by Annie O'Neil
Robyn stared at Victoria for a moment, realizing her arms were still holding the invisible child on her lap. She dropped her hands, limp and empty, to hang by her sides. The ache for a child to love would never be appeased.
“So? Are you packing your bikini and sunblock?”
“Ha! I don’t think that’s considered traditional garb in Da’har.”
Victoria looked at Robyn closely. She was good at reading people and today was no different.
“You don’t have to go, you know.”
That answered that, then.
Victoria’s brow crinkled with concern, her hand unconsciously slipping to her very pregnant tummy.
Robyn looked away and then up to Victoria’s kind, hazel gaze.
“The problem is, my friend, not whether I can bear to go...but whether I can bear not to.”
“With the future of the hospital at stake, you mean?” Victoria bravely put words to the elephant in the room.
“Yeah.” Robyn nodded. “Which is why I said yes.”
Victoria’s face lit up, her face a real-life version of the sunbeam smiley face on her notepad. “You did? Oh, that’s great, Robyn. It’s really great! I’m off to meet the board now so I’ll let them know.” She stepped away from the door frame, then quickly poked her head back into Robyn’s office. “If that’s all right.”
“Of course it’s all right.” Robyn nodded, laughing at Victoria’s burst of enthusiasm. “Now, leave me be. I’ve got tons to do before I can even think about sunblock!”
“Ugh...” Victoria sighed, leaning her cheek against the doorframe. “I’m totally jealous. The beautiful ocean, the warmth, the freshly squeezed orange juice and the amazing baguettes... And fruit! Think of the amazing fruit bowls—”
“Don’t you have a meeting to go to?” Robyn stemmed the flow of excitement with a faux schoolmarm purse of the lips. One aimed more at herself than Victoria. She needed to see this as work only. Not pleasure. “You’re making me hungry.”
Victoria left with a flutter of her fingers, humming as she went.
At least she’d made someone happy.
With fresh resolve, Robyn pulled her keyboard across the notepad full of doodles, masking the grumpy face and thundercloud.
The next few weeks weren’t going to be so much of a trip into the unknown as a magic carpet ride into a world where anything was possible.
Fingers crossed that “anything” included restoring Amira’s hearing. If the surgery failed?
She gave a quick thumbs-up to Ryan as he steamed by on his crutches.
The surgery couldn’t fail.
The hospital’s future depended upon it.
CHAPTER FOUR
IDRIS’S STRIDE WAS a single long-legged one to her two. Maybe even two and a half. Robyn was no shorty, but she was practically having to skip to keep up with him. And it wasn’t as if she’d asked him to show her to her room, so he could drop the whole “being put upon by her presence” thing. Surely a sheikh would have at least a handful of servants to hand. And yet...there’d been no one other than Sheikh Idris Al Khalil himself opening the door to a very un-palace-like palace when the driver dropped her in the semicircular drive of the stone-and-clay building nestled amongst an acre or two of lush gardens.
She ran a few steps, making an exaggerated clatter on the tiles as she eventually caught up.
“It’s really beautiful,” she tried.
“I’m so pleased you think so.”
His body language was the opposite of a delighted host. Didn’t they do charm school in Da’har?
Then again, she had been very reluctant to agree to come in the first place so maybe they were a match made in heaven.
Ha! When cats could fly. Or something like that.
“I trust this will do?” Idris flung open a pair of intricately carved wooden doors and stepped to the side so that Robyn could enter the bedroom...or...was it an entire suite of rooms?
“Idris, it’s—” She gave him a gob-smacked double take. “That was a rhetorical question, right?”
Her question went unanswered. Just a slight tightening of those sensual lips.
“It’s beautiful, but I don’t need—”
He raised his hand and shook his head. “We’d like you to be happy with your rooms during your stay here.”
Robyn bit back a less than civil response that might have included words like enforced and commanded and instead reminded herself that the entire reason for being here in Da’har was because of Paddington’s. And one very darling little girl.
“We can put you up in another suite if this isn’t to your liking.”
“No!” She waved him off as if “settling” for the grouping of rooms she could have easily fit her entire flat into was something she could just about come to terms with. It was the only cover she could come up with to mask the fact she was all but drooling over everything her eyes had lit upon so far.
Four stories of stone, jewel-colored tiles rose above a massive internal courtyard of the palace, whose centerpiece was a vast shallow pool tiled with what looked like millions of little squares and diamonds. A virtual jungle flourished and tumbled from the plenitude of balconies, dipping their jungle green leaves into the expansive pool.
Who knew such a place existed? Perhaps it was where they washed His Royal Excellency’s rose petals.
She sniggered, then quickly covered her mouth, aware she was very likely suffering from a severe case of visual overload.
Idris impatiently cleared his throat, to which Robyn offered a polite smile in return. She took a few steps into the room, shoes immediately sinking into sumptuous carpets her high-heels-weary toes just itched to dig into. What had she been thinking when she’d put the ruddy things on in the first place?
Dressing to impress?
Hardly.
She twiddled her toe around a swirly design on the carpet, reminding herself she was here for work and to spend time with Amira.
“Out here is your courtyard.” Idris had disappeared from her side and was opening a pair of French windows leading to a lushly gardened patio.
“If you like you can take your breakfast here—”
“Oh! I thought I’d be dining with Amira,” Robyn cut in, flopping back onto the bed and only just escaping suffocation by a generosity of silk-covered throw pillows...and a bouncy mattress, too!
She looked up at Idris from her prone position, aware her eyes were perhaps a little too sparkly after the playful bed-tester moment.
His gaze was penetrating and decidedly cool. Chilly slivers of discomfort shot through her veins. She was just testing the bed, for heaven’s sake! Give a jet-lagged woman a break!
She pushed herself up awkwardly amid the sea of luxurious bedding, her eyes leaving his to seek purchase on item after item of discreet comforts and immaculate design.
Truthfully? She was still a bit shell-shocked from handing over her surgical roster. She’d lectured and double lectured the team on the importance of attention to detail before being practically pushed out of the hospital and into a waiting taxi by Victoria.
Then there was the first-class flight to Da’har. A first. She had automatically turned right upon boarding the plane and was instantly turned around and steered left by flight attendants who all seemed to have been briefed that she was a guest of His Excellency’s.
“The en-suite bathroom is just through here.”
Her eyes followed the length of Idris’s fingers, loitered just a moment, wondering what their touch upon her skin would elicit, then zoomed past them on to an arched doorway.
Carved marble. Natch. To go with the intricately tiled floors that had stretched out before them as they’d worked their way from one end of the surprisingly comfortable palace to the other.
She looked at Idris, a bit taken aback to find his black eyes continuing their indecipherable inquisition.
“You wouldn’t mind grabbing me a couple of extra towels, would you?”
Idris’s eyes widened as his eyebrows all but shot past his hairline. His very thick, very rake-your-fingers-through-me hairline.
“Ha, ha!” Robyn made a goofy face. “Kidding!”
So much for acting all mature and aloof when she got here. What she wouldn’t give for a pair of scrubs and a surgical theater.
She swung her shoulders side to side, wondering why on earth Idris was just standing there staring at her until she couldn’t bear it any longer and braved breaking the awkward silence.
“Any chance of seeing Amira? Maybe she can give me the full Monty tour of your pal—palatial home.” Still a little weird to call his house a palace. Still a little weird to be in Da’har.
“By ‘full Monty’ you mean...?”
One of Idris’s eyebrows remained aloft while the other dipped into a studiously displeased crinkle.
“Um...” An image of jolly blokes down at the pub doing stripteases morphed into strobe-lit flickers of Idris tugging off his loose-fitting linen shirt to reveal—
She dragged her eyes away from the expanse of chest and forced herself to meet his detached gaze. She shifted, stupidly nervous he’d poked his head into her mental cinema and not enjoyed what he saw. He’d seen other things, too. Hurt. Loss. Defensiveness.
An urge to have him see more, know more about her, began to override her nerves, and retreated just as quickly. She didn’t trust herself to share the real Robyn with a man who seemed to value his privacy as much as she did.
“I’d love to see the place through Amira’s eyes and I’m sure you’re very busy with, um, ruling your kingdom?”
“I’ve largely cleared my schedule for the duration of your visit.”
Ah.
Unexpected.
Unwanted.
“Not to tend to me, I hope!”
“More to look out for my daughter’s interests,” he replied dryly.
“Of course.”
How could haughty and arrogant look so...so...rip my clothes off, please?
Actually, there probably wouldn’t even be a “please” in there. Just commands and expectations of obedience.
Which opened a whole other doorway to sexy she’d never thought of before.
Robyn’s cheeks streaked with heat. She was going to have to find something to blame for all of the illicit thoughts crowding out her common sense. She seemed to have left the Robyn whose life was only about Paddington’s back in customs.
That Robyn was familiar. That Robyn she could deal with. That Robyn had something to fill her every waking moment with! Patients. Surgeries. Research.
This one? The one thinking all sorts of sassy inappropriate things while waiting to see a little girl who was tucked away somewhere in this cavernous palace? This Robyn was really, really in need of something to do.
Idris turned sidelong to her—offering next to no signs of leaving and absolutely no show of being satisfied with what he saw as his ebony eyes raked the length of her.
There might have been a few meters separating them, but his eyes didn’t just look...they inspected. His gaze felt tactile.
Being naked in front of a million penguins would’ve felt less awkward.
Her nicest and most conservative “London suit” was making her feel itchy and trapped. When she’d landed, she’d been surrounded by men wearing weather-appropriate dishdashas—the collarless ankle-length gowns that looked more cooling than constraining. As did the women’s abayas. Long, loose-fitting fabrics fluttering prettily in the breeze seemed far more appealing than her snug wool skirt and jacket combo. Blasted British summer! It had been perfect ten hours ago in London.
Idris was wearing Western clothing—a loose-fitting linen top and dark linen trousers—but unlike her, he seemed entirely unaffected by the late-afternoon heat.
Robyn rocked back on her stupidly uncomfortable “business” heels and gave her new...what was he? Boss? Benefactor? Whoever he was, she gave him a sidelong look that she hoped showed him the last thing she was going to do with her time—her precious time—was stand here like a von Trapp child waiting for the whistle blow that would allow her to be dismissed and do something. Idle hands and all that.
“Is there some sort of code word I’m meant to be using? Something that will get the ball rolling here?”
Idris’s eyebrows tucked together in the center of his forehead and just as quickly drew apart. “You’ve never had a holiday, have you, Dr. Kelly?”
Who made you Mr. Insightful of the Year?
“Perhaps there’s an element of truth to what you say...” she allowed, wondering why she was speaking like an eighteenth-century duchess.
“Have you not ever done anything just for fun, Dr. Kelly?”
Why did he keep saying her name all the time? He’d charmed her into agreeing to leave the hospital; it was fair to say they could follow through on the first-name basis thing.
“It’s Robyn,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I think we’ve got a little case of the pot calling the kettle black here, don’t you?”
She suddenly realized, as the words hit their intended target, that the two of them were birds of a feather. Maybe not in the billionaire-ruler-of-a-country department, as she ran a department that could easily spend a billion...or two.
But in the all work and no play department, Idris seemed as ill at ease with this unexpected “holiday” as she did.
She stood there, unexpectedly transfixed as Idris processed what she’d said. It was, it slowly dawned upon her, unlikely that people ever spoke to him so...frankly. Saw that his solid stance, indecipherable mood and cool response to her agitated shuffling were all defense shields against the less protected business of being human.
Their gazes meshed and the shock waves of heat detonating throughout her body at the union were unlike anything she’d experienced before.
She didn’t dare think how she’d respond if they were actually touching.
A shudder of awareness shifted down her spine as she tried to regain control, knowing if she were to open her heart to the man standing before her, she would be powerless to defend herself.
* * *
Idris abruptly turned on his heel and left the room. Her room.
The one where Robyn would undress tonight and stretch, catlike no doubt, along the length of the bed that he wished he hadn’t seen her enjoying so much.
What had he been thinking inviting Robyn to Da’har? To the palace? His home? The one place he could hide away from the world and all of the things he didn’t want to feel.
Yes, he wanted Robyn to get to know Amira, his cherished little girl, but had he really wanted things to feel so personal?
His jaw tightened at the thought.
Absolutely not was the answer to that one.
He tried to hold back the surge of attraction he’d felt for Robyn just now in long-legged purposeful strides toward his office.
“Daddy!”
His daughter jumped out from behind a tree in the central courtyard, signing his name and mouthing the word in the Da’har dialect he longed for her to hear.
He scooped her up into his arms and swung her around, tightly embracing Amira in his arms as he wheeled around to find Robyn standing at the far end of the courtyard.
“Yes?” he asked, placing his daughter on the cobalt-and-jade-colored tiled bench surrounding the fountain.
“I—I was looking for Amira.” Robyn faltered, eyes still locked on his until in a swish and a whirl, Amira, too, saw Robyn and flew from the fountain’s edge up and into Robyn’s arms as if she were a long-lost...
Oh, no. He
didn’t dare say “mother.” But the smile that lit up on Robyn’s face as she scooped his child up in her arms? It was loving. Unrestricted by the cruelty of life as his was.
A sting of jealousy went through him as he saw the pair of them, gabbling away in a mix of heaven knew what, fingers flashing, eyebrows jigging around, mouths exaggerating words.
Idris caught himself staring at Robyn’s lips—a beautiful dusky shade of rose—and for the second time felt a rush of attraction he hadn’t thought possible. Whether it felt like betrayal or destiny he couldn’t tell. The first word that came to his head told him all he needed to know.
Malikah.
His wife’s birth name had crowned her queen before he had fallen in love and made her a true one. Never had the nation known such collective joy as the day they had married.
Never had the nation borne such grief as the day she had died giving birth to their daughter.
This precious jewel of his who was—His eyes zapped across the courtyard. Was Amira laughing?
His eyes widened as he took in the sight and rarely heard sound of his daughter’s laughter. Robyn was tickling Amira’s little tummy, eliciting burble after burble of giggly laughter.
Extraordinary.
She was normally such a stern little girl.
Took after her father, everyone said. Took her future responsibilities incredibly seriously for such a young child.
He’d taken the words as praise. Had felt prideful his daughter’s tendencies were to take seriously the role she would eventually hold as Sheikha, and yet...
The sound of her laughter—more beautiful than that of all the birdsong in the land—swept a slash of doubt across his clean conscience.
Robyn rose from her kneeling position and took Amira’s hand in hers, realigning her features into a hopeful expression.
“Amira and I need your help,” she said.
“Oh?”
Winning comeback, Your Excellency. And since when did he speak to himself in the third person? Life had made certain he knew that he, too, was only human when his wife had been taken from him. He shook his head. Robyn might be suffering from jet lag but he was suffering from...brain lag.
