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She watched his hand, saw the moment man connected with sleeping child, saw wonder on his face in the low lamp light, and felt a rush of joy. Baby steps, she thought, it would take one baby step at a time. But in time, she knew, he would learn to love Atiyah as he should.
She kissed the baby on the head and tucked her back into her cradle. ‘Come,’ she said to Rashid, and led him back to bed.
‘It’s strange,’ he said, thinking in the dark, amazed at her wisdom. ‘I feel like I know you, and yet I know nothing about you.’
She shrugged in his arms. ‘There’s not a lot to tell. I grew up in Sydney and became a child-care worker. And then, like I told you before, when my friend Sally and her husband opened the business, I joined Flight Nanny. End of story really.’
‘What about family? Pets? Favourite colour?’
‘Orange,’ she said, with a smile. ‘No pets. I’m away from home too much.’
‘How did your parents die?’
‘It was a glider crash, three years ago now. Dad was piloting when they collided with another glider and lost a wing. They were too close to the ground to have time to parachute out.’
He pulled her close, pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘It must have been hard to lose them both together.’
‘Yeah, and there are days when it’s still hard. But overall, it gets easier with time. I was lucky enough to have them both until I was in my twenties. And I know it sounds a cliché, but it makes me feel better knowing they died doing something they both loved. Dad used to say you can never be freer than in the sky. I like to think of them soaring somewhere in the sky together.’
He squeezed her shoulders. ‘Did you have any other family to help you, then?’
‘I have a sprinkling of cousins but they’re mostly all interstate so I hardly ever see them. Oh, except for one who lives in Sydney. But we’re—well, we’re not close.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Matt let me down badly over something.’ Absently she ran her fingers through the coarse hair of his chest. ‘I’m finished with him now. Sally’s more family than any of them, really.’
‘I’d be lost without my brothers, too. But then, they’re not real brothers. Maybe that’s what makes them special to us.’
‘Maybe.’ She squirmed and rolled over, as if the topic made her too uncomfortable. ‘You know, can we talk about something else?’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said, liking the way her bottom wiggled so provocatively against him and feeling his body react accordingly. ‘Maybe we should do something else.’
‘Oh,’ she said, when she caught on. ‘I like the way you think.’
‘And I like the way you do this...’ He pulled her astride him and handed her a condom, liking, too, the way her eyes widened appreciatively as she realised how aroused he already was and took him in hand. He cupped one breast and ran a palm up her thigh while her fingers worked their magic on him as slowly she rolled the condom down his hard length. She gasped when his thumb grazed her inner lips.
‘Oh, my,’ she said, her job complete, but not her enjoyment as his fingers explored her slick folds. ‘You do make it hard for a girl to concentrate on a task.’
‘Maybe,’ he said as he lifted her hips over him and positioned himself at her core, ‘this might make it easier?’
And he pulled her all the long way down on him until he was seated deep inside her and she was stretched up like a cat, her back arched, all curves and sleekness above him such that he could not resist running his hand up over her smooth, firm flesh.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said on a sigh as her muscles let him go enough to lift herself from him until she was at his very tip, ‘I think I can concentrate on this,’ before she lost herself as she plunged down on him again.
* * *
‘Stay here in Qajaran,’ he said in between breaths as he brushed her hair from her face as they lay side by side waiting for their heart rates to return to normal. ‘There is no need to go home yet.’
‘Atiyah is settling,’ she said, relishing the tickle of his fingers on her skin. ‘She is becoming more used to Yousra and her new surroundings. Find her another carer and you will not need me soon.’
‘I’m not asking you to stay for Atiyah’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’m asking you for mine.’
And like one of the bursts of fireworks she’d witnessed against tonight’s sky, hope bloomed bright and beautiful in her chest.
