Sheikh Without a Heart

The child’s mouth turned down. His small face darkened. Karim moved fast, lifted him carefully from the curve of Rachel’s arm and walked quickly into the sitting room.

Now what?

What did you do with a crying child? For that matter, what did you do with one that was not crying?

The boy blew a noisy bubble. Karim looked at him. What the hell did a bubble mean?

“Bzzzt,” the kid said.

Karim cleared his throat. He needed a translator.

Little hands waved. Small feet kicked. The round face screwed up.

“Okay,” Karim said quickly. “How about we, ah, we go downstairs for a while?”

Down the stairs they went.

The baby began to make little noises. Not happy ones.

“I don’t know what you want,” Karim said desperately.

God help him if it was a bottle of formula or, worse still, a diaper change.

The living room was lighter now; dawn was touching the soaring towers of the city. Karim went to one of the big, arched windows.

“Look,” he said. “It’s going to be a sunny day.”

More little noises. Karim had a yacht that sounded like that when it started up. Well, no. Not the yacht. The motor-boat that could be launched from it—

“Naaah. Naaah. Naaah.”

“Shh,” Karim said frantically …

Hell.

The kid was crying. Hard. Genuine tears were rolling down his plump cheeks. Karim looked for something to use to wipe them away. Dammit, how come he hadn’t thought to put on a T-shirt?

“Don’t cry,” he said. Carefully, he swiped a finger along the baby’s cheeks. A little hand grabbed his finger, dragged it to the rosebud mouth.

The noise stopped.

The tears stopped.

Teething. The kid was teething on his finger.

Karim smiled. He sat down in the corner of one of the curved living room sofas. Put his feet up on the teak and glass coffee table. Carefully arranged himself so there was a throw pillow behind him.

The kid was chomping away. And—thank you, God—this time the sounds he made were obviously ones of satisfaction.