The Sheikh's Guarded Heart

by Liz Fielding

  Suppose her email had not arrived? Was it still buzzing around somewhere in cyberspace? It had happened at work only the other day and a deal had nearly fallen through…

  She wrote again.

  I am looking for my mother, Elizabeth Forrester, daughter of Jessica Forrester of Maybridge. Please, if it’s not you, will you let me know so that I can cross you off my list? Lucy Forrester.

  She hit ‘send’, then stared at the screen as if expecting a reply to drop into her mailbox.

  ‘A watched computer never delivers mail,’ Deena told her. ‘Come on, let’s go to the supermarket, I’ll make you some khoushaf.’

  The distraction worked until Lucy saw the fresh figs on display, cold, hard, a world away from the soft, sweet fruit she’d shared with Han. She told an unconvinced Deena that she had a headache, went home and took out the kaftans Han had bought for her, rubbing the silk against her cheek, imagining some faint lingering scent of roses, remembering Ameerah’s face as she’d paraded herself in the shalwar kameez.

  Picked up the poetry book he’d given her and held it against her heart, wondering what he’d be doing at that moment in New York.

  Was he at some diplomatic cocktail party surrounded by countless women, all of them cleverer than her, prettier, dressed in the kind of clothes that a man like Han would expect a woman worth his attention to wear?

  Then she realised that she was still doing it. Despite her good job, the place she’d won at SOAS, the friends she’d made, she hadn’t moved on where it mattered. In her head she knew that she was a strong, bright woman who deserved everything that life had to offer, but in her heart she still believed that because her mother hadn’t wanted her, she wasn’t worth anything.

  The next day she placed advertisements in the personal columns of all the national newspapers, appealing for information. Contacted the local radio station and used their ‘find a friend’ request programme. She was even interviewed by the local newspaper.

  She hated every minute of it. It was like exposing herself in public. Walking naked down the street in slow motion.

  And it was all for nothing. Worse than nothing. The only responses she had were from desperate women looking for their own children, desperate children looking for their mothers, all of them wanting to share their own stories.

  At least she’d finally managed to sell the house, get that burden off her back, clear her debts.

  She moved into a flat share with one of her colleagues from work, learned how to head off the invitations to drinks, dinner, the movies from the men she met. Not because they weren’t decent men, not because she didn’t trust her own judgement, but because they weren’t Han.

  Then one evening when she got home from work there was a woman standing on the pavement looking up at the first floor windows as if she’d knocked, had got no answer, but still hoped that there might be someone home.

  ‘Can I help?’ Lucy asked. ‘Who are you looking for?’ But even before the words were out of her mouth, she knew.

  She’d seen photographs of her grandmother as a young woman. Had seen her own face in the mirror countless times. This woman was both of them, neither of them, unknown and yet recognised in ways that went to the deepest part of the soul.

  Lucy just stood there, unable to move, to speak…

  ‘I went to the house,’ her mother said. ‘The woman who lives there gave me the name of the estate agent who sold it to her. I thought they might know where you were. I was going to ask them to send on a letter.’ She made a vague wordless gesture. ‘One of the women there told me where to find you. She said you’d want her to…’

  Someone else arrived, opened the door, held it for a moment and then, when neither of them moved, let it swing shut.

  Still Lucy stood there.

  ‘Maybe she was wrong. I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me, talk to me…’ She turned, began to move, but Lucy reached out, laid her hand on her mother’s arm, kept her from walking away, finally managed to say, ‘No. Please. I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘Looking for me?’

  Lucy saw hope in her mother’s face and all the years fell away.

  ‘For months. I used local radio, newspapers, the Internet…’

  ‘I’ve been living abroad. New Zealand. My husband knew nothing about you until a few months ago when I had a bit of a scare. A lump in my breast.’ She shook her head. ‘No. It wasn’t, but for a while I thought I might die and that I’d never have known you… I told Michael everything and he brought me home to confront my mother, to demand to know where she’d placed you so that I could begin to look for you.’

  ‘Placed me?’

  Her mother struggled to speak. ‘She took you away from the hospital, told me you’d been given to a good God-fearing couple who couldn’t have children, that they were going to adopt you, take you away, that I’d never see you again. That it was best.’ Tears were pouring down her cheeks. ‘Everyone said it was for the best.’

  ‘But she didn’t,’ Lucy said. ‘She raised me herself.’

  ‘She kept you?’ Her mother stifled a cry of anguish with her hand. It was a cry, Lucy realised with an overwhelming sense of her loss, that she’d been stifling all her life. ‘I never went back. I walked out of the hospital and never went back. I never wanted to see or speak to her ever again. I couldn’t forgive her. Bear to be in the same house, the same room…’

  She put out a hand as if to touch Lucy, but couldn’t quite bring herself to bridge the gap in case she was not real, only some figment of her imagination.

  ‘If I’d come back, just once, I could have been with you. I could have borne anything to be with you…’

  ‘Don’t,’ Lucy said, reaching out as her mother had. Not quite touching. ‘Please, Mum…’

  And then, somehow, without either of them knowing how it happened, they were in each other’s arms, holding each other, weeping and laughing.

  It was being with her mother, discovering that she had a wonderful stepfather, a sixteen-year-old half-sister, had been given the family she’d always longed for, that made her realise that finding a life was nowhere near as important as living the life you’d been handed. Being with the people you loved. That the risk of looking a fool was nowhere near as bad as being one and losing something unbelievably precious.

  On a Monday afternoon, a month after she’d been reunited with her mother, she picked up her cellphone and called the United Nations building in New York, asked to speak to Sheikh Hanif al-Khatib.

  She was put through to his office. His secretary was polite. ‘Sheikh Hanif is not expected in the office today, Miss Forrester. Do you wish to leave a message?’

  Having screwed herself up to make the call, disappointment flooded through her.

  ‘Tell him I called, will you?’

  Then, even before she’d hung up, she was summoned to the Chairman’s office and, before she knew it, she was on a plane to Paris.

  ‘Are you doing anything tonight, Lucy?’ one of her colleagues asked as they went down in the lift.

  ‘Forget it, Jamie. After that Paris trip, she’s holding out for the boss.’

  ‘I think she’s got bigger ambitions than that,’ someone else chipped in as the doors opened and they headed for the door.

  ‘Bigger? What’s bigger than that?’

  ‘Royalty.’

  Lucy, who had until that moment ignored the usual banter, turned and stared at the girl who’d spoken.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I took a phone call for you from some bloke who said he was a sheikh. While you were away.’

  Lucy felt her knees buckle. She’d come back from Paris hoping that Hanif would have called back. When she found out he hadn’t…

  ‘I didn’t get any message. When did he ring?’

  ‘Come on, it was a wind-up,’ the girl said. Then, ‘Tuesday, Wednesday. I left a note on your desk.’

  ‘It wasn’t there when I got back this morning.’

>   ‘Hey, don’t fret,’ Jamie said. ‘I’m short a white stallion but I can whisk you away in a BMW coupé—’

  ‘Black,’ she said, cutting him short as she punched the lift button to call it back so that she could go and search for the message. ‘The stallion has to be black.’

  ‘Black. Right.’ Then, ‘Is that your way of telling me that there’s no point in asking you out for a drink?’

  ‘No point whatever,’ she assured him, but none of the men were listening. They were all too busy crowding through the door to drool over the black Aston Martin parked in front of the entrance.

  From her place by the lift Lucy saw the door open, the driver step out. He was dressed casually enough in well cut trousers with a cashmere sweater over an open-neck shirt, but no one would have mistaken him for anything but what he was. A man who commanded vast empty spaces that ordinary men would find daunting.

  His eyes held hers as the lift doors opened in front of her. People filed out but she didn’t move and a pathway seemed to open up as he walked towards her.

  ‘Hanif…’

  Lucy felt as if the air had been knocked from her body and he caught her shoulders as if afraid she might fall. He was always catching her before she fell, she thought.

  ‘You called,’ he said.

  ‘I only just got the message that you rang back,’ she managed. ‘I was in Paris…’

  ‘Paris?’ He smiled. ‘You are living life with a capital L…’

  ‘No. It’s my job… What are you doing here? Is Ameerah with you? When did you arrive?’

  She was gabbling, talking too quickly, asking too many questions, but not the important one. The one that mattered.

  Why are you here?

  ‘You called and I came,’ he said in response to her thought. ‘I would have been here earlier but I had to present my credentials at the Court of St James’s this morning.’

  She frowned. ‘But doesn’t that mean…’

  ‘That I’ve delivered my report to the UN, that my new post is in London. I’m here as my country’s Ambassador.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘You miss the rain…’

  ‘I miss you. And since you are here, this is where I must be too.’

  He’d had his hair cut, she realised. It lay in thick, soft, dark layers, shining under the street light, and she reached without thinking for the leather tie that she’d used to hold back her own hair.

  The one he’d used to tie it back for her. The one that she shouldn’t be wearing. Like the amber silk blouse. The black linen trousers…

  ‘And yet you put the Queen before me?’ she demanded.

  He smiled as if no words could have pleased him more.

  ‘When Her Majesty finds ten minutes in a busy schedule, it’s a brave man who is prepared to ask her to wait, to tell her that he has someone more important to see. Besides, now that’s done, I can concentrate my whole mind on you.’

  ‘Oh…’ Then, ‘Your mind?’

  ‘My mind, my body, take whatever part of me you want.’

  She swallowed. ‘Is Ameerah with you?’

  ‘In London, safe in the care of her nanny. She cannot wait to see you.’

  ‘I’ve missed her so much.’

  ‘Just Ameerah?’

  No. Not just Ameerah.

  ‘Can it be,’ he said, glancing at the men standing slackjawed behind her, then slipping into Arabic, ‘Can it be that you have found the life you were looking for and have no time to spare for me?’

  ‘No! I will always have time for you, Hanif. I owe you my life.’ She smiled up at him. ‘It’s finally on a path forward, thanks to you. I’ve found my mother—at least she found me. I’m starting university next autumn—’

  ‘I’m glad for you, Lucy,’ he said softly and at that moment she realised that her path forward had begun not when she’d walked away from him, but at the very instant she had met him, when he had scared her witless with his knife, had saved her from a fiery death.

  ‘Have you found somewhere to live yet?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In London.’

  ‘No. I haven’t even begun to look—’

  ‘The embassy is conveniently close to the School of Oriental and African Studies.’

  She did not ask him how he knew. He could read her mind… If only she could read his.

  ‘The rooms are large. Fully furnished. There is every comfort.’

  Her breath caught in her throat. For a man of Hanif’s traditions, beliefs, there would be only one reason he would ask her to move into his embassy.

  ‘Have you come all this way simply to offer me accommodation, Your Highness?’

  ‘You begin to read my mind, as I read yours, Lucy. There is, however, one small problem. You will have to share.’

  ‘A room?’

  His hands slid from her shoulder to her hands. He clasped them in his, drew them close to his chest, to his heart. ‘Share my life, my world. You called and I have flown from New York with my heart in my hands, Lucy. My future. I have come to beg you for yours. To ask you to be my only wife, my one princess, to be the honoured mother to Ameerah. To the children that may come.’

  She bent to kiss his hands and when she looked up at him her eyes were misted with tears.

  ‘You are my life, Hanif. My one love. You are my prince and the husband of my heart. My life is yours.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘ARE you sure about this?’

  Lucy straightened, refusing to give into the backache that had kept her awake all night, had been plaguing her all morning. Nothing, not even the imminent arrival of her first baby, was going to deprive her of the magic moment when she received her degree.

  ‘You can’t make it through dinner without a dash to the bathroom,’ Han said. ‘You’ll never be able to make it through the entire ceremony.’

  ‘They’ve given me a seat on the aisle so that I can take comfort breaks. Honestly, I’ll be fine, Han.’ Her darling looked so anxious that she reached out, rubbed her hand reassuringly against his arm. ‘Just tell me that this ridiculous hat is on straight and then go and sit down.’

  ‘It’s perfect. You’re perfect.’ Then, ‘If it’s too much, just get up and walk out. Everyone will understand.’

  ‘Han!’

  He kissed her and then, because there was nothing else he could do, he joined her mother and all the other proud family members waiting to see their loved ones receive their degrees.

  The wait seemed endless for him as name after name was called. For Lucy, he suspected, it felt like an eternity.

  ‘Her Highness Princess Lucy al-Khatib…’

  He let out a sigh of relief. Another few minutes and they could leave.

  She made it up the steps, graceful as a galleon in full sail, crossed to the Chancellor, the daughter of another royal house, who kissed her cheek as she offered her congratulations.

  Then, as Lucy reached for the certificate, he saw her face change.

  He didn’t wait for her to turn to him. He was out of his seat and running towards her before she found him amongst the crowd.

  Two hours later, Lucy, exhausted, watched as he took this newest member of the al-Khatib family from the midwife.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  There had been an unspoken pact between them; neither of them had wanted to know whether the child they were expecting was a boy or a girl, but there was a wobble in her voice now, an uncertainty, a fear that he would be disappointed if this baby was not the son he had so longed for.

  ‘Do we have Jamal or Elyssa?’

  He looked at her, took her hand and raised it to his lips, before laying their newborn against her breast.

  ‘We have a baby, my love. A beautiful, healthy baby.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7249-5

  THE SHEIKH’S GUARDED HEART

  First North American Publication 2006.

  Copyright © 2006 by Liz Fielding.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review,
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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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