pulled out a photo instead. Of Mennah.

A photo of Mennah sitting in strange surroundings. Holding an unfamiliar toy. Wearing unknown clothes. Mennah was laughing at the camera, secure, pleased, knowing how to please.

Mennah was only like that around her.

In the few times she’d seen other people, she’d clung to Carmen, fearful, tearful. If someone had managed to get her alone …

Was she losing her mind? How could she be wondering that?

She’d never left Mennah alone, except when she was sound asleep in her crib, like now. She’d diverted her career to work from home so she could be with her daughter at all times.

How had he gotten his hands on Mennah?

“I—I’ve never left Mennah. When—how did you get the chance to—to—”

“I didn’t.” His voice slashed across her babbling. “This isn’t a photo of your … of my daughter. This is a photo of my sister, Jala, at Mennah’s age. Mennah is also my feminine replica at that age. That Mennah is mine is indisputable. So let’s drop the hysterics and get to the point of all this.”

“Wh-what is that?”

“That I’ll never forgive you for keeping her from me.”

Farooq’s gaze clung to Carmen as she flinched as if at the lash of a whip, his fascination beyond his control.

But that was an improvement on what had happened when she’d opened her door with that smile ready on her lips. Everything had stilled then. Thought, heartbeats. Time itself had seemed to stop.

Then it had hit a screeching reverse, catapulting him to the moment he’d first laid eyes on her in that conference hall a year and a half ago.

As a tycoon and a prince, he had the world’s most spectacular beauties flaunting their assets and practicing seduction for his benefit. His attention had to be worked for extensively, was held with utmost effort for periods never surpassing days.

Then she’d come forward, hesitant, prim, and his focus had been captured and his lust aroused, effortlessly. Absolutely. A surge of something he’d never entertained feeling—possessiveness—had followed.

He’d wanted to banish every male around, shield her from their eyes and thoughts. Not that she’d been inviting attention. No doubt as part of her plan to stand out.

Apart from her aloofness, she’d been smothered in a navy skirt suit from neck to mid-calf, when all the women around her had worn skirts riding up their thighs and blouses opened on deep cleavages.

Her closed expression and concealing clothes had made him more eager to tear through them. He’d seen himself stripping her of that guarded look, those offending coverings, arranging her on that conference table, spreading her for his pleasure and hers, her reserve melting as she begged for his pleasuring, writhed for his domination …

It must have been the response she’d counted on. That the mystique of her reticence in manner and dress would rouse the hunter lying dormant inside him. And it had worked. Spectacularly.

For the first time ever, he’d been fazed, couldn’t account for his violent response. Unlike many men of his culture, he didn’t prefer fair-skinned, light-eyed women, certainly never redheads.

But she’d approached him like a wary gazelle, her equal attraction and alarm blazing in those heaven-colored eyes, had put that supple hand in his and everything about her had become everything he craved. Her face and body had become the sum total of his fantasies, every feature and line the source of his hunger, the fuel for his pleasure.

He would have done anything to have her in his bed. And when by the end of the night he’d had her there, he couldn’t let it end, had offered what he’d never offered any woman. Three months. In the private space he never let anyone breach. With every minute, he’d wanted her for longer. He’d even entertained forever.

Then she’d walked out.

Ever since, he’d been trying to wipe her taste from his mouth, the memory of her from his psyche, to reacquire a taste for other brands of beauty, build tolerance for another’s touch.

After each dismal failure he’d damned her, damned his addiction more. And here he was, renewing his exposure.

She’d opened the door, and it had been as if everything he’d learned since she’d revealed her true face had been erased, and she was again the woman he’d run back to that night, intending to offer forever.

It had taken her spectacular reaction to seeing him to jog him out of his amnesic haze. To fire his memory of when she’d done the unprecedented. The unimaginable. Thrown his desire back in his face. Been the one to walk out.

He’d pretended interest in his surroundings to tear his senses away, only for everything about her new home to send his fury cresting, proof of her crimes against him.

Had this place been stripped of even a coat of paint, it would still cost a fortune, with its location in an elite building in an upmarket neighborhood of one of the most expensive cities in the world, New York. The fortune she’d made being Tareq’s mole.

Tareq had planted her in his life at the perfect time. During his taxing world tour, as he’d fought for his goals on all fronts, amidst Tareq’s escalating efforts to discredit him.

He’d thought her a godsend. Instead she’d been sent by a devil. A devil whose evil had backfired.

With Farooq’s father dead—of a broken heart, Farooq was convinced, just a year after Farooq’s mother had died from a long illness—Tareq had thought that, as the king’s oldest nephew, he’d succeed Farooq’s father as crown prince. Tareq’s own father had died of a heart attack when they were all quite young, leaving Tareq his only heir and the oldest of the royal cousins.

But, knowing that Tareq favored certain unkingly, depraved activities, their uncle the king had at first said he’d reserve the crown prince title for his own son. A son he could only have if he took a second wife. When he couldn’t bring himself to take another wife, he’d then said he’d name his heir according to merit, not age, with the implication clear to all that he meant Farooq and would soon officially name him crown prince. Tareq had then launched into non-stop plotting to overrule the king’s decree.

During Farooq’s tour, Tareq had suddenly started talking as if he’d secured the succession, bragging that he’d be the first king who never married. Farooq guessed he’d said that to gain the support of the enemies of the royal house of Aal Masood by intimating that they would therefore get a turn to rule after him. He now realized that Tareq had also thought his plot with Carmen had been about to bear fruit, creating an illegitimate, half-western heir for Farooq and eliminating him from favor.

But Tareq’s assertions had only given the king ammunition to overcome the reluctance of the members of the Tribune of Elders—the king’s council—who had resisted bypassing Tareq for Farooq. With Tareq adding contempt for the Aal Masoods’ future to his depravities, the king knew that all Farooq needed to do to drive the last nail in Tareq’s coffin was to overcome his own reluctance to marry. Didn’t he have a woman he’d consider marrying? his uncle had asked.

Farooq hadn’t even hesitated. He had a woman. Carmen.

And his king had issued the decree. The heir who married and produced the first child would succeed to the throne.

And Tareq had ordered Carmen to leave the very next day.

During their confrontation, Tareq had thanked his lucky stars that Carmen hadn’t conceived, casting aspersions on Farooq’s virility and fertility. Sixteen hours ago, Farooq had realized she’d left because she had conceived, the child that would have snuffed her employer’s dying hopes.

She couldn’t have known what she’d lost when she’d run out on him. But he still didn’t know why she hadn’t stayed to use the child as a bargaining chip, had taken Tareq’s offer instead. Even if she’d shown Farooq the face of a woman he could never marry, he’d been in addiction’s merciless grip, would have given her light years beyond what she had now.

Had she thought he’d sate himself, wreak vengeance on her then discard her with nothing? Or did her subservience to Tareq mix greed with fear? Or even lust …?

His thoughts boiled in an uproar of revulsion.

Thinking of her in Tareq’s filthy arms, succumbing to his sadism and perversions … Bile rose up to his throat.

But the sick image of her as his cousin’s tool and whore, and her own words as she’d left him, clashed with everything radiating from her now….

No. He’d never believe anything he sensed about her again. He could still barely believe how totally he’d been taken in, how seamlessly she’d acted her part. It had been a virtuoso performance, the guilelessness, the spontaneity, the unbridled responses, the perpetual hunger, the total pleasure in him, in and out of bed.

But all that faking had borne something real. A daughter. And he’d missed so much. The miracle of her birth and every precious moment of the first nine months of her life.

And if it had been up to Carmen, he would have never found out about her. She would have grown up fatherless.

But among all Carmen’s crimes, what most enraged him had been that touch.

She’d touched him as if to ascertain he was really there. And that touch had almost made him drag her to the floor, tear her out of her clothes and bury himself inside her.

Now he relished repaying her for shredding his control yet again, seeing her with her composure shattered.

Oh, yes. That was real. She must be frantic, thinking her cash cow had run dry. Now that Farooq had learned of Mennah’s existence, Tareq would stop paying for her luxurious lifestyle.

Seething with colliding emotions, he inclined his head at her. “Nothing to say, I see. That’s very wise of you.”

She gulped. “H-how did you find out?”

He wouldn’t have. Ever. If he’d stuck to his oath never to seek her out. But instead of fading away, her memory had burned hotter each day, and the need for closure had almost driven him mad.

It had taken months, even with the endless resources at his fingertips, to find her. His best people had finally gotten him the basics—an address, a resume … and a photograph. Of Carmen and a baby. A baby recognizable on sight as his.

That photograph now burned a rectangle its size over his heart, though he’d chosen to show Carmen Jala’s photo instead, to cut things short. He’d expected her to contest his paternity.

Pursing his lips, he pushed past her. “I find out anything I want. Now, I’ll see my daughter.”

“No.” She grabbed him, aborting his stride toward the hall leading to the bedrooms. Her touch, though frantic, still sent a bolt of arousal through him. He added his unwilling response to her transgressions, looked down at her hands in disgust, at her, at himself. She removed them, took a step backward. “She’s sleeping.”

“So? Fathers walk in on their sleeping daughters all the time. You’ve taken nine months of my daughter’s life away from me. I’m not letting you take one more minute.”

She jumped into his path again, her color dangerous, her chest heaving. “I’ll let you see her only if—if you promise—”

He slashed his hand, cutting off her wobbling words. “Nobody lets me do anything, let alone you. I do what I see fit. And everyone obeys.”

He took another step and she threw herself at him, imprinting him with her lushness. His body roared even through the fury.

He gritted his teeth. “Get out of my way, Carmen. You’re not coming between me and my flesh and blood again.”

She clung, gasped, “I didn’t—”

“You didn’t?” He held her away with fingers that even now luxuriated in the feel of her resilient flesh, longed to run all over her. “What else do you call what you did?”

A sob rattled deep inside her, made him want to clamp his lips on hers, plunge inside her fragrant warmth, plunder her until he’d extracted it, and her perfidious soul with it. Instead he relinquished his hold on her, unhooked her frantic fingers from his flesh with utmost control, put her away. She stumbled back, ended up plastered to the hall entrance, her eyes, those luminous pieces of his kingdom’s summer skies, welling with terrible emotions. Emotions he knew she didn’t have.

His anger spiked. “What do you call keeping her a secret? Or trying to deny my paternity now?”

“Please, stop.” She spread her arms over the entry when he moved, intending to brush her aside. “I did it because I know that, in your culture, illegitimacy remains your deepest entrenched stigma and that to a prince like you, having a lover bear you an illegitimate child would be an irreparable scandal …”

He looked down into her eyes. Ya Ullah, how could they be so guileless? So potent? How could lies be so undetectable?

“So you are an expert on my culture and my status?” he grated. “And you left, and left me in the dark that I’d fathered a daughter, to observe the demands of both?”

She nodded, shook her head, at a total loss. “Oh God, please.” She paused, then panted, “How could I have told you I was pregnant? When I told you it couldn’t happen?”

He gave a shrug. “Just like any woman who gets pregnant after such protestations would have. That it just happened. I’m sure the statistical failure of contraceptive measures has come to the rescue of countless women in your position.” Those ruby lips trembled on what he knew would be another ultra sincere-sounding protest. Before he closed them with his own, he plowed on, “And then I’m well aware of the facts of life, and if I’d wanted to be positive I didn’t impregnate you, I would have handled protection myself, not left it up to you and your assurances of safety. But I didn’t.”

And how well he remembered why he hadn’t.

That first night, by the end of their dinner, he’d been in agony. But he’d been willing, for the first time in his life, to wait for a woman. He’d wanted the perfection to continue, had wanted to give her time, give himself more of her, without the intimacies he’d been burning for. The unprecedented feelings of closeness and rapport, the sheer delight in everything about her had been incredible enough; he would have savored them without fulfillment of the carnal promise indefinitely. He’d resolved to end the night with a kiss and no more. Then she’d sabotaged his intentions, pulverized his expectations.

She’d offered herself with such a mixture of shyness, passion and resolve that he’d almost refused. She’d aroused in him what he’d never felt toward a female outside his family. Tenderness, protectiveness. She’d seemed in an agony of embarrassment at her demand, yet in the grips of a hunger she couldn’t control. She’d tremulously told him she knew she’d be a one-night stand for him but she had to have it, would settle for any taste of him.

He’d had her in his quarters without realizing how, had too late remembered protection, had been loath to send for it. He’d told her he’d still pleasure her, and she could pleasure him, if she wanted. She’d clung to him, said she was safe, in every way.

He hadn’t even questioned her honesty, his relief sweeping. He’d wanted her to be his first. The first woman he experienced to the fullness of intimacy, his flesh driving in hers, feeling the heat and moistness of her need for him, without barriers. The first woman he poured himself into. And all through the magical six weeks he’d done that, had each glorious time abandoned himself inside her in the throes of completion. And trust.

His lips twisted in disgust, at what even memories did to him. “I didn’t,” he repeated. “So whatever blame there is, I share it in equal measure. Not that the word blame applies anywhere in the conception of a child. Certainly not my child.”

She crumpled against the entryway, as if from a blow, and hiccupped, “I—I had no way of knowing you could have felt this way. You didn’t want me beyond those three months and I thought you couldn’t possibly want the baby I accidentally got pregnant with …”

He growled a laugh. “Accidentally? Really? But no matter how or why you got pregnant, I don’t care. I don’t care how my daughter was conceived, I don’t care who conceived her, not even if it’s you. She’s mine. And I want her.”

Her reaction to that was spectacular.

Springing from the entryway, she advanced on him like a lioness ready to defend her cub to the death.

“No,” she growled. There was no other way to describe it. She growled. “She’s not yours. She’s mine. Mine.”

He frowned. This felt too real.

But no more real than what he felt. He, too, felt like baring his fangs in demand of the daughter who’d been kept from him. His body bunched with the elemental instinct, its fire spitting through eyes slitting on fury and challenge.

“You want to fight me for her?” he snarled. “Do I need to tell you that nobody wins in any kind of battle with me, that your chances of winning anything against me are below nonexistent?”

The contortion of horror and desperation that crumpled her expression did something similar behind his breastbone.

Ya Ullah, how did she do that?

She sagged back against the door as if the knowledge of his unstoppable power sank inside her, draining her of hers.

At last she rasped, “Why are you doing this?”

Could defeat have a sound? If it did, this must be it.

“I told you. I want my daughter.” He paused, unsure what he wanted to say or do anymore. Her essence was seeping through him, dissolving his resolve, rearranging his thoughts, rewriting her character in his mind again. He ground his teeth against the weakening. “And I will have her.”

And the eyes that had been brimming with tears gushed.

He’d seen her tears before. When he’d drawn out her torment before he’d ended it, shattering her with releases so fierce she’d wept with them. Now, seeing new tears pouring from eyes so crimsoned he feared they might seep blood at any moment, he could no longer dispute her state.

Whatever the reason behind her anguish, it was real, profound. She was more terrified, more desperate now than if she believed he intended to end her life.

He stared at her, an overwhelming need rising, to soothe away the pain he’d caused her. He curled his fists against the urge.

“Please … understand … I o-only hid my pregnancy b-because I was s-scared you’d make me terminate it!”

Her words detonated inside him, the belief that it was all an act erased in the blast. All he heard was the accusation, all he believed was that she’d believed it.

“You thought I would ask you to kill an unborn child? My unborn child? And you think you know anything about my culture or me? And when she was born, what did you fear? That I’d bury her alive like my land’s barbarians of old?”

“No.” Her cry was engulfed by shearing sobs. She still talked through them. “All I thought was you—you might fear her existence, might think her a threat to your honor, your status … And I wasn’t risking it. I would do anything—anything—to keep her from harm.”

“And you thought I’d harm her? You saw me fighting to bring relief to millions of children and thought I’d harm my own?”

B’Ellahi, what was he saying? He was playing the part she’d shoved him into with all the oblivious fervor of the past. He was answering her as if he believed concern for her baby and true fear of his reactions had been the reasons behind her disappearance.

“B’haggej’Jaheem—by Hell, I thought you’d come up with better than that. Or maybe you didn’t give it much thought since you were sure this confrontation would never come to pass.”

She shook her head, sending her tears splashing everywhere. A few fell on his hands, felt as if they’d burned him to the bone.

“But why do you want her?” And if he’d thought she’d given defeat sound, she now gave desperation tone and texture. “Don’t Judarians value only male sons? What is a daughter to a prince like you who surely wants only heirs?”

“So, first you dare to imply that I might have gotten rid of her for being born at all, and now that I’d discard her for being born female.”

She spread her hands in a helpless gesture, a lost gesture, beseeching his understanding, his mercy.

He had neither to give. “Enough of that.”

She again threw herself in his path, but was shaking so hard she couldn’t even cling. “I didn’t dream you’d want her … please …”

He looked down at her, struggling with the need to slake the accumulation of hunger in that body that had deprived him of finding pleasure elsewhere. He’d been unable to contemplate marrying another after she’d walked out on him, even as a damage-control measure when Tareq had rushed out and married the first woman to accept him. Instead, Farooq had decided to expose Tareq’s ineligibility to rise to the succession once and for all, had asked his king, who couldn’t go back on the marriage-criteria decree, to stall everyone until he furnished irrefutable proof of Tareq’s perversions and crimes.

He was close to gaining that proof, but now he’d found Carmen and Mennah—and they were the fastest route to securing the succession. Not that he would let Tareq go unpunished. Or Carmen, either. But he wouldn’t touch her. Not yet.

Putting her away was harder than anything he’d ever had to do. Then he strode through the entrance she’d been guarding, went deeper into the apartment, felt her stumbling behind him, her tremors buzzing through his flesh, her sobs constricting his lungs.

He ignored the feelings, stopped before the door that he just knew had his daughter on the other side. Then he turned.

“Show me my daughter, Carmen.”

He had no idea why he asked her permission when he never asked anyone’s, gave her that consideration when she’d shown him none. Worst of all, he had no idea why he’d done it so … gently.

That was for his daughter, he told himself. He didn’t want to enter her room, her life, with anger polluting those first magical moments. Children picked up on moods, deciphered tension between adults. And he wasn’t poisoning her mood or introducing fear and anxiety in her life for any reason, was even willing to make peace with her mother, if only around her, for her sake.

“Stop crying. I won’t have my daughter see me for the first time with her mother weeping beside me. She’d forever link me with your pain.”

“A-and she’d be right … you’re destroying me.”

He grimaced his distaste at her exaggeration. “Cut the melodrama, Carmen. Or are you willing to risk scarring her impressionable psyche just to paint me black in her mind?”

“No, no … I’d never … never …” She almost fell at his feet, forced him to take her full weight, his hands around her rib cage, so close to the breasts that were now shuddering with emotion, that had once shuddered in his palms, beneath his chest in ecstasy. She raised rabid eyes to his and wailed, “Don’t take my daughter away … I’d die without her.!”

Three

Farooq stared down at Carmen for a stunned moment.

He had heard about the power of tears before, had had them shed for his benefit on countless occasions, by both women and men. The only power they’d held over him was that of testing the limits of his goodwill. But her tears …

Ya Ullah, hada mostaheel—it was impossible the way they affected him, the way her outburst had.

She thought he intended to take her baby away.

It was only in this moment that he realized he’d stormed in here not knowing what he intended.

He’d gotten the intel sixteen hours ago, had been on his fastest jet within an hour, had spent the time on the nonstop transcontinental, transatlantic haul seething with realizations and convictions. Some of the latter had been of how an exploitative mother didn’t deserve to keep her child.

He now realized those thoughts had colored the way he’d stated his intention of having his daughter, making it sound as if he’d snatch her away from Carmen.

He believed that drastic action should be reserved for women who were a danger to their offspring. But, couldn’t he equate a mother who used her daughter to maintain a luxurious lifestyle with an alcoholic or a drug addict?

Rage shot to another zenith as he looked down into her drenched eyes. Then, to his further fury, her anguish fractured his grip on his convictions.

As their eyes meshed, all he could think of was that this was no act. This wasn’t someone afraid for her income. This was someone who feared something far worse than death.

Could it be true? She’d conceived Mennah for an ulterior motive, but she now loved her? And that much?

He could take her—his—daughter from her as easily as taking a toy from an infant. Considering what she’d done to him, he should at least entertain retribution. The thought only scorched him with mortification.

She had to be some sort of witch.

But then, all he’d meant when he’d declared she couldn’t fight him was that she couldn’t deny him his right to his daughter. She’d taken his words to their worst possible conclusion. That was in keeping with the fear she claimed had driven her to run away. So could he believe that had really been the reason she’d run?

Laa, b’Ellahi. He couldn’t. He knew the truth.

Still, whatever her motives then, for some maddening reason, against a hundred insisting he shouldn’t, he believed her fear now. Worse, he had no desire to see her so anguished. Though he had every right to hurt her, he didn’t want to. Not this way.

Damning himself for a fool a thousand times for feeling he should kneel and beg her forgiveness for making her feel this way he rasped, “I won’t take her away. Now stop crying.”

Among the crashing in her head, the detonations tearing apart her chest, Carmen heard him say, “I won’t take her away.”

Suddenly there was silence. And darkness.

From a timeless void, sounds returned. Blood drumming in her ears to a sluggish rhythm. Another set of heartbeats booming there. Slow, steady, powerful. Coming from the living granite wall her ear was pressed against.

The rest of her senses coalesced. Smell, soaking in the scent of virility and vigor. Touch, transmitting the luxury of cashmere and silk and power. Orientation, placing her in his embrace, her head on his chest, her breasts molded against his upper abdomen, his arms around her back, her thighs. Then her sight focused on the fierceness drawing his winged eyebrows together, chiseling his features deeper, clouding the translucence of his golden eyes.

Such intent. He was carrying her to yet another session of delirium and ecstasy. The tension that had started to gather in her limbs melted into the enervation of expectation, her body readying itself for his onslaught, his possession …

But as each of his strides transmitted their effortless power to her bones, realization seeped through, until everything crashed back into her awareness.

This wasn’t the past. He wasn’t carrying her to his bed, or anywhere else where he’d ravish her with pleasure. This was now. In the oppressive present.

She might have imagined the words he’d said pledging he wouldn’t take Mennah from her.

She convulsed in his arms from the resurrected dread. His scowl deepened, and his hold firmed as he shouldered open her bedroom door. “Be still. You passed out.”

“Put me down. I’m all right now.”

“I’ll put you down on your bed. B’Ellahi, quit struggling.”

She shook her head, crushing his lapels in spastic fingers. “You said you w-won’t …?”

He didn’t answer her amputated question, deposited her on her bed with utmost care, leaning over her with arms flanking her head. His eyes swept down her length as they’d always done, as if he were struggling with the decision about which part of her to ravish first.

When he had her quaking, he swept back up to her eyes, drawled, “I won’t take Mennah away from you, Carmen. I’m not the monster you insist on painting me.”

“I never thought you were a monster.”

“No? The man you claim to think would have forced you to abort your baby, or would take her from you to banish her somewhere, make her live her life unknown and illegitimate so he’d secure his position? If this isn’t a monster, what is?”

“I’m sorry, Farooq. So sorry.” She clung to his forearms as he began to withdraw, desperate to make him understand. He extricated himself as if from slime. She shuddered. “I was so afraid … it was too huge, I couldn’t afford a margin of error, could only consider worst-case scenarios. I was afraid you’d think I’d lied on purpose, meaning to compromise you. I didn’t know you long enough to know how you’d react to perceived betrayals or threats. And then it wasn’t about you, or me. It was about her. Everything is about her. She’s everything to me. Everything.”

Emotions she couldn’t define blasted from his eyes, flaying her. It was a minute before he had mercy on her. He wrenched his gaze away, razing her single bed, her room, instead. She felt him wrestling his temper under control and began to realize the depth of his affront, his fury.

Everything he’d said was the opposite of what she’d imagined. It shriveled her to know she’d taken extreme actions that had hurt him on so many levels …

No. They had hurt him on only one level—where Mennah was concerned. He suffered anger that she’d hid the baby, offense that she’d dared fear him concerning any child, even one conceived without his will and knowledge. What they’d shared was not worth mentioning except to reference her exit act, which he’d made clear had been so pathetic he’d seen right through it.

Suddenly a gurgle tore through the silence. One of the sounds Carmen lived to hear. Mennah’s. As if she was right between them.

Farooq stiffened, his eyes slamming back to hers for a moment of incomprehension. The sounds continued, the cooing and burbling with which Mennah entertained herself upon waking up. Astonishment invaded his eyes as they fell on the miniature receiver buckled on Carmen’s waistband. Then he murmured, clearly not to her, his deepest baritone soft with amazement, “Ya Ullah, she’s awake …”

He exploded to his feet and toward the nursery right next door. Strength flooded Carmen’s limbs and she flew after him, catching his arm as his hand gripped the door handle.

“Let me go in first.”

His gaze burned down on her for a moment, accentuated by Mennah’s happy babblings emanating from the receiver and through the door. The feel of his muscles flexing in her grasp screamed down her nerves.

He turned away, a shake of his arm making her hands fall away like shedded leaves, making her believe he’d disregard her request.

He stared sightlessly at the door for one more moment then exhaled heavily. “Zain. Fine. Again I ask you to show me my daughter, Carmen. I hope you won’t faint again to put it off.”

Her body heat shot up another notch, this time not with awareness. “You think I was pretending?”

A growl rumbled from his gut, impatience made into sound. “Does it matter what I think?” Before she cried out a denial he ground on, “Laaken Laa … no, I don’t think even you can pretend such a dead faint. Now quit stalling.”

“Great,” she grumbled. “To be exonerated from a con, only because you think my acting abilities aren’t up to pulling it off. And I’m not stalling. You think I’d leave her alone for long even to thwart you? Now, can you move aside? I’ll call you in when …”

He seemed to expand, blocking her way like a barricade. “I’m letting you walk in ahead, not alone. Don’t test my patience anymore, Carmen.”

“Or you’ll do what?” she bristled.

He raised both eyebrows. “So, the falling-apart act is over and now comes … what? The hellcat one?”

She exhaled forcibly, letting out some of her tension. She couldn’t walk into Mennah’s nursery seething. “Who’s wasting time now? Now move out of my way so I can go to my daughter. She’s content to lie in her crib yammering to herself when she wakes up, but I never leave her alone for more than a few minutes.”

He gave a theatrical gesture, inviting her to precede him.

She opened the door a crack.

“You make her sleep in the dark!”

The hiss lodged between her shoulder blades. She closed the door, glared up at him. “You have a problem with that?”

His scowl was spectacular. “You should leave a night-light on. She’ll get scared if she wakes up in pitch-black like that.”

Her lips twisted. “And this is your expert opinion as an experienced dad?” Again the growl rumbled from in his gut, softer, no doubt because he feared Mennah might hear. She challenged him again. “Does she sound scared to you?”

His jaw muscles clenched in what she could only describe as grudging concession.

God, had he always looked that—that indescribable?

Struggling to bring yet another pang of response under control, she found herself saying, “My mother never made me sleep in the dark, and I developed a phobia of darkness. It took me years of agonizing self-conditioning to get over it.”

Why was she explaining her actions as if she was defending her maternal ability? He could hear with his own ears that Mennah wasn’t in the least disturbed to be awake in a dark room, had already conceded that, no matter how unwillingly.

And what was that strange expression that flared in the depths of those lion’s eyes of his?

Slowly she started to reopen the door. He took the door from her, closed it again. “This is the first time you’ve mentioned your mother.”

She stared up at him, huffed a sarcastic breath. “And you’re what? Surprised I had one?”

“Had?” he probed. “She’s dead?”

She nodded, her throat closing all over again. “Cancer.”

“When?”

“Just over ten years now. She died on my sixteenth birthday.”

His eyes narrowed, the amber intensifying. “On the very day?”

She nodded, tears she hadn’t shed then brimming.

What was he doing, interrogating her this way? What was she doing, pouring out information about herself? She’d never talked about her past with him. There was so much she’d never wanted to share with others, especially someone as blessed as he was.

Their time together had been consumed in conflagrations of mindless passion. When they had talked, it had been about their tastes, fantasies, beliefs. She’d assumed he’d run a background check on her, had a full report with her statistics somewhere in his security files, one he probably hadn’t bothered to read. And why should he have? He surely didn’t clutter his mind with the particulars of the steady parade of women who warmed his bed. And she’d already known of his background, since he was such an international figure.

She broke contact with those eyes that made her feel turned inside out for his inspection. “We’ll go in now. But I’m warning you … when Mennah sees you, she may be upset, may even cry. She doesn’t like strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger.”

He was so close he singed her cheek, the side of her neck with the heat of his vehemence, the intoxication of his breath. She shuddered, leaned on the door.

“You’re still one to her …” The words petered out on her lips, in her mind, evaporated by the intensity in his gaze.

Mennah’s yammering took on an excited edge. She must have sensed them even through the noise she was making. Carmen opened the door, turned up the dimmer, drenching the cheery room in soothing illumination. Mennah let out a squeal, started kicking her legs in welcoming delight as soon as she saw Carmen.

“Oh, darling, me, too.” Hungry strides took her to Mennah, before she froze. Farooq had clamped her shoulder.

Suddenly Mennah’s happy noises ceased, her smiles dissolving into a look of surprise. She’d seen Farooq towering behind Carmen.

Wide-eyed, she stuffed both hands in her mouth and stared at him, chewing on her chubby fingers. Carmen felt apprehension rising, thoughts streaking over how to stop what she knew would come. The wobbling chin, the down-turning lips, the whimpers and tears and the arms outstretched for her.

She wondered why she’d want to spare him that.

The answer formed alongside the question in her mind.

She’d misjudged him, deprived him of Mennah’s first precious months of life. He should have been the second person who held her, whom she saw. She should have been secure in his presence from her first moment of life, should be squealing her pleasure at the sight of him now, too. If, after Mennah’s delightful welcome to her, she whined and whimpered at Farooq, Carmen didn’t know what she’d …

“Ya Ullah, ma ajmalhah.”

Farooq’s awed words jolted through her heart. How beautiful she is. Being fluent in Arabic had secured her the opportunity of organizing his conference, the reason she’d met him.

He went on, in a more ragged rasp, as if to himself, “Ma arwa’ha, hadi’l mo’jezah as’sagheerah!”

How marvelous she is, this little miracle.

And he had no idea just how miraculous Mennah was. The baby everyone had sworn Carmen would never be able to conceive. Now, after her hysterectomy, the only baby she’d ever conceive. Mennah was beyond a miracle. She was Carmen’s every reason to go on living.

Overloaded with emotion, she felt him brushing past her, watched with breath gone and heart stampeding as he leaned down in leashed eagerness, reaching one powerful finger to brush Mennah’s cheek, a sound of agonized enjoyment escaping him.

Transferring his gentleness to the hands still half-stuffed in Mennah’s mouth, he whispered, “Ana abooki, ya sagheerati.”

I’m your father, my little one. Delivered in a vocal caress that was delight soaked in wonder and pride and possessiveness and a dozen other emotions.

Carmen’s heart splintered.

Oh God. Oh God. If she’d had the least doubt before, she no longer had it. He wanted Mennah. Fiercely wanted her.

And she’d once had a taste of how fiercely he could want …

Her eyes snapped to Mennah, dread of her reaction mounting, every muscle ready to snatch her up at the first whimper, to soothe her, ameliorate his disappointment, promise she’d soon get used to him. Not that she had any idea how Mennah would do that, when she had no idea how he intended to be in her life from now on, at best as a long-distance father …

Mennah’s piercing squeal had her heart almost kicking her off her feet. She surged forward, but Mennah was … she was … She was smiling!

And not any smile, but a huge, dimpled one. Then she was eagerly rolling to a sitting position, holding up her arms, her chubby hands closing and opening, beckoning, demanding to be picked up. By Farooq!

Farooq whooped in elation, scooped her up. “Erefteeni, ya zakeyah!” He held her up, his large hands spanning her rib cage. “You’re so clever you recognized me at once.” He tickled her and she kicked her legs, screeching sharp sounds of pleasure, reaching out both hands to his face, her palms landing anywhere. He let her paw him, his chuckles escalating into guffaws.

Suddenly he took her to his chest, enfolded her, closed his eyes on a deep, long groan. Carmen’s heart swelled so fast, so hard she felt it might burst. Next moment, it almost did.

Mennah mashed her face into his neck and went still. Closed her eyes, too. As if to savor her father’s feel, inhale his scent, absorb his power and protection.

And Carmen’s tears wouldn’t be held back anymore.

She swung around, ran out, needing to get as far as possible before a storm of anguish like those that had overcome her all through her pregnancy overtook her.

She closed the door to the bathroom, slumped on it as sobs shredded through her.

To see them together, father and daughter, to know what she’d deprived them of, to know she hadn’t had to run, to endure all the pain alone, that he would have been there for her, if only for the sake of the daughter she’d been carrying …

A knock at her back almost heaped her to the floor again.

“Mennah wants to see you now, Carmen.”

Farooq’s voice was … tender. It had to be the distortion of hearing it through the door … But no, it was tender for Mennah. She would never know anything soft or indulgent from him again.

She wiped both sleeves over her eyes, ran shaking fingers through her mess of tangles. Then she opened the door and stepped back into the hall. The sight that greeted her almost sent the dammed anguish flooding again.

Farooq had discarded his jacket, now stood with shirt half unbuttoned, raven mane mussed, glossy locks raining down his leonine forehead, with Mennah perched on his left hip, looking at her gleefully as if asking her to share this incredible find, this giant she’d already twisted around her little finger. He, too, was smiling hugely. She knew it wasn’t at her. This was his pleasure at holding Mennah, his whimsy at his unbridled reaction to her.

“So this is what a bundle of joy is.” He looked down on Mennah, giving her a playful squeeze. She squealed, buried her face into his chest, her fingers going for the hair. He winced, his lips spreading wider with her first pull. He carefully disentangled her fingers. “Ma beyseer, ya kanzi es-'sagheer. It doesn’t work that way, my little treasure. Your father’s hairs remain where they are. Let me give you something else to maul.”

He dipped into his pocket, produced what Carmen assumed was a cell phone. It had probably been designed for him. He pushed a button, had it displaying a video of animals in the wild. Mennah grabbed it in eager hands, lost interest in the moving pictures in just seconds and decided to find out if it was chewable.

Carmen groaned. “Farooq, she’ll ruin it.”

He gave her an imperious glance. “What if she does?”

“Oh, no, you’re not!”

“I’m not what?”

“You’re not walking into her life and showering her with grossly overpriced stuff and letting her tear it apart. I’m not letting you turn her into a brat who thinks nothing has value.”

Imperiousness gave way to scorn. “A harping mother already?”

“A responsible adult, you mean. Maybe you don’t know what that is, having been born submerged in golden spoons, but I’m not letting you do that to my daughter.”

“You’re contesting my parenting methods? When I haven’t had ten minutes to put them into practice? You think I’ll indulge her into becoming a thoughtless, useless, destructive creature? Another assumption, Carmen?”

Mennah saved Carmen from withering under his barrage by performing her favorite trick. Testing gravity. The phone clattered on the hardwood floor.

Carmen swooped down to pick it up, looked at him accusingly.

He shrugged, secured Mennah on his hip as she tried to pluck out his buttons. “It’s too sturdy to be damaged by anything Mennah can do. That’s why I gave it to her.”

She simmered. “That’s not the point. Now she’ll think it’s okay to throw stuff that isn’t her toys around.”

Imperiousness rose further. “She won’t. I’ll see to it.”

“I’ll see to it. As long as you don’t sabotage my efforts.”

Their eyes locked, dueled. Carmen felt her heat rising, her breath shortening as she hauled all the height she could into her five-foot-seven frame in answer to his straightening from his relaxed pose for their confrontation, dwarfing her in size and aura.

Challenge suddenly drained from his eyes, intimidation flooding in its wake. “Who were you waiting for?”

She blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “The super. I have a short in the laundry room. He was supposed to come fix it.”

One eyebrow rose. “You make filet mignon au champignons for him whenever he comes to install a lightbulb?”

“It’s for Mennah.”

His lips twisted on derision. “Of course. Because filet mignon is a staple of a nine month old’s diet.”

“I gave her a taste two days ago and she’s refused to nurse ever since, so I thought if I gave her another taste, she might …”

The rest of her words backed up in her throat. At the word nurse, his gaze moved to her breasts. Breasts that immediately throbbed, their nipples conquering the thickness of her clothes, jutting their hunger. And that he could do this to her with a look, that he should see her helpless response …

His eyes dragged back to hers, pupils almost engulfing the gold in blackness. “So you were waiting for the super. Who didn’t come.” She jerked a nod. “Show me your problem.”

“I’m sure it’s just a short. I would have investigated it myself, but I was almost electrocuted once …”

“When was that?”

“I was twelve …” She groaned. “What’s with the interrogation?”

“You have quite a lot of hang-ups.”

“And you what?” She kept her tone sweet for Mennah. “Think someone who has a couple of phobias shouldn’t be a mother?”

He smiled down at Mennah, drawled, “You said it, not me.”

“You mean you do think it!”

“I mean you said it, not me.” The words were sharp steel, the tone softest silk. Of course for Mennah, too. “I say exactly what I mean. You’d do well to remember that, Carmen.”

She held her tongue as he haughtily gestured for her to lead the way. At the laundry room, he handed her Mennah. Then, without needing a ladder, he stretched up his six-foot-five frame, examined the bulb socket by the light coming from the corridor. In a few precise actions, with the screwdriver she kept handy on a tool shelf, he dismantled it, did something to the wires inside, put everything back together, screwed the bulb back in place then flicked the switch. The light burst on.

Mennah yelped. Carmen croaked, “I’m amazed.”

His lips twisted. “That I know basic maintenance techniques?”

“Considering you have hordes of people waiting on your every blink, I’m wondering why you deemed to pick up the skills.”

“I was taught every survival skill early on, then made myself fully self-sufficient. I can do anything anyone does for me better than them. I only abide others’ services to save precious time for the more important things only I can do.”

Okay. Whoa. “So you’re Sheikh MacGyver, huh?”

He smiled. But not at her, at Mennah, held out his arms to her again. Mennah pitched forward, eagerly throwing herself at him.

Carmen berated herself for her stupid reaction. He’d said he wasn’t taking Mennah from her, and she shouldn’t feel jealous of Mennah’s instantaneous and unrestrained delight in him. He was her father. He deserved the same love Carmen got from her.

His lazy drawl aborted her chaos. “About that filetmignon …”

She gulped down the silly tears. “What about it?”

“You say Mennah loved it, and it did smell delicious when I came in. It’s a pity to let it go to waste.”

“You want to eat?”

“I’ve been known to indulge in the practice.”

“But it’s already cold.”

“You do have means to reheat it, don’t you?”

“Reheating will overcook it, destroy its buttery softness …”

“Let me …” He dropped a kiss on Mennah’s downy cheek as if compelled before going on, “Let us worry about that.” Suddenly all ease evaporated, suspicion flaring in eyes that slammed back into hers. “Are you sure you’re not waiting for someone?”

“Someone?” she jeered, seeing red. “You mean my ‘sponsor'? One of many, no doubt. You think I entertain men in rotation, a few feet from my sleeping infant? Why don’t you just call me a whore? C’mon, get it off your chest. I know how men of your culture view easy women and I was easy, with you. But I never let you ‘sponsor’ me. Oh wait, I did. I shared your ‘privileges.’ But surely you didn’t think that was enough for me. You must have checked your collection of priceless cufflinks to make sure I hadn’t ‘shared’ more than your hundred-star existence. I trust you weren’t too disappointed to find everything accounted for.”

His eyes spat danger, sending a frisson of anxiety radiating through her limbs. “Such caustic wit and a rapier tongue. You hid them well.”

“I didn’t hide them. There was no reason for them to surface. You weren’t a domineering brute back then.”

The flames in his eyes leaped. “The domineering brute would have walked in here with bodyguards and diplomatic attachés, snatched his daughter and walked out over your weeping, begging body. I am still waiting for you to remember basic courtesy and invite me to share the meal you were preparing when I arrived.”

And if it were possible to die of mortification, she would have keeled over.

Embarrassed, cornered and mad as hell about it, and at him, she mumbled sourly, “Okay. Fine. But if the meat is leathery and the sauce is congealed, I don’t want to hear it.”

He pursed his lips. “Eat in silence, you mean?”

She rolled her eyes. “As if.”

He smiled then—a slow, hot smile, all for her this time, amused at her wisecrack.

She didn’t know what held her up all the way to the kitchen.

Once there she shakily tried to take Mennah to put her in her high chair. He declined, did it himself as if he’d been doing it every day. Then, without being told, he placed Mennah’s toys on her tray and she immediately began the game of throw and fetch.

After her bones solidified enough in her limbs, Carmen began the reheating procedure then turned around, only to be stabbed in the heart again by the poignant sight Farooq and Mennah made together, so alike, sharing such an elemental, almost tangible bond.

She located something resembling her voice. “You’re taking to your father role spectacularly. And I’ve never seen her like this with anyone. Not that she’s seen many people.”

“She recognized me. As I did her. The bond is … elemental.”

What she’d just thought. “Yes,” she choked. “And I—I’m truly sorry for depriving you of-of …” She made a helpless gesture at them, her hand trembling. “This. But please believe I thought I was doing the best thing. For her.”

He said nothing to that. Not out loud. His eyes said he believed nothing she said.

Oh, well. He wouldn’t get over his anger that fast.

She inhaled before she blacked out. “I’ll cooperate in any way so you’ll be a part of her life, be with her whenever possible.”

“I will be with her always.” This wasn’t a statement. This was a pledge. A decree.

“A-always? B-but you live halfway across the globe …”

His gaze hardened. “And so will she.”

“But you said …”

“I said I won’t take her from you, and I won’t. You will both be with me. We will marry.”