Hell.
The child was crying again.
He must have been wrong. Rachel wasn’t dealing with the boy, but that was her responsibility.
His was to gain custody, see to it the child was raised properly.
As he had been raised.
By tutors and nannies and governesses, so Rami’s son would learn to be responsible and not waste his life on frivolity or anything but meeting his obligations …
The crying was annoying.
“Dammit,” Karim growled, and he put down the glass, left the study, went quickly up the stairs and down a long corridor to the suite where Rachel and the boy slept.
The sitting room door was shut. He tapped his knuckles against it.
“Rachel?”
No answer.
Great.
She was fast asleep while he paced the floor.
He tried again. Knocked harder, said her name more loudly. Still nothing.
A muscle in his jaw knotted.
“Dammit,” he muttered again, and he opened the door and stepped into the sitting room. She had to be in one of the two bedrooms that opened off it.
The noise had stopped but he knew it would start again. There was only one way to deal with it. He’d find Rachel and tell her to keep the child quiet.
He had a full schedule ahead and needed his rest.
He moved briskly through the sitting room. The first door was ajar. He hesitated, then pushed it open.
No crib. No stacks of baby gear—all the stuff he’d arranged to have delivered. He saw only a bed in the same condition as his own, blankets twisted and pushed aside as if the occupant had had difficulty sleeping.
It was Rachel’s room. Rachel’s bed.
There was the faint scent of lemon in the air. Rachel smelled of lemon. It suited her, that fresh, sweet-sharp tang. It was clean. Delicate.
Honest.
Who but an honest woman would have looked him in the eye when she admitted she’d hated the man who had been her lover?
Then, how had it happened? How could a woman like her have gone to the bed of a man she didn’t love?