But when she lay in his arms on the eve of her wedding day, she allowed herself to dream, just a little, of an Arun who loved her in return. She felt the warmth of his body curled around her back, his hands tucked against the bulge that was their baby.
So he slept every night, wrapping her not only in his arms but in security, and though she told herself this was a far greater gift than love, and one that would last for ever, sometimes she ached for love as well.
Greed, that’s all that is, she reminded herself as Arun stirred, his hands moving across her belly, one higher, one lower, teasing her body to life, stirring it to excitement as he awoke wanting her.
‘You are one most exciting, satisfying, generous and sexy lover,’ he whispered in her ear, as he pulled her closer and she felt his hard erection slide between her legs and tease its way inside her. ‘Have I told you that, Mrs al’Kawali to be?’
His hands caressed her breasts.
‘Have I told you how I love to touch you, to feel your body tighten as you respond to me? Have I told you your skin is softer than the softest thistledown and finer than the most expensive silk? Have I told you how I love to touch you here?’
One hand slid lower. ‘And here?’ A thumb and finger tweaked her nipple. ‘Until you catch your breath and tighten around me and say my name in such a husky whisper I can no longer restrain myself?’
Mel bit her lip as the pressure rose inside her, sweeping her up and up in a dizzying spiral of sensation until she peaked and splintered apart and breathed his name, as he’d predicted, then felt his release and heard him sigh, his arms tightening around her as if he’d never let her go.
But a wave of melancholy swept over her as Arun eased her hair aside to press a kiss to the nape of her neck, and though she could tell herself it didn’t matter, she was beginning to wonder if it did.
If loving him would prove too much for her to hide.
And, should that happen, whether him knowing would embarrass him and affect the way he held her, touched her, made love to her?
And the ache that his love-making had chased away returned…
‘I’ll be away tonight,’ he said, all business now as he eased away from her, sitting up on the side of the bed and stretching, his toned muscles rippling beneath his satiny skin. ‘I am flying out to the winter palace and won’t be back until morning, but you can rest assured I will not be late for our wedding.’
He leaned across and kissed her cheek.
‘And you, Madam Wife-to-be, are not to set one foot inside that hospital today. Go play with Jenny, shop, or drink coffee or do whatever women do on the day before their weddings. No work, understand?’
He tapped his finger on her nose as he gave the order, then, without waiting for a reply or a protest, rose, wrapped the white cloth he wore beneath his robes around his waist and left the bedroom, heading for his own room and the bathroom attached to it.
Mel watched him go, realising, as her melancholy deepened, that she’d never been inside that room—never been invited to see the room he considered his.
Was this room where they slept the equivalent of the women’s house in the compound—a place where they could make love while his own room remained sacrosanct?
In which case, why?
She sighed.
There was only one possible reason.
Hussa!
Mel sat up, took a deep breath and tried a little positive thinking to throw off her gloom. Looking sensibly at the situation, if that was the case, then she, Mel, should be glad they used her bedroom, not his, for three in a bed, even when one was a ghost, was not a happy situation.
‘This is a marriage of convenience,’ she reminded herself, saying the words out loud to help her head remember, although it wasn’t her head but her heart that needed help.
‘Stupid heart,’ she muttered, crossing to the bathroom and starting the shower running. ‘Stupid, stupid heart.’
CHAPTER NINE
JENNY arrived as Mel was finishing her breakfast, full of plans for the day.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been here for ten days and haven’t seen the city,’ she announced, bubbling over not with her usual newly wed bliss but with the excitement of the proposed shopping expedition. ‘Arun said we were to shop till we dropped and I was to buy you anything you wanted—a whole new wardrobe for your pregnancy and a dress for your wedding, and isn’t it just the most amazing thing, the two of us falling in love with twins?’
‘Marrying twins is amazing,’ Mel said, ‘but me marrying Arun is different—I told you that.’
Jenny smiled.
‘And you can keep on telling me that,’ Jenny responded, ‘until you’re blue in the face, but I only have to look at you when you’re with Arun to realise you’re in love.’
‘Nonsense, that’s lust, it’s different,’ Mel protested, because the love she held for Arun was a secret she wanted to keep hidden deep within her heart.
But to make Jen happy she shopped, allowing her friend to talk her into the most extravagant gown of golden silk for her wedding, although she stuck to practical outfits for the rest of her new wardrobe.
‘I’ll be working,’ she reminded Jenny when they sat down for lunch in a café in the huge new shopping centre.
‘Not all the time,’ Jen reminded her, then she looked up and smiled as Miriam came in, having agreed to leave Tia for long enough to have lunch with the two women.
‘I was telling Mel she won’t be working all the time,’ Jenny explained to Miriam, before turning back to Mel. ‘You’ll have days off to ride with Arun and explore the country. In fact, it’s surprising Arun didn’t take you out to the winter palace today. It’s a fascinating place.’
‘I suppose because he went to talk to Hussa,’ Miriam said, sounding so matter-of-fact it took a moment for Mel to process the words.
But when she did she felt the hurt—as deep as a knife thrust in her chest.
‘Hussa’s dead, surely?’ she blurted out, dismayed by the statement and the pain.
‘Of course,’ Miriam agreed, still totally unperturbed. ‘But her mausoleum is there. He goes to talk to her, to explain about the baby and marrying you—so it would have been rude to take you with him.’
The pain expanded, filling Mel’s chest, squeezing her lungs so she could barely breathe.
Jenny was looking at her anxiously, so Mel smiled as if she’d known all along that was why she hadn’t accompanied Arun, and as if it didn’t matter in the least to her that her husband-to-be still talked to his dead wife. But she must have been smiling too hard, for Jenny touched her arm.
‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ Mel managed. ‘I don’t feel well. It’s been coming on all morning. Must be the excitement. Do you think you could call the driver and get him to take me back to the hospital? I’ll go up to the apartment and rest. You and Miriam can stay here and have lunch.’
‘As if!’ Jenny said, signalling to a waitress and asking her to call their driver. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No, Jen!’ Mel said, looking directly at her friend so Jenny could see she meant it. ‘I just need to get home and lie down for a while. I promise you I’ll be all right.’ She tried a smile as she added. ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’
‘Well, it doesn’t seem right,’ Jenny grumbled as she took Mel’s arm and walked with her out to the car. ‘And Arun will be furious if he hears I’ve let you go home on your own when you’re not feeling well.’
‘Arun needn’t know,’ Mel told her. ‘Now, go back to Miriam and make sure she understands that. I’m fine, just a little woozy. It’s been a kind of hectic couple of weeks.’
‘It has, that,’ Jenny said, kissing Mel on the cheek as the driver opened the car door for her. ‘You take care and, whether you like it or not, I’m going to be calling at the apartment just as soon as Miriam and I have finished lunch, and you’d better be resting or I will tell Arun.’
Relief that she was finally alone flooded thr
ough Mel as the car pulled into the traffic and began the journey to the hospital. Although now she was alone, she’d have to think.
Have to work out why Miriam’s words had cut into her so deeply.
She’d known all along that Arun didn’t love her, so why was she upset?
Because she’d hoped he’d grow to love her—maybe had even convinced herself he was falling in love already—mistaken his natural kindness and courtesy for more than that…
The common sense part of her head was showing little mercy, but showed even less when it pursued the thoughts to their logical conclusion.
And now, it murmured to her, you know that won’t happen, because no matter how he feels about you he still loves Hussa!
Oh, dear!
Back at the apartment she undressed and climbed into bed, curling herself up into a tight ball, hoping sleep might come so she didn’t have to think, but sleep eluded her, which wasn’t surprising, for how could she sleep when her mind kept replaying little videos of times she’d been with Arun?
Riding over the dunes, walking in the sand by moonlight, Arun soaping her back in the shower, Arun holding her as she shattered in a climax…
It was useless trying to sleep so she got up, had a shower and dressed, but what next? Arun could hardly class checking on Tia’s baby as work so she left a message for Jenny with Olara and went down to the ICU, only to find Jenny and Miriam both there with Tia.
‘He doesn’t seem as well as he did yesterday,’ Tia said, and Mel knew her instincts were probably right, although, just looking at the baby, she could see little change.
Mel checked the monitor. His pulse rate was slightly up, his blood oxygen slightly down, not enough to worry about in a healthy infant but in a baby so fragile…
She made a note for a slight change to the medication that was helping his heart and promised Tia she’d look in later. Assuring Jen she was all right now, it must just have been tiredness making her feel ill, she returned to the apartment and this time when she crawled into bed she did fall asleep, but only after she’d thought the situation through and decided what path to take.
Were her dreams bad that she frowned as she slept? Arun wondered as he stood beside the bed and watched the woman he was about to wed.
So beautiful, but did he really know her?
Not that it mattered. He told himself that repeatedly, reminding himself that no one really ever got to know another person completely. Yet it did bother him, just as her regular reminders that their marriage was a convenient arrangement bothered him.
She stirred and opened her eyes, smiling then frowning at him.
He took the fact that she smiled first as a good omen and sat down on the bed.
‘You weren’t coming back until tomorrow,’ she said, pushing herself up on the bed until she was sitting with her back against the pillows. She frowned again. ‘Did Jenny contact you?’
‘No.’ He answered truthfully because it was Miriam who had phoned to tell him Melissa wasn’t well, and, given the frown, he guessed she’d given Jenny strict instructions to not mention her indisposition.
‘Well, that’s all right,’ his bride-to-be announced, ‘because it’s good you are here. I’ve decided something and it’s probably better I tell you today rather than tomorrow.’
This was not good, whatever it was. He knew for sure he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming. And the way Melissa took a deep breath before launching into what she had to say warned him it was as bad as news could be.
‘I’ve decided not to marry you,’ she said, her clear blue eyes steadfastly holding his. ‘It won’t change much. I’ll live here or in the women’s house and we can sleep together wherever and whenever you like and the baby will grow up in the compound with all the other kids so you will have the same paternal input into him. But we won’t be married.’
The words were ringing in his head, so clear they were repeating themselves—I’ve decided not to marry you— over and over again. But they made no sense.
‘You’ve—?’
‘Decided not to marry you,’ she said, as if maybe he hadn’t heard the first time. ‘But I can’t see that it will make much difference to our lives, unless, of course, there’s something really dreadful in your culture about us continuing to sleep together if we’re not married, in which case that should stop, too.’
Mel ached as she said it, but she’d thought it through and decided a little pain now was better than being in pain for the rest of her life, and to marry Arun, loving him as she did, without him loving her back, would guarantee a lifetime of heartache and regret.
She watched him try to come to terms with her decision, today his thoughts not hidden from her. He was bewildered, as well he might be. So bewildered he hadn’t asked the obvious question—why.
Not that she could tell him why.
Because you still love Hussa would sound lame.
She eased her legs off the bed.
‘I’ve got to go to see the—’
The phone interrupted her. Arun lifted the receiver, and once again his face failed to hide his emotion, concern deepening to worry.
‘That was Sarah Craig. The baby—’
Mel nodded, forcing everything else from her mind—all that mattered now was the baby. ‘I saw him earlier,’ she said. ‘If he’s still losing ground, I’ll need to operate immediately. How quickly can you get a surgical team ready? Kam’s agreed to assist. And Sarah. You’d lined up anaesthetists, perfusionists and someone who is experienced with the heart-lung machine for the op—do you think you can get them to come in tonight?’
Arun stared at her for a moment, unable to believe she’d switched from a declaration that she couldn’t marry him to organising an operation in a split second.
He’d barely nodded when she continued.
‘We’ll need the best theatre nurses you can find—Kam will help you there—and most importantly the homograft and possibly a couple of tiny dacron ones as well in case the homograft doesn’t fit. We need to move now, although we won’t need the theatre team for a couple of hours. I want to be sure everything is in place before we start, and I’ll want to talk to all the people who’ll be in Theatre so they know what I’m doing.’
She didn’t want to marry him? His mind swerved between that and business.
‘I’ll phone Kam then go down with you to the ICU to get the rest happening. He knows the surgical staff and can phone ahead with orders for what and who we’ll need. We’ll get your team if we have to fly in staff from a neighbouring country.’
Satisfied that things were moving, and with her mind now fully focussed on what lay ahead, Mel went through to the bathroom to wash before heading for the ICU.
‘If he is not thriving, is it safe to operate?’
Arun was putting down the phone and asked the question as she returned to the bedroom, her hands raised as she plaited her unruly hair into a thick pigtail.
‘That’s the one question I’d rather you hadn’t asked,’ Mel said, snapping a band on her hair and turning to him with a sigh. ‘I suppose it will be up to Tia. I do wish her husband was here because she shouldn’t have to decide this on her own.’
‘He is here, or he should be. He was due to fly in this morning. Kam arranged for him to come home as soon as we knew the baby had problems, but getting flights and connections…’
He paused, then added, ‘Why are you so concerned? Why do two people need to make the decision?’
Mel sighed again.
‘You must know why,’ she said, cross that he was forcing her to say it. ‘If the baby’s health is deteriorating, it means his heart isn’t coping and so we have two choices. We do nothing more than keep him comfortable until he dies, or we operate, knowing he’s very young and losing the battle already, so he might die anyway.’
Arun took her hand and squeezed her fingers.
‘At least that way he gets a chance,’ he reminded her, but Mel refused to be comforted.
‘Not t
hat great a one,’ she said. ‘Think of all the variables. Will he survive a switch to a heart-lung machine? Will he even survive the an-aesthetic? Will his heart muscle be patent enough for me to stitch it after the operation, will whatever homografts you have in storage be the right size? We need more than a chance, we need a miracle.’
‘Miracles happen,’ Arun reminded her, pulling her closer to him and holding her against his body. She hadn’t mentioned no physical contact, just that she wouldn’t marry him. ‘Jenny and Kam found each other and fell in love in a rebel stronghold, you’re having the baby our country needs as an heir. I know it seems we’ve had our share of miracles, but shouldn’t they come in threes?’
‘I’d like to think so,’ Mel said, but it was a grudging admission, mainly because being held in Arun’s arms reminded her of all she was turning away from with her decision to not marry him. She pushed away.
‘We’ve got to go,’ she said, and left the room.
The little boy was struggling, his lips much bluer than they had been when Mel had seen him only hours earlier, his oxygen stats on their own low enough to be a concern. Mel examined him, an anxious Sarah hovering by her side.
‘It happened so suddenly I thought at first the monitors must be playing up,’ the anxious young doctor said.
‘It can happen quickly,’ Mel assured her. ‘Don’t blame yourself. Where’s Tia?’
‘In the visitors’ room across the hall,’ Sarah responded, nodding towards the small room families used as a refuge. ‘Dr al’Kawali went in there to talk to her.’
Mel finished her examination, then made her way to the next room.
Tia sat on the couch with a young man in jeans and a polo shirt, looking so anxious he had to be the baby’s father. Arun squatted in front of the pair, his hands holding a hand of each of them.
The Sheikh Surgeon's Baby Page 13
