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‘I don’t know,’ she said, trying and not sure she was succeeding in keeping the tremor from her voice. ‘Is it relevant?’
The lawyer looked strangely at Rashid, questions clear in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what does it matter? Come, Rashid, and see your sister and your new charge.’
His sister? Surely that didn’t mean what she thought it meant? And Tora felt the cold tea in her stomach turn to sludge.
* * *
He hadn’t been in a rush to get up—he might have agreed to go to Qajaran and take the child with him, but he was in no desperate hurry to meet her. He was glad he’d hung back in his chair now, glad of the time to let incredulity settle into cold, indisputable truth.
Because it was her.
The woman who’d stolen away from his bed like a thief in the night.
The woman he’d never expected to see again.
She looked almost the same as she had last night in the bar, in a beige short-sleeved shirt and hair that he now knew fell heavy like a curtain of silk when pulled out of that damned abomination of a bun, but with black trousers this time, covering legs he could still feel knotted around his back as he drove into her.
She looked almost the same in that bland mouse-like uniform she wore that he knew hid a firebrand underneath.
And it seemed that twenty-four hours of being blindsided didn’t show any signs of letting up yet.
‘Rashid?’ the lawyer prompted. ‘Don’t you want to meet your sister?’
Not particularly, he thought, and least of all now when she was being cradled in the arms of a woman he hadn’t begun to forget, though he supposed he should look interested enough to take a look.
He rose to his feet. Was it his imagination or did the woman appear to shift backwards? No, he realised, it wasn’t his imagination. There was fear in her eyes even though the angle of her chin remained defiant. She was scared of him and trying not to show it. Scared because he knew what the nanny got up to in the night time.
She should be worried.
In spite of himself, he got closer. Close enough that the scent of the woman he’d spent the last night with curled into his senses, threatening to undo the control he was so desperately trying to hang onto. Didn’t he have enough to contend with right now—a father who’d removed himself from Rashid’s life, only to leave him this tiny legacy, a country that was floundering where he was expected to take up the reins—without a woman who had the power to short his senses and make him forget? He needed his wits about him now, more than ever, not this siren whose body even now seemed to call to him.
He shifted his head back out of range, and concentrated instead on the squirming bundle in her arms. Black hair and chubby arms and a screwed-up face. Definitely a baby. He didn’t know a lot about babies, but then he’d never expected to need to.
‘Would you like to hold her?’ the woman he knew as Tora ventured, her voice tight, as if she was having trouble getting the words out.
It was his turn to take a step back. ‘No.’
‘She won’t break.’
‘I said no.’ And neither, when he thought about it, did he want this woman holding her, let alone accompanying them to Qajaran. Not that he was about to take the child himself. He turned to the lawyer. ‘Is there no one else you could have found for this role?’
The woman blinked up at him, her brown eyes as cold as marble. Too bad. Did she expect him to greet her like a long-lost friend? Not likely.
‘Excuse me?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Someone more suitable to take care of Atiyah. Couldn’t you find someone better to take care of my sister?’
‘Ms Burgess comes to us highly qualified. She has an exemplary record with Flight Nanny. Would you like to see her credentials?’
‘That’s not necessary.’ He’d already seen her credentials, in glorious satin-skinned detail, and they qualified her for a different type of position entirely from the one she was required for now.
‘If you have some kind of problem—’ she started.
‘Yes, I have “some kind of problem”, Ms Burgess. Perhaps we should discuss this in private and I’ll spell it out for you?’
The lawyer looked at them nervously. ‘If you excuse me, a moment, I’ll see how Kareem is going,’ and he too was gone.
Rashid took a deep breath as he strode back towards the wall of windows.
‘What are you doing here? How did you find me?’
‘What? I didn’t find you. I was asked by my boss to take this job on. I didn’t know you had anything to do with Atiyah.’
