A Secret Birthright
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.