by Annie O'Neil
Ha!
“The action or habit of estimating something as worthless,” she explained with a sniff.
“In other words, dismissing the opinions of others?” The eyebrow lifted again.
“Well...” She etched a heart shape into the sand with her toe. “I’m not entirely sure if I would have put it precisely as you did. But yes.” She raised her eyes to meet his, surprised to find Idris smiling.
“I’m not so sure you are as shy of asserting yourself as you profess, Dr. Kelly.”
“Robyn,” she gently corrected, a warm hit of pride tickling at her heart as she spoke.
“Very well, then. I won’t cancel the day’s events. We carry on as—” Idris paused to give her a conciliatory smile “—as the doctor ordered.”
Robyn’s smile flattened into a grimace.
“Why the frown? You just got what you wanted, my dear. Usually a victor smiles.”
Robyn cinched her lips back into a facsimile of a smile. “This isn’t about winning or losing, Idris. It’s about what’s best for your little girl. If you would just hang up the ‘underaged curmudgeon badge’ you so proudly wear you might be able to see sense for once!”
“Underaged curmudgeon?”
“Yes.” She gave him an indignant little nod. “You’re far too young and gorge—” She swallowed the rest of her sentence and started again. “You’re far too young and gifted a leader to be this grumpy. It’s usually Victorian gentlemen with gout who are this consistently horrid.”
“You think I’m horrid?”
“I...might. Just a little,” she squeaked, fingers held up in a tiny pinch, as her lungs strained against the huge breath she’d sucked in realizing she was about to tell him what she really thought.
And what she really thought was that underneath the thick layer of defensiveness there was a kind, loving father. A generous and thoughtful leader. A man whose capacity to love had... She was struck with an unexpected hit of disappointment that he had chosen never again to be open to the pure, enriching love between a man and a woman.
“You’re right.” Idris gave her a begrudging nod.
“About the gout?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m as healthy as an ox.” He struck a pose and only released it when he was quite sure Robyn had appreciated quite how healthy he looked. Just as quickly his entire demeanor transformed into a businesslike mode. “We’ll hold a press conference. You will, that is. We shall organize it at the television station back in the capital when we return. For now we will complete our trip. As scheduled.”
Idris’s eyes twinkled, his chin tilting to the right, lips pressing forward and that eyebrow of his arching in a self-satisfied sort of way.
Which was great, except... She raised her hand as if she were a girl back in school needing to ask for permission for something to which she already knew the answer was no.
“Is there any chance we could skip the press conference part?”
“Not even a sliver of a chance.” He squared himself to her, arms crossing over the broad expanse of caramel-colored chest she’d fastidiously been trying to avoid staring at, as if crossing his arms put an end to the matter. And for the moment, it did, because the gesture near enough short-circuited her brain again. It wasn’t so much the soft whorls of dark hair around the burnt-sugar areolas, but the arrow of hair between his taut stomach muscles and his hip-skimming swimming trunks. All a bit much in the visual overload department. Particularly when her mind needed to be one hundred percent focused on sorting out this PR palaver.
“What if you were to release a statement, or even deliver the statement?” she posited. “Surely people are more interested in what you have to say...”
“I think you will find, Dr. Kelly,” Idris dryly replied, “it is your surgical skills and medical prowess the people are curious about. It would get you the much-needed publicity I am sure Paddington’s requires in the face of this financial uncertainty. Come now—what was it you said I was suffering from earlier?”
“Floccinaucinihilipilification?”
“Yes. Let’s not hope it’s catching now, shall we?”
Her mouth went dry and she felt a funny, tickly, scratchy sensation in her throat. The same one that always threatened to squeeze her larynx into oblivion whenever the thought of speaking publically started worming its way through her nervous system. So she’d been the pot calling the kettle black. So what? This whole thing was about Idris and Amira—not about her!
“Couldn’t we just use some of your gazillions and get ourselves a body double to do it for me?” she said, only half joking now that the words were out.
Idris’s lips tweaked upward a couple of times before he drew them in and released them after a drag beneath his teeth. “Gazillions isn’t a word I tend to use in reference to my wealth.”
“Apologies.” She fluttered her hands between them as if it would erase what she’d said and huffed out a defeated sigh. “I just...oh! This is so embarrassing since you’re so good at it, but I absolutely, positively, couldn’t find anything in the world more terrifying than giving a press conference.”
Idris leaned his weight back on one foot and gave her a sidelong look. “Even when the future of Paddington’s is at stake?”
“You’re not threatening me, are you?”
“Not in the slightest. I’m just saying this is a news leak we need to harness. Gain control. You know I don’t like it when things are out of my control and I know you will do anything to save Paddington’s. I think it might be time to take a spoonful of your own medicine, Robyn.”
As he spoke, his eyes raked across her and for the second time that morning she felt her body respond to his visual caresses. Her breasts pressed up against the brushed cotton of her overworn dress. Something she’d thrown on for an early-morning walk along the shoreline as she fought for the right way to explain to Idris that she’d lost control of the ship she hadn’t been steering all that well in the first place.
“If it’s all right, I’d like to think about it.”
“Think about what you’ll say?”
“Think about whether or not I’ll do the press conference,” she corrected, knowing the wince crinkling her nose and shooting her eyebrows up to her hairline wasn’t really giving her the in-charge-of-the-situation look she’d been going for. Her teeth bit down on her lower lip too hard, too fast, and as she ran her fingers along the lip to feel for blood, she knew if she looked up, her cheeks would once again burn with response at being the object of Idris’s heated looks.
“What if I agree to do it with you?”
Her eyes shot up, her fingers stilling along her lip as an injection of hope surged through her. “Really? You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do it for Paddington’s.”
* * *
Idris knew damn well he was offering to do the press conference for Robyn, but telling her so would be akin to opening a vault whose doors were already bulging with unshared revelations.
Unwittingly, Robyn was bringing him back to life. She enabled him to see the blessings he had instead of focusing on all those he didn’t. She was of the simple-pleasures school of life and it was serving him well to have her remind him of the importance of them. He turned at the gentle shift in the wind and inhaled the sweet scent of a woman.
Robyn was growing increasingly uncomfortable underneath the weight of Idris’s gaze as he absorbed the impact she’d made on, not just him, but his daughter, too. He’d rarely heard Amira laugh before, and now—he cocked his ear upward—he could make out the giggly laugh only a tickling session with her nanny might elicit. A tickling session the nanny would never have attempted before Robyn.
“Good. Well, then, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a swim.” He untucked the towel from his hips and swung it over his shoulder as if the entire m
atter were settled.
“We’ll carry on with our tour of Da’har as scheduled, and in three days’ time, we will give a press conference. If you could let the appropriate parties know, I would be grateful.”
He strode away, a smile on his lips as he felt her turn her head to watch as he strolled off into the morning surf. He liked having her here and was loath to think of a life without her in it. In some capacity.
Perhaps, he mused, his lips quirking back up into a grin, his “gazillions” could help secure Paddington’s future, freeing her up for periodic visits to Da’har. Amira would love to see her again. He was sure of that and he—
Idris stepped into the sea and took a sure-footed dive into the incoming waves.
Yes.
He would like that very much, as well.
* * *
It was incredibly difficult to fume when all Robyn was feeling was abject terror.
A press conference? In front of...press?
Five hours, a car ride across the mountains toward Da’har’s central desert region and a breathtakingly delicious lunch hadn’t done a jot to dissipate the growing panic over what she knew she had to do. A lunch of cardboard cutouts would most likely have done the same trick. And yet, the publicity the innovative surgery could generate was too important for the hospital to refuse. It was the whole reason she’d agreed to this harebrained trip.
Her eyes flicked across toward Idris.
Well.
Mr. Tall, Dark and Sheikhy may have had something to do with it, as well. But it had definitely started with a Paddington’s Only remit, she assured herself. No romance here. Not in this heart!
She glanced across at Amira—right up front near the falconry experts, the sun glinting off her dark hair, happy as a lark in the center of a whole gaggle of children despite Idris’s earlier protests. She felt a smile twitch and form. She’d won that discussion, anyway.
This moment made the soul-digging glares Idris had scorched into her psyche worth it. Amira was giggling away and pointing, the children making up their own sign language on the spot to explain everything. Sign language that involved lots of jumping and soaring arms, hands turning into beaks snapping up unsuspecting prey.
Knowing how much more Amira could enjoy the interaction if she could hear, especially later when the children would sing for her, Robyn just had to perform the surgery.
Which meant...she would have to do the press conference.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the falconry display and willed the images of popping flashbulbs and whirring cameras to disappear. Did photographers even use flashbulbs anymore?
Her lids flew open again, squinting sharply against the glare of the late-afternoon sun.
“Aren’t you enjoying the display?” the increasingly familiar voice rumbled into her ear, his scent wafting and twirling around her as he leaned in to demand her full attention. If they hadn’t been all alone in the shaded viewing tent she might have—What? Might have fled? Kissed him? Laid herself out on the pile of cushions and cried, Take me now!
A twirl of heat took hold below her belly and she squelched the wickedly, sensual thoughts from her mind as best she could.
She gave him a quick smile and nodded. The part of her that was able to focus was really enjoying herself. Two men in traditional dress were riding bareback on a pair of ridiculously beautiful chestnut stallions. The falcons rode, perched on the leather tether strapped to each man’s forearm, flying upward toward the blinding light of the sun, then spiraling downward when they caught the prey other men sent heavenward in catapults designed for the show. It was a huge blur of color, action and raw strength.
“Perhaps you’d like to see me in action?”
Idris’s eyes were still on the display, but had that been a note of hope in his voice? Her jaw dropped. Was he flirting with her?
Too easily she could picture him in one of the loose silk tops, the center slit of the cobalt blue fabric bearing down the length of his midriff. She could practically see the cloth fluttering behind him as he galloped, exposing the golden expanse of his bare chest and stomach. A heated bolt of attraction crackled down her spine, pooling luxuriously below the waistline of her silken sherwal, despite frowning most sternly against the sensation.
Not good. Her body’s response to merely thinking about Idris’s naked torso told her she’d need to chain herself to a tent pole in order to resist leaning forward for just a teeny-tiny touch. Precisely the reason she should have stayed at Paddington’s in her scrubs and working instead of coming to this wonderland that brought such light and...frisson to Paddington’s most generous benefactor.
“A display may put us slightly behind schedule, of course.” Idris’s voice went slightly gravelly as he continued. “Riding in this heat is sweaty work.”
Another burst of warmth showered through her at the thought of Idris standing beneath a cascade of water heated by the desert sun.
The inside of her cheek took a punishing blow as she tried to bite away the vision. She’d already had to scurry away once this morning when he’d strode off into the sea, knowing that watching him emerge from the water with that bronzed body, all dappled with drops of water, glistening in the morning sun...agh! Too much stimuli for her to compartmentalize.
Particularly with this blinking awful press conference hanging over her head.
“Don’t worry about riding just for me. I’m fine.”
Robyn shook her head in a solid “no” against the offer, but when a laser shot of disappointment streaked through Idris’s dark eyes, she did an about-face so quickly she almost made herself dizzy.
“Now that I think about it... Yes. Absolutely, yes. I would love to see you in one of those shirts astride one of the stallions—”
She only just managed to stop midflow, a little too aware she had just opened her private thoughts to inspection.
Idris’s lips, sensual beasts that they were, twitched forward, almost into a pucker. First a smile, then a frown was formed, and she couldn’t help feeling like a starstruck teen as her heart began thumping in sporadic thuds, all but lurching straight up into her throat as she awaited his response.
“You wouldn’t want to deny Amira a chance to see her father’s prowess with a horse, would you? Maybe you’d inspire her to take up riding,” she lamely tacked on, knowing her craving to see Idris at his rugged, shirtless, stallion-riding apex was a request best left unfulfilled.
“Of course,” Idris answered, his features, as they most often were, recomposed into something unreadable even in the broad light of day. “My daughter has often told me she’d like to see me bare my chest to the elements, taking a horse under my command, teasing it into submission.”
Robyn’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “I do believe, Your Excellency, you are playing with my mind.”
“Well spotted, Dr. Kelly.”
She dipped into a small curtsy, and lowered her gaze. When she tilted up her head and dared to meet those black eyes of his, it was as if the invisible pane of glass between them had disappeared. The pounding of horses’ hooves on the dunes accompanied the rhythm of her heart as Idris took her hand in his and raised it to his lips, eyes glued to hers as he pressed his mouth to the back of her hand.
Fireworks didn’t even begin to cover her body’s response to Idris’s touch.
Feeling his lips upon her skin sent undulating waves of yearning through a bloodstream she was sure had been running on idle until Idris’s kiss slammed it into high gear.
* * *
Idris let go of Robyn’s hand as spontaneously as he had brought it to his lips, hoping to consign the action to a moment of madness, knowing full well the moments leading up to it had been laden with intent.
“I’m going to check on Amira.”
He could feel Robyn’s eyes on his back as h
e took the swift, long-legged strides he needed to work off whatever alchemy she had unwittingly bestowed on him. He’d thought the relationship he’d had with his wife was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Now he knew he was wrong.
Robyn had found an entire fistful of keys with which to open his heart—door after door of revelation. And it simply wouldn’t do.
He had a kingdom to run. A daughter’s welfare to look after. A future... His breath caught as he thought of the instant and unfillable void that would be left in his life when Robyn went back to London. In their lives.
He shook off the scowl as he approached his daughter and placed his hands upon her slight shoulders. The children all turned to face him, their expressions suddenly somber, eyes wide as saucers as they looked upon their leader.
It was decision time. He felt Amira twist out of his hands and look up to him. She knew as well as he did this wasn’t “normal.” Playing with children as if she were just any old child. But she wasn’t a regular. She would one day be responsible for the future of the very children she was playing with.
And he wouldn’t have her embarrassed by the singing display he knew was coming next. These sorts of displays could wait until after the surgery.
He stretched his neck, hearing the tension kink and pop as he did. The surgery that was dependent upon Robyn. He would have to do his utmost to ensure it went ahead—no hitches.
“The musicians have asked us to go to the tent for the singing.” Kaisha appeared by his side, her tone ever neutral.
“No.” He shook his head firmly, giving Amira’s head an apologetic stroke as he did. “It was mostly for Robyn’s sake, but—”
“What was for my sake?” Robyn asked, tucking her headscarf protectively around her shoulders. The deep green of the scarf had shimmers of gold woven through it, adding luster to her amber eyes. He resisted the urge to get lost in them, putting on the blinkers that had seen him through the last seven years.
