Defiant in the Desert (27 page)
She blinked at him, unsure whether she’d just imagined that. Love? Who’d said anything about love?
‘Tariq?’ she questioned, in confusion.
But he shook his head, determined to finish what he had begun, and it was like opening up the floodgates and letting his heart run free.
‘In you, I found something I’d never known with any other woman. Even before we became lovers you gave me an unwitting glimpse of what life
could
be like. Those days I spent in your cottage—I’d never felt so at peace. It felt like
home
,’ he realised wonderingly. ‘A home I’d never really known before. Only it took me a long time to realise what was staring me in the face.’ He paused. ‘Just like something else which was there all the time—only I was too pig-headed to admit it. And that’s the fact that I love you, Izzy. Simple as that—I just do.’
Still she didn’t dare believe him—because she sensed that there would be no coming back from this. That if she discovered his words were nothing but a sham then her pain would never heal. But the light which gleamed from his ebony eyes cut through the last of her resistance. It broke through the brick wall she had erected around her heart and made it crumble away as if it were made of sand.
She lifted her fingertips to his lips.
‘I love you,’ he said fiercely. ‘And if I have to tell you a thousand times a day for the rest of our lives before you will believe me, then so be it—I will.’
A little awkwardly, given the bump of the baby, she scrambled to her knees and sat on his lap, facing him, her hands smoothing over his face, touching his skin with a trembling delight. ‘Oh, Tariq. My sweet, darling Tariq.’
‘I love you, Izzy,’ he said brokenly. ‘And I was a stubborn fool to have tried so hard
not
to love you.’ He stared at her, willing the tawny eyes to give him the only answer his heart craved. ‘Just tell me it’s not too late.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ she whispered, as she dragged in a great shuddering breath of relief. ‘I think we’ve managed to save it in the nick of time. And thank goodness for that—because I love you too, Tariq al Hakam, and you’d better believe it. I’ve loved you for a long, long time, I think. Since the time you lay injured—or maybe even before that. Maybe it just took your brush with death to show me what already lay deep in my heart. And I love the baby that grows beneath my breast—
your
baby.’
He stared at her, her soft understanding suddenly hard to take. ‘You are too sweet, Izzy. Too kind to a man who has done nothing but—’
‘No!’ she contradicted, her firm denial butting into his words. ‘I’m just fighting for what is mine—and you
are
mine, Tariq al Hakam. You and this baby are all mine.’
‘
Our
baby,’ he said fiercely.
She touched her lips to the palm of his hand, seeing the last of the pain and regret leave his eyes as they were eclipsed by love. And she felt her heart soar as the bitterness of the past dissolved into the glorious present. ‘Our baby,’ she agreed.
He caught her against him and brought her head close to his. ‘Beautiful, Isobel,’ he whispered against her soft cheek. ‘Outside and in, your loveliness shines like the moon in the night sky.’
‘Poetry, too?’ she questioned unsteadily. ‘I didn’t know you did poetry.’
‘Neither did I. But then, I could never really see the point of it before.’
‘Just kiss me, Tariq,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Kiss me quickly—before I wake up and discover this is all a dream.’
His lips grazed hers, slowly at first, and their eyes were wide open as they watched themselves kiss. And then hunger and passion and love turned the kiss into something else, and Izzy’s breath began to quicken as she pressed her swollen breasts against him.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said, dragging his lips away and hearing her little sigh of objection. Carefully disengaging himself, Tariq got up from the sofa and went over to his desk, where he bent over and spoke into the intercom. ‘Fiona, can you hold all calls, please? Izzy and I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the day.’ He turned and dazzled her with a blazing look of love. ‘Do we, darling?’
In the outer office, Fiona couldn’t believe it. Sheikh Tariq al Hakam had just called Isobel Mulholland
darling
and asked that they be left alone for the rest of the day! It was the sort of
unbelievable
statement which was impossible for her to keep to herself, and she went straight down to the water-cooler to tell anyone who would listen.
But perhaps that was what Tariq had intended.
Rumours were soon spreading like wildfire through the building, and by five o’clock the evening newspapers were all carrying the news that the Playboy Prince was going to be a daddy.
EPILOGUE
I
T
WAS
A
SOURCE
of enormous frustration to Tariq that Izzy refused to marry him—no matter how many times he asked her.
‘Why not?’ he demanded one morning, exasperated by what he perceived as her stubbornness. ‘Is it because of all those stupid accusations I made when you told me—when I said you’d deliberately got yourself pregnant in order to trap me?’
‘No, darling,’ she replied with serene honesty— because those days of fury and confusion were long behind them. ‘That has absolutely nothing to do with it.’
‘Why, then, Izzy?’
Isobel wasn’t quite sure. Was it because things seemed so perfect now? So much the way she’d always longed for them to be that she was terrified of jeopardising them with unnecessary change? As if marriage would be like a superstitious person walking on a crack in the pavement—and bad luck would come raining down on them?
It had become a bit of a game—which Tariq was determined to win, because he always won in the end. But winning was not uppermost in his thoughts. Mostly he wanted to marry Izzy because he loved her—with a love which had blown him away and continued to do so.
‘You’ll be a princess,’ he promised.
‘But I don’t
want
to be a princess! I’m happy just the way I am.’
‘You are an infuriating woman,’ he growled.
‘And you just like getting your own way!’
His lips curved into a reluctant smile. ‘That much is true,’ he conceded.
He asked her again on the morning she gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter and he felt as if his heart would burst with pride and emotion. The nurse had just handed him the tiny bundle, and he held the swathed scrap and stared down at eyes which were blue and wide—shaped just like her mother’s. But she had a shock of hair which was pure black—like his. Wonderingly, he touched her perfectly tiny little hand and it closed over his finger like a starfish—a bond made in that moment which only death would break.
His eyes were wet when he looked up and the lump in his throat made speaking difficult, but he didn’t care. ‘Why won’t you marry me, Izzy?’ he questioned softly.
Slumped back against the pillows—dazed but elated—Isobel regarded her magnificent Sheikh. This powerful man who cradled their tiny baby so gently in his arms. Why, indeed? Because she was stubborn? Or because she wanted him to know that marriage wasn’t important to her? That she wasn’t one of those women who were angling for the big catch, determined to get his ring on her finger? That she loved him for who he was and not for what he could give her?
‘Doesn’t it please you to know that I’m confident enough in your love that I don’t need the fuss of a legal ceremony?’ she questioned demurely.
‘No,’ he growled. ‘It doesn’t. I want to give our girl some security.’
And that was when their eyes met and she realised that he was offering her what her mother had never had. What
she
had never had. A proper hands-on father who wasn’t going anywhere. Here was a man who wasn’t being forced to commit but who genuinely
wanted
to. So what was stopping her?
‘I don’t want a big wedding,’ she warned.
He bit back his smile of triumph. ‘Neither do I.’ But her unexpected acquiescence had filled him with even more joy than he had thought possible, and he turned his attention to the now sleeping baby in his arms. ‘We’ll have to think about what to call her.’
‘A Khayarzah name, I think.’
‘I think so, too.’
After much consultation they named her Nawal, which meant ‘gift’—which was what she was—and when she was six months old they took her to Khayarzah, where their private visit turned into a triumphant tour. The people went out of their way to welcome this second son and his family into their midst—and Tariq at last accepted his royal status and realised that he had no wish to change it. For it was his daughter’s heritage as well as his, he realised.
It was in Khayarzah one night, when they were lying in bed in their room in the royal palace, that Tariq voiced something which had been on his mind for some time.
‘You know, we could always try to find your father,’ he said slowly. ‘It would be an easy thing to do. That’s if you want to.’
Isobel stirred. The bright moonlight from the clear desert sky flooded in through the unshuttered windows as she lifted her eyes to study her husband.
‘What on earth makes you say that?’
Expansive and comfortable, with her warm body nestling against him, Tariq shrugged. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since we had Nawal. How much of a gap there would be in my life if I didn’t have her. If I had never had the opportunity to be a father.’
‘But—’
‘I know he deserted your mother,’ he said softly. ‘And I’m not saying that you have to find him. Or that even if we do you have to forgive him. I’m just saying that the possibility is there—that’s all.’
It was his mention of the word
forgive
which made Isobel think carefully about his words. Because didn’t forgiveness play a big part in every human life—their own included? And once her husband had planted the seed of possibility it took root and grew. Surely she owed Nawal the chance of meeting her only surviving grandparent...?
Tariq was right. It
was
easy to find a man who had just ‘disappeared’ twenty-five years ago—especially when you had incalculable wealth and resources at your fingertips.
Isobel didn’t know what she had been expecting—but it certainly wasn’t a rather sad-looking man with grey hair and tawny eyes. Recently widowed, John Franklin was overjoyed to meet her and her family. His own personal regret was that he and his wife had never been able to have children of their own.
It was a strange and not altogether comfortable moment when she shook hands for the first time with the man who had given life to her over a quarter of a century ago. But then he saw the baby, and he smiled, and Isobel’s heart gave an unexpected wrench. For in it she saw something of herself—and something of her daughter, too. It was a smile which would carry on down through the generations. And there was something in that smile which wiped away all the bitterness of the past.
‘You’re very quiet,’ observed Tariq as they drove away from John Franklin’s modest house. ‘No regrets?’
Isobel shook her head. What was it they said? That you regretted the things you didn’t do, rather than the things you did? ‘None,’ she answered honestly. ‘He was good with Nawal. I think they will be good for each other in the future.’
‘Ah, Izzy,’ said Tariq. ‘You are a sweet and loving woman.’
‘I can afford to be,’ she said happily. ‘Because I’ve got you.’
Their main home was to be in London, although whenever it was possible they still escaped to Izzy’s tiny country cottage, where their love had first been ignited. Because maybe Francesca had been right, Tariq conceded. Maybe it
was
important that royal children knew what it was like to be ordinary.
He didn’t buy the ‘Blues’ football team after all. It came to him in a blinding flash one night that he didn’t actually
like
football. Besides, what was the point of acquiring a prestigious soccer team simply because he
could,
when its acquisition brought with it nothing but envy and unwanted press attention? He wanted to keep the cameras away from his beloved family, as much as possible. Anyway, polo was his game.
Real men didn’t prance around in a pair of shorts, kicking a ball.
Real men rode horses.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A HUNGER FOR THE FORBIDDEN by Maisey Yates.
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