“Do you have any idea about the extent of my craving for you?

“How long it has gone unfulfilled? How much it has cost me to suppress it, to stay away from you?”

Each beat of her heart rocked her as a shadow detached itself from the darkness engulfing the upper floor, taking his form. His body materialized. Then his face emerged from the shadows and she gasped.

Even from this distance, there was no mistake.

The ultra-efficient surgeon, the indulgent benefactor, the teasing, patient playmate was gone. A man of tempestuous passions had emerged in his place.

And she had no right to his passion. She’d lose even the bittersweet torment of his nearness tomorrow. She’d never again feel this alive.

Dear Reader,

I didn’t set out to do it, but when I was halfway through writing A Secret Birthright, I realized that in it I’d gathered almost all of my most loved themes in writing for Desire! A sheikh, a medical theme, a secret baby, family drama, royal intrigue, love at first sight and a seemingly impossible love.

Is it any wonder the result was one of my most enjoyable books to write, ever?

As I wrote, unraveling the mysteries in the book, I loved being inside Fareed’s mind as he finds out the secrets only as the reader does. I also loved being privy to Gwen’s conflicted and anguished thoughts and emotions, which give us glimpses of the complex, high-stakes situation and let us wonder right along with her if, when it all comes to light, she will lose everything she’s ever loved.

I hope you enjoy discovering the story’s many secrets and accompanying Fareed and Gwen on their bumpy road to happy-ever-after as much as I enjoyed writing it all!

I love to hear from readers, so please feel free to contact me at oliviagates@gmail.com. I’d also love it if you “Like” my Olivia Gates author page on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @OliviaGates.

To find out about my latest releases, read excerpts and enter my contests, please visit me on the web at oliviagates.com.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Olivia Gates

About the Author

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions like singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

A Secret Birthright
Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all my Romance World friends.

Authors, editors, fans and reviewers.

I don’t have enough words to thank you for being

who you are, and for being there for me

when I most needed friends.

One

“I don’t want to see another woman. Ever again.”

A long moment of silence greeted the fed-up finality of Sheikh Fareed Aal Zaafer’s declaration. His companion’s empathy and exasperation hung heavy in the stillness.

Then Emad ibn Elkaateb sighed. “I am almost resigned a woman isn’t in the cards for you. But because this isn’t about you or your inexplicable personal choices, I have to insist.”

Fareed’s laugh was one of incredulous fury. “What is this? You, who brought me damning proof on each imposter? You’re now asking me to suffer another one? To grit my teeth through more pathetic, disgusting lies? Just who are you and what have you done with Emad?”

Suddenly the decorum Emad maintained dissolved. Fareed blinked. Emad rarely budged in giving him the “dues of his birthright,” insisted it was an integral part of his honor as Fareed’s right-hand man to observe Fareed’s position as his prince.

Now Emad’s expression softened with the indulgence of twenty-five years of being closer to Fareed than his family, friends and staff in his medical center combined. “Anticipating your disappointment was the only reason I objected to the … scheme that brought upon you all of those opportunists. On any other account, I can’t begin to fault your methods. My own haven’t produced results either. Hesham hid too well.”

Fareed gritted his teeth on the upsurge of frustration and futility. Of grief.

Hesham. The sensitive soul and exceptional artist. And out of Fareed’s nine siblings, the youngest brother and the most beloved.

It was their father and king’s fault that Hesham had hidden. Over three years ago, Hesham had returned from a long stay in the States to announce that he was getting married. He’d made the mistake of believing their father might be persuaded to give him his blessing. Instead, the king had flared into an unprecedented rage. He’d forbidden Hesham to contact his fiancée again, or to consider wedding anyone not chosen by their royal house.

When Hesham refused to obey him, the king’s fury had escalated. He’d ranted that he’d find the American hussy who’d tried to insinuate herself into the royal line and make her wish she’d never plotted to ensnare his son. As for Hesham, he wasn’t letting him dabble in his pointless artistic pursuits and shirk his royal duties anymore. This was no longer about what or whom Hesham chose to amuse himself with. This was about heritage. He wouldn’t let him taint their bloodline with an inferior union. Hesham would obey, or there would be hell to pay.

Fareed and his brothers and sisters had intervened on their brother’s behalf, then had worked together to release him when their father had placed Hesham under house arrest.

Hesham had wept as he’d hugged them and told them he had to disappear, to escape their father’s injustice and to protect his beloved. He’d begged for their word that they’d never look for him, to consider him dead, for all of their sakes.

None of them had been able to give that word.

But even though each had tried to keep track of him, with Fareed the one who’d gone to the greatest lengths, Hesham had all but erased himself from existence.

A new wave of rage against their father scorched his blood.

If it hadn’t been for the oath he’d taken to serve his people, he would have left Jizaan, too. But that wouldn’t have been a punishment for their father. He wouldn’t have cared about losing another son. All he’d said after Hesham’s disappearance had been that he cared only that Hesham did nothing to disgrace their family and kingdom. Fareed believed that their father would have preferred to see Hesham and any of his future children dead before that came to pass.

What had come to pass had been even worse.

After years of Fareed yearning for any contact with him, Hesham’s call came from an E.R. in the States. Hesham had called him only to use his last breaths to beg for a favor. Not for himself, but for the woman for whom he’d left his world, who’d become his world.

Take care of Lyn, Fareed … and my child … protect them … tell her she’s everything … tell her … I’m sorry I couldn’t give her what she deserves, that I’ll leave her alone with …

There’d been no more words. He’d almost bloodied his throat roaring for Hesham to tell him more, to wait for him to come save him. He’d heard only an alien voice, telling him his brother had been taken to surgery.

He’d flown out immediately, dread warring with the hope that he’d be in time to save him. He’d arrived to find him long dead.

Learning that Hesham had been in no way responsible for the accident had deepened his anguish. An eighteen-wheeler had lost control and decimated eleven cars, killing many and injuring more. Grief had compromised his sanity, yet he’d fought it to offer his services. As an internationally recognized surgeon and one of the leading experts in his field, he had been gratefully accepted, and he’d operated on the most serious neurological injuries, had saved other victims as he hadn’t been able to save Hesham.

It had been too late by the time he’d learned that a woman had been with Hesham in the car. She’d had no injuries, no identification, and had left the hospital as soon as Hesham had died. Descriptions had varied wildly in the wake of the mass casualties.

With a bleeding heart, he’d taken Hesham’s body back to Jizaan. After a heart-wrenching funeral, which the king hadn’t attended, Fareed had launched a search for Lyn and the child.

But Hesham had hidden too well. It seemed he’d been erasing each step as he’d taken it. Investigations into the new identity he’d assumed had revealed no wife or child. Even the car he’d died in had been a rental under yet another name.

After a month of dead ends, Fareed had taken the only option left. If he couldn’t find Hesham’s woman, he’d let her find him.

He’d returned to where Hesham had died, placed appeals in all the media for the woman to contact him. He’d kept his message cryptic so only the right person would approach him. Or so he’d intended …

Women had swamped him.

Emad had weeded out the most blatant liars, like those with teenaged children or with none, and still advised Fareed not to waste his time on the rest. He’d been certain they’d all turn out to be fortune hunters. Being a billionaire surgeon and desert prince, Fareed had always been a target for gold diggers. And he’d invited them by the drove.

Fareed couldn’t comply, couldn’t let anyone who remotely answered the criteria go without an audience.

He’d felt antipathy toward every candidate before she’d opened her mouth. But he’d forced himself to see each performance to its exasperating end. He believed Hesham, the lover and creator of beauty, would have fallen in love only with someone flawless inside and out, someone refined, worthy and trustworthy. But what if Hesham hadn’t been as discerning as he’d thought?

But after a month of agonizing letdowns, Fareed had gone home admitting his method’s failure. He’d known any new attempt would fail without new information to use. For two more months, he’d been driven to the brink on a daily basis thinking his brother’s flesh and blood was out there and might be in need.

He’d groped for a sanity-saving measure, answered a plea from a teaching hospital in the States to perform charity surgeries. A part of his schedule was always dedicated to charity work, but he’d never tackled so many within such a tight time frame. And his work at his own medical center was too organized to provide solace. For the last four weeks he’d lost himself in the grueling endeavor that had managed to anesthetize his pain.

Today was the last day. And after the distraction provided by the crushing schedule, he dreaded the impending release like an imminent jump off a cliff …

“Somow’wak?”

Emad’s prodding “Your Highness” brought him out of his lapse into memories and frustration.

Fareed heaved to his feet. “I’m not seeing any more women, Emad. You were right all along. Don’t go soft on me now.”

“I assure you I’m not. I’ve been sending the women who’ve come asking for an interview with you away.”

Fareed blinked. “There’s been more?”

“Dozens more. But I interviewed them in your stead without inflicting even a mention of them on you.”

Fareed shook his head. Seemed his desperate measure would haunt him for Ullah only knew how long. “So what’s new now? Don’t tell me you’re suddenly hoping that my ‘grief-blinded gamble’ might, ‘against all rationality and odds,’ bear fruit?”

Emad’s lips twitched at Fareed’s reminder of his reprimands. “Somow’wak has an impeccable memory.”

“Aih, it’s a curse.” A suspicion suddenly struck him. “Are you telling me you want me to start this … farce all over again?”

“I want you to see this one woman.”

Fareed winced at the look that entered his eyes. Emad wouldn’t look at a lion with more caution.

Jameel. Great. He was losing it. He huffed in disgust at his wavering stamina. “Why this one? Why is she special?”

Emad sighed, clearly not appreciating needing to explain his conviction. “Her approach was unlike any other. She didn’t use the contact number you specified in the ad but has been trying to reserve an appointment with you through the hospital from the day we arrived. Today they told her that you were leaving and she started weeping….”

Fareed slammed down the dossier he’d picked up. “So she’s even more cunning than the rest, realized that the others’ approach hadn’t borne fruit and tried to get past your screening by conning her way to me through my work. And when that didn’t work, she made a scene. Is that why you want me to see her? Damage control? To stop compounding the ‘scandal I created for myself and my family’?”

Emad’s dark eyes emptied of expression. “I wouldn’t want to resurrect that mess after I managed to contain it. But that’s not why. The people in reception today are new. They only heard the story of her waiting around for the past four weeks in case you had an opening in your schedule from her disjointed accounts. When they couldn’t deal with her, they sent for me, and I … saw her, heard what little she’d been able to say. She … feels different from the rest. Feels truly distraught.”

Fareed snorted. “An even more superlative actress, eh?”

“Or maybe the real thing.”

His heart boomed with hope, once, before it plummeted again into despondence. “You don’t believe that.”

Emad leveled his gaze on him. “The real thing does exist.”

“And she doesn’t want to be found,” Fareed growled. “She must know I’ve turned the world upside down to find her and she didn’t come forward. Why would she decide to show up when nothing has changed?”

“Maybe nothing we know of.”

Fareed closed his eyes. Emad’s calm logic was maddening him. He was in a far worse condition than he’d realized if anything Emad, of all people, said or did had him within a hair’s breadth of going berserk. It seemed he’d distracted himself at the cost of pushing himself to a breakdown.

Emad’s deep tones, so carefully neutral, felt like discordant nails against his restraint. “But what we do know is that Hesham’s Lyn is still out there.”

And what if that woman down there was her?

He closed his eyes against hope’s insidious prodding. But it was too late. It had already eaten through his resistance.

This woman most probably wasn’t; but really, what was one more performance to suffer? He’d better get this over with.

He opened his eyes as Emad opened his mouth to deliver another argument. He raised his hand, aborting it. “Send her up. I’m giving her ten minutes, not a second more. Tell her that. Then I’m walking out and I’m never coming back to this country.”

Emad gave a curt nod, turned on his heels.

He watched him exit the ultramodern space the hospital had given him as his consultation room, before he sagged in the luxury of the leather swiveling chair. It felt as if he’d sunk into thorns.

If more fake, stomach-turning stories about his brother were flung in his face, he would not be responsible for his actions.

He glowered at the door. He’d seen all kinds. From the sniveling to the simpering to the seductive. He had an idea which type this one would be. The hysterical. Maybe even the delusional.

He steeled himself for another ugly confrontation as the door was pushed open. Emad preceded the woman into the room.

But he barely saw him. He didn’t hear what Emad said before he left, or notice when he did.

All he saw was the golden vision approaching until only the wide desk stood between them.

He found himself on his feet without realizing he’d moved, only one thought reverberating in his mind.

Please, don’t be Hesham’s Lyn!

The thought stuttered to a standstill.

B’Ellahi, what was he thinking? He should be wishing that she was, that his search was over.

It shouldn’t make a difference that her drowned sky-at-dawn eyes dissolved his coherence and the sunlight silk that cascaded over her bosom made his hands ache to twist in it. It didn’t matter that the trembling of her lush lips shook his resolve and her graceful litheness gripped his guts in a snare of instant hunger. If she turned out to be Hesham’s Lyn.

His thoughts convulsed to a halt again.

He wanted her to be anything but that. Even another imposter.

B’Ellahi, why?

The answer churned inside him with that desire that had surged out of nowhere at her sight.

Because Hesham’s Lyn would be off-limits to him. And he wanted this woman for himself. He wanted her …

As he’d wanted her the first and only time he’d seen her.

He remembered her now!

It was the total unexpectedness of seeing her again, let alone here, that had thrown him at first. That, and the changes in her.

That time he’d seen her, her luminous hair had been scraped back in a severe bun. She’d been wearing makeup that he now realized had obscured her true coloring and downplayed her features. A dark suit of masculine severity had attempted to mask her screaming femininity. She’d been younger, far more curvaceous, yet somehow less ripe. Her vibe had been cool, professional … until she’d seen him.

One thing remained the same. Her impact on him. It was as all-consuming as it had been when he’d walked into that conference room.

He vaguely remembered people scurrying to empty a place for him at the front row. She’d been at the podium. It wasn’t until the stunning effect she’d had on him ebbed slightly that he realized what she’d been doing there.

She’d been delivering the very presentation he’d gone to that conference to attend, about a drug that helped regenerate nerves after pathological degeneration or trauma. He’d heard so much about the outstanding young researcher, the head of the R & D team. He’d had a mental image to go with her prodigious achievements, one that had collapsed under its own inaccuracy at the sight of her.

He’d held her gaze captive as he’d sat grappling with impatience for the presentation to be over so he could approach her, claim her. Only his knowledge that the sight of him had been as disruptive to her had mitigated his tension. His pleasure had mounted at seeing her poise shaken. She’d managed to continue, but her crisp efficiency had become colored by the self-consciousness he’d evoked. Every move of her elegant body and eloquent hands, every inflection of her cultured delivery, everything about her had made focusing on the data she’d been conveying a challenge. But her work had been even more impressive than he’d anticipated, only deepening his delight with her….

“Is it all a lie? Are you a lie?”

He almost flinched. That red wine-and-velvet voice.

It had taken hearing it to know it had never stopped echoing in his mind. Now it was made even more potent by the raggedness of emotion entwined in it.

But had she said …?

The next second her agitation cascaded over him, silencing questions and bringing every thought to a shocked halt.

“Is your reputation all propaganda? Just hype to pave the way to more reverence in the medical field and adulation in the media? Are you what your rare detractors say you are? Just a prince with too much money, genius and power, who makes a career of playing god?”

Two

Gwen McNeal heard the choking accusations as if they came from a disembodied voice. One that sounded like hers.

It seemed the past weeks had damaged what had been left of her sanity. She’d made her initial request for a meeting with it already strained. But as time had ticked by and her chances of meeting him had diminished, her stamina had dwindled right along.

She’d thought she’d be a mass of incoherence when she was finally in his presence.

Then she was there, and the sight of him had jolted through her like a lightning bolt. The intensity of his gaze, of his impact, had slashed the last tethers of her restraint.

She’d just accused him of being an over-endowed sadist who lived to make lesser beings beg for his intervention.

At least the unchecked flow had stopped. All she could do now was stare in horror at him as he stared back at her in stupefaction. And realize.

He was what she remembered. Description-defying. Or there had to be new adjectives coined to describe his brand of virility and grandeur. Seeing him felt like being catapulted into the past. A past when she’d known where her life was heading. A life that had been derailed since she’d laid eyes on him.

Ever since, she’d told herself she’d exaggerated her memories of him, had built him up into what no one could possibly be.

But he was all that. It was all there, and more. The imposing physicality, the inborn grace and power, the sheer influence. She had no doubt time would continue to magnify his assets until he did become godlike.

One thing time hadn’t enhanced, though. His effect on her. How could it when that had been shattering to start with?

Then he moved. The move itself was almost imperceptible, but the intention behind it, to come closer, when that would engulf her even deeper into his aura, intensify his effect, went off inside her like a clap of thunder.

Desperation burst from her in a new rush of resentment. “Five minutes? That’s what you allow people in your presence? Then you walk away without looking back? Do you smirk in satisfaction as they run after you begging for a few more moments of your priceless time? Do you enjoy making them grovel? That’s how much regard the world’s leading philanthropist surgeon really has for others?”

A slow blink swept his sinful lashes down, before they lifted to level his smoldering gaze on her.

“I actually said ten minutes.”

She’d thought his voice had been hard-hitting in the videos she’d seen of his interviews, lectures and educational surgeries. In reality, the depth and richness of his tones, the potency of his accent, the beauty of his every inflection made the words he uttered an invocation.

“And when I said that …”

She cut him off, unable to hear more of that spell. “So you granted me ten minutes instead of five. I can see how your reputation was founded, on such magnanimous offers. But I’ve already wasted most of those ten minutes. Do I start counting down the rest before you walk away as if I’m not here?”

He shook his head as if it would help him make sense of her words, and L.A.’s winter afternoon sun slanting through the windows glinted off his raven mane. “I won’t do any such thing, Ms. McNeal.”

Her heart gave one detonation. He … he … he remembered her?

The world receded into a gray vortex. A terrible whoosh yawned in her ears. Everything faded away as she plunged in a freefall of nothingness.

Something immovable broke her plummet, and she found herself struggling within the living cables that encompassed her, reaching back to the reprieve that oblivion offered.

“B’Ellahi … don’t fight me.”

The dark melody poured into her brain as she lost all connection with gravity, was swathed in hot hardness and dizzying fragrance. She opened her eyes at the sensation and that face she’d long told herself she’d forgotten filled her vision. She hadn’t forgotten one line of symmetry or strength, one angle or slash or groove of nobility and character and uniqueness. Sheikh Fareed Aal Zaafer would be unforgettable after one fleeting look. Secondhand exposure would have been enough. But that firsthand encounter had been indelible.

But if she’d thought his effect from a distance the most disruptive force she’d ever encountered, now that she filled his arms, he filled her senses, conquered what remained of her resistance.

A violent shudder shook her. He gathered her tighter.

“Put me down, please.” Her voice broke on the last word.

His eyes moved to her lips as soon as she spoke, following their movements. Blood thundered in her head at his fascination. His hands only tightened their hold, branding her through her clothing.

“You fainted.” His gaze dragged from her lips, raking every raw nerve in her face on its way back up to her eyes.

She fidgeted, trying to recoup her scattered coordination. “I just got dizzy for a second.”

“You fainted.” His insistence was soft like gossamer, unbending as steel. “A dead faint. I had to vault over the desk to catch you before you fell face down over that table.”

Her eyes panned to where she’d been standing by a large, square, steel-and-glass table. Articles were flung all over the floor around it.

Even though she’d never fainted in her life, no doubt formed in her mind. She had. And he’d saved her.

The bitterness that had united with tension to hold her together disintegrated in the heat of shame at her behavior so far. All she wanted was to burrow into his power and weep.

She couldn’t. For every reason there was. She had to keep her distance at all costs.

He was walking to the sitting area by the windows as if afraid she’d come apart if he jarred her. What did was the solicitude radiating from him.

She pulled herself rigid in his hold. “I’m fine now … please.”

He stopped. She raised a wavering gaze to his, found it filled with something … turbulent. Then it grew assessing, as if weighing the pros and cons of granting her plea.

Then he loosened his arms by degrees, let her slide in nerve-abrading slowness down his body. She swayed back a step as soon as her feet found the ground, and her legs wobbled under her weight, as if she’d long depended on him to support it. His hand shot out to steady her. She shook her head. He took his hand away, gestured for her to sit down, command and courtesy made flesh and bone.

She almost fell onto the couch, shot him a wary glance as soon as she’d sought its far end. “Thank you.”

He came to tower over her. “Nothing to thank me for.”

“Just for saving me from being rushed to the E.R., probably with severe facial fractures, or worse.”

His spectacular eyebrows snapped together as if in pain, the smoldering coals he had for eyes turning almost black. “Tell me why you fainted.”

She huffed. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have.”

His eyes drilled into hers, clearly unsatisfied with her answer. “You’re not alarmed that you did faint, at least you’re not surprised. So you have a very good idea why. Tell me.”

“It was probably agitation.”

His painstakingly sculpted lips twisted. “You might be a renowned pharmaceutical researcher, Ms. McNeal, but I’m the doctor among us and the one qualified to pass medical opinions. Agitation makes you more alert, not prone to collapse.”

He wouldn’t budge, would he? She had to give him something to satisfy his investigative appetite so she could move on to the one subject that mattered. “It—it was probably the long wait.”

He still shook his head. “Eight hours of waiting, though long, wouldn’t cause you to be so exhausted you’d faint. Not without an underlying cause.”

“I’ve been here since 4:00 a.m …” His eyebrows shot up in surprise. And that was before she added, “yesterday.”

His incredulity shot higher, his frown grew darker. “You’ve been sitting down there for thirty-six hours?”

He suddenly came down beside her, with a movement that should have been impossible for someone of his height, his thigh whisper-touching hers as those long, powerful fingers, his virtuoso surgeon’s tools, wrapped around her wrist to take her pulse. Her heartbeats piled up in her heart before drenching her arteries in a torrent.

He raised probing eyes to her. “Have you slept or even eaten during that time?” She didn’t remember. She started to nod and he overrode her evasion. “It’s clear you did neither. You haven’t been doing either properly for a long time. You’re tachycardic as if you’ve been running a mile.” Was he even wondering why, with him so near? “You must be hypoglycemic, and your weak pulse indicates your blood pressure is barely adequate to keep you conscious. I wouldn’t even need any of those signs to guide me about your condition. You look—depleted.”

From meeting her haggard face in the mirror, she knew she made a good simulation of the undead. But having him corroborate her opinion twisted mortification inside her.

Which was the height of stupidity. What did it matter if he thought she looked like hell? What mattered was that she fixed her mistake, got on with her all-important purpose.

“I was too anxious to sleep or eat, but it’s not a big deal. What I said to you is, though. I’m sorry for … for my outbursts.”

Something flared in his eyes, making her skin where he still held her hand feel as if it would burst into flame. “Don’t be. Not if I’ve done anything to deserve this … antipathy. And I’m extremely curious, to put it mildly, to find out what that was. Do you think I left you waiting this long out of malice? You believe I enjoy making people beg for my time, offer it only after they’ve broken down, only to allow them inadequate minutes before walking away?”

“No— I—I mean … no … your reputation says the very opposite.”

“But your personal experience says my reputation might be so much manufactured hype.”

Her throat tightened with a renewed surge of misery. “It’s just you … you announced you’d be available to be approached, but I was told the opposite, and I no longer knew what to believe.”

She felt him stiffen, the fire in his eyes doused in something … bleak. She’d somehow offended him with her attempts at apology and explanation more than she had with her insults.

But even if she deserved that he walked away from her, she couldn’t afford to let him. She had to beg him to hear her out.

“Please, forget everything I said and let me start over. Just give me those ten minutes all over again. If afterward you think you’re not interested in hearing more, walk away.”

Fareed crashed down to earth.

He’d forgotten. As she’d lambasted him, as he’d lost himself in the memory of his one exposure to her, in his delight in finding her miraculously here, then in his anxiety when she’d collapsed, he’d totally forgotten.

Why he’d walked away from her that first time.

As she’d concluded her presentation and applause had risen, so had everyone. He’d realized it had been the end of the session when people had deluged him, from colleagues to grant seekers to the press. He’d wanted to push them all away, his impatience rising with his satisfaction as her gaze had kept seeking him, before darting away when she’d found him focused on her.

And then a man had swooped out of nowhere, swept her off her feet and kissed her soundly on the lips. He’d frozen as the man had hugged her to his side with the entitlement of long intimacy, turned her to pose for photos and shouted triumphant statements to reporters about the new era “their” drug would herald in pharmaceuticals.

He’d grabbed the first person near him, asked, “Who’s that?”

He’d gotten the answer he’d dreaded. That, a Kyle Langstrom, had been her fiancé and partner in research.

As the letdown had mushroomed inside him, he’d heard Kyle announcing that with the major hurdle in their work overcome, there’d soon be news of equal importance: a wedding date.

The knowledge of her engagement had doused his blaze of elation at finding her, buried all his intentions. His gaze had still clung to her receding figure as if he could alter reality, make her free to return his interest, to receive his passion.

Just before the tide of companions had swept her out of sight, she’d looked back. Their eyes had met for a moment.

It had felt like a lifetime when the world had ceased to exist and only they had remained. Then she’d been gone.

He’d seen her again during the following end-of-conference party. The perverse desire to see her again even when it oppressed him had made him attend it. He’d stood there unable to take his eyes off her. She’d kept her gaze averted. But he’d known she’d been struggling not to look back. He’d finally felt bad enough about standing there coveting another man’s woman that he’d left with the party at full swing.

He hadn’t returned to the States again until Hesham.

He’d replayed that last glance for months afterward. Each time seeing his own longing and regret reflected in her eyes. And each time he’d told himself he’d imagined it.

He’d long convinced himself he had imagined everything. Most of all, her unprecedented effect on him.

It had taken him one look today to realize he’d completely downplayed it. To realize why he’d been unable to muster interest in other women ever since. He might not have consciously thought it, but he’d found no point in wasting time on a woman who didn’t inspire the white-hot recognition and attraction this woman had.

Now she’d appeared here, out of the blue, had been waiting to see him for a month, her last vigil lasting a day and a half of sleepless starvation. She’d just said she was here because he’d “announced he’d be available to be approached.”

Had she meant his ad? Could it be, of all women, this one he’d wanted on sight, hadn’t only been some stranger’s once, but Hesham’s, too?

If she had been, he must have done something far worse than what she’d accused him of in her agitation. What else would that be but some unimaginably cruel punishment of fate?

He hissed, “Just tell me and be done with it.”

She lurched as if he’d backhanded her. No wonder. He’d sounded like a beast, seconds away from an attack.

Before he could form an apology, she spoke, her voice muffled with tears, “I lied—” She had? About what? “—when I said ten minutes would do. I did keep asking reception for any moments you could spare when they said full appointments were reserved for patients on your list. I now realize they couldn’t have acted on your orders, must have done the same with the endless people who came seeking your services. But I was told you’re leaving in an hour, and that long might not do now either and …”

He raised his hands to stem the flow of her agitation, his previous suspicions crashing in a domino effect.

“You’re here for a consultation?”

She raised eyes brimming with tears and … wariness? Nodded.

Relief stormed through him. She wasn’t here about the ad, about Hesham. She was here seeking his surgical services.

Next moment relief scattered as another suspicion detonated.

“You’re sick?”

Three

She was sick.

That explained everything. The only thing that made sense. Terrible sense. Her desperation. Her mood swings. Her fainting.

She had a neurological condition. According to her symptoms, maybe … a brain tumor. And if she’d sought him out, it had to be advanced. No one sought him specifically except in conditions deemed beyond the most experienced surgeons’ skills. In neurosurgery, he was one of three on earth who’d made a vocation of tackling the inoperable, resolving the incurable.

But a month had passed since she’d first tried to reach him. Her condition could have progressed from minimal hope to none.

Could it be he’d found her, only to lose her again?

No, he wouldn’t. In the past, he’d walked away from her, respecting the commitment she’d made. But disease, even what others termed terminal, especially that, was what he’d dedicated his life to defeating. If he could never have her, at least he would give the world back that vibrant being who’d made giving hope to the hopeless her life’s work….

“I’m not sick.”

The tremulous words hit him with the force of a bullet.

He stared at her, convictions and fears crashing, burning.

Had she said.? Yes, she had. But that could mean nothing. She’d already denied knowledge of why she’d fainted. She could still be undiagnosed, or in denial over the diagnosis she’d gotten, hoping he’d have a different verdict….

“It’s my baby.”

This time, only one thing echoed inside his head. Why?

Why did he keep getting shocked by each new verification that this woman had a life that had nothing to do with him? That she’d planned and lived her life without his being the major part of it?

Often he’d found himself overwhelmed by bitterness without apparent reason. He now admitted to himself what that reason had been. That he still couldn’t believe she hadn’t waited to find him, had accepted a deficient connection with someone else.

But that sense of betrayal was ridiculous, had nothing to do with reality. Her marriage had been imminent when he’d seen her. So why did it shock him so much that she had a baby, the normal outcome of a years-old union?

And that baby was sick. Enough to need his surgical skills.

His heart compressed as he realized the reason, the emotions behind her every word and tear so far. The same desperation he’d once felt, to save someone whose life he valued above his own.

How ironic was it that her intensely personal need for his purely professional services had made her finally seek him out?

He’d long given in to fate that had deemed that their paths diverged before they’d had the chance to converge. But to have her enter his life this way was a punishment, an injury. And he wasn’t in any condition to take more of either.

If it had only meant his own suffering, he would have taken any measure of both. But he held his patients’ lives under the steadiness of his hand, their futures subject to the clarity of his decisions. He couldn’t compromise that.

Now he had to deal her the blow of refusing her baby’s case. He would make sure her baby got the very best care. Just not his.

He inhaled a burning breath. “Ms. McNeal …”

As if feeling he’d let her down, she sat up, eyes blazing with entreaty. “I have Ryan’s investigations with me, so maybe minutes will do. Will you take a look, tell me what you think?”

She only wanted his opinion? Didn’t want him to operate on her baby? If so …

Again, as if she felt him relenting, she scrambled up. He noticed for the first time the briefcase and purse she’d dropped. All he’d seen had been her. In spite of everything, his eyes still clung to her every move, every nuance, and his every cell ached with long-denied impulses.

He saw himself striding after her, catching her back, plastering her body against his, burying his fingers in the luxury of her golden cascade of hair, sweeping it aside to open his lips over her warm, satin flesh. What he’d give for only one taste, one kiss …

She was returning, holding the briefcase as if it contained her world, her dawn-sky eyes full of brittle hope.

Ya Ullah, how was beauty like that even possible?

He’d never been attracted to blondes, never preferred Western beauty. But to him, she was the embodiment of everything that aroused his wonder and lust. And it was only partially physical. The connection he felt between them, that which needed no knowledge or experience, just was, was everything he wanted. When he couldn’t have her.

She started fumbling with the briefcase’s zipper as she neared him, and another idea occurred to him.

If this would be only a consultation, he owed her a full one after all the suffering she’d endured for the mere hope of it.

He should also give himself a dose of shock therapy. Seeing her with her baby, with her whole family, might cure him of this insidious malady he’d been struck with at her sight.

He stayed her hand with a touch, withdrew his as if contact with her burned him, and before he tugged her against him.

“I won’t be able to give you an opinion based on those investigations. I don’t rely on any except those done to my specifications.” Alarm flared in her eyes. He couldn’t believe the effect her distress had on him. It … physically hurt. He rushed to add, “Anyway, my preferred and indispensable diagnostic method is a clinical exam. Is your baby downstairs with his father?”

Her gaze blipped, and she barely suppressed a start.

Before he could analyze her reaction, she murmured, her voice deeper, huskier, “Ryan is with his nanny at our hotel. They both got too tired and Ryan was crying nonstop and disturbing everyone, I had to send them away.” Agitation spread across her features like a shadow. “I thought I’d bring them back as soon as I got an appointment with you. But the hotel’s near the airport, and at this time of day, even if I’d told Rose to come as soon as I knew you’d see me, it would have taken her too long to get here. I didn’t even tell her, because Mr. Elkaateb said you had only minutes to spare. That’s why I said an hour won’t do….”

He raised a hand, stopped her anxiety in its tracks. “I’m going home on my private jet, so the timing of my departure is up to me. Call your nanny and have her bring Ryan over.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, God, thank you …”

A hand wave again stopped her. He hated the vulnerability and helplessness gratitude engendered in others, was loathe to be on its receiving end. Hers took his usual discomfort to new levels.

She nodded, accepting that he wanted none of it, dived into her purse for her phone.

In moments, with her eyes fixed on him, she said, “Rose.” She paused as the woman on the other side burst out talking. Realizing he must hear the woman, Gwen shot him an apologetic, even … shy glance. “Yes, I did. Get Ryan here ASAP.”

He barely stopped himself at a touch of her forearm. “Tell her to take her time. I’ll wait.”

The look she gave him then, the beauty of her tremulous smile, twisted another red-hot poker in his gut. He had to get away from her before he did something they’d both regret.

He turned away, headed back to the desk and blindly started gathering the files he’d scattered.

When she ended her phone call, without looking up he asked the question burning a hole in his chest, trying to sound nonchalant, “Isn’t your husband coming? Or is he back home?”

He needed to see her with her husband. He had to have that image of her with her man burned into his mind, to erase the one he had of her with him.

She didn’t answer him for what felt like an eternity. His perception sharpened and time warped with her near.

He forced himself to keep rearranging the desk, didn’t raise his eyes to read on her face the proof of her involvement with another. He should, to sever his own inexplicable and ongoing one. He couldn’t. It would be bad enough to hear it in her voice as she mentioned her husband, the father of her child.

When her answer finally came, it was subdued, almost inaudible. He almost missed it. Almost.

His heart kicked his ribs so hard that he felt both would be bruised. His eyes jerked up to her.

She’d said, “I don’t have a husband.”

He didn’t know when or how he’d crossed the distance back to her. He found himself standing before her again, the revelation reverberating in his head, in his whole being.

He heard himself rasp, “You’re divorced?”

She escaped his eyes, the slanting rays of sunset turning hers into bottomless aquamarines. “I was never married.”

He could only stare at her.

A long moment later, he voiced his bewilderment. “I thought you were engaged when I saw you at that conference.”

He thought, indeed. He’d thought of nothing else until he’d forced himself into self-inflicted amnesia.

Color rushed back into her cheeks, making his lips itch to taste that tide of peach. “I was. We … split up soon afterward …” She snatched a look back at him, her lips lifting with a faint twist of humor. “Sort of on the grounds of irreconcilable scientific differences.”

Suddenly he felt like putting his fist through the nearest wall.

B’haggej’ jaheem … in the name of hell! He’d walked away because he’d believed she would marry that Kyle Langstrom. And she hadn’t.

Frustration charred his blood as realizations swamped him, of what he’d wasted when he hadn’t pursued her, hadn’t at least followed up on her news. He would have found out she hadn’t married that … that person. But that didn’t necessarily mean that …

“He’s not the father of your child?”

She ended that suspicion with a simple, “No.”

Before delight overtook him, another realization quashed it.

She might not have married Langstrom, but she had a man in her life. He had to know. “Then who is your child’s father?”

She shrugged, unease thickening her voice. “Is this about Ryan’s condition? Do you think knowing his father is important for managing it or for his prognosis?”

He was tempted to say yes, to make it imperative for her to answer him. The temptation passed, and integrity, damn it to hell, took over. He exhaled his frustration with the code he could never break. “No, knowing the source of a congenital malformation has no bearing on the course of treatment or prognosis.”

“Then I don’t see how bringing up his father is relevant.”

She didn’t want to talk about this. She was right not to. He’d never dreamed of pursuing private information from anyone, let alone the parent of a prospective patient. But this was her, the one woman he had to know everything about.

He already knew everything that was relevant to him. From her work, he’d formed a thorough knowledge of her intellect and capabilities. Instinct provided the rest, about her nature and character and their compatibility to his. What remained was the status of any personal relationship she might have.

And yet, there was a legitimate reason for him to ask about the father. “It’s relevant because the father of your child should be here, especially if your child’s condition is as serious as you believe. As his father, he has equal right to decide his course of treatment, if there is any, and an equal stake in his future.”

Concession crept in her eyes. It was still a long moment later when she spoke, making him feel as if the words caused her internal damage on their way out. “Ryan … doesn’t have a father.”

And all he could ask himself now was when? When would that woman stop slamming him with shocks? When would she stop giving him fragments of answers that only raise more maddening questions?

“You mean he’s not a part of your lives? Is he gone? Dead?”

What? the shout rang inside his head. Just tell me.

Her eyes shot up to his. She must be as attuned to him as he was to her. He’d kept his tone even, his demeanor neutral. But she must have sensed the vehemence of his frustration.

She finally exhaled. “I had Ryan from a donor.”

This time he did stagger back a step.

There was no end to her surprises.

But he was beyond surprised. He was flabbergasted. He would have never even considered this a possibility.

Even though he knew this would mean something huge when he let it sink in, and he couldn’t understand why she’d been so averse to disclosing this fact, it only raised more questions. “Why would someone so young resort to a sperm donor?”

She kept her eyes anywhere but at him, her color now dangerous. “Age is just one factor why women go the donor route. And it’s been a while since I left the designation ‘so young’ behind. Thirty-two is hardly spring chick territory.”

His lips twitched at this, yet another trace of wit. “With forty being the new thirty even where child bearing is concerned, you are firmly in that territory. If I’d just met you, I wouldn’t give you more than twenty-two.”

Her shoulders jerked on a disbelieving huff as she gave him one of those glances that made his blood pressure shoot up. “I’ve looked in a mirror lately, you know. You yourself said I look terrible. But anyway, thanks for the … chivalry.”

“I only ever say what I mean. You have proof of that from my unsweetened interrogation.” One corner of her lips lifted. “And my exact word was depleted. It’s clear you’re neglecting yourself in your anxiety over your child. It doesn’t make you any less … breathtaking.”

It was her own breath that stalled now. The sound it made catching in her throat made him dizzy with desire.

He intended to hear that sound, and many, many others, as he compromised her breathing with too much pleasure. For now he pressed on. “And I’ll keep it up until you tell me the whole story, so how about you volunteer it?”

Her shoulders rose and dropped helplessly. “Maybe you should keep it up and I’ll answer what I can because I don’t know what constitutes a whole story to you.”

“I want to know why a woman like you, who will be pursued by men when you’re seventy-two, chose to have a child without one. Was it because of your ex-fiancé? Was there more to your breakup than you let on? What did he do to put you off relationships?”

The hesitant humor playing on her lips reached her eyes. He couldn’t wait until he could see it fully unleashed. “I did ask for it. But you can’t be further from the truth in Kyle’s case. I’m the villain of the piece in that story. It was because of me that even working together became counterproductive.”

Zain. That was succinct and unequivocal. And still deficient.

He persisted, “Then why?”

She looked away again. “Not everything has to have a huge or complex reason. I just wanted a baby.”

He knew she was hiding something. The conviction burned in his gut with its intensity. “And you couldn’t wait to have one the usual way? When another suitable man came along?”

“I wasn’t interested in having another man, suitable or not.”

She fell silent. He knew she’d say no more on that issue.

He had more to say, to ask, to think, and everything to feel. It all roiled inside him, old frustrations and new questions. But one thing crystallized until it outshone everything else.

Not only didn’t she have a man in her life, but she also hadn’t wanted one. After she’d seen him. He knew it. Just like he hadn’t wanted another woman after he’d seen her.

Elation swept him. Changed the face of his existence.

He didn’t know how he stopped from doing what he’d wanted to do since that first moment—sweep her in his arms and kiss her until she begged for him. But he couldn’t do it now.

Not having her now was still torment, only sweet instead of bitter, and the wait would only make having her in time that much more transfiguring.

For now, she needed his expertise, not his passion. He would give her everything she needed.

Her eyes were focused on him in such appeal that he could swear he felt his bones liquefying. “Won’t you look at the investigations anyway, just to get an idea, while we wait?”

Eyes like these, influence like this, should be outlawed. He’d tell her that. Soon.

He smiled at her, took her elbow, guided her back to the couch. “I’d rather form an uninfluenced opinion.”

She slid him a sideways glance, and the tinge of teasing there almost made him send everything to hell and unleash four years’ worth of hunger on her. “Is anyone even capable of influencing your opinion?”

He laughed. For the first time … since he didn’t remember when. After endless months of gloom, with her here, with her free, he felt a weight had lifted. If it weren’t for Hesham, for his unfound woman and child, he would have said he was on the verge of experiencing joy.

“All this because of my interrogation?” He gently prodded her to sit down, got out his cell phone, called Emad and asked him to bring in a meal. When she insisted she’d settle for a hot drink, he overrode her with a gentle “Doctor’s orders.”

He came down beside her, close enough to feel imbued by the fragrant warmth of her body, but leaving enough space for her attempt to observe a semblance of formality.

She looked at him now, not enraged or wary or imploring, but with fascination, unable to stop studying him as he studied her, and the openness of her face, the clarity of her spirit … amazing.

He sighed his pleasure. “I would be a very poor scientist and a terrible surgeon if I wasn’t open to new influences. I should be making the crack about you. After half an hour of my premium persistence all I got out of you was a half-dozen sentences.”

She looked away, making him want to kick himself for whatever he’d done to make her deprive him of her gaze. “Your judgment has served you, and endless others, unbelievably well. You’re one surgeon who deserves to have omnipotent notions.”

“You mean my rare detractors aren’t right and I’m not just a highborn lowlife suffering from advanced narcissistic sadism laced with a terminal god complex?”

She buried her face in her hands as he paraphrased her opening salvo, before looking back up at him, embarrassment and humor a heady mix in her eyes. “Do you think there’s any chance you can pretend I never said that?”

He quirked his lips, reveling in taking her in degrees from desperation to ease. “Why would I? Because you were wrong? Are you sure you were? Maybe I behaved because you handed me my head.”

A chuckle cracked out of her. “I doubt anyone can do that.”

“You’d be really, really surprised what you can do.”

He let to me go unspoken, yet understood.

Before he could analyze the effect this declaration had on her, Emad entered with the waitstaff.

Fareed saw the question, the hope in his eyes as Emad took in the situation. Fareed gave a slight headshake letting him know she wasn’t the woman they’d been looking for.

But she was the woman he’d been looking for.

After preparing the table in front of them, and with disappointment and curiosity filling his eyes, Emad left.

For the next hour Fareed discovered new pleasures. Coddling Gwen—to her chagrin, before she succumbed, ate and drank what he served her, delighting in her resurfacing steadiness, in the banter that flowed between them, the fluency of appreciation.

Then Emad knocked again. This time he ushered in a woman carrying a child. Gwen’s child.

Fareed couldn’t focus on either. He only had eyes for Gwen as she sprung to her feet, her face gripped with emotions, their range breathtaking in scope and depth. Anxiety, relief, welcome, love, protection and so much more, every one fierce, total.

He heard the child squeal as he threw himself into her eager embrace. He registered the elegant, classically pretty redhead in her late forties, who Gwen introduced as Rose Maher, a distant maternal relative and Ryan’s nanny. He welcomed her with all the cordiality he could access, filed everything about her for later analysis. Then he turned to Gwen’s child.

And the world stopped in its tracks.

Four

Fareed hadn’t thought about Gwen’s child until this moment. Not in any terms other than his being hers.

He hadn’t had the presence of mind to formulate expectations, of the child, of his own reactions when he saw him. Had he had any mental faculties to devote to either, he would have thought he’d feel what he felt for any sick child in his care.

Now he knew anything he could have imagined would have been way off base.

She’d said Ryan didn’t have a father. He could almost believe that declaration literally now. It was as if he was hers, and hers alone. Even the discrepancy in age and gender, the almost-bald head, did nothing to dilute the reality that he was a pure part of her, body and soul.

But that absolute kinship and similarity between child and mother wasn’t why the sight of Ryan shook him to his core. Ryan, even though no more than nine or ten months old, was his own person. His effect wasn’t an echo of his mother’s, but all his own.

Ryan looked at him with eyes that were the same heavenly blue as his mother’s but reflecting his own nature and character, inquisitive, intrepid, enthusiastic. His dewy lips were rounded on his same breath-bating fascination as he probed him as if asking if he was a friend. Then he seemed to decide he was, his eyes crinkling and his lips spreading.

“Say hello to Dr. Aal Zaafer, Ryan.”

Fareed blinked as Gwen’s indulgent tone cascaded over his nerves, such a different melody from any he’d heard from her.

It had an equal effect on Ryan, who smiled delightedly up at her. Next moment, his every synapse fired as the child turned back to him, encompassed him in the same unbridled smile. Then he extended his arms to him.

He stared at the chubby hands closing and opening, beckoning for him to hurry and pick him up.

Gwen moved Ryan out of reach. “Darling, the adorable act works only on me and Rose.” Fareed’s eyes moved from Ryan’s crestfallen face to her apologetic one. “I didn’t think he would ask you for a ride. He doesn’t like to be held much, even by me. Too independent.”

She thought his hesitation meant he didn’t want to hold Ryan? She didn’t realize he was just … paralyzed? Everything inside him wanted to reach back for Ryan, but the urge was so strong, so … unknown that it overwhelmed him.

He had to correct that assumption. He couldn’t bear that she thought she’d imposed on him, couldn’t stand seeing Ryan’s chin quiver at being apparently rebuffed.

“I’m—” he cleared his throat “—I’m honored he thinks I’m worthy of being his ride. He probably fancies one from a higher altitude.”

A chuckle came from his left. His gaze moved with great effort from the captivating sight mother and son made to Rose.

She was still eyeing him with that almost-awed expression in her green eyes, but humor and shrewdness were taking over. “Ryan is a genius, and he knows a good proposition when he sees it. And you’re as good as it gets.”

A strangled gasp issued from Gwen. He didn’t need to look at her to know that her eyes were shooting daggers at Rose.

His lips spread in his widest smile in years. “Ms. Maher, I knew you were a discerning woman the moment I saw you.”

Rose let out a tinkling laugh. “Call me Rose, please. And oh, yes, I’ve been around long enough to know premium stuff when I see it, too.”

He almost felt the heat of mortification blasting off Gwen. And he loved it. Rose was saying the exact things to dissolve the tension, to set him free of the immobility that had struck him.

“I am honored you think I belong on the premium shelf, Rose, almost as much as I was to be considered a desirable ride by Ryan.” He shared another smile with the woman he already felt would be his ally, before he turned to Gwen and held out his arms.

His heart revved at what flared in her eyes. Momentary belief that his arms where inviting her into their depths. And a stifled urge to rush into them.

He let her know he’d seen it with a lingering glance before he transferred his smile to the baby who was already bobbing in her arms, demanding to be released. “Shall we, young sir?”

Ryan squealed his eagerness, reached back to him. Fareed noted his movements, already assessing his condition. He received him with as much care as he would a priceless statue that might shatter if he breathed hard. He looked down on the angelic face that was regarding him in such open wonder and something fierce again shuddered behind his breastbone.

Ya Ullah. That baby boy wielded magic as potent as his mother, and both their brands of spells had his name on them.

“You won’t dent him, you know?” Rose said.

He swept his gaze to her, his lips twisting. “It’s that clear I’m scared witless of holding him?”

Rose let out another good-natured laugh. “Your petrified expression did give me a clue or two that your experience in handling tiny humans is nonexistent.”

“You don’t have kids?”

Gwen’s soft question swept his gaze back to her. She looked … horrified that she’d asked it.

Satisfaction surged inside him. She needed to know his private details as much as he’d needed to know hers. Even though she was clearly kicking herself for asking, she was dying to know. If he had children, and therefore, a wife.

He’d thought his life wasn’t conducive to raising a family, that he didn’t have that innate drive to become a father. Now he knew the real reason why he’d never thought of having children. Because he’d never found a woman he wanted to have them with.

Now looking at her, holding her child in his arms, he did.

He looked down at Ryan, who was industriously trying to undo his shirt’s top buttons, before he looked back at her, giving her a glimpse of what he felt, if not too much of it. She wasn’t ready for the full power of his intentions.

Then he murmured, “I don’t.”

Her lashes fluttered down. But he felt it. Her relief.

Elation spread through him. “But I am an uncle many times over, through two of my sisters and many first cousins, to an assortment of boys and girls from ages one to fifteen.”

Gwen raised her eyes back to his, and … ya Ullah. Although still guarded and trying to obscure her feelings, the change that had come over them since she’d walked in here, the warmth she couldn’t fully neutralize, singed him. “I bet you’re their favorite uncle.”

He grinned at her. “You honor me with your willingness to waste money betting on me. But a waste it would be. ‘Favorite Uncle’ is a title unquestioningly reserved for Jawad, my second-eldest brother. We call him the Child Whisperer. All I can lay claim to is that I think they don’t detest me. I’ve been too preoccupied for the span of their lives to develop any real relationship with them. I would have liked to, but I have to admit, when I’m around them, I wonder how their parents put up with their demands and distraction and still function. I wonder how they made the decision to have them in the first place.”

Wisps of mischief sparked in her eyes. “So that’s why you kept asking me why I had Ryan? Because you think your nephews and nieces are a noisy, messy time-suck, and that an otherwise sane adult can have a child only by throwing away logic and disregarding all cautionary tales?”

He raised one eyebrow at her. “You know you’ve just called me Uncle Scrooge, don’t you?”

Rose burst out chuckling. “Busted.”

Gwen spluttered qualifications, shooting reproach at Rose, and he aborted her protests with a smile, showing her he was offense-proof, especially by anything coming from her. “Don’t take it back when you’re probably right. Interacting with children has never been one of my skills.”

The only child he’d loved having around and taking care of had been Hesham. But he’d been only eight years older. He hadn’t had any relevant experience with children outside his professional sphere.

She made an eloquent gesture indicating how he was holding Ryan with growing confidence, picking up various articles for his inspection. “If it has never been, then you’re capable of acquiring new skills on the fly.”

He’d always been uncomfortable receiving compliments, feeling the element of self-serving exaggeration in each. But her good opinion felt free of ulterior motives, and was clearly expressed against the dictates of her good sense. To him it felt … necessary.

He transferred his smile from her to Ryan. “It’s this little man who’s making me look like a quick study. He’s the one doing the driving here.”

Rose nodded. “Ryan does that. Just one look and a smile and the world is his to command. Very much like his mother.”

Gwen’s eyes darkened on something that gripped his heart in a tight fist. Something like … anguish. Ya Ullah, why?

Next second, he wanted to kick himself. How could he have forgotten the reason she was here? Ryan’s condition.

But he had forgotten, during the lifetime since she’d walked in and turned his life upside down all over again. But from holding Ryan, he had a firm idea what his condition was. It was time he did everything he could to put her mind to rest about it.

He adjusted his grip on Ryan, feeling as if he’d always held him, turned his face up with a finger beneath the dimpled chin that was a replica of Gwen’s. “Just so I don’t look like a total marionette, Ryan, how about we pretend I have a say here? How about you let me examine you now?”

“How about I leave you to your new game and go find me some food?” Rose said, clearly to give them privacy.

Fareed produced his cell phone, called Emad back. Emad appeared in under ten seconds, as if he’d been standing behind the door, which he probably had been. Eavesdropping?

He was resigned that Emad would go to any lengths to ascertain his safety. But what was there to worry about here? Getting ambushed by lethal doses of charisma and cuteness?

He gave him a mocking glance that Emad refused to rise to. “Will you please escort Rose to an early dinner, Emad? And do make it somewhere where they serve something better than the food simulations you got us from the hospital’s restaurant.”

He expected Emad to obey with his usual decorum, which never showed if he appreciated the chore or not. But wonder of wonders, after nodding to him with that maddening deference, he turned to Rose with interest—almost eagerness—sparking in his eyes. Fareed hadn’t seen anything like that in the man’s eyes since his late wife.

The gregarious Rose eyed him back with open appreciation and murmured to Gwen for all to hear, “So incredible things do

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