by Annie O'Neil
“Stop. Don’t worry. The curtain goes up in a minute or two—just...”
Just what? Go out into the whole of London and find her? Bring the production to a halt while they waited? One meeting and she’d already threaded herself into his psyche—a single gold thread in a tapestry of too much unhappiness.
He cleared his throat and reenergized his tapping. Golden presence or otherwise, the woman was late. He wasn’t unaware the fault could be his own. It was very possible he’d been too harsh. Shaping his own fears into too acute a display of anger.
He leaned across to Amira and dropped a kiss on top of her curtain of ebony hair as she diligently worked her way through the program, her index finger distractedly fiddling with a loose tooth. He fought the urge to tell her to leave it be. His parents had allowed him free rein to be a child and he owed it to his daughter to do the same. She would bear full responsibility for ruling Da’har one day. For now? She could worry about her loose tooth.
Amira turned to him and pressed one of her small hands onto his knee, mouthing and signing, “Daddy! You’re jiggling the entire balcony!”
“I’m sorry, darling. Just excited for the princesses. Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” she signed, her brows knitting together as she did. “Do you think there will be dancing frogs?” Her fingers lifted and twirled upon her palm as if it were the stage and her fingers the dancers.
“I can’t see why not.” He gave what he hoped looked like an enthusiastic nod.
Dancing frogs! Definitely not his milieu, but if it lit up his daughter’s somber expression, then so much the better.
He looked up sharply as the lights began to dim and the initial glimmerings of the musicians warming up drew to a halt in the orchestra pit. He felt his daughter’s eyes on him as he responded to the sound of the trill of a flute, a few seesawed notes upon a violin, the rich scales running along the length of a cello, and his heart ached for her. Ached for the day when she would be able to hear what he did. Music. It had played such a huge part in his life before Amira’s mother died. The foundation of so many moments. And when the doctors had told him they had lost her, along with his wife’s beautiful smile went his passion for singing.
Some murmuring to his right caught his attention. His security staff were—were they laughing with someone? A flash of bright blond curly hair answered how such a thing was possible.
Robyn Kelly.
Like a bright, energetic force of nature—springtime in human form—she entered the area prepared for Idris and his daughter. He felt himself pluck at his suit’s lapels, then run a hand through hair he knew didn’t need revamping. Primping! His facial features tightened at the thought. She was here to impress them. Not the other way around.
Robyn was walking backward, still laughing at something one of the security guards had said, and when she turned around he was struck, just as dramatically as he had been the first time, by the rich amber luster of her eyes. If she hadn’t collided with one of the seats and stumbled, he would have likened her to Persephone. But the Greek goddess had turns of darkness which could turn the world cold and decayed. There didn’t seem to be anything that wouldn’t flourish underneath the warmth of Robyn’s smile.
Curiosity struck as she looked up with an embarrassed smile and inched her way along the row of seats toward him. All too quickly he saw the hidden sadness he’d unearthed earlier when her eyes lit upon Amira and then moved to him. A darkness only she was privy to. And, as their eyes met again when she approached him with a mouthed apology for her lateness, he knew in his heart it was true. There were depths to this woman—hidden sorrows she bore on her own without malice or fury in the way his own grief often manifested itself.
A hint of rain and fresh flowers wafted toward him as she settled into her chair, unlooping the strap of her satchel from around her neck. She scanned the location and again, as an expectant hush filled the theater, mouthed how impressed she was by the seats. She then leaned forward and gave a little wave to Amira.
He watched, mesmerized, as his daughter...smiled.
What was it about Robyn that brought about such open joy?
His eyes were locked on Robyn’s fingers as she introduced herself to Amira—speaking in Arabic first, then the same again in English.
“Robyn,” her slender fingers spelled.
“Like the bird?” his daughter asked, eyes clearly glued on Robyn’s lips, her tiny fingers mimicking the Arabic sign for bird.
“Very close,” Robyn deftly signed back. “Shall we use that as my name?”
Idris’s eyes flicked between the two—leaning across his lap as if he weren’t there, barely cognizant of the curtain lifting above the stage as Amira and this mystery of a surgeon in Mary Poppins mode decided Robyn’s sign language name would be that of little bird.
It suited her.
Robyn’s fingers continued signing at lightning speed, mouthing the words as she did that they’d carry on the discussion later and come up with a suitable name for Amira during the interval. In the meantime, she drew their collective attention to the warm wash of light and sequined princesses filling the stage—it was time for fairy tales.
As Idris settled back against the seat, he caught himself smiling. It was fairly clear in this particular scenario who was playing the frog.
* * *
“May I sit here?” Amira’s dark eyes were huge and hopeful.
Robyn watched Idris’s face for a reaction.
Who could say no to that face?
Not to mention the wash of relief she felt when the seven-year-old pointed at the seat where Idris had been sitting before the interval.
“It is fine with me.” She nodded. Hopefully not too eagerly.
Amira’s happy smile was such a reward she had to freeze her own grin for a moment, hoping to mask a jab of concern. A shift in the “seating plan” was a double-edged sword. The second her eyes had lit upon the gorgeous little girl, Robyn’s heart had swooped up and cinched tight. An instant connection. And she knew where that could so easily lead. No matter how often she tried to view children as work, they always ended up becoming so much more. The number of times she’d opened up the door to her heart only to suffer the excruciating pain of loss...
It was nothing more than a parent would feel. Of course. And that thought alone threatened to blind her for an instant, sorrow eclipsing pragmatism with the knowledge that she would never be a mother herself. Never have the right to love a child as much as she so often did.
She shook her head clear. She’d promised Victoria she would come see the musical as per Idris’s request. All part of the deal to save the hospital. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t a reminder she’d never have a child of her own. It was a moment to savor.
Little-girl-heaven moments, she called them at Paddington’s. This was just an out-of-context meeting made more pronounced by the gilt-edged theater, the front row royal balcony seats, the amazing musical and a certain dark-haired, glowering sheikh begrudgingly shifting over a seat so his daughter could sit next to the British interloper.
She grinned as Amira plopped down with a satisfied nod—the female version of her father. Big brown eyes. A black sheet of polished ebony hair. A heart-shaped face and a near permanent expression of earnest intent on her face.
Amira’s beauty was hardly a surprise given the gene pool she’d sprung from. Not that Robyn thought Idris was gorgeous or anything... It was just a question of science and personal preference. Just a little. Okay, a whole lot. But she had, on her lightning-fast internet search on the way to the theater, also seen how very much in love he’d been with his late wife—another beauty. It explained the imperiously arched eyebrows and pursed lips when he looked at her—a discombobulated mishmash of science and too much heart on her sleeve.
“So what did you decide upon?”
“Sorry
?” Robyn looked up to Idris.
“Amira’s sign language name.”
“Oh!” Robyn leaned forward so that Amira could see her lips, as well, and began signing. “We forgot, didn’t we? What would you like your name to be?”
“I want you to pick it,” Amira replied somberly.
“Me?”
When Robyn glanced across at Idris, she saw his eyebrows were raised as high as hers felt.
“Maybe we should wait.”
“But what if I don’t see you again?”
This time she could practically feel Idris’s gaze burning into her—expectant. She hadn’t exactly given him an answer, had she?
Victoria’s words rang in her head again. “We can delay your surgeries, but we can’t put off saving Paddington’s. We’re down to the wire. He may be our last chance.” Then she’d added the line that always spurred Robyn into action. “Just think of all this could do for the children.”
Unable to meet Idris’s questioning gaze, she shifted in her seat, putting her full focus on Amira.
“What do you say we pick the perfect name another time?”
Amira’s shoulders slumped a little, while in the corner of her eye she saw Idris’s stiffen.
“When I come to Da’har,” Robyn amended, not daring to look toward Idris.
She was certain there would be a look of triumph in those dark eyes of his if she met his gaze now. Unwitting or no, he had found her weak spot. The challenge of a parent to even attempt to love their child as much as they did. Their own flesh and blood. How could she, a barren spinster, ever understand what it meant to love a child?
It was possible. Robyn had felt the deep love again and again. Experienced the pain of loss as many times. And would have to bury her pain if she were to save Paddington’s.
Amira looked up at her father, face alight with happy disbelief. As the lights began to lower she swung her head first to Robyn, then to Idris and back again in taut anticipation of the second act.
How to improve upon dancing frogs and swirling princesses? Robyn could hardly stop a giggle from burbling forth. Amira’s excitement was contagious.
She had to fight the urge to reach across and hold hands with the little girl, settling on folding her hands in her lap like a reserved nun.
She tsked herself.
If she’d been by Ryan’s bedside, the poor lad back at Paddington’s who had well and truly captured her heart, she would definitely have taken hold of his hand without hesitation. Or Penelope Craig, with whom she’d spent countless hours reading and rereading the childhood classics. Princesses in attics. Wannabe ballerinas. Discovering magic gardens. She followed Amira’s bright eyes as the little girl pushed forward in her seat and leaned against the red velvet balcony ledge to take in the spectacle unfolding in front of them. So...alive! This little girl deserved, at the very least, a shot at having her hearing restored.
So what was making going to Da’har so difficult?
When she saw a large hand protectively rub across his daughter’s shoulders, she knew the answer instantly.
Idris.
He’d made an impact and it was unsettling her. The man obviously adored his daughter, but his cool reserve felt...not judgy, but...
Critical.
As though each and every thing she did were under a microscope. It made her all squirmy and un-surgeon-like. Well, tough. This was her surgery. Her terms. Except, of course, for the parts that were his terms. Rearrange her plans, her surgeries, fly thousands of miles away from her life here and—
A sudden change in the orchestra’s music caught her attention. Lots of minor chords and eerie lighting filled the theater as the evil Frog King took his long-legged, menacing strides across the stage toward the beautiful fairy princess, bravely facing the man—frog!—who could change everything with the flick of a—
Before she knew what was happening, Amira had clambered into her lap, eyes still glued to the stage, her little hands reaching for Robyn’s so she could be wrapped in the safety of her arms.
Instinct took over. Her arms slipped around Amira’s waist, a delicious wash of little-girl aroma filling her senses and she looked to Idris for—what exactly? Approval?
His expression was unreadable. And fleeting. She caught a slight twitch in his jaw as he turned back to the musical as if his daughter was always crawling onto the laps of virtual strangers for a cuddle.
Too much too soon. The vibe was coming off him loud and clear.
Only one way to solve that problem.
She scooped up Amira and handed her toward Idris. His eyes widened, and ever so slightly his implacable expression softened as he reached out his arms and took his daughter, her bright eyes still entranced by the unfolding action of the proud Frog King and the courageous fairy princess.
No chance of art imitating life up here in the royal balcony! Robyn plucked her work pager off her waistband and made a What can you do? shrug of apology, scooped up her raincoat and skulked out of the auditorium like the coward she felt.
When she dared to turn around and peek through the red velvet curtains, it was as if she had never been there at all. Amira’s arm had snaked around her father’s neck as he held her close. Father and daughter. An unbreakable bond.
Robyn turned and all but ran down the stairs, gulping in lungful after lungful of London’s cool night air when she pushed through the double doors out onto the street. She held her arm up to hail a taxi, then abruptly dropped it. She could walk to the hospital from here.
A brisk walk would take thirty, maybe forty minutes from the West End given the amount of energy she had to burn. She’d limit herself to an hour at the hospital. Just a chance to peek in on the little sleeping faces. The ones she wouldn’t let herself get attached to except, of course, on a professional basis. Hopefully, little Penelope Craig wouldn’t be there. Too much time in the cardiology unit for that wonderful little girl.
With each click of her boot heels she added a mental note to her ever-growing tick list.
Sort out her surgeries.
One or two days max in Da’har.
Arm’s length.
That was where she’d keep Amira. No more cuddling during the scary bits of West End musicals.
And, of course, her gloweringly attractive father would have to be sure he knew his place. The man had more than a little Mr. Rochester running through him. An image of herself as Jane Eyre flickered into her head and out again when she remembered Jane had to have all that awful tumbling about in the moors in the cold and wet. August in Da’har would be sunny and enriching—not that desert kingdoms had ever been on her radar.
Would she get to wear a gauzy and enigmatically mysterious ensemble? Curly toed silk shoes? Ride a camel?
Her foot caught on the pavement and she only just stopped herself from taking a nosedive onto the hard concrete.
Serves you right, daydreamer.
Back to the checklist.
Her mind shot into the familiar gear of Only Look Forward, Do Not Look Back as the rain began to fall around her in a mist. At first it added a bit of ambience to the evening until heaven wearied of its indecision and cranked open a full-blown downpour.
List-making became more succinct at this point.
Perform the surgery.
Don’t get attached. To anyone.
Job done.
* * *
“A fortnight?”
Idris held the phone away from his ear and looked at the receiver as if he were going mad. Most people would give their right arm to stay at the palace for a day let alone a couple of weeks. He cleared his throat, drew a swift outline of a bird on the hotel notepad and tried again.
“Yes, Dr. Kelly. A fortnight.”
Silence.
He obliterated the bird under a th
ick layer of lead, snapping the pencil tip off in the process. He didn’t know why, but this whole business of getting Robyn on board felt more akin to...wooing than asking and receiving.
“Dr. Kelly—a fortnight or we go elsewhere.”
Robyn stared at her phone receiver—almost expecting to see Idris’s face through some sort of telephonic portal. When she heard him continuing, the irritation in his tone made her relieved this wasn’t a teleconference.
“Kaisha will sort out all the particulars and I will be the contact for everything involving Amira and her medical treatment.”
“There’s no need for that.”
“Yes,” he said. “There is.”
“Whatsoever you desire, Your Excellency.”
Since when had she morphed into a courtier?
Robyn hung up the phone without any of the usual niceties and stared out into the corridor where the hustle and bustle of Paddington’s continued as if nothing at all had changed in the world.
It had, though. All of the fear that had been gripping the hospital as it rallied its troops under the threat of closure had just taken on a seismic shift. And the responsibility for which direction that shift took was on her. She could almost imagine a tiny halo-wearing Victoria appearing on her shoulder and asking, “Well, Robyn? Are you going to save us?”
She tried to picture Idris with a little pair of horns and a trident on the other shoulder, but he kept turning into a shirtless Poseidon standing—poised for action—at the prow of a beautiful handmade ship, willing to do anything for his daughter’s well-being. Even acquiescing, just a little, to an ENT specialist if it meant his little girl would hear one day.
The sacrifices parents made for their children never failed to humble her. The very same sacrifices she would have given to have a child of her own.
Just thinking of Amira brought back the incredible sensation of holding her in her arms last night at the theater. The little-girl limbs, all curled up, sending out wafts of little-girl scent...
“Knock-knock?” Victoria rapped lightly on Robyn’s door frame. Victoria wasn’t wearing her usual paramedic uniform. She looked like she was power dressing for a meeting. Another reminder of just how important the decision she’d made to go to Da’har was.
