A Secret Birthright

chapter Seven

She should have known.

That anything she hoped for would happen in reverse. With the record of the past years, how had she hoped otherwise?

Apart from Ryan’s healing at a breathtaking rate, blossoming under Fareed’s comprehensive care, everything else was going wrong. Terribly wrong.

For the week they stayed in the center, Fareed was constantly present. She knew this wasn’t true, that he disappeared for hours but he came back so often, in her amplified awareness of him, it felt like he was always there, giving her no respite.

After dreading being in his place, where everything echoed with his feel and was soaked in his presence, she couldn’t wait to go back there. She hoped that with him at work during the day, and hopefully returning home exhausted, she’d see less of him. But for the following four weeks, the opposite again happened. He came home too often, too unpredictably, so she couldn’t brace for his appearance, worsening her condition at every exposure.

Everyone in the center had told her he made them feel he was omnipresent. She could well believe it. After the endless hours in the O.R., consultations, follow-ups and administrative chores, not to mention his duties as a prince, which he said he’d lately limited to steering the kingdom’s health system, as if that wasn’t huge enough, she couldn’t figure out how he had time for her. Not to mention had a life. A private life…

Her throat tightened as it did each time that thought forced its reality on her. It was ridiculous to feel that way, but still…contemplating the horde of glamorous women who no doubt pursued him, of whom he took the most voluptuous and beautiful to bed…

Peals of laughter, masculine and childish, wrenched her mind away from the images, only for different ones to superimpose themselves. The images that would be engraved in her mind, seared into her soul forever. The sight of Fareed and Ryan together, bonding, reveling in each other.

But as painful as the sight was, it was also incredible. And worth any future suffering to live through.

Fareed was sitting with Ryan on the floor, in the middle of his mansion’s family room, wrapped up in their game, caressed by the warm, golden lights of polished brass sconces that illuminated the expansive space. The French doors leading to the massive terrace were wide open and the gauzy cream curtains were billowing in the desert’s cool evening breeze. The unpolished sand-colored marble floor was spread in hand-woven kilims and scattered in huge cushions covered with the same designs and vivid hues. Fareed had said those were the Aal Zaafers’ tribal patterns and colors, intricate combinations of stripes and rhomboids, in vibrant crimsons, gold and greens. He’d also said the room had never been used. Until them.

As if she needed more heartache, to know he’d been welcoming them in the place reserved for his future family.

Before they’d settled down for the evening here, they’d finished another physiotherapy session with Ryan. He’d turned another of the mansion’s rooms into a rehabilitation center, and had turned those uncomfortable, exhausting and sometimes painful sessions into Ryan’s most anticipated playtime.

Now he was playing catch with Ryan. After giving Ryan easy catches to get him excited and motivated, he’d throw one out of reach and have him eagerly crawling to fetch.

He was always thinking of another exercise for Ryan, another method to gauge his improvement. He’d made an art of helping Ryan enjoy it, participate wholeheartedly, and subsequently heal faster, develop more power and better coordination.

He now threw the soft red ball on the huge square table that paralleled the couch she sat on. Ryan hurtled after it, reached the table, then stopped, an absorbed expression painting his face as he contemplated his dilemma.

She transferred her gaze to Fareed. “Seems you’ve given him a challenge he’s not up to…yet.”

Fareed shrugged, his face spread in the warmth that messed her up inside. “He hasn’t given up yet. Let’s see what he’ll do.”

She nodded even as her heart constricted. Every cell in her longed to end Ryan’s frustration, give him the ball. But Fareed had been teaching her not to coddle him, to drive him to achieve his potential, and be as loving or even more so while at it.

Ryan finally approached one of the table’s corners. Then after some internal debate, pulled himself up in degrees until he unfolded to his feet, stood braced at its edge. Her heart boomed.

It was the first time he’d ever stood up!

Her eyes flew to Fareed. He looked as moved, his smile as proud as hers. But when she moved to get the ball for Ryan, he gave her an imperative “wait” gesture.

She waited. And under her disbelieving, delighted eyes, Ryan hooked his right leg, the one that had always been weaker, over the edge of the table and pulled himself on top of it.

Once there, he weaved through worked-silver plates, gleaming copper candleholders and glass planters like a cat, knocking nothing over. Once he reached his quarry, he grabbed it, waved it at her in delighted victory.

“You did it, darling,” she said, forcing back tears, her smile so wide that it hurt. “You got the ball because you’re brilliant and strong and determined and the most wonderful boy on earth.”

After a satisfactory dose of adulation, he remembered his playmate, the one he wanted to impress most.

Ryan reversed his way across the table, backed off its edge carefully. Once his feet touched ground, he plopped back down, catching his breath after the unprecedented endeavor.

Then he turned to Fareed, shrieking his triumph and throwing his trophy back to him.

He caught it, stuffed it beneath his arm and treated Ryan to a boisterous round of applause. Ryan zoomed to him, sought the haven of his arms. After having enough of Fareed’s validation, Ryan wriggled off and crawled away as if eager to resume their game.

Before following, Fareed spared her a glance, eyes twinkling with pride. “See? Nothing is beyond him. He’s creative and problem-solving and ambitious and he’ll always surpass your expectations.”

She barely stifled the cry. Stop surpassing mine! Stop making me want you more when I can’t even dream of you.

But it was already too late.

She’d come to depend on him when it was the worst thing she could have done. She couldn’t think of a time when he wouldn’t be in her life, their lives, when it was inevitable.

She’d fallen in love with him when it would mean destruction.

Yes, she loved him.

And she would have preferred it if he didn’t realize she was alive. But she could no longer escape what she’d known from the moment he’d captured her gaze at that conference. He’d made it clear, in a hundred nuances, what he wanted from her, that he was only waiting until any doctor/patient’s parent trace of their relationship had faded, to act on his desire.

His desire to have her in his bed.

And even though guilt and dread haunted her, this was the only place she wanted to be.

But it didn’t matter what she wanted. She couldn’t act on her desire. She wouldn’t.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t melted yet.”

Rose. Sitting right beside her and she hadn’t even noticed her come in.

Rose elaborated, “I’ve seen hunger blazing in eyes before, but the solar flares in yours…yowza!”

Her gaze moved nervously to Fareed, who was far enough away not to catch Rose’s comments. Thank goodness. If Rose had seen it, had he…?

Who was she kidding? He had. He knew he had her on the brink of mindlessness. And he’d been letting her know, subtly, inexorably, how he’d leave her no place to run when he made his move, how earth-shattering it would be when he claimed her.

She let out a resigned exhalation. “Don’t start, Rose.”

Rose repaid her with a fed up look. “Then why don’t you stop? Jumping away as if he scalds you each time he comes near?”

“What do you expect? The man has a magnetic field that could upset a planet’s orbit.” After a moment’s hesitation, she admitted, “He does scald me.”

Rose nudged her. “Then help yourself to his inferno, girl.”

She squeezed her eyes. “I can’t, and you know it.”

“So you’ve been mourning. Now enough.” Rose turned fully to her, scowling. “Let the dead rest and get on with your life.”

Gwen bit her lip, memories a shard embedded in her heart. “It’s not only mourning.”

“What else is it? Can’t be Ryan because Fareed is the best thing that has ever happened to him, present company included.”

“You’re talking as if Fareed is in Ryan’s life in anything more than a temporary way, when you know he’s just his surgeon.…”

“He’s not just his surgeon, and you know it.”

For a heart-wrenching moment, Gwen thought Rose knew. Who Fareed really was to Ryan.

But there was no way that she did. She hadn’t been in her life for the past five years, had missed all the developments and upheavals that had ripped through her life. Rose knew only what she’d told her once everything had been over. She didn’t know about Ryan’s parentage. And she must never know.

Rose turned her eyes to the man and baby who possessed Gwen’s heart. “I mean…just look at them.” Gwen didn’t want to look. It hurt too much. “Look at you. You’re burning for him.” Gwen averted her eyes, damned being so transparent. “Then look at him. He would devour you whole if you didn’t flit around like a hummingbird on speed.”

A chuckle burst out of Gwen. Only Rose could cut to the truth, yet make it somehow bearable, even lighthearted. “And you recognize the symptoms because you and Emad are suffering from the same condition?”

Rose wouldn’t be distracted. “Emad and I have nothing like the same condition. I don’t have melodramatic tendencies and I’m not letting self-perpetuated worries stop me from taking whatever happiness I can now. We’re free grown-ups with nothing to stop us from having whatever we want together. Apart from your baffling reluctance, I can say the same about you and Fareed.”

Gwen exhaled dejectedly. “I’m not free.”

“Because you’re a single mother? And I can’t fathom your position because I’m not? So enlighten me, what are women in your situation supposed to do? Sacrifice your personal lives at the altar of your children’s upbringing?”

Gwen stared sightlessly at the mansion’s gardens. She wished with all her heart that she could share her burden with Rose, that everything wasn’t so complicated, so impossible.

Why had Fareed of all men turned out to be the one who awakened the woman in her? And so completely, so violently?

To add to her heartache, Rose added, “And anyway, don’t knock temporary. You of all people know that nothing, starting with life itself, is permanent. Think about that and make up your mind.”

She swallowed a lump at another impending and permanent loss. “My mind is made up, Rose.”

Before Rose could counterattack, Fareed’s rich baritone curled around Gwen’s sensitized nerves, filling her with regret for what would never be.

He was walking toward them, with Ryan in his arms. He’d said, “I have an announcement to make.”

Her heart pounded so fast that she felt the beats merging like the wings of the hummingbird Rose had compared her to.

Fareed stopped before them, so beautiful and vital that a fist of longing squeezed her heart, stilled it into its grip.

“I’ve done and redone every test there is. And the verdict is in. This magnificent boy is on his way to a full recovery. I expect he’ll walk in a few months’ time.”

Gwen’s hands shot to her lips, stifled her soundless cry.

She’d been monitoring Ryan’s every notch of improvement obsessively, and from her experience with neurological progress, she’d been hoping for the best. But to have Fareed spell out such concrete conviction, put a time frame on it, made it all real.

Ryan would walk!

She raced with Rose to Fareed to drown him in thanks, to pluck Ryan from his arms, then from each other’s to deluge him in kisses. Ryan thought this was a new game and threw himself from one set of arms to another, giggling his delight.

But as Emad joined them and dinner followed, Gwen’s euphoria drained gradually.

She’d known the day when Fareed would announce the completion of his role in Ryan’s care was fast-approaching. She couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. There was no better outcome. For Ryan.

For her…

It was clear from everything Fareed said and did that he thought this day would mark the beginning of that temporary inferno Rose had urged her to hurtle into. She knew it would only herald the end. She’d thought she’d be ready for it. She wasn’t.

As their “family” evening continued, Fareed’s nearness only made it harder. She couldn’t stop herself from feasting on his presence like it was her last meal.

And he made it worse still by no longer tempering the desire in his eyes, by barely touching his food, too, showing her that the only thing he hungered for was her.

For the rest of the evening, as she escaped his unspoken intentions, she struggled to convince herself that walking away would be survivable.

Gwen was suffocating.

Tentacles were tightening around her throat, cutting off air and blood, holding her back. Her arms reached out, but the tentacles jerked her tighter, immobilized her. The shadow she was reaching for tumbled in macabre slow-motion down the abyss.…

“No!”

She heard the shout ring out even as she felt it tear out of her depths…and her eyes shot open.

She jerked up, her hands tearing at the nonexistent noose.

It had been another nightmare.

Knowing that didn’t help. She still gasped, trembled, feeling like the day of the accident all over again. Crushed, torn, strangled by panic and helplessness.

In the months since, night terrors had plagued whatever sleep she’d succumbed to. During the day, anxiety attacks had dismantled her psyche. It hadn’t helped that she knew there had been nothing she could have done.

She stumbled out of the bed. It was 2:00 a.m. She’d barely slept an hour. No use thinking she’d sleep again tonight. She was afraid to, anyway.

She went to Ryan’s room, checked on him even though she’d heard his steady breathing over the baby monitor. She found him on his back, which he hadn’t done since the surgery, his arms flung over his head in abandon. She kissed him and he murmured something satisfied, melting her heart with thankfulness.

She went downstairs, roamed the seemingly deserted mansion, her steps as restless as her mind.

She felt Fareed all over, his scent clinging to her lungs, caressing her senses. And it wasn’t because this was his domain. She’d feel him across the world. And she would, for the rest of her life.

And now, it was over. There was no more reason to stay here. She’d take her tiny family and leave Jizaan in the morning.

And he’d never know how she really felt. But that mattered nothing. What mattered was that he never knew who she really was.…

“Do you know what you are?”

Fareed’s hypnotic tones hit her with the force of a quake.

She jerked around, her gaze slamming to the top of the stairs, the side leading to his quarters.

He wasn’t there. Had she imagined hearing him? Were her dread and guilt playing tricks on her?

Then his voice hit her again. “What I thought when I first saw you? A magical being from another realm.”

She almost sagged. He was here. And he hadn’t meant what she’d feared.

“And do you have any idea about the extent of my craving for you? How long it has gone unfulfilled? How much it has cost me to suppress it, to stay away from you?”

Each beat of her heart rocked her as a shadow detached itself from the depth of darkness engulfing the upper floor, taking his form. His body solidified, his influence intensified with every step. Then his face emerged from the shadows and she gasped.

Even from this distance, there was no mistake.

The ultra-efficient surgeon, the indulgent benefactor, the teasing, patient playmate was gone. A man of tempestuous passion had emerged in his place.

Making it worse was seeing him for the first time in what he’d been born to wear, an abaya that looked tailored of Jizaan’s moonless skies themselves.

And she had no right to his passion. She’d lose even the bittersweet torment of his nearness tomorrow. She’d never again feel as alive.

“You sensed me.” His voice reverberated inside her as he descended the stairs. “You knew I was coming to you, came to meet me halfway. You knew that I would no longer wait.”

Something snapped inside her. Her paralysis shattered.

She needed to tell him…something, anything of the truth, if only that of her feelings, her needs. To have something, anything of him. Just this once.

He quickened his descent as she moved toward him, the abaya billowing around him like a shroud of darkest magic. Her feet felt as if they were gaining momentum from his power, his purpose, that force that had entered her life to change the face of her world forever.

Then he stopped. At the platform where the stairs diverged, as if giving her a last chance to retreat.

She stopped, too, three steps beneath him, momentum lost, confessions fled. She looked up at him, overwhelmed. He was even more than she’d ever dreamed.

The obsidian silk abaya draped over his endless shoulders, pleated for miles to his bare feet, falling open over the perfection of his chiseled, raven hair-dusted chest and abdomen. The low-riding drawstring pants of the same color and material hugged his thighs, hiding none of the power of his muscles, or that of his arousal.

He seemed as if he’d stepped out from another time, a force of nature and of the supernatural, poured into solid form. But it was the fever radiating from him, the same one that raged through her, that shook her most—setting free the one confession she could make.

“I don’t want you to wait.”