Carrying the Sheikh's Baby Read online

  And no matter how many times he told himself he didn’t need her, he might never, ever be ready to let her go.

  * * *

  ‘Zane, is everything all right?’ Cat asked as she clutched his shoulders, the water beginning to cool around them.

  ‘It was a long boring trip,’ he murmured against her hair before lifting her out of the water and placing her on her feet.

  Her heart shrank in her chest, as it did every time he avoided talking about his feelings. She thought they’d made progress in the last few months. Had forced herself to be optimistic about their marriage. And when his manservant had come rushing into the women’s quarters to tell her, not only that he had returned early from his three-day trip, but that he wanted to see her immediately, and in private, her spirits had soared.

  This had to mean something.

  He’d taken her with passion and as always she’d revelled in it. But for the first time afterwards, the optimism she’d tried to feel each night he’d left her bed refused to come.

  He handed her a towel and bent to pick one up himself. She knew she was about to be dismissed. And for the first time ever, instead of trying to fill her head with positive thoughts, with patience and compassion at the sight of his scars, she felt the first stirrings of anger.

  She’d waited for him to meet her halfway, to finally admit that there was more in this marriage than duty and sex, but it had been three months now. And he still refused to meet her even a quarter of the way.

  Just as she was about to say something though, she felt a strange tickling sensation in her abdomen. She gasped and pressed her hand to her belly.

  Zane shot round, his eyes concerned. ‘What’s the matter? Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I...’ She gasped again as the tickling sensation rippled across her palm.

  ‘What is it, Catherine? Is something wrong?’ He gripped her arms, his face a mask of shock and pain and guilt.

  But she didn’t have time to ask herself where that look was coming from before the smile split her face in two.

  ‘What...?’ He stepped back, letting her go.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Lifting his palm on impulse, she flattened it over her belly. ‘It’s Junior. I think we woke him up.’

  She laughed, the sound echoing around the steamy chamber, her joy uncontrollable. They had a child. A baby. Which would make everything right. She’d been telling herself as much for months. Convincing herself that Zane would come around. But instead of the interest, the fascination, the matching joy she’d convinced herself she would see when he finally agreed to talk about the future, all she saw was the stricken look that crossed his face as the tickle came again.

  He jerked his hand away, as if her stomach were radioactive.

  ‘Zane? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have taken you like that. It was wrong of me,’ he said, his voice so flat and dull and devoid of emotion her whole body chilled in the warm room.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she murmured, but she could feel the emotion closing her throat. ‘Dr Ahmed told me conjugal relations are perfectly okay. We can make love right up to the third trimester, as long as we both want to—no harm will come to the baby.’

  His eyes met hers, his expression so bleak, her throat closed completely. ‘But that’s just it,’ he said. ‘We’re not making love, are we?’

  Shock came first, quickly followed by pain and the brutal realisation that he meant it. And before she could think better of it, she said what she’d been wanting to say for months now, since before their wedding.

  ‘I am.’

  His gaze became hooded, wary. ‘I told you I can’t offer you that,’ he said, as if he were reciting a treatise to a foreign power. Instead of addressing the woman he’d just made violent love to, the woman who carried his child.

  ‘What about our baby, Zane? Can you offer the baby your love?’ She could hear the edge in her voice. The anger she’d never allowed herself to feel for herself but which she suddenly felt for her child.

  He thrust his fingers through his hair. ‘We’re both tired, and you need to get some rest. Let’s talk about this tomorrow.’

  ‘No, I want to talk about it now.’

  The dark frown would have warned her off before. But he’d just destroyed this magical moment with his indifference—and if nothing else he owed her an explanation.

  ‘Fine, Catherine. If you insist. No, I do not intend to love this child. I’m simply not capable of that type of emotion.’

  She pressed a hand to her chest. Shocked by the flat tone.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You said it yourself—my own father was a monster.’

  That’s not an answer, she wanted to scream, but before she could get the words out past the boulder of stunned outrage in her throat, he continued talking.

  ‘I think it best in the circumstances that we end our sexual relationship. I’ll arrange to have your possessions moved back to the women’s quarters. You’re going to be busy between now and when the baby’s born, finishing off your book. It’s probably best if I don’t distract you further.’

  ‘Distract me?’ she said. Horrified at the nonchalant tone. ‘But I love you. I’m your wife, the mother of your child. I want us to be a family.’

  ‘You don’t love me. You don’t know me. If you did, you’d know what you want isn’t possible with a man like me.’

  ‘Don’t talk in riddles, Zane,’ she snapped, the anger flowing freely through her now to disguise the crippling pain. ‘What does that even mean? I can understand if you don’t love me. I was willing to wait for intimacy and understanding between us to grow. But you won’t even try? And now you’re telling me you won’t even try to love our child either?’

  She’d never raised her voice, never deliberately sought a confrontation. She’d blamed herself, her expectations, the circumstances, the timing.

  Why had it taken her three months to see the blame for the empty spaces in their marriage lay with him? And his refusal to bend. Even in the slightest.

  He was the one who had refused to talk about anything but the most superficial details of their relationship. He was the one who hadn’t budged an inch since their marriage. He was the one who came to her every other night, as if he were on a schedule and then left.

  She’d let him get away with far too much.

  ‘You’re tired and you’re overwrought.’ Gripping her elbow, he led her out of the bathing chamber and back towards her own suite.

  She wanted to argue, to shout, to carry on, but the storm of emotions inside overwhelmed her. And the anger drained away until all that was left was the hurt.

  She walked into the room, and he stopped at the threshold.

  ‘We can talk more tomorrow,’ he said. ‘When you’re willing to be practical.’

  She collapsed on the bed as soon as he was gone. But then she felt it again, the flutter of their child. Wanting to be heard. Wanting to be loved.

  Pushing herself up, she glanced around the ornate chamber. It wasn’t his mother’s room, but it was just the same, she realised. A gilded prison.

  She had become trapped by her love for a man who could never love her back. The way her father had been trapped by his love for her mother. Trapped in an unhappy, insubstantial marriage.

  Eventually Zane would stray. How could he not? He was a highly sexed man—he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life celibate.

  She would have to watch him take lovers, the way her father had once been forced to watch her mother.

  Their marriage would be an empty shell of duty and nothing more. A charade, to protect a child he couldn’t even love.

  Swiping the tears from her eyes, she sat up. She had to leave. What other option was open to her? She’d tried for three long months. She’d tried. But if she waited until the baby was born, she would be tra
pped here for ever. In this sham of a relationship.

  Kasia would help her; she could make the journey tonight, through the desert to the Zafari border. Her heart bumped her throat, threatening to cut off her air supply.

  She had to go, before she began to hate Zane.

  He had been through so much, and had come out of it a strong, staggeringly sensual human being. But that wasn’t enough.

  Raising the sheet, she slipped out of the bed. And dressed quickly in the half-light, ignoring the soreness between her legs where he had taken her with such fury in the pool, and the wrenching pain in her chest at the thought of never seeing him, or this country, again.

  You’ll have his child. And that’s enough. Even if it’s a child he could never love.

  However fascinated she was by Narabia’s traditions, its customs and culture, and however invested she had become in its future—she owed a greater debt to her child. Their child. She knew what it felt like to be second best in a parent’s life.

  And if all of that wasn’t reason enough to run, there was the biggest reason of all. Zane didn’t love her. He’d made it very clear this was a constitutional arrangement—and tonight had proved his feelings weren’t ever going to change.

  Walking into the adjoining chamber, which she had been using as a study, she scribbled a short note—she owed him this much.

  Hurt and sadness clogged her throat as she wrote, the tears she couldn’t seem to contain slipping down her cheeks and splashing on the paper. She wiped them off. Then sealed the envelope and left it on the desk. He would find it tomorrow. By which time she would have had a twelve-hour head start.

  She left everything behind her and secured the robe’s veil over her face. If she was seen walking to the women’s quarters with a suitcase, the guards would stop her.

  As she left the room, she imagined Zane in the room next door. Arousal shimmered through her, combining with the empty weight in the pit of her stomach, which she doubted would ever go away.

  ‘Goodbye, Zane,’ she whispered.

  Hopefully he would forgive her for leaving him. And one day, maybe she’d be able to forgive herself for falling in love with a Sheikh.

  * * *

  ‘Don’t give me that crap, Kasia. I want to know where she’s gone.’

  Zane held onto the urge to shout at Catherine’s friend. His mind reeling—the fury that had made his throat dry nothing compared to the stabbing pain in his heart ever since he’d found the note in her chamber. He’d gone in to talk to her, to try one more time to make her understand. But the paragraphs had pierced through the fog he’d been living in since leaving her in her room the night before.

  I love you so much, Zane. I have ever since our night at the oasis. I should never have agreed to marry you without telling you. And I’m sorry for that. But I can’t live with you knowing that you can never love me back.

  If you change your mind about wanting to be more than a figurehead in our baby’s life, all you have to do is ask and we can work out a custody arrangement.

  But I can’t stay in Narabia, knowing we are nothing more than a responsibility to you.

  Please understand.

  Love,

  Cat xx

  It shouldn’t hurt this much. He knew that, but he couldn’t think about that now. Because he couldn’t seem to focus on anything except the driving need to find her and bring her back to the palace.

  And Kasia was the key.

  Catherine couldn’t possibly have left without the girl’s help. The palace guards would have stopped her.

  ‘She told me nothing,’ the girl said, her eyes defiant, but the tremble in her hands was a dead giveaway.

  Kasia might be fiercely loyal to Catherine, but she was a terrible liar. He stepped closer and leaned into her face, his temper and panic impossible to contain any longer. He didn’t want to frighten or bully the girl. But this was about Catherine, about her safety, and he was through messing around, because behind the panic lurked the fear—and it was starting to choke him.

  ‘Tell me where she’s gone, Kasia. Nothing will happen to you or her if you do, but if you don’t, you could be putting her life in danger.’

  ‘How?’ the girl said, her whole body shaking now, the urgency of the situation finally having got through to her.

  ‘She left alone, to drive across the desert in an all-terrain vehicle she doesn’t know how to handle...’ He had managed to discover as much from the garage manager, who had noticed the car missing that morning. But he had no idea which direction she’d taken. Had she headed to Zafari or in the opposite direction across the hills past the Kholadi Oasis towards Kallah? Either way it was at least a day’s drive to the border, she had a ten-hour start on him and he only had one helicopter.

  ‘But she said she could drive it,’ Kasia blurted out, all attempts at subterfuge having fled.

  ‘She can’t. And there’s no damn GPS signal in the desert—how would she know which way to go?’

  ‘I gave her a map,’ the girl admitted.

  He fisted his fingers, resisting, barely, the urge to wring her neck. ‘Which way?’ he shouted, and the girl jumped.

  ‘Zafari. She is headed to the Zafari border.’ The girl’s shoulders slumped, the defiance draining out of her.

  ‘Get the motorbike,’ he shouted to the coterie of servants and advisors who had accompanied him to the women’s quarters. He would take it to the airfield, where the chopper was already fuelled and waiting.

  As he walked away from Kasia the fury and panic and guilt were sucked into the gaping hole in the centre of his chest, until all that was left was the pain.

  * * *

  Cat squinted at the glow of red shimmering on the edge of the horizon. Her arms felt as if lead weights had been attached to her wrists as she wrestled to keep the Jeep on the road. Driving in the dark had been exhausting, as she’d tried to keep the unpaved dirt road through the rocky terrain between the glow of her headlamps, and mind-numbingly cold in the open-topped SUV. But she already wished for the chill again as the sun peeked over the dunes in the distance—painting myriad shades of red and orange across the sky, and bringing with it a wave of heat. She should have been at the border by now, but she’d had to keep the speedometer to below twenty miles an hour to negotiate the boulders in the rarely used road.

  The vehicle’s engine began to hum alarmingly, until she realised the metallic swish-swish-swish growing louder and more distinct wasn’t coming from the Jeep. A shadow crossed over the bonnet and a huge black machine appeared overhead. She blinked, watching as it hovered in the air for several moments and then landed on the road thirty yards ahead, throwing up a cloud of sand and dust and blocking her path out of the country. Pebbles and rocks pinged off the Jeep’s metalwork.

  Cat braked, her dazed, exhausted mind struggling to take in what she was seeing. The silhouette of a man—tall and broad and looking far too magnificent in the traditional garb of black pants and tunic, boots and robe—jumped out of the chopper’s cockpit and began walking towards her.

  Zane.

  She bent to rest her forehead on the steering wheel and dispel the foolish leap of joy in her heart.

  When she lifted her head, he was almost upon her. She could see his face clearly in the dawn light. The pagan beauty of those sharp cheekbones, the sensual line of his lips now flattened in a tight line of displeasure or temper, it was hard to tell, the shocking blue of his eyes focused on her.

  She felt as if she were floating—as the adrenaline that had kept her lucid for the last few hours drained away.

  ‘Catherine, get out of the car,’ he said, the deep commanding voice making her shudder.

  Towering over her, he reached inside the Jeep to unlock the door. He pulled it open, then grasped her upper arm in firm fingers. ‘Get out now. I’m taking you back to the palace,’ he said, his tone low, as he tu
gged her out of the vehicle.

  A last spurt of adrenaline charged through her, and she managed to yank her arm free of that firm grip. ‘No, I can’t go back.’

  She wouldn’t be able to leave him again. Wouldn’t be able to find the strength. But then she swayed, her knees becoming liquid and he swore softly.

  ‘You’re exhausted,’ he said, scooping her into his arms.

  ‘Please, you have to let me go.’ She thudded her fists on his chest, but the punches were weak and inconsequential and he didn’t break stride as he carried her towards the aircraft.

  At last he sat her down on the open cargo door. After ripping off her veil, he grasped her wrists and forced her leaden arms down to her side. ‘Stop it, you’re only going to hurt yourself. And the baby.’

  The fear that had gripped her ever since she’d seen the helicopter became huge. ‘I’m pregnant. I’m not an invalid.’

  ‘But why would you put our child at risk?’ he said, the veneer of indifference lifting to be replaced with something she’d heard in his voice once before—during their magical night at the Kholadi Oasis, when he’d told her about his mother. Not anger, but regret. ‘Is it because you don’t want it any more?’

  ‘No, Zane, I want it very much,’ she said. ‘I already love it.’

  The misery on his face became more pronounced. ‘Then why did you run?’ he said, his voice breaking.

  And she knew she couldn’t chicken out again. She had to tell him what she’d learned during the long night drive. What had made her more determined, not less, to leave him. ‘Because what we have isn’t a marriage, it’s a business arrangement. And I don’t want to live like that.’

  He stiffened, his face grim. ‘I made you my Queen. I’ve supported you in everything you wanted to do.’

  ‘But you won’t let me get close to you. You don’t love me.’

  ‘Why is that so important?’ he shot back. ‘I care about you. I want you—all the damn time. Why isn’t that enough?’