Then up a winding staircase, into one of the turrets.
‘We played here as children, Kam and I, although we were forbidden to do so,’ he said, and she could imagine the twins racing each other up the stairs.
‘Or perhaps because you were forbidden,’ Mel said, knowing the lure of the forbidden to a child. ‘But is the whole place deserted now?’ she asked, thinking of the waste that all the rooms should be empty.
‘Far from it,’ he said, leading her out onto a small balcony that ran around the top of the turret. ‘Look.’
He pointed down and she saw that he’d landed on the shortest side of the huge building and led her into only one part of it. Below them was another courtyard, thick with palms and fruit trees, where men raked paths, and women walked, and children played.
‘When my father was alive, he wanted all the family to live here permanently and used whatever pressure he could, financial and emotional, to keep them here. I imagine it was part rebellion against his strictures that when he died most of them immediately moved to the city. But a couple of my sisters, some aunts and a few unrelated dependants still live out here all year round. Some prefer the old to the new.’
‘It’s very beautiful,’ Mel said, seeing the stunted date palms from the top and yellow lemons bright against the glossy leaves of their trees.
‘This part I have been showing you was my father’s domain,’ Arun continued. ‘Kam hates it still, but it has always had a special place in my heart, in spite of the unhappiness the old man caused us. Knowing this, Kam has insisted it be mine and after me it will be my child’s, because this is his or her history and heritage. I thought, in seeing it, you might understand why marriage is important to me.’
Mel could, but the word ‘marriage’ reminded Mel of Miriam’s words in the shopping centre.
‘You came here yesterday?’ Mel began, unsure what to say next.
Arun looked puzzled for a moment, then frowned.
‘Miriam told you? Yes, I did.’
He hesitated and Mel felt the chill of Hussa’s ghost floating between them.
Then Arun took her hand and held it gently, as if it was something very precious.
‘My first wife, Hussa, is buried here. I came to see her, Mel, to tell her all about you and about the happiness you’ve brought me, and as I sat there, I realised she would want me to be happy. It was an ending, Mel, so I could move on. So I could marry you—or so I thought.’
He was studying her face and although she could feel happiness singing in her blood, uncertainty held her mute.
Fortunately, Arun still retained the power of words. In a voice husky with an emotion she dared not guess at he said, ‘But you should know, Melissa, that I won’t force you to marry me any more…’
He paused and looked out over the buildings and beyond them to the desert, baking under the afternoon sun.
Then he turned and took her hands and looked at her.
‘Any more,’ he continued, ‘than I can force you to love me.’
Mel frowned at him, the words not computing into anything intelligible in her head.
‘Force me to love you?’ she repeated. ‘Why would you say that?’
A self-deprecating little smile pressed a line into his left cheek.
‘Because love has been off limits? Because of your insistence that our marriage is a practical arrangement? Because it’s so damn difficult for me to believe what I feel, let alone make a fool of myself by telling you?’
He turned away as if looking at her caused him pain, but Mel was catching up.
‘Arun?’
He swung back to look at her, strain around his mouth now and uncertainty in his eyes.
‘Make a fool of yourself,’ she begged, smiling at him as she said it. ‘Tell me.’
He sighed, then shook his head, the in-control sheikh suddenly lost.
‘I love you,’ he managed, then added, ‘There, it’s said!’
And sighed again.
‘That’s all?’ Mel teased, so happy she wanted to leap into the air and shout her joy to the world but holding it all under control because she wasn’t finished with this man yet.
‘Isn’t it enough?’ he grumbled, as if sure he’d made a total idiot of himself.
‘Of course it’s not,’ Mel told him. ‘Now you have to kiss me and tell me why you love me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear.’
‘Sweet nothings?’ he repeated, suspicion dawning in his eyes. ‘You’re happy about this? You’re not annoyed?’
Mel smiled at him and put her arms around him, drawing close to his body.
‘Why would I be annoyed when you’ve just made me the happiest woman in the world?’ she murmured. ‘When you’ve just told me the love I have for you is returned. When—’
‘Love is returned? You love me, too?’
He pushed away so he could look into her face.
‘If you love me, why did you say you wouldn’t marry me?’ he demanded, and Mel drew him close again, embarrassed by the intensity of her feelings and not wanting him looking at her as she confessed.
‘I thought you didn’t love me—couldn’t see why you would—especially when you’d so loved Hussa. Then I thought loving you without you loving me back would be easier if we weren’t married than if we were, so…’
Arun put his hands on her shoulders and eased her away, his face stern now.
‘Let us back up a bit here,’ he said, his voice stern as well. ‘I know we never talked of love, but surely you must have had some inkling of how I felt? And as for Hussa, yes, Melissa, I did love her, but she is gone and you have come to fill all the empty places in my heart. You must understand that or you will make yourself miserable. It is you I love—my brave, strong, independent, argumentative and beautiful Melissa. You I love now and will love for ever.’
And finally he kissed her, so sweetly, so tenderly Mel wondered if her heart might burst apart with the love it held, although she knew full well hearts were very tough structures and hers would probably handle the strain.
EPILOGUE
TWO women robed in blue sat on easy chairs beneath the lemon trees in the courtyard, warmed by the sun reflecting off the red stone building.
‘Bliss?’ Mel said, turning to pick up the baby girl who grizzled quietly in a woven basket by her side.
‘Bliss!’ Jenny echoed, lying back, her hands linked around her bulging stomach. ‘Although it would be nicer if the men were here.’
‘Your wish is their command, I’d say,’ Mel said, turning her head the better to hear the rattling noise of the approaching helicopter.
It flew over them like a shiny green dragonfly, swooping low enough to make Mel shake her fist at the pilot.
‘He knows not to do that in case it wakes the baby,’ she told her friend.
‘The baby’s already awake,’ Jenny reminded her, nodding to the chubby infant sucking greedily on Melissa’s breast.
‘But she might not have been,’ Mel complained, although her heart wasn’t in it. Her heart, in fact, was dancing with excitement, although Arun had only been gone a couple of days—down to the city to the opening of the now completed renovations of the old hospital.
‘So, the lazy women of the harem are taking their ease.’
It was Kam who spoke as the two brothers entered the courtyard, so alike yet easily identifiable to their wives.
‘It’s not exactly ease when I’m having Braxton-Hicks’s contractions all the time,’ Jen told him, though she rose to go towards him, greeting him with a kiss and turning in his arms so they could walk together. ‘To think of all I went through to have this baby—operation after operation—and now it’s doing this to me.’
‘Ah, but it will all be worth it when you hold him in your arms,’ Mel said. ‘I think I was as excited as you were when you finally fell pregnant and then to learn it was a boy. Zaheer may be developing quickly but I’m not sure they’d be ready for a female ruler.’
‘Or that my sweet lit
tle Nooria would want the job,’ Arun said, reaching Mel’s side and kneeling by her, his eyes feasting on his daughter.
‘Sweet little Nooria?’ Mel responded. ‘This child is going to be the size of an oil drum, the way she eats.’
‘She is beautiful,’ Arun whispered, running his hand over the downy head. ‘As is her mother.’
He reached up to touch Mel’s lips with his fingers.
‘You are well?’
Mel nodded, the emotion she felt tightening her chest too much for her to be able to speak.
How could it be that love could grow so much? That what she had felt for Arun when they’d married, a couple of days later than they’d planned, could be but a shadow of the love that had grown between them in the year that had followed?
‘Is all prepared for the party?’ Arun asked, and Mel found her voice.
‘That’s why we had to rest—we haven’t stopped. That sister of yours is a slave-driver.’
She eased the baby off her breast and Arun helped her stand, then he slipped his arm around her and the five of them made their way into the grand hall, not for an audience today but to celebrate the first birthday of a very special, and very healthy, little boy.
Shiar.
But as Kam and Jenny walked under the arch into the cloister, Mel paused, turning to look back at the courtyard, seeing the greens of the trees deepen as the sun sank lower in the sky then the flush of colour above the palace walls as the magical evening light show began.
Arun turned with her.
‘You are happy, my love?’ he asked quietly.
She moved closer to his side and rested her head on his shoulder.
‘Happier than I ever thought a woman could be, Arun. And you?’
His arm tightened around her shoulder and he bent awkwardly around Nooria to kiss Mel on the lips.
‘How could I not be when you have given me so great a gift—when you have given me your love?’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5612-8
THE SHEIKH SURGEON’S BABY
First published in Great Britain 2008
© Meredith Webber 2008
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
All the 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 the incidents are pure invention.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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** Desert Doctors
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The Sheikh Surgeon's Baby Page 15
