“Thank you. That was—that was kind of you. To tell me, I mean.”
Karim hesitated.
“You’ve done a fine job with him,” he said softly.
She nodded. “I tried.”
“I—I want you to know that I love him.”
And me? she almost said. Can’t you love me?
But he couldn’t. She knew that.
He was a man to whom honor was everything, and by lying to him she had dishonored him.
“I know you do,” she said. “And that’s good.” Her voice thickened. “Because he’s going to need you, you know? He’s only a baby, but—but this is going to be a hard transition for him.”
Karim nodded. “I’ll do everything I can to make it easier.” He hesitated. “I regret the—the suggestion I made last night.”
Rachel lifted her chin. “Is that an apology?”
“No. It’s—it’s …” He sighed. God, she was tough. “Yes. It is. But the fact remains, Ethan will need a nanny. I can find one, of course, but he cares for you, and you for him.” Her eyes snapped and he held up his hand. “No. I’m not suggesting … I’m simply saying that if you wanted to be his nanny—only that, nothing more—” Dammit, this was not going well. “You’d have your own apartment in the palace, a significant salary and—”
“You mean, I would be your servant.”
“I suppose that is one way to see it,” he said stiffly.
“And,” she said, her voice trembling, “how long would this arrangement last?”
“Until he is five, perhaps, or six. Until he no longer needs you.”
Until
he no longer needs you …
Rachel wanted to slap the Sheikh she’d been fool enough to love. That he could even think she’d accept being a temporary part of her baby’s life told her everything she needed to know.
“Only a man with no heart would make such an offer,” she said quietly. “And I pity you, Karim, for being such a man.”
She brushed past him, half expecting him to come after her and stop her. But he didn’t, and after a few minutes she found a servant and demanded to be taken to Ethan’s room.
The servant said that was not possible. Rachel assured him it damned well was, and finally Karim strode toward them, barked out a command, and the servant bowed, then led her to the room where the baby was, as Karim had said, fast asleep.
She stood over his crib, wept silently, whispered to him of how she loved him, how she knew he would grow up to be big and smart and strong, promised him that she would fight to get him back.
And then, before she could collapse with grief, she swung away from the child who held her heart in his tiny hands and ran through the palace, down what were surely a thousand steps, and out the front door into the rain.
A car was waiting.