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‘Go on,’ she said softly.
‘You know that they sent me away to school in England at seven? In a way, my life was just as isolated as it had been in the palace. For a while I was the only foreign pupil—and I was the only royal one. And of course I was bullied.’
‘You? Bullied? Oh, come on, Tariq! As if anyone would dare try.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘There are more ways to hurt someone than with your fists. I was certainly excluded on a social level—never invited to the homes of my classmates. My saving grace was that I made every sports team going and I had first pick of all the girls.’ He shrugged as he realised that was about the time when he had begun to use the veneer of arrogance to protect him. ‘Though of course that only increased the feelings of resentment against me.’
‘I can imagine.’ She sighed as she looked at him, longing to take him in her arms but too scared to dare try. Still afraid that nothing had really changed and that he would hurt her again as he had hurt her before. And besides, if he really meant it then didn’t he have to come to her?
He saw the fear and the pain which clouded her face, and it mirrored the aching deep inside him. A terrible sense of frustration washed over him as he looked into her tawny eyes.
‘Oh, Izzy—can’t you see that I’m a novice at all this stuff? That for the first time in my life I don’t know what to do or what to say? I’ve never dared love anyone before, because I didn’t want to. And then when I did—I didn’t know how to.’
She blinked at him, unsure whether she’d just imagined that. Love? Who’d said anything about love?
‘Tariq?’ she questioned, in confusion.
But he shook his head, determined to finish what he had begun, and it was like opening up the floodgates and letting his heart run free.
‘In you, I found something I’d never known with any other woman. Even before we became lovers you gave me an unwitting glimpse of what life could be like. Those days I spent in your cottage—I’d never felt so at peace. It felt like home,’ he realised wonderingly. ‘A home I’d never really known before. Only it took me a long time to realise what was staring me in the face.’ He paused. ‘Just like something else which was there all the time—only I was too pig-headed to admit it. And that’s the fact that I love you, Izzy. Simple as that—I just do.’
Still she didn’t dare believe him—because she sensed that there would be no coming back from this. That if she discovered his words were nothing but a sham then her pain would never heal. But the light which gleamed from his ebony eyes cut through the last of her resistance. It broke through the brick wall she had erected around her heart and made it crumble away as if it were made of sand.
She lifted her fingertips to his lips.
‘I love you,’ he said fiercely. ‘And if I have to tell you a thousand times a day for the rest of our lives before you will believe me, then so be it—I will.’
A little awkwardly, given the bump of the baby, she scrambled to her knees and sat on his lap, facing him, her hands smoothing over his face, touching his skin with a trembling delight. ‘Oh, Tariq. My sweet, darling Tariq.’
‘I love you, Izzy,’ he said brokenly. ‘And I was a stubborn fool to have tried so hard not to love you.’ He stared at her, willing the tawny eyes to give him the only answer his heart craved. ‘Just tell me it’s not too late.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ she whispered, as she dragged in a great shuddering breath of relief. ‘I think we’ve managed to save it in the nick of time. And thank goodness for that—because I love you too, Tariq al Hakam, and you’d better believe it. I’ve loved you for a long, long time, I think. Since the time you lay injured—or maybe even before that. Maybe it just took your brush with death to show me what already lay deep in my heart. And I love the baby that grows beneath my breast—your baby.’
He stared at her, her soft understanding suddenly hard to take. ‘You are too sweet, Izzy. Too kind to a man who has done nothing but—’
‘No!’ she contradicted, her firm denial butting into his words. ‘I’m just fighting for what is mine—and you are mine, Tariq al Hakam. You and this baby are all mine.’
‘Our baby,’ he said fiercely.
She touched her lips to the palm of his hand, seeing the last of the pain and regret leave his eyes as they were eclipsed by love. And she felt her heart soar as the bitterness of the past dissolved into the glorious present. ‘Our baby,’ she agreed.
He caught her against him and brought her head close to his. ‘Beautiful, Isobel,’ he whispered against her soft cheek.
‘Outside and in, your loveliness shines like the moon in the night sky.’
‘Poetry, too?’ she questioned unsteadily. ‘I didn’t know you did poetry.’
‘Neither did I. But then, I could never really see the point of it before.’
‘Just kiss me, Tariq,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Kiss me quickly—before I wake up and discover this is all a dream.’
His lips grazed hers, slowly at first, and their eyes were wide open as they watched themselves kiss. And then hunger and passion and love turned the kiss into something else, and Izzy’s breath began to quicken as she pressed her swollen breasts against him.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said, dragging his lips away and hearing her little sigh of objection. Carefully disengaging himself, Tariq got up from the sofa and went over to his desk, where he bent over and spoke into the intercom. ‘Fiona, can you hold all calls, please? Izzy and I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the day.’ He turned and dazzled her with a blazing look of love. ‘Do we, darling?’
In the outer office, Fiona couldn’t believe it. Sheikh Tariq al Hakam had just called Isobel Mulholland darling and asked that they be left alone for the rest of the day! It was the sort of unbelievable statement which was impossible for her to keep to herself, and she went straight down to the water-cooler to tell anyone who would listen.
But perhaps that was what Tariq had intended.
