The Sheikh's Undoing

Now she observed him with a kind of fury. What? Buy her off? Did he think that she’d be satisfied with that as compensation for the lack of the marriage she’d supposedly been angling for? She thought of her own mother—how she had always gone out to work and supported herself. And hadn’t Isobel been grateful for that role model? To see a woman survive and thrive and not be beaten down because her hopes of love had not materialised?

‘Actually, I’ve decided that I want to carry on working,’ she said. ‘And besides, what on earth would I do all day—sit around knitting bootees? Plenty of women work right up until the final weeks. I’ll … I’ll look for another job, obviously.’

But she was filled with dread at the thought of going from agency to agency and having to hide her pregnancy. Who would want to take on a woman in her condition and offer her any kind of security for the future?

‘You don’t need to look for another job,’ he said harshly. ‘You could come back to work for me in an instant. Or I could arrange to have you work for one of the partners, if you don’t think you could tolerate being in the same office as me.’

Isobel swallowed. She thought of starting work for someone new, with her pregnancy growing all the time. She wasn’t aware of how much other people at the Al Hakam corporation knew about their affair. After all, it wasn’t the most likely of partnerships, and Tariq hadn’t exactly been squiring her around town. Would people put two and two together and come up with the right answer? Would her position be compromised once any new boss knew who the father of her baby was?

She stared at him, wondering what kind of foolish instinct it was which made her realise that she actually wanted to work for him. For there was a certain kind of security in the familiar—especially when there was so much happening in her life. At least with Tariq she wouldn’t have to hide anything, or pretend. Tariq would protect her. Because, despite his angry words of earlier, she sensed that he would make sure that nothing and nobody ever harmed her, or her baby.

‘I think I could just about tolerate it,’ she said slowly. She met his eyes, knowing that she needed to believe in the words she was about to speak—because otherwise there could be no way forward. She had thought that if she quietly loved him then he might learn how to love her b

ack—even if it was only a little bit. She had thought that maybe she could change him. But she had been wrong. Because you couldn’t change somebody else—you could only change yourself. And Tariq didn’t want love—not in any form, it seemed. He didn’t want to receive it, and he didn’t want to give it either. Not to her—and not to their baby.

‘We must agree to give each other the personal space we need,’ she continued steadily. ‘The relationship is over, Tariq—we both know that. But there’s no reason why we can’t behave civilly towards each other.’

He was aware of an overwhelming sense of relief that she wasn’t going to be launching out on her own. But something in the quiet dignity of her statement made his heart grow heavy with a gloomy realisation. As if somehow there had been something wonderful hovering on the periphery of his life.

And he had just let it go.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘THE press have been on the phone again, Tariq.’

Tariq looked up to see Izzy hovering in the doorway of his office, lit from behind like a Botticelli painting, with her hair falling down over her shoulders like liquid honey. Although she was wearing a loose summer dress and still very slim, at four months pregnant there was no disguising the curving softness of her belly. A whisper ran over his skin. For weeks now he had been watching her. Trying to imagine what his child must be like as it grew inside her.

And now he knew.

Aware of the sudden lump which had risen in his throat, he swallowed and raised his brows at her questioningly. ‘What did they want?’

Isobel stared at the brilliant gleam of the Sheikh’s black eyes, and the faint stubble on his chin which made him look like a modern-day pirate. Had she been out of her mind yesterday when she’d told him that he could accompany her to the doctor if he wanted to see her latest scan? What crazy hormonal blip had prompted that? She’d been expecting a curt thanks, followed by a terse refusal, but to her surprise he had leapt at the opportunity, his face wreathed in what had looked like a delighted smile. A most un-Tariq kind of smile. And then he’d acted the part of the caring father as if he actually meant it—clucking round her as if he’d spent a lifetime looking after pregnant women.

In fact, when he’d been helping her into the limousine—something which she’d told him was entirely unnecessary—his hand had brushed over hers, and the feeling which had passed between them had been electric. It was the first time that they had touched since their uneasy truce—and hadn’t it started her senses screaming, taunting her with what she was missing? Their eyes had met in a clashing gaze of suppressed desire and she had felt an overwhelming need to be in his arms again. A need she had quickly quashed by climbing into the limousine and sitting as far away from him as possible.

She sighed with impatience at her inability to remain immune to him, then turned her mind back to his question about the press. ‘They were asking why the Sheikh of Khayarzah was seen accompanying his assistant to an obstetrician’s for her scan yesterday.’

‘They saw us?’

‘Apparently.’ Her eyes were full of appeal. ‘Tariq, I should have realised this might happen.’

Maybe she should have done. But to his surprise he was glad she hadn’t. Because mightn’t that have stopped her from giving him the chance to see the baby he had never wanted? He still didn’t know why she had done that—and he had never expected to feel this overwhelming sense of gratitude. Perhaps he should have realised himself that someone might notice them, but the truth was he wouldn’t have cared even if he’d known that a million journalists were lurking around.

He hadn’t cared about anything except what he was to discover in that darkened room in Harley Street, watching while a doctor had moved a sensory pad over the jelly-covered swell of her abdomen.

Suddenly he’d seen an incomprehensible image spring to life on the screen. To Tariq, it had looked like a high-definition snowstorm—until he had seen a rapid and rhythmical beat and realised that he was looking at a beating heart. And that was when everything had changed. When he’d stopped thinking of Izzy’s pregnancy as something theoretical and seen reality there, right before his eyes.

His heart had lurched as he’d stared at the form of his son—or daughter—and the doctor had said something on the lines of the two of them being a ‘happy couple’. And that had been when Izzy’s voice had rung out loud and clear.

‘But we’re not,’ she had said firmly, turning to look at Tariq, her tawny eyes glittering with hurt and challenge. ‘The Sheikh and I are not together, Doctor.’

Tariq had flinched beneath that condemnatory blaze—but could he blame her? Didn’t he deserve comments and looks like that after his outrageous reaction when she’d told him about the baby? Even though he had been doing his damnedest to make it up to her ever since. Short of peeling grapes and bringing them into her office each morning, he was unsure of what else he could do to make it better. And he still wasn’t sure if his conciliatory attitude was having any effect on her, because she had been exhibiting a stubbornness he hadn’t known she possessed.

Proudly, she had refused all his offers of lifts home or time off. Had turned up her pretty little nose at his studiedly casual enquiry that she might want to join him for dinner some time. And told him that, no, she had no desire to go shopping for a cot. Or to have her groceries delivered from a chi-chi London store. Pregnant women were not invalids, she’d told him crisply—and she would manage the way she had always managed. So he had been forced to bite back his frustration as she had stubbornly shopped for food each lunchtime, bringing back bulging bags which she had lain on the floor of her office. Though he had put his foot down about her carrying them home and told her in no uncertain terms that his limousine would drop the bags off at her apartment.

Now, as she walked into his office and shut the door behind her, he realised that the Botticelli resemblance had been illusory—because beneath her pale and Titian beauty she looked tired.

‘We’re going to have to decide what to say when the question of paternity comes up,’ she told him, wondering why it had never occurred to her that people would want to know who the father of her baby was. ‘Because it will. I mean, people here have been dropping hints about it for ages, and that journalist was on the verge of asking me outright about it today—I could tell he was.’