by The Sheikh
She braced herself for his violent reaction. She didn’t expect him to get angry, but she knew there would be energy and demands for information. Perhaps even accusations. But instead he stayed on the bed, his fingers brushing against her scalp, his other hand tucked behind his head.
“What happened?”
A simple question, yet it was as if he’d unlocked a hidden door. She felt her heart shudder as the memories escaped and raced to the light of day for the first time in six years.
“The doctor said it wasn’t uncommon to lose a baby in the first few weeks of pregnancy, especially for a young woman. He said there was probably something wrong with it and that was nature’s way of making things right.” She blinked to hold back tears, but still they spilled over onto her cheeks. “I was so upset when you left that I locked myself in my room at my parents’ house and cried for nearly two weeks. I’ve always wondered if our child couldn’t stand the thought of a mother who was so sad all the time.”
“So you take responsibility for what happened?”
She nodded.
“I see.” He cupped her cheek. “Perhaps our child didn’t want a father who disappeared without word.”
“You had nothing to do with me losing the baby.”
“Neither did you.” His dark gaze locked on her face. “So that is why you refused to see me. You were too upset.”
She nodded. “That’s a part of it. I was ashamed, too. And scared. I thought you’d be so angry with me.”
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her closer until she rested on top of him and they could kiss. He brushed his mouth against hers. “Never. With the wisdom of hindsight I know that I shouldn’t have left you behind when my aunt died. I should have brought you with me.”
“I’m not sure that would have helped. I couldn’t have handled the situation, or you. Not then.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “You think you can handle me now?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you so sure?”
This was, as her father would say, where the rubber met the road. How willing was she to risk everything and lay it on the line?
“Because before I didn’t know why you’d married me. I was young and scared and too inexperienced to know how to please a man. Everything is different now.”
The humor disappeared as if it had never been. He started to sit up. Emma pushed on his shoulders, trying desperately to hold him in place.
“Reyhan, don’t. We have to talk about it.”
“There is nothing to say.”
“I think we could talk for a lifetime and never say all the things we missed by being apart. Reyhan, why didn’t you ever tell me you loved me?”
He grasped her by the waist and slid her aside, then sat up. That simple action warned her he was already slipping away.
“Why is it such a horrible thing to admit?” she asked desperately. “Is it
because I was so immature? I know I couldn’t be a partner for you then, but things are different now. We’re both different. You loved me then. Couldn’t you care a little for me now?”
He didn’t speak, didn’t move. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing.
Frightened, and not sure how to convince him, mostly because she didn’t understand what she was fighting against, she tried to speak from the heart.
“I don’t know what I felt back then. I was a kid. I keep saying that but it’s true. I had a fantasy about love and marriage and what my husband would be like.
You rescued me that very first day and I’m not sure I saw you as a real person.
You were more like a superhero or something. But now I can see the man and he’s a good and honorable person.”
She leaned against Reyhan’s back and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“You’re proud and sometimes that’s annoying, but I can live with it,” she continued. “I want to stay here with you. I want us to stay married, to love each other and have babies together.” She swallowed before confessing her most intimate secret. “I’m in love with you.”
Reyhan felt each word. They cut him like knives. When he’d been shot the day before, he’d barely felt the pain, but now, with Emma, he was ripped apart.
Love. She spoke the words he would have sold his soul to hear. Words that would drive him to his knees with gratitude. But then what? Who would he be if he gave in to his love and desire for this woman? How could he be strong? How could he be a man if he was controlled by a woman?
“No!” he roared, and sprang to his feet. “Do not love me. I will not love you in return. Not again. I will not be crushed by the needing and wanting. I will not have you fill my head and consume the very breath from my body. I will not be made weak by all that I feel for you.”
He glared at her, but she didn’t flinch. Instead she met his angry gaze with a look so filled with love that he could have captured the emotion in his hand and trapped it in a box.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” she said as she stood naked in front of him.
Her long hair spread across her shoulders and teased the top of her breasts. “We can support each other, gaining strength from what the other gives. A team is better than a single man. I want to make you happy, Reyhan. I want to be the one person in the world you can trust with everything and I want to trust you the same way.”
He knew what she asked, what she wanted. He knew the truth—it was better to be safe and alone. Better to walk away.
He started to do just that, but before he did so, he allowed himself one last look at her. He took in her beautiful face, the slight tilt of her eyes and the fullness of her mouth. He memorized the sound of her laugh and how she scowled when she was angry. He pictured her hair up, as she’d worn it to the formal reception at the palace.
His gaze dropped lower to her full breasts, the tight nipples that called to him like a siren. Wanting stirred, but he ignored it. Next he studied her narrow waist and the fullness of her hips. He felt badly about the child they’d lost, about the pain she’d suffered alone. Had she been recovering when he’d first tried to see her? Her father had said she was ill. Reyhan had assumed the old man was lying, but perhaps not.
They hadn’t used birth control. Why hadn’t he considered the possibility of her having his child?
A son, he thought with regret. Or a pretty little girl of five who ran through the halls of the palace and wrapped him around her finger as much as he would wrap her around his heart.
Standing there naked, with sunlight filling the room, Reyhan felt the weight of all he’d lost when he’d abandoned Emma, and the weight of it made it impossible for him to stand. He sank to his knees.
She was at his side in an instant.
“Don’t let me go,” she pleaded. “We’ve been given a second chance. Can’t you see how rare and precious that is?”
He clung to her because she was as she had always been—his lifeline. He had tried to live without her. He had convinced himself a cold gray world was a safe place to be, but it was not living. It was an existence that offended those brave enough to reach for what they wanted.
“I am a man humbled by a woman,” he said, taking her face in his hands and kissing her.
“I am the one who is humbled,” she breathed as she kissed him over and over again. “I love you, Reyhan. For always.”
“And I love you. From the first moment I saw you.”
He drew her into his arms then carried her to the bed where he settled both of them on the tangled sheets.
“Stay with me,” he pleaded. “Love me. Have my children, work at my side, fill my nights and my heart.”
Tears spilled out of the corners of her eyes. “Yes. For always.”
He wrapped his arms around her. Emma could feel the steady beating of his heart.
His skin was warm against her own, both comforting and arousing.
There was much to discuss, she thought as she snuggled closer still. Where they would make their home—either h
ere or the pink palace. How often she would be visiting her parents in Texas. What Reyhan was going to say when she told him she loved her work too much to give it up. While being a delivery room nurse would be difficult, she would have to find another way to use her skills.
Last, and perhaps most important, she wondered when she would tell him about the tiny life growing inside of her. She knew with the certainty that had served women well since the dawn of time that they had made a baby that morning. A child who would be the first of many. The new life was their promise to each other—that they would love with all their hearts. Having nearly lost everything, they would hold on to each other while nurturing a love as constant and endless as the desert itself.
