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He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think you are.” He pressed his palm over her heart, across the curve of her breast. “I think you are as sure of this as I am.”
Her eyes flinched away from his, terrified he might see truth there. “First you just wanted sex. And now you want to marry me. I don’t understand; what’s changed?”
He lifted her chin with his forefinger. “You have a child. To another man. For this reason alone, I hesitated.”
“Because your country won’t accept me? Or Lexi?” The idea chilled her to the core.
“Because it is an enormous move for her to make.”
Was it possible that he’d been speaking from a place of concern for the little girl? Something about the answer didn’t seem right; as though he was hiding the truth from her. “Would you like to see your wedding dress?”
Her jaw dropped. “You chose my dress?”
He lifted a hand to her hair, running his fingers over it thoughtfully. “Yes.”
“When?”
The smile he gave her was a twist of his lips. “The day you left New York.”
“After we slept together? You went bridal shopping after I’d stormed out of here and told you I never wanted to see you again?”
“Of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?” She stomped her foot, impatient with the conversational circles they were making.
“You think I could watch you walk away without realising?”
Her eyes blinked open, waiting, impatient.
“You walked away and everything inside me revolted against it. I want you here. In my life. In my bed. Beside me. Always.” He dropped his hands to her belly, brushing them over her breasts so that her spine tingled with a lust that only he could arouse, and certainly satisfy.
“Why?” She pushed, hoping, wanting desperately, for him to say the only thing that would make sense of this mess. The promise and pledge that she had made to him five years ago, that she could never take back. Even death would not alter her love for him. Time and distance certainly hadn’t.
“Because I’m addicted to you,” he said. “Because seeing you with that man in the bar made me feel a rage unlike any I’ve ever known. Because I think Lexi is adorable and lovely and yet I look at her and I wonder at the bastard you made her with. The man you slept with so soon after me. Did you think of me as you lay with him? Did he make your body feel as I did? Did you wish it was me instead of him?”
She shook her head, the lie feeling so incongruous now. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Did you love him, Sarah? Did you tell him that he was your world, your purpose, your everything, as you did me?” He leaned down, his eyes hunting hers. “You made a child with him; surely he meant something to you?”
It was meant as a rhetorical question, but Sarah shook her head and then looked towards the door.
“Lexi is my child,” she said quietly, and strangely, admitting the truth to him didn’t feel anything but right. “But I didn’t carry her, and I didn’t birth her.” Her hands dropped to her flat stomach, rubbing across it as if experiencing a barren ache.
His eyes narrowed. Syed Al’Eba could control a room with a single look. This look. It was as commanding as it was determined. He was extracting from her words and her being a comprehension beyond what she’d offered.
“Explain,” he said, finally, apparently failing to simply intuit what she’d meant.
“My sister …” Sarah frowned. “Well, stepsister, really.” She concentrated on the facts, rather than his reaction or what he might feel at it. All she knew was that she had to tell him about Cameron and Marshall before she married him. It was a secret she didn’t want to be accused of guarding. “We grew up together, so even though we have different dads, we still thought of each other as –,”
“Sisters,” he interrupted with a curt nod, cutting back to the point.
“Right.” She wrapped her hands together in front of her and then moved distractedly towards the window. The city swirled beneath them, like a soup at boiling point. “She came to stay with me about two weeks after you left.” Sarah’s eyes misted over. The past was playing out in front of her as a film might. “She was pregnant. Her boyfriend – I’d only met him once before – liked to show his affection by bringing his fists down on her body; sometimes his feet, too. She was terrified of what he’d do – to her, and their baby when she was born.” She felt him stiffen even when she wasn’t looking at him. Unconsciously, her eyes lifted higher, to glimpse his shape in the reflection of the window.
He was very still. Watchful.
“We didn’t see him until she was almost due. He came back and made some big effort to fix everything. I told her not to go to him, but she was adamant.” Sarah swallowed past the lump of pain in her throat. “He was worse than before. When Lexi was two weeks old, Cameron left him for good. He’d broken her arm and collapsed her jaw.” She closed her eyes, the taste of bile oppressive in her mouth.
“Did he hurt you?” The question came from nowhere. He’d been silent a long time, and it had wrapped around them, pressing on his chest until words erupted of their own volition.
