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The valet didn’t answer and Kahlil pushed off the pillar and approached the desk, lifting the documents to read them yet again. “At least she’s a better mother than a wife.”
Still, Rifaat said nothing.
Wearily Kahlil tossed the papers back onto the gleaming surface of the desk. “Has my cousin arrived yet?”
“No.”
“Let me know when he does. Good night.”
“Good night, my lord.”
Kahlil crouched next to the small bed in the nursery and gently drew the covers back. The child stirred, curling his hand more closely beneath his cheek, nestling deeper into his pillow.
Little boy, my boy. Kahlil’s eyes burned, and with a hard swallow, he accepted that it could not continue like this. It would not continue like this. There ought to be a sanctuary for children, a sacred place to protect their innocence. Their tenderness.
Perhaps if he had been protected as a child he might be a different man today…he might be a different leader.
Kahlil’s palm rested against his son’s head. The child’s hair felt silky, his scalp felt warm. Kahlil could feel his son breathe, feel his son’s innate strength.
Protect the child. Protect his life.
Calmer, feeling the first hint of peace in days, Kahlil scooped Ben into his arms and stood. The boy weighed nothing but meant everything.
Footsteps sounded in her room. Bryn lifted her head, squinting in the darkness as her heart raced. Someone was in her room. Someone was moving her way.
She swung her legs out from beneath the covers and rubbed her eyes. Full of fear she was reminded of another night, another intruder.
“Bryn.”
Kahlil.
Her husband’s deep voice, his English crisp, formal, echoed in the dark. “Are you awake?”
“Yes. What’s happened?”
“Nothing. Shh, he’s still asleep. Don’t wake him.”
Suddenly she knew. Bryn nearly lunged from bed, flinging the covers back. Kahlil had brought Ben back to her!
Kahlil placed Ben on the mattress next to her and drew the silk comforter up, covering them. Speechless, Bryn pressed the back of her hand to Ben’s warm cheek. He was real. He was here.
Warmth filled her. A dizzying hope. “Thank you,” she choked, the words grossly inadequate. “Thank you so much.”
Kahlil nodded, and without speaking, headed for the door.
“Kahlil, what does this mean?”
Her voice stopped him. “I don’t know.” He hesitated, his features shadowed, his expression reserved. “Maybe it means we call a truce. No more fighting. At least, not over our son.”
“Never again,” she swiftly agreed. “Kahlil, thank you again. I mean it. From the bottom of my heart—”
“I know.”
He stood framed in the doorway, the soft yellow light of the hall illuminating his height and strength and his honey-gold skin.
He looked like a prince from a medieval storybook, darkly handsome and yet so alone. She realized bleakly that he had no one, not since she had left him.
He hesitated in the doorway. She felt his tension, his silence throbbing with unspoken meaning.
The ache in her chest was so strong it made it nearly impossible to breathe. She wanted to go to him, touch him, hold him, love him. But she was afraid, so afraid of the distance between them.
“Good night, Bryn. I hope you sleep well.”
“I will now.”
“So will I.” He turned, and left, heading off alone into the dark of the night.
Bryn cuddled Ben to her but she couldn’t sleep. Minutes passed, a half hour crept by, and then finally an hour, but it wasn’t a peaceful rest. She felt anything but peaceful, not when Kahlil punctuated her thoughts.
From the moment she ran into Kahlil in the Dallas parking lot, she’d felt the impact of the fender-bender accident reverberate through every part of her life.
When Kahlil climbed out of his luxury sedan, the shock wave deepened. He had said words that her mind didn’t capture. She couldn’t focus on his speech, only on his face. She’d known him sometime, somewhere. Recognized him from a previous life. She couldn’t tear her gaze away. Entranced by the symmetry of his brow, sweep of cheekbone, the strong aquiline nose, he was the most amazing man she’d ever seen. Like Valentino from the old movies, he seemed perfect.
Kahlil had been astonished that she not only knew where Tiva was, but that she’d spent her first thirteen years in the Middle East, most in the Zwar desert. They’d gone for coffee and the one coffee became an all-night conversation.
Disarmingly honest, he told her she wasn’t like most women in his country. She’d thought he meant it as a compliment. Now she knew better. Their cultural differences would destroy them, if she let it.
Kahlil needed her, but he’d never tell her. Not after she’d betrayed him, and she had betrayed him. She’d become too close to Amin, developing a friendship with an Arab man—Kahlil’s first cousin, of all people!—to answer her insecurity. It hadn’t been enough to be loved by Kahlil. She’d needed endless reassurance, constant proof of love.
Bryn wanted to blame her insecurity on her parents’ death, and the culture shock she’d experienced moving to Aunt Rose’s house in Texas, but she’d felt adrift before the market blast. Truthfully she felt adrift most of her life. She’d never felt at ease with her parents’ nomadic lifestyle, nor their ability to live without friends, and worldly possessions. She wanted a bedroom of her own, pink rosebud paper on the walls, chintz curtains, lots of dolls and stuffed animals on her pillow. She wanted books on shelves, toys stacked in a closet, shoes and clothes tucked in a solid wood dresser.
Instead there had been one knapsack, a half-dozen worn dresses, a battered brown bear. Her parents meant well. They believed they were an example of good values, teaching her that things didn’t matter, making it clear that too many possessions only tied one down. But Bryn wanted to be tied down and longed for the stability of a real house. It was her great childhood fantasy, waking up to discover her parents had bought a two-story house with shingles and shutters and a painted picket fence. There would be kids riding bikes on the street, and girls jumping rope or playing jacks. Bryn would go to a real school and every day she would walk home, carrying her book bag and laughing with her school-mates.
Her parents laughed at her fantasy world, telling her it was the exact thing they’d left behind. No ordinary life for them.
Bryn had spent most of her life trying to be ordinary. Kahlil had not been ordinary. But he’d wanted what she did—stability, security, tradition. And family. They both wanted children. Desperately.
Bryn gently kissed Ben, careful not to wake him. She was grateful to hold him again, soothed by his proximity. But she couldn’t sleep, not when her thoughts revolved around Kahlil.
Tonight, for the first time in years, she’d seen a chink in Kahlil’s armor, and instead of moving in to wound him, she wanted only to protect him. Protect the man she’d once loved, still loved, when he was at his most vulnerable.
She felt a tumult of emotion, even new emotions, a combination of tenderness…forgiveness…regret. Once she and Kahlil had been so sweet together, so full of hope and love. Could they find it again? Could they ever find their way back to each other again?
Bryn slid out of bed, leaving Ben nestled in her pillows and covers, and rang for her maid. She explained that she needed to be taken to Kahlil immediately.
He was in bed, sleeping. Rifaat opened the door for her, giving her access where all else would be denied.
Bryn hadn’t stopped to think, she just acted, responding to the impulse that drove her from her room to his in the dead of night.
Kahlil sat up, the satin sheet falling to his waist. Her heart did a funny double-beat. He looked shockingly sexual. Breathtakingly male, and virile.
Unlike Stan.
Unlike any other man she’d ever known.
Kahlil’s gold eyes, heavily lashed and darkly brooding
, met hers. “Yes?”
As their gazes locked her heart turned over. His eyes undid her. She wanted only to go to him, beg him to forgive her, beg him to love her. Instead she stood stiffly several feet away, feeling the chasm between them, the secrets and mistrust, the mistakes and fear.
He shifted restlessly. “What do you want?”
Her chest constricted. “You.”
Kahlil’s forehead furrowed, an ebony lock shadowing his strong, beautiful face. Slowly he flipped back the satin sheet, making space for her next to him. It was the same thing she’d done earlier for Ben.
She ran to him, climbed into his bed, burying herself in his arms. “Kahlil, I—”
He stopped her, silencing her words with his lips. ‘No,” he whispered. “No talking, I don’t trust words.”
His lips covered hers, and his body moved against her, the hard planes of his chest brushing the peaks of her aching breasts, his hips pressing to her belly. She felt him harden, and he moved her onto her back, his weight braced on his elbows. Fire surged within her, fire and hunger. Only one man could answer this feverish need, and that man was her first and last love, Kahlil.
CHAPTER EIGHT
