She stared at him, thinking how strange it was to hear him sounding so genuinely contrite. Because Tariq didn’t do apology. In his arrogance he thought he was always right. But he didn’t look arrogant now, she realised, and something in that discovery made her want to meet him halfway.
‘We both said things we shouldn’t have said,’ she conceded. ‘Things we can’t unsay which are probably best forgotten. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about the baby sooner.’
‘I don’t care about that. Your reasons for that are perfectly understandable.’ There was a pause. The heavy lids of his eyes almost concealed their hectic ebony glitter. ‘There’s only one thing I really care about, Izzy—and that’s whether you can ever find it in your heart to forgive me?’
She bit her lip as hurt pride fought with an instinctive desire to make amends. Because wasn’t this something she was going to have to teach her baby—that forgiveness should always follow repentance? And there was absolutely no doubt from the stricken expression on Tariq’s face that his remorse was genuine.
‘Yes, Tariq,’ she said softly. ‘I can forgive you.’
He stared at her, but her generous clemency only heightened his sense of disquiet. It made him realise then that if they wanted some kind of future together he had to go one step further.
But it wasn’t easy—because everything in him rebelled against further disclosure. Wasn’t it his ability to close off the painful experiences in his life which made him so single-minded? Wasn’t it his reluctance to actually feel things which had protected him from the knocks and isolation of his childhood? Success had come easily to Tariq because he hadn’t allowed himself to be influenced by emotion. To him, emotion was something that you blocked out. Because how else could he have survived if he had not done that?
Yet if he failed to find the courage to confront all the darkness he’d locked away so long ago then wouldn’t he be left with this terrible lack of resolution? As if he could never really get close to Izzy again? As if he was seeing her through a thick wall of glass? And what was the point of trying to protect himself from emotional pain if he was going to experience it anyway?
‘There are some things you need to know about me,’ he said. ‘Things which may explain the monster I have been.’
‘You’re no monster,’ she breathed instantly. ‘My baby’s not having a monster for a father!’
‘There are things you need to know,’ he repeated, even though his lips curved in a brief smile at her passionate defence. ‘Things about me and my life that I need to explain—to try to make you understand.’
He frowned. He struggled to put his feelings into words—because in a way wasn’t he trying to make himself understand his own past?
‘I’ve never had a problem with the way I live,’ he said. ‘My work life was a triumph and my personal life was…manageable. I was happy enough with the affairs I had. I liked women and they liked me. But as soon they started getting close—well, I wanted out. Always.’
Isobel nodded. Hadn’t she witnessed it enough times before experiencing it for herself? ‘And why do you think that was?’ she questioned quietly.
‘Because I had no idea how to relate to people. I had no idea how to do real relationships,’ he answered simply. ‘My mother was so ill after my birth that I was kept away from her. My father was run off his feet with the ongoing wars with Sharifah—so my relationship with him was pretty non-existent, too. And the nurses and nannies who were employed to look after me would never dare to show love towards a royal child, for that would be considered presumptuous. Children only know their own experience—but even if at times I felt lost or lonely I did not ever show it. In that strongly driven and very masculine environment it was always frowned on to show any weakness or vulnerability.’
Vulnerability. The word stuck to her like a piece of dry grass. It took her back to when she’d seen him lying injured on the hospital bed—for hadn’t it been that selfsame vulnerability which had made her feelings towards him change and her heart start to melt? Hadn’t it been in that moment when she’d started to fall in love with Tariq? When he’d shown a side of himself which he’d always kept hidden before?
‘Go on,’ she said softly.
‘You know that they sent me away to school in England at seven? In a way, my life was just as isolated as it had been in the palace. For a while I was the only foreign pupil—and I was the only royal one. And of course I was bullied.’
‘You? Bullied? Oh, come on, Tariq! As if anyone would dare try.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘There are more ways to hurt someone than with your fists. I was certainly excluded on a social level—never invited to the homes of my classmates. My saving grace was that I made every sports team going and I had first pick of all the girls.’ He shrugged as he realised that was about the time when he had begun to use the veneer of arrogance to protect him. ‘Though of course that only increased the feelings of resentment against me.’
‘I can imagine.’ She sighed as she looked at him, longing to take him in her arms but too scared to dare try. Still afraid that nothing had really changed and that he would hurt her again as he had hurt her before. And besides, if he really meant it then didn’t he have to come to her?
He saw the fear and the pain which clouded her face, and it mirrored the aching deep inside him. A terrible sense of frustration washed over him as he looked into her tawny eyes.
‘Oh, Izzy—can’t you see that I’m a novice at all this stuff? That for the first time in my life I don’t know what to do or what to say? I’ve never dared love anyone before, because I didn’t want to. And then when I did—I didn’t know how to.’
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 breas
t—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
IT 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.
The Sultan’s Choice
Abby Green
Desert Jewels & Rising Stars Page 15
