by Tessa Radley
Finally, his aunt could clearly contain herself no longer. “My daughter is at university in Los Angeles. Did you meet Rafiq when he studied abroad?”
Rafiq answered before she could reply. “Tiffany and I are…business acquaintances. She’s been traveling—and decided to visit.” It didn’t satisfy his aunt’s curiosity but she wouldn’t ask again.
“You look tired, dear.”
“I am.” Tiffany gave Lily a smile. “I can’t wait to go to bed.”
“After dinner I’ll show you where the women’s quarters are.”
“Thank you.”
The subdued note in her voice made Rafiq want to confront the turmoil that had been whirling around inside his head. He’d been rough on her earlier. Even his aunt could see that her travels had worn her out.
A trickle of shame seeped through Rafiq, then he forced it ruthlessly aside. What else was he supposed to have done? Accepted the lie that she was pregnant? Paid through the nose for the privilege of silencing her new blackmail attempt?
Never.
He’d taken the only course of action open to him: he’d brought her here, away from the bank, away from any possible contact with his father, brothers and staff to learn what she wanted.
Pregnant? Hah! He would not let her get away with such a ruse. Now she was confined to his home. And he would make sure she wasn’t left alone with his aunt. He made a mental note to assign one of the maids to keep the women company. His aunt would never gossip in front of the servants.
Tomorrow she would leave. He’d escort her to the airport himself. He certainly wouldn’t allow himself any regrets. Tiffany was not the stranded innocent she’d once almost managed to con him into believing she was. He’d already allowed her to squeeze him for money once.
By foolishly possessing her, taking her under a starlit sky, he’d made a fatal mistake. One that she would milk for the rest of her life—if he let her.
Rafiq had no intention of becoming trapped in the prison she’d created with her soft touches and sweet, drugging kisses.
He became aware that Tiffany was talking to his aunt. He tensed, and started to pay attention.
“You must miss your daughter,” Tiffany was saying.
Lily nodded. “But I’ll be joining her when the holidays come. She wanted a little time to find her feet.”
“How lucky for her that you respect her need for independence.”
“I still worry about her. She had a bad romantic experience a while back.”
That was enough! He wasn’t having this woman interrogating his family, discovering pains better left hidden.
“Wine?” Rafiq brusquely offered Tiffany.
She shook her head, “No, thanks.” And focused on his aunt. “Do you have any other children?”
“No, only Zara.”
“I’m an only child, too.”
“Oh, what a pity Zara wasn’t here for you to meet. You would’ve gotten along like a house on fire.”
Rafiq narrowed his gaze. If Tiffany even thought she might threaten his family’s well-being she would learn how very ruthless he could be.
“I would’ve liked that.”
She sounded so sincere. His aunt was glowing with delight. Lily put a hand on his arm, “I’m sure your father and brothers would like to meet Tiffany.”
“I’d like that but—”
His killing glare interrupted the woman who had caused all this trouble. “Tiffany will not be staying for very long,” he said with a snap of his teeth.
Aunt Lily looked crestfallen. “What a pity.”
Rafiq wished savagely that he’d been less respectful of Tiffany’s modesty. He should’ve known better than to introduce her to any member of his family.
“She’ll be leaving us tomorrow.”
The bedchamber Lily and the little plump maid called Mina showed Tiffany into was rich and luxurious. Filmy gold drapes surrounded a high bed covered by white linen while beautiful handwoven rugs covered the intricately patterned wooden floors. On the opposite walls, shutters were flung back to reveal a view of a courtyard containing a pool surrounded by padded loungers. Water trickled over a tiered fountain on the far side of the pool, the soothing sound adding to the welcome.
It felt as if she’d been transported into another, far more exotic, world.
Alone, Tiffany stripped off her crumpled clothes and pulled on a nightie. She felt dazed and disoriented and just a little bit queasy. Jet lag was setting in with vengeance.
Through an open door, she caught a glimpse of an immense tub with leaping dolphins—dolphins!—for faucets before weariness sank like a cloud around her. She padded through to the large bathroom to brush her teeth before heading for the bedchamber and clambering between the soft sheets where sleep claimed her.
The next thing she knew she was being wakened by the loud sound of knocking. Seconds later the door crashed open.
Tiffany sat up, dragging the covers up to her chin, thoroughly startled at being yanked from deep sleep.
“What do you want?” she demanded of the man looming in the doorway.
“Neither of the maids could awaken you.” Whatever had glittered in Rafiq’s eyes when the door first opened had already subsided.
“I was tired,” she said defensively. “I told you that last night.”
“It’s late.” He glanced at his watch. “Eleven o’clock. I thought you might’ve run out—” He broke off.
Eleven o’clock was all she heard. “It can’t be that late.”
He strode closer, brandishing the square face of his Cartier timepiece in her direction. “Look.”
The wrist beneath the leather strap was tanned, a mix of sinew and muscle. Oh, God, surely she wasn’t being drawn back under his thrall?
“I believe you,” she said hastily, her grip tightening on the bedcovers as she pulled them up to her chin so that no bare flesh was visible. Her stomach had started its now-familiar morning lurching routine.
“Will you please go?”
And then it was too late. Tiffany bolted from the bed and into the adjoining bathroom, where she was miserably and ignominiously sick.
When she finally raised her head, it was—horror of horrors—to find Rafiq beside her, holding out a white facecloth. She took it and wiped it over her face, appreciating the cool wetness.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
“You look terrible.”
This time her “Thanks” held no gratitude.
“I don’t like this. I’m going to call a doctor.” He was already moving away with that sleek, predatory stride.
“Don’t,” Tiffany said.
He halted just short of the bathroom door.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” She gave him a grim smile.
“Maybe it was something you ate.” Two long paces had him at her side. “You may need an antibiotic.”
“No antibiotic!” Nothing was going to harm her baby. “I promise you this is a perfectly normal part of being pregnant.”
His hands closed around her shoulders. “Oh, don’t try that tall tale again.”
“It’s the truth. I can’t help that you’re too dumb to see what’s right in front of your nose.” She poked a finger at his chest, but to her dismay he did not back away. Instead she became conscious of his muscled body beneath the crisply ironed business shirt. A body she’d touched all over the night they had been together…
She withdrew her finger as though it had been burned.
“I’m not dumb,” he growled.
Right. “And I’m not pregnant,” she countered. “I knew you were faking it.”
The triumph in his voice made her see red. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
Tiffany broke out of his grasp and, slipping past him, headed for the bedroom. Grabbing her purse off the dressing table she upended it onto the bed and scrabbled through the displaced contents. Snatching up a black-and-white image in a small frame she spun around to wave it in front of his nose.
�
�Look at this.”
“What is it?”
Couldn’t he see? He had to be blind…as well as obtuse.
“A photo of your daughter.”
“A photo of my daughter?” For once that air of composure had deserted him. “I don’t have a daughter.”
She pushed the picture into his hands. “It’s an image from a scan. A scan of my baby—” their baby “—taken last week. See? There’s her head, her hipbone, her arms. That’s your daughter you’re holding.”
His expression changed. When he finally raised his head, his eyes were glazed with shock. “You really are pregnant.”
Six
“No, I’m only faking it. Remember?”
Rafiq glared at Tiffany, unamused by the flippant retort—and the sharp edge he detected beneath it. He tightened his grip on the photo, conscious of a sense that his world was shifting.
“So how do you know it’s a girl? Can they tell?”
She stared down her nose at him in a way that made him want to kiss her, or throttle her. Then she said, “My intuition tells me she is.”
Her intuition? The ridiculous reply brought him back to reality, and he shut down the string of questions that he’d been about to ask. Rafiq almost snorted in disgust at how readily he’d crumbled. She was softening him up—and worse, it was working.
“You don’t think I’m going to fall for this?” He shoved the picture back at her. “This could be any man’s baby.”
Her fingers closed around the small framed image with great care. She slid it into the bag and walked back to the dressing table where she set the bag down. Her back to him, she said, “Doctors will be able to estimate the time of conception close enough to that night—”
“They won’t be able to pinpoint exactly. The baby could’ve been conceived anytime around then.” He paused as she wheeled around to face him. “It doesn’t mean it is my child.” He sneered. “I hardly met you under the most pristine conditions.”
The gold flecks in those velvet eyes grew dull. “I told you that it was my first night at Le Club.”
“I don’t know you at all.” He shrugged. “Even if it was the truth, who knows what’s behind it?”
Tiffany flushed, and the gold in her tawny eyes had brightened to an accusatory flame. She looked spirited, alive, and Rafiq fisted his hands at his sides to stop himself from reaching for her. Instead he said, “I want to have DNA tests done before I pay a dollar.”
“Have I demanded even one dollar from you since I got here?” she asked, her eyes blazing with what he realized in surprise was rage. Glorious, incandescent rage that had him blinking in admiration.
“I’m sure you intend to demand far more than that.”
“There’s no trust in you, is there?”
“Not a great deal,” he said honestly. “When you grow up as wealthy as I have there’s always someone with a new angle. A new scam.”
“Everyone wants something from you?”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
There was a perturbing perception in her gaze. As if she understood exactly how he felt. And sympathized. But she couldn’t. He’d found her in the backstreets of Hong Kong—hardly the place for someone who could have any insight into his world.
Crossing to the bedroom door that he’d left wide open, he paused. “I’ll arrange for the DNA tests to be done as soon as possible.” That would give him the answer he wanted and put an end to this farce.
“But you were going to take me to the airport.”
Rafiq’s gaze narrowed. Tiffany looked surprisingly agitated. “You’re not staying in Dhahara long. You’ll be on the first plane out once I have confirmation that your child is not mine. You’re not going to hold that threat over my head for the rest of my life.”
Once a week Rafiq met his brother Khalid for breakfast in one of Dhahara’s seven-star hotels. As the two men were heavily invested in the political and economic well-being of the desert kingdom, talk was usually lively. But Rafiq was too abstracted by the rapidly approaching appointment for his and Tiffany’s DNA tests that he’d arranged after their argument yesterday.
Before he could temper it, he found himself asking, “Khalid, have you ever thought what might happen if you get a woman who is not on father’s list pregnant?”
His brother’s mouth fell open in surprise. He looked around and lowered his voice. “I take great care not to get a woman pregnant.”
So did Rafiq. It hadn’t helped. He’d been a fool. “But what if you did,” he pressed, pushing his empty plate away. “What would you do?”
Khalid looked disconcerted. “I don’t know. One thing is for sure, an abortion would be out of the question. I suppose it would depend on the situation. The woman in question would have to be suitable for me to consider marrying her.”
Suitable. Just thinking of the night he’d met Tiffany made Rafiq squirm. She couldn’t have been more totally unsuitable if he’d scoured the entire earth. “That is true.”
And there lay his problem.
“Of course,” continued his brother, then pausing as a white-garbed waiter filled their cups with black, fragrant coffee and waiting until he’d left, “there has never been an illegitimate heir in our family. That’s something else to consider. I suppose even an unsuitable marriage would be better than that,” mused Khalid. “Later I could always find a second, more suitable wife who would perform the state duties.”
Rafiq had never considered marriage to Tiffany an option. As he sipped his coffee, another thought occurred to him. “If there’s a marriage, then there’s divorce, too.”
Khalid frowned. “As a last resort. It’s never popular for a ruler to divorce a consort.”
But, even though his brother didn’t know it, they weren’t talking about Khalid. They were talking about his situation. And Rafiq was not heir to the throne. It wouldn’t attract the same degree of censure.
Marriage to legitimize the child followed by divorce might work…if the child turned out to be his.
Rafiq set his cup down and flicked back a starched cuff to glance at his Cartier watch. Time to go. Tiffany would be waiting for him to collect her from his residence. “It’s later than I thought. I have an appointment—I must go.”
“If I divorced her, I’d make sure the child—if it was a boy—was well out of her control,” said Khalid thoughtfully.
Arrested, Rafiq turned to gaze at his brother. Of course. “Thank you.”
While Khalid shook his head in bemusement, Rafiq strode across the dining hall with a light heart. Sometimes the solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem was far simpler than a man dreamed.
The doctor’s rooms were surprisingly modern. A glass desk paired with crisp-white walls hung with framed sketches of flowers gave the room a contemporary feel. Nothing like the heavy dark furniture Tiffany had expected. Even more astonishing was the fact that the doctor was female. Although on second thought, that shouldn’t have surprised her. No doubt many Dhaharan men preferred their wives to be examined by a woman doctor.
Yet it was the doctor’s words that had caused the tension that presently gripped Tiffany. Shaking her head until her hair whipped about her face, she turned to Rafiq and said defiantly, “I’m not agreeing to that.”
Rafiq gave Dr. Farouk a charming smile. “Excuse us for a moment, please.”
The doctor rose to her feet. “Of course, Your Highness. I’ll be next door when you need me.”
A few words and a smile from him, and the doctor simply obeyed? Vacating her own office? Tiffany was taken aback at the display of his power.
No wonder Rafiq believed he could get whatever he wanted.
“I’m not signing the consent for surgery.” Tiffany gestured to the paper that lay on the desk.
Rafiq raked a hand through his hair, rumpling the sleek perfection. “I was prepared to undergo the indignity of a test—why can’t you be more cooperative?”
“A swab taken from your inner cheek?” She snorted. �
��That’s nothing. If it was just a simple DNA test, I wouldn’t have a problem. But you heard the doctor. Getting the baby’s DNA is not going to be that easy.”
The doctor had laid the options out for them. Getting the baby’s DNA would require a surgical procedure. Because Tiffany was only ten weeks pregnant, amniocentesis could not be performed. Instead, a thin needle, guided by ultrasound, would pass through her cervix to retrieve little fingers of tissue from the wall of the uterus beyond. Like her baby, the tissue, which the doctor had called chorionic villi, originated from the egg that Rafiq’s sperm had fertilized.
“You’re not going to change my mind,” she warned him.
“Be reasonable—”
“Reasonable? You heard the doctor. The procedure holds risks to my baby.”
He waved a hand. “Very slim percentages.”
“Miscarriage is not a percentage I’m prepared to risk.”
Rafiq’s eyebrows lowered to form a thick line over his eyes, making him look fierce and formidable. “How else am I supposed to find out whether the baby is mine?”
She glared at him, determined not to let him know that her heart was knocking against her ribs. “You’re prepared to risk this life growing within me, so that you can evade the responsibility of fatherhood?”
“That’s not true—”
“Of course it’s true.” She averted her gaze. “You could easily wait until the baby is born, then have the necessary tests done. But no, that doesn’t suit the great sheikh. So you want to risk my baby’s life to get the answer you’re expecting. Well, I’m not going to let that happen!”
“You’re hardly in a position to dictate terms,” he breathed from barely an inch away.
“I’m in the best position,” she fired back. “I’m not signing that consent form.”
“Then you’ll lose any chance of a quick cash settlement.”
“I don’t need your monetary support. I just wanted you to know…” Her voice trailed away.
How to explain? Her childhood had been less than perfect, disrupted by her father’s affairs. Rafiq might’ve been distant, but he’d struck her as honorable. She’d wanted her daughter to have a father. Resting her fingertips on her stomach, Tiffany said softly, “One day this baby will want to know who her father is—and I would never keep that from her.”
