Rumours were soon spreading like wildfire through the building, and by five o’clock the evening newspapers were all carrying the news that the Playboy Prince was going to be a daddy.
EPILOGUE
IT WAS a source of enormous frustration to Tariq that Izzy refused to marry him—no matter how many times he asked her.
‘Why not?’ he demanded one morning, exasperated by what he perceived as her stubbornness. ‘Is it because of all those stupid accusations I made when you told me—when I said you’d deliberately got yourself pregnant in order to trap me?’
‘No, darling,’ she replied with serene honesty—because those days of fury and confusion were long behind them. ‘That has absolutely nothing to do with it.’
‘Why, then, Izzy?’
Isobel wasn’t quite sure. Was it because things seemed so perfect now? So much the way she’d always longed for them to be that she was terrified of jeopardising them with unnecessary change? As if marriage would be like a superstitious person walking on a crack in the pavement—and bad luck would come raining down on them?
It had become a bit of a game—which Tariq was determined to win, because he always won in the end. But winning was not uppermost in his thoughts. Mostly he wanted to marry Izzy because he loved her—with a love which had blown him away and continued to do so.
‘You’ll be a princess,’ he promised.
‘But I don’t want to be a princess! I’m happy just the way I am.’
‘You are an infuriating woman,’ he growled.
‘And you just like getting your own way!’
His lips curved into a reluctant smile. ‘That much is true,’ he conceded.
He asked her again on the morning she gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter and he felt as if his heart would burst with pride and emotion. The nurse had just handed him the tiny bundle, and he held the swathed scrap and stared down at eyes which were blue and wide—shaped just like her mother’s. But she had a shock of hair which was pure black—like his. Wonderingly, he touched her perfectly tiny little hand and it closed over his finger like a starfish—a bond made in that moment which only death would break.
His eyes were wet when he looked up and the lump in his throat made speaking difficult, but he didn’t care. ‘Why won’t you marry me, Izzy?’ he questioned softly.
Slumped back against the pillows—dazed but elated—Isobel regarded her magnificent Sheikh. This powerful man who cradled their tiny baby so gently in his arms. Why, indeed? Because she was stubborn? Or because she wanted him to know that marriage wasn’t important to her? That she wasn’t one of those women who were angling for the big catch, determined to get his ring on her finger? That she loved him for who he was and not for what he could give her?
‘Doesn’t it please you to know that I’m confident enough in your love that I don’t need the fuss of a legal ceremony?’ she questioned demurely.
‘No,’ he growled. ‘It doesn’t. I want to give our girl some security.’
And that was when their eyes met and she realised that he was offering her what her mother had never had. What she had never had. A proper hands-on father who wasn’t going anywhere. Here was a man who wasn’t being forced to commit but who genuinely wanted to. So what was stopping her?
‘I don’t want a big wedding,’ she warned.
He bit back his smile of triumph. ‘Neither do I.’ But her unexpected acquiescence had filled him with even more joy than he had thought possible, and he turned his attention to the now sleeping baby in his arms. ‘We’ll have to think about what to call her.’
‘A Khayarzah name, I think.’
‘I think so, too.’
After much consultation they named her Nawal, which meant ‘gift’—which was what she was—and when she was six months old they took her to Khayarzah, where their private visit turned into a triumphant tour. The people went out of their way to welcome this second son and his family into their midst—and Tariq at last accepted his royal status and realised that he had no wish to change it. For it was his daughter’s heritage as well as his, he realised.
It was in Khayarzah one night, when they were lying in bed in their room in the royal palace, that Tariq voiced something which had been on his mind for some time.
‘You know, we could always try to find your father,’ he said slowly. ‘It would be an easy thing to do. That’s if you want to.’
Isobel stirred. The bright moonlight from the clear desert sky flooded in through the unshuttered windows as she lifted her eyes to study her husband.
‘What on earth makes you say that?’
Expansive and comfortable, with her warm body nestling against him, Tariq shrugged. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since we had Nawal. How much of a gap there would be in my life if I didn’t have her. If I had never had the opportunity to be a father.’
‘But—’