A Secret Birthright

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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 the world stopped in its tracks.

Four

Fareed hadn’t thought about Gwen’s child until this moment. Not in any terms other than his being hers.

He hadn’t had the presence of mind to formulate expectations, of the child, of his own reactions when he saw him. Had he had any mental faculties to devote to either, he would have thought he’d feel what he felt for any sick child in his care.

Now he knew anything he could have imagined would have been way off base.

She’d said Ryan didn’t have a father. He could almost believe that declaration literally now. It was as if he was hers, and hers alone. Even the discrepancy in age and gender, the almost-bald head, did nothing to dilute the reality that he was a pure part of her, body and soul.

But that absolute kinship and similarity between child and mother wasn’t why the sight of Ryan shook him to his core. Ryan, even though no more than nine or ten months old, was his own person. His effect wasn’t an echo of his mother’s, but all his own.

Ryan looked at him with eyes that were the same heavenly blue as his mother’s but reflecting his own nature and character, inquisitive, intrepid, enthusiastic. His dewy lips were rounded on his same breath-bating fascination as he probed him as if asking if he was a friend. Then he seemed to decide he was, his eyes crinkling and his lips spreading.

“Say hello to Dr. Aal Zaafer, Ryan.”

Fareed blinked as Gwen’s indulgent tone cascaded over his nerves, such a different melody from any he’d heard from her.

It had an equal effect on Ryan, who smiled delightedly up at her. Next moment, his every synapse fired as the child turned back to him, encompassed him in the same unbridled smile. Then he extended his arms to him.

He stared at the chubby hands closing and opening, beckoning for him to hurry and pick him up.

Gwen moved Ryan out of reach. “Darling, the adorable act works only on me and Rose.” Fareed’s eyes moved from Ryan’s crestfallen face to her apologetic one. “I didn’t think he would ask you for a ride. He doesn’t like to be held much, even by me. Too independent.”

She thought his hesitation meant he didn’t want to hold Ryan? She didn’t realize he was just … paralyzed? Everything inside him wanted to reach back for Ryan, but the urge was so strong, so … unknown that it overwhelmed him.

He had to correct that assumption. He couldn’t bear that she thought she’d imposed on him, couldn’t stand seeing Ryan’s chin quiver at being apparently rebuffed.

“I’m—” he cleared his throat “—I’m honored he thinks I’m worthy of being his ride. He probably fancies one from a higher altitude.”

A chuckle came from his left. His gaze moved with great effort from the captivating sight mother and son made to Rose.

She was still eyeing him with that almost-awed expression in her green eyes, but humor and shrewdness were taking over. “Ryan is a genius, and he knows a good proposition when he sees it. And you’re as good as it gets.”

A strangled gasp issued from Gwen. He didn’t need to look at her to know that her eyes were shooting daggers at Rose.

His lips spread in his widest smile in years. “Ms. Maher, I knew you were a discerning woman the moment I saw you.”

Rose let out a tinkling laugh. “Call me Rose, please. And oh, yes, I’ve been around long enough to know premium stuff when I see it, too.”

He almost felt the heat of mortification blasting off Gwen. And he loved it. Rose was saying the exact things to dissolve the tension, to set him free of the immobility that had struck him.

“I am honored you think I belong on the premium shelf, Rose, almost as much as I was to be considered a desirable ride by Ryan.” He shared another smile with the woman he already felt would be his ally, before he turned to Gwen and held out his arms.

His heart revved at what flared in her eyes. Momentary belief that his arms where inviting her into their depths. And a stifled urge to rush into them.

He let her know he’d seen it with a lingering glance before he transferred his smile to the baby who was already bobbing in her arms, demanding to be released. “Shall we, young sir?”

Ryan squealed his eagerness, reached back to him. Fareed noted his movements, already assessing his condition. He received him with as much care as he would a priceless statue that might shatter if he breathed hard. He looked down on the angelic face that was regarding him in such open wonder and something fierce again shuddered behind his breastbone.

Ya Ullah. That baby boy wielded magic as potent as his mother, and both their brands of spells had his name on them.

“You won’t dent him, you know?” Rose said.

He swept his gaze to her, his lips twisting. “It’s that clear I’m scared witless of holding him?”

Rose let out another good-natured laugh. “Your petrified expression did give me a clue or two that your experience in handling tiny humans is nonexistent.”

“You don’t have kids?”

Gwen’s soft question swept his gaze back to her. She looked … horrified that she’d asked it.

Satisfaction surged inside him. She needed to know his private details as much as he’d needed to know hers. Even though she was clearly kicking herself for asking, she was dying to know. If he had children, and therefore, a wife.

He’d thought his life wasn’t conducive to raising a family, that he didn’t have that innate drive to become a father. Now he knew the real reason why he’d never thought of having children. Because he’d never found a woman he wanted to have them with.

Now looking at her, holding her child in his arms, he did.

He looked down at Ryan, who was industriously trying to undo his shirt’s top buttons, before he looked back at her, giving her a glimpse of what he felt, if not too much of it. She wasn’t ready for the full power of his intentions.

Then he murmured, “I don’t.”

Her lashes fluttered down. But he felt it. Her relief.

Elation spread through him. “But I am an uncle many times over, through two of my sisters and many first cousins, to an assortment of boys and girls from ages one to fifteen.”

Gwen raised her eyes back to his, and … ya Ullah. Although still guarded and trying to obscure her feelings, the change that had come over them since she’d walked in here, the warmth she couldn’t fully neutralize, singed him. “I bet you’re their favorite uncle.”

He grinned at her. “You honor me with your willingness to waste money betting on me. But a waste it would be. ‘Favorite Uncle’ is a title unquestioningly reserved for Jawad, my second-eldest brother. We call him the Child Whisperer. All I can lay claim to is that I think they don’t detest me. I’ve been too preoccupied for the span of their lives to develop any real relationship with them. I would have liked to, but I have to admit, when I’m around them, I wonder how their parents put up with their demands and distraction and still function. I wonder how they made the decision to have them in the first place.”

Wisps of mischief sparked in her eyes. “So that’s why you kept asking me why I had Ryan? Because you think your nephews and nieces are a noisy, messy time-suck, and that an otherwise sane adult can have a child only by throwing away logic and disregarding all cautionary tales?”

He raised one eyebrow at her. “You know you’ve just called me Uncle Scrooge, don’t you?”

Rose burst out chuckling. “Busted.”

Gwen spluttered qualifications, shooting reproach at Rose, and he aborted her protests with a smile, showing her he was offense-proof, especially by anything coming from her. “Don’t take it back when you’re probably right. Interacting with children has never been one of my skills.”

The only child he’d loved having around and taking care of had been Hesham. But he’d been only eight years older. He hadn’t had any relevant experience with children outside his professional sphere.

She made an eloquent gesture indicating how he was holding Ryan with growing confidence, picking up various articles for his inspection. “If it has never been, then you’re capable of acquiring new skills on the fly.”

He’d always been uncomfortable receiving compliments, feeling the element of self-serving exaggeration in each. But her good opinion felt free of ulterior motives, and was clearly expressed against the dictates of her good sense. To him it felt … necessary.

He transferred his smile from her to Ryan. “It’s this little man who’s making me look like a quick study. He’s the one doing the driving here.”

Rose nodded. “Ryan does that. Just one look and a smile and the world is his to command. Very much like his mother.”

Gwen’s eyes darkened on something that gripped his heart in a tight fist. Something like … anguish. Ya Ullah, why?

Next second, he wanted to kick himself. How could he have forgotten the reason she was here? Ryan’s condition.

But he had forgotten, during the lifetime since she’d walked in and turned his life upside down all over again. But from holding Ryan, he had a firm idea what his condition was. It was time he did everything he could to put her mind to rest about it.

He adjusted his grip on Ryan, feeling as if he’d always held him, turned his face up with a finger beneath the dimpled chin that was a replica of Gwen’s. “Just so I don’t look like a total marionette, Ryan, how about we pretend I have a say here? How about you let me examine you now?”

“How about I leave you to your new game and go find me some food?” Rose said, clearly to give them privacy.

Fareed produced his cell phone, called Emad back. Emad appeared in under ten seconds, as if he’d been standing behind the door, which he probably had been. Eavesdropping?

He was resigned that Emad would go to any lengths to ascertain his safety. But what was there to worry about here? Getting ambushed by lethal doses of charisma and cuteness?

He gave him a mocking glance that Emad refused to rise to. “Will you please escort Rose to an early dinner, Emad? And do make it somewhere where they serve something better than the food simulations you got us from the hospital’s restaurant.”

He expected Emad to obey with his usual decorum, which never showed if he appreciated the chore or not. But wonder of wonders, after nodding to him with that maddening deference, he turned to Rose with interest—almost eagerness—sparking in his eyes. Fareed hadn’t seen anything like that in the man’s eyes since his late wife.

The gregarious Rose eyed him back with open appreciation and murmured to Gwen for all to hear, “So incredible things do