by Annie O'Neil
She dropped almost gratefully to the floor to collect everything up, then crawled into the changing room—mercifully out of sight.
Wow, did she hate the limelight.
* * *
“Another one!”
Robyn gave a playful eye roll and turned back toward the changing room.
So far they’d seen three outfits and, with each one, Robyn had softened and relaxed in the “glare” of her audience’s eyes.
Idris felt a tug on his sleeve. His daughter was facing him, her face alight with excitement and hands whirling with a rapid-fire list of demands.
Pull the curtains together. Robyn needed a place to have a “proper” entrance. Where was her dress-up box? Could she please wrap his head in a turban and draw on a mustache. Why should Robyn be the only one to dress up?
Laughing, he pulled his daughter into his arms, rose and swirled her around, eliciting squeals of delight as he swung her over the fountain’s edge.
A phone call later, boxes appeared and Idris found himself near enough nose-to-nose with his daughter.
* * *
Robyn peeked out from the changing rooms only to find curtains had been drawn between the two columns she had been using as a stage. She’d heard Amira’s squeals earlier, and now could hear the little girl’s laughter. She chanced a glance between the curtains, her own lips twitching into a smile as she saw the scene unfolding before her.
With a face as serious as a general’s, Amira had one hand planted on her father’s head as she fastidiously went about drawing on the curliest mustache Robyn had ever seen with the other. Idris sat patiently, his caramel skin becoming less visible beneath the swirling magnificence of his daughter’s artwork. Amira pulled back and eyed her handiwork. Idris pulled a couple of faces, giving the drawn-on mustache life and eliciting another peal of laughter from his daughter. Next, she pulled a length of opalescent silk out of a wooden crate and gave it swirl after swirl upon his head until he had a beautifully wrapped turban atop his head. He jumped up and struck a pose on the side of the fountain for her, feigned losing his balance so well Robyn almost jumped through the curtains to help—
Help what? Interrupt a beautiful moment between a father and daughter? For every part of her that ached to be with them, enjoying the moment, there was another part reminding her that this was not her world. Not her life. Arriving in Da’har had felt akin to handing over her passport to a different universe. Not just the different sights and sounds, but different feelings, responses. She sucked in a deep breath. English Robyn would run back to her room and hide rather than show off the outfit she felt strangely at home in. She blew the breath out, pulled her shoulders back and smiled. She wasn’t English Robyn right now—she was the Little Bird of Da’har and she felt as though she could fly.
* * *
“How’s this?” Robyn asked, sweeping open the drapes of the changing rooms and spinning along the “catwalk” in a swirl of diaphanous fabrics. The light chiffon lifted and floated as Robyn’s hips and shoulders shifted and moved against the silky softness.
Idris looked up and was instantly mesmerized. If Robyn was amused by his mustache and turbaned look, she didn’t show it. If anything, she looked emboldened.
As she sauntered one moment, then twirled another, Robyn looked as he imagined she would have as a younger woman—a giggling girl playing dress-up. And at times, when his eyes caught with hers, he saw a woman discovering a sensuality blossom within her. A sensuality she’d never known she possessed.
Until now.
Idris sat upright, utterly transfixed as their eyes locked. His body grew taut with desire for her.
He wanted Robyn. Wanted to pull her to him, shift away the deep emerald chiffon and lace headscarf with a sweep of his fingertips. His hand twitched. One step led to the next as imagination and desire melded into one. He would take hold of the back of her head, his other hand slipping onto the weightless silk that caressed her back and pulled her to him so that he could taste the bright red of her lips, her mouth. Urgently. Hungrily.
The sound of his daughter’s clapping jarred him into the present. Into reality.
Their eyes still caught together, Robyn’s body frozen mid-twirl, Idris tried to communicate all the things he couldn’t say—couldn’t put a voice to. As Robyn’s eyes widened, then narrowed with understanding, shame and anger obliterated the romantic notions.
Robyn wasn’t here to be his lover. Not even a friend. Her presence here was strictly business and he was a fool to think—even for a moment—she could be anything to him but a means to an end. The solution to his daughter’s plight.
“Perhaps we’ve had enough fun for tonight.”
* * *
“Yes,” Robyn said. “I think I’ll turn in straightaway if you don’t mind.” She turned to go, tripping as she did. The first time that night. For the past hour she’d felt beautiful. Graceful.
Amira rushed up to her when she realized Robyn was leaving and wrapped her arms around her waist.
Robyn gave her a quick squeeze and dropped a kiss on top of her head, then hightailed it to her room, desperate to hide the tears she knew would come.
* * *
“Excellent!” Robyn accepted the pile of folders from Dr. Hazari. “These are all of her records?”
“His Excellency said to ensure you had everything you need.”
Robyn didn’t need a mirror to tell her that her eyebrows were knitting together. All she wanted was a little “me time” at a hospital. Amira’s actual records were just a bonus.
“Has he—? You haven’t spoken with him this morning, have you?”
“Of course,” he said. “Her Royal Excellency’s medical papers aren’t something we just hand over to anyone.”
“No,” she said. “Of course not.” She looked at the papers and then back to Dr. Hazari. “And you just pick up the phone and call him?”
“On matters relating to Amira—yes. Absolutely. He is always available to speak when it is about his daughter.”
“How very...accessible of him.” No staff, no go-betweens. A protective lion of a father.
She gave Dr. Hazari a smile of thanks, turned her attentions to the files and found she could only see one thing.
Idris Al Khalil.
The caramel skin. The proud set of his cheekbones drawing her attention first to the ebony sheen of his eyes, then tugging her along the descent toward the full, deep red of his mouth. Her pulse quickened at the memory of his lips parting when she had last appeared “onstage,” an emerald headdress skating along the edges of her blond hairline, an even deeper green dishdasha skimming her skin as Idris’s inky gaze unleashed prickles of anticipation across her entire body.
The man had haunted her dreams. That alone had been miracle enough because sleep had been a long time coming after she’d left him and those hauntingly evocative eyes of his.
Enough!
She snapped the folders into a precise pile and began meticulously working her way through them, ignoring the little tugs and pulls of guilt teasing away the well-stitched hemline of her conscience. So what if she’d snuck out of the palace and found her way to the hospital on her own. That’s what guidebooks were for. Right?
A few hours in the hospital wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially not the impenetrable fortress that was Idris.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the image that had kept her awake well into the night. Idris’s usually implacable expression softened.
A smile crept onto her lips. And it wasn’t just the memory of his swirly mustache. It was the whole picture. The proud father indulging an excited daughter. The host enjoying his guest’s discovery of his country, his home. It was a side to Idris she suspected few people saw. A warm, loving family man at home with face painting and a spontaneous fashion show.
; And when their eyes had met?
She couldn’t help a little happy hum as she relived the moment. Idris’s gaze had held something stronger in them than approval. They had sparked and fought the same thing she was feeling when she looked at him. Desire.
She sucked in a deep breath and held it.
Longing. Passion. Love.
She didn’t do those sorts of things. Not now. Definitely not in the future. And all because of the past she’d never laid to rest. A past she’d had to deal with on her own.
How quickly news of an unexpected pregnancy had turned into the darkest of horror films. She’d been so happy. A wonderful boyfriend. Maybe a marriage? The ectopic pregnancy. Too advanced. Low to no survival rate. For herself and the child unless...
She looked up from the sofa where she’d been sitting and wondered if her subconscious had led her here.
The maternity ward.
Just like any hospital she’d ever been to, there was the row of beautiful babies, swaddled in soft blankets of pink or blue. Little eyes clenched tight against the world they’d only just entered, lips puckering, fingers reaching for the mother they were inextricably linked to.
Her baby hadn’t come to term before they’d had to end the ectopic pregnancy threatening her life...but, oh, how she had ached to hold him. Would ache so long as she drew breath. It still astonished her how impossible it was to forget that tiny little child.
The breath released from her chest in a whoosh of regret.
She picked up her phone and did a quick calculation. Too early to call the hospital. Then again, surely someone she knew would be on night shift. She tapped the little green phone receiver icon, needing to hear a familiar voice.
“Is this how you always conduct your research?”
A shiver of recognition slipped along her spine, pooling in her belly.
Maybe not that particular voice.
She looked up from the phone, scanned past the pair of long legs, along the arms crossed over a linen-shirted chest and up, past the...stubble? Interesting. Idris was normally immaculately well-shaven.
“If you mean by going to a hospital to look at all of Amira’s records, then yes,” she replied with more verve than she felt.
She stood so she felt less like a five-year-old being told off outside the headmistress’s office. It didn’t stop her cheeks from burning, though. As she rose, Idris didn’t take the customary step back one generally hoped for in the personal space department. Proximity only made her response to him deepen. She tilted her chin up and met his gaze with as much defiance as she could muster. Difficult, when her body was a bit busy doing its own thing—heart rate accelerating, the whoosh and roar of her body temperature soaring as her eyes met his. The physical need to reach out and touch him was near enough overwhelming every practical bone in her body.
“I meant sneaking out of the house and causing great distress to my daughter, who thought you’d left. Thought you weren’t interested enough in spending time with her to do the surgery.” His lips pressed together tightly as if he could’ve said more but was biting the words back against his better judgment.
All the swirly feelings swooping around Robyn’s body like giddy hummingbirds plummeted into a weighted mass in her gut.
“I didn’t think—”
“Precisely,” Idris cut in. “You didn’t think. I’m hardly surprised to learn you don’t have children of your own if this is how you treat children under your care.”
From the streak of pain searing across Robyn’s amber eyes, he knew in an instant he’d been cruel.
She stood, frozen in place, visibly digesting the sour spill of words he’d spat in anger. What could he have said instead? That he’d woken to discover an empty room, no sign of Robyn anywhere in the palace, his little girl’s stricken face when she thought Robyn had fled? How could he tell her he’d been frightened, too? That he’d been left on his own again. That fear had manifested itself as rage.
“You’ll be happy to hear, Your Excellency, I can’t have children. A—a procedure I had in my twenties made sure of that.”
He tore his gaze away from Robyn’s, unable to bear the burden of guilt he bore for the sorrow in her eyes.
“I’m truly sorry,” Robyn continued, her voice devoid of the light it usually carried. “I never meant to hurt Amira. Or to pull you away from her to hunt me down.” Robyn gave the files a distracted look and swiped at her eyes where she’d lost the battle with a handful of tears. She looked up at him, cheeks flushed, voice hoarse with emotion. “And I never meant to hurt you.”
In that moment, Idris was consumed by a need to hold her in his arms until all the hurt and pain he’d caused went away. How could she be so generous with her apologies, so heartfelt, when he had been so unkind?
He opened his arms and pulled her toward him, unsurprised to feel her stiffen, then—much to his amazement—feel her relax into his embrace, laying her cheek against his chest as if seeking solace in the beat of his heart.
He did his best to steady his breath, quell the racket thumping around his rib cage, a little too aware of Robyn’s wildflower scent, the soft femininity of her hand pressing against his chest.
He laid his cheek alongside her temple, astonished that Robyn, despite having seen his darker side, was bringing the man he’d once been back out into the light. The one who comforted, smiled and laughed. The one who enjoyed being alive!
For seven years he’d been shut off to that man. More attuned to one who saw the world through a filter of grief, frustration and fear for his daughter’s well-being.
And yet, here he was, holding Robyn in his arms, conscience pricking at the harsh judgments he’d made as if he alone were bearing the weight of the world.
He traced his fingers along Robyn’s temple, drawing them to her chin, only realizing as he caressed her cheek with the back of his hand that she was wearing a headscarf. Sky blue. It matched her personality, full of light and optimism.
The Da’harian style had seemed so natural on her when he’d first caught sight of her on the sofa; he hadn’t even thought to remark on it. Or perhaps his relief at finding her had made him blind to everything else.
He held her close, neither of them saying anything, their breaths joining in a growing cadence with the other’s.
They shared the understanding of loss. He knew that now.
This and a thousand questions filled his mind as he stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, relieved, at last, to feel her steadied breath upon his wrist. He crooked his index finger and tipped her chin up toward him, telling himself it was to ensure there were no more tears in her eyes, but the ease with which he could have leaned down and kissed her all but blindsided him.
Robyn blinked at his wide-eyed response to her, then gave a shy smile as she gently extricated herself from his embrace.
“Was that our first fight?”
“I suspect, my dear, it won’t be our last.”
My dear?
He checked himself. Best not to get too carried away. Emotions could far too easily take the helm when it came to Amira. They’d had a moment. Nothing more. He shook his head again, taking a step backward, only to barely avoid colliding with a passing nurse.
“Your Excellency!” The woman turned when she saw who he was, blanched and performed a quick bob.
He clucked away the gesture with a smile and a shake of the head. Adulation of any sort had never suited him. Earning the respect of his people was all that mattered.
“So!” He turned back to Robyn, masking his discomposure with what he hoped was a businesslike nod. “I suppose meeting our Ear, Nose and Throat specialists was on your tick list.”
“Yes.” She nodded, relieved to be back on familiar terrain. “I really would like to meet the entire team if possible. It would be particularly he
lpful to see where and who will be giving Amira her aftercare.”
“Won’t you be doing that?”
“Immediately after the surgery, of course I will, but...when you both return home, I’ll be at Paddington’s. Or wherever we end up if this closure goes ahead.”
Her smile seemed unnaturally bright. As if she were forcing on the same show of bravura he was in the wake of the moment they’d just shared. Pain, loss and the unexpected understanding that neither of them was alone.
The reminder that Robyn would be in and out of their lives so briefly shook the new sense of grounding he’d felt since she had come into their lives. He had borne so much alone that having her here felt like putting back together the pieces of a puzzle he’d never known had come apart.
“Well.” He returned the artificially cheery smile. “Isn’t it lovely we still have the best part of a fortnight together to sort out all the particulars? Now that I can allay Amira’s fears about your mysterious vanishing, I trust I can safely leave you to your own devices here at the hospital for a handful of hours. We will, however, look forward to you joining us for lunch back home. And,” he continued, trying his best not to stare as her mouth formed an inquisitive moue, “I hope you don’t mind, but I have organized for some of your new things to be packed. We’re going on a little trip this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
His announcement seemed to have reduced her to monosyllables and widened eyes, but he noted with a satisfied smile that it was the first time she hadn’t protested.
“Right, then.” He gave a curt nod. “Shall I leave you in Dr. Hazari’s capable care?”
Robyn nodded, her dazed expression mirroring everything he was feeling internally. There was something they shared now. A silent understanding of the burdens of grief. One he made no effort to hide from the world, while she... Robyn bore her grief for her own loss with tenacity and a fierce show of happiness. The light to his shade. The two essential components to make an object real.
He ground his teeth together and lengthened his stride. A walk rather than the high-speed drive he’d made to track Robyn down might be in order.
