You have proof of that from my unsweetened interrogation.” One corner of her lips lifted. “And my exact word was depleted. It’s clear you’re neglecting yourself in your anxiety over your child. It doesn’t make you any less … breathtaking.”
It was her own breath that stalled now. The sound it made catching in her throat made him dizzy with desire.
He intended to hear that sound, and many, many others, as he compromised her breathing with too much pleasure. For now he pressed on. “And I’ll keep it up until you tell me the whole story, so how about you volunteer it?”
Her shoulders rose and dropped helplessly. “Maybe you should keep it up and I’ll answer what I can because I don’t know what constitutes a whole story to you.”
“I want to know why a woman like you, who will be pursued by men when you’re seventy-two, chose to have a child without one. Was it because of your ex-fiancé? Was there more to your breakup than you let on? What did he do to put you off relationships?”
The hesitant humor playing on her lips reached her eyes. He couldn’t wait until he could see it fully unleashed. “I did ask for it. But you can’t be further from the truth in Kyle’s case. I’m the villain of the piece in that story. It was because of me that even working together became counterproductive.”
Zain. That was succinct and unequivocal. And still deficient.
He persisted, “Then why?”
She looked away again. “Not everything has to have a huge or complex reason. I just wanted a baby.”
He knew she was hiding something. The conviction burned in his gut with its intensity. “And you couldn’t wait to have one the usual way? When another suitable man came along?”
“I wasn’t interested in having another man, suitable or not.”
She fell silent. He knew she’d say no more on that issue.
He had more to say, to ask, to think, and everything to feel. It all roiled inside him, old frustrations and new questions. But one thing crystallized until it outshone everything else.
Not only didn’t she have a man in her life, but she also hadn’t wanted one. After she’d seen him. He knew it. Just like he hadn’t wanted another woman after he’d seen her.
Elation swept him. Changed the face of his existence.
He didn’t know how he stopped from doing what he’d wanted to do since that first moment—sweep her in his arms and kiss her until she begged for him. But he couldn’t do it now.
Not having her now was still torment, only sweet instead of bitter, and the wait would only make having her in time that much more transfiguring.
For now, she needed his expertise, not his passion. He would give her everything she needed.
Her eyes were focused on him in such appeal that he could swear he felt his bones liquefying. “Won’t you look at the investigations anyway, just to get an idea, while we wait?”
Eyes like these, influence like this, should be outlawed. He’d tell her that. Soon.
He smiled at her, took her elbow, guided her back to the couch. “I’d rather form an uninfluenced opinion.”
She slid him a sideways glance, and the tinge of teasing there almost made him send everything to hell and unleash four years’ worth of hunger on her. “Is anyone even capable of influencing your opinion?”
He laughed. For the first time … since he didn’t remember when. After endless months of gloom, with her here, with her free, he felt a weight had lifted. If it weren’t for Hesham, for his unfound woman and child, he would have said he was on the verge of experiencing joy.
“All this because of my interrogation?” He gently prodded her to sit down, got out his cell phone, called Emad and asked him to bring in a meal. When she insisted she’d settle for a hot drink, he overrode her with a gentle “Doctor’s orders.”
He came down beside her, close enough to feel imbued by the fragrant warmth of her body, but leaving enough space for her attempt to observe a semblance of formality.
She looked at him now, not enraged or wary or imploring, but with fascination, unable to stop studying him as he studied her, and the openness of her face, the clarity of her spirit … amazing.
He sighed his pleasure. “I would be a very poor scientist and a terrible surgeon if I wasn’t open to new influences. I should be making the crack about you. After half an hour of my premium persistence all I got out of you was a half-dozen sentences.”
She looked away, making him want to kick himself for whatever he’d done to make her deprive him of her gaze. “Your judgment has served you, and endless others, unbelievably well. You’re one surgeon who deserves to have omnipotent notions.”
“You mean my rare detractors aren’t right and I’m not just a highborn lowlife suffering from advanced narcissistic sadism laced with a terminal god complex?”
She buried her face in her hands as he paraphrased her opening salvo, before looking back up at him, embarrassment and humor a heady mix in her eyes. “Do you think there’s any chance you can pretend I never said that?”
He quirked his lips, reveling in taking her in degrees from desperation to ease. “Why would I? Because you were wrong? Are you sure you were? Maybe I behaved because you handed me my head.”
A chuckle cracked out of her. “I doubt anyone can do that.”
“You’d be really, really surprised what you can do.”
He let to me go unspoken, yet understood.
Before he could analyze the effect this declaration had on her, Emad entered with the waitstaff.
Fareed saw the question, the hope in his eyes as Emad took in the situation. Fareed gave a slight headshake letting him know she wasn’t the woman they’d been looking for.
But she was the woman he’d been looking for.
After preparing the table in front of them, and with disappointment and curiosity filling his eyes, Emad left.
For the next hour Fareed discovered new pleasures. Coddling Gwen—to her chagrin, before she succumbed, ate and drank what he served her, delighting in her resurfacing steadiness, in the banter that flowed between them, the fluency of appreciation.
Then Emad knocked again. This time he ushered in a woman carrying a child. Gwen’s child.
Fareed couldn’t focus on either. He only had eyes for Gwen as she sprung to her feet, her face gripped with emotions, their range breathtaking in scope and depth. Anxiety, relief, welcome, love, protection and so much more, every one fierce, total.
He heard the child squeal as he threw himself into her eager embrace. He registered the elegant, classically pretty redhead in her late forties, who Gwen introduced as Rose Maher, a distant maternal relative and Ryan’s nanny. He welcomed her with all the cordiality he could access, filed everything about her for later analysis. Then he turned to Gwen’s child.
And
