A Secret Birthright

“No— I—I mean…no…your reputation says the very opposite.”

“But your personal experience says my reputation might be so much manufactured hype.”

Her throat tightened with a renewed surge of misery. “It’s just you…you announced you’d be available to be approached, but I was told the opposite, and I no longer knew what to believe.”

She felt him stiffen, the fire in his eyes doused in something…bleak. She’d somehow offended him with her attempts at apology and explanation more than she had with her insults.

But even if she deserved that he walked away from her, she couldn’t afford to let him. She had to beg him to hear her out.

“Please, forget everything I said and let me start over. Just give me those ten minutes all over again. If afterward you think you’re not interested in hearing more, walk away.”

Fareed crashed down to earth.

He’d forgotten. As she’d lambasted him, as he’d lost himself in the memory of his one exposure to her, in his delight in finding her miraculously here, then in his anxiety when she’d collapsed, he’d totally forgotten.

Why he’d walked away from her that first time.

As she’d concluded her presentation and applause had risen, so had everyone. He’d realized it had been the end of the session when people had deluged him, from colleagues to grant seekers to the press. He’d wanted to push them all away, his impatience rising with his satisfaction as her gaze had kept seeking him, before darting away when she’d found him focused on her.

And then a man had swooped out of nowhere, swept her off her feet and kissed her soundly on the lips. He’d frozen as the man had hugged her to his side with the entitlement of long intimacy, turned her to pose for photos and shouted triumphant statements to reporters about the new era “their” drug would herald in pharmaceuticals.

He’d grabbed the first person near him, asked, “Who’s that?”

He’d gotten the answer he’d dreaded. That, a Kyle Langstrom, had been her fiancé and partner in research.

As the letdown had mushroomed inside him, he’d heard Kyle announcing that with the major hurdle in their work overcome, there’d soon be news of equal importance: a wedding date.

The knowledge of her engagement had doused his blaze of elation at finding her, buried all his intentions. His gaze had still clung to her receding figure as if he could alter reality, make her free to return his interest, to receive his passion.

Just before the tide of companions had swept her out of sight, she’d looked back. Their eyes had met for a moment.

It had felt like a lifetime when the world had ceased to exist and only they had remained. Then she’d been gone.

He’d seen her again during the following end-of-conference party. The perverse desire to see her again even when it oppressed him had made him attend it. He’d stood there unable to take his eyes off her. She’d kept her gaze averted. But he’d known she’d been struggling not to look back. He’d finally felt bad enough about standing there coveting another man’s woman that he’d left with the party at full swing.

He hadn’t returned to the States again until Hesham.

He’d replayed that last glance for months afterward. Each time seeing his own longing and regret reflected in her eyes. And each time he’d told himself he’d imagined it.

He’d long convinced himself he had imagined everything. Most of all, her unprecedented effect on him.

It had taken him one look today to realize he’d completely downplayed it. To realize why he’d been unable to muster interest in other women ever since. He might not have consciously thought it, but he’d found no point in wasting time on a woman who didn’t inspire the white-hot recognition and attraction this woman had.

Now she’d appeared here, out of the blue, had been waiting to see him for a month, her last vigil lasting a day and a half of sleepless starvation. She’d just said she was here because he’d “announced he’d be available to be approached.”

Had she meant his ad? Could it be, of all women, this one he’d wanted on sight, hadn’t only been some stranger’s once, but Hesham’s, too?

If she had been, he must have done something far worse than what she’d accused him of in her agitation. What else would that be but some unimaginably cruel punishment of fate?

He hissed, “Just tell me and be done with it.”

She lurched as if he’d backhanded her. No wonder. He’d sounded like a beast, seconds away from an attack.

Before he could form an apology, she spoke, her voice muffled with tears, “I lied—” She had? About what? “—when I said ten minutes would do. I did keep asking reception for any moments you could spare when they said full appointments were reserved for patients on your list. I now realize they couldn’t have acted on your orders, must have done the same with the endless people who came seeking your services. But I was told you’re leaving in an hour, and that long might not do now either and…”

He raised his hands to stem the flow of her agitation, his previous suspicions crashing in a domino effect.

“You’re here for a consultation?”

She raised eyes brimming with tears and…wariness? Nodded.

Relief stormed through him. She wasn’t here about the ad, about Hesham. She was here seeking his surgical services.

Next moment relief scattered as another suspicion detonated.

“You’re sick?”

Chapter Three

She was sick.

That explained everything. The only thing that made sense. Terrible sense. Her desperation. Her mood swings. Her fainting.

She had a neurological condition. According to her symptoms, maybe…a brain tumor. And if she’d sought him out, it had to be advanced. No one sought him specifically except in conditions deemed beyond the most experienced surgeons’ skills. In neurosurgery, he was one of three on earth who’d made a vocation of tackling the inoperable, resolving the incurable.

But a month had passed since she’d first tried to reach him. Her condition could have progressed from minimal hope to none.

Could it be he’d found her, only to lose her again?

No, he wouldn’t. In the past, he’d walked away from her, respecting the commitment she’d made. But disease, even what others termed terminal, especially that, was what he’d dedicated his life to defeating. If he could never have her, at least he would give the world back that vibrant being who’d made giving hope to the hopeless her life’s work.…