A Wife For The Surgeon Sheikh

‘I’ve got to get home,’ she said, halting any further conversation. ‘Joe goes to swimming training and I have to be there for Nim.’

‘Nimr,’ Malik corrected automatically, giving the ‘r’ on the end of his nephew’s name the slight roll it required.

‘Whatever!’ his companion snapped. ‘But we’ll never get through any conversation if you’re going to correct his name every time I say it! And you know nothing about Australian kids if you imagine he could get through childhood with a rolled “r” on the end of his name without incessant teasing, so here he’s Nim!’

And she stalked away, her anger back, and clearly seen in the straight shoulders and swift strides that somehow drew his attention to strong, shapely legs and a trim figure.

Kept his attention for an instant too long...

He sighed again.

He had more important matters at hand than a woman with grey eyes and a trim figure. Although Tariq had always been the practised negotiator—when he’d bothered—he, Malik, had stepped in often enough to be a competent one. But he’d blown it this time. He could understand her fighting him if she’d grown fond of the boy—that would be understandable—but part of her resistance had definitely been fear.

At least he knew where she lived.

In fear?

* * *

Rattled by the encounter, Lauren made her way out of the hospital by the nearest exit, finding herself in the wrong car park, so by the time she’d found her small vehicle she was shaking with the tension the stranger’s appearance had generated.

Tension and fear—and something else, something she really didn’t want to acknowledge.

She unlocked the door and slumped gratefully into the driving seat, opening windows and starting the air-conditioning as the vehicle, after standing in the summer sun all day, was like an inferno. Even the steering wheel was too hot to touch, so the idea of resting her forearms on it and having a wee cry had to be denied.

Not that she’d let that man make her cry! She’d shed enough tears four years ago—enough to last a lifetime. Although admittedly there’d been more, when Nim had been a baby and, teething or not well, impossible to settle, she’d felt totally alone.

Then Aunt Jane had sold her parents’ house for her, found the duplex for them on the other side of the country, set up the security, and made it safe enough for her to finally give Nim a home.

It was time to get home to her son. She couldn’t let Joe down. Without Joe she’d be lost, she and Nim.

And no matter what that man said, Nim was hers and hers he was going to stay. He could grow up as an ordinary Australian boy and need never know much at all about that strange place thousands of miles away where his birth mother had lost her bearings.

Oh, Lily.

With a huff of impatience at the sudden sense of loss inside her, she drove out of the parking area and headed for home, her mind back on practical matters.

Did she have to stop at the shops for fruit for Nim’s lunchbox tomorrow or had Joe called in on his way back from kindy?

He probably had and she couldn’t think of anything else they needed.

Except perhaps a magic carpet to whisk Sheikh whoever he was back to where he’d come from. But magic carpets were fairly rare in Abbotsfield, for all it was a thriving regional city.

Regional city?

How had the man found her here, thousands of miles from where she’d grown up in Perth? All the police reports on the so-called accident had put the family’s place of residence as Perth. And after that she’d disappeared. The family’s assets had been frozen so she’d borrowed enough from Aunt Jane to buy the campervan, and she and tiny baby Nim had lived like gypsies, moving constantly, she doing anything to keep him safe.

Lauren’s mind was lost in the past and, driving on autopilot, it was only as she was using the remote to open the outer gate that she saw the sleek black luxury vehicle parked outside.

The fear she’d felt earlier turned to terror and she dropped the remote as if it would burn her fingers. She parked behind the ominous car, only too aware of who would be inside it.

Or inside her house?

Dear heaven, surely not!

She shot from her car, and strode towards the limo, hauling open the driver’s door so suddenly a slim man in a blue suit and matching cap almost fell out, his cap coming askew on his head.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?” she demanded, hoping Joe was inside with one finger poised above the alarm.

‘He’s my driver. He owns the hire car.’

Sheikh whatever was emerging from the back seat on the passenger side. ‘I had no time to waste finding my way around your city, small though it might be.’

‘Oh, and I suppose your city is ginormous!’ Lauren shot at him, and immediately regretted it as this wasn’t the argument she should be having.

Especially as the wretched man had the nerve to smile.

Well, she supposed it was a smile—he’d definitely moved his lips and revealed a dazzling array of perfectly aligned white teeth, but it was a crocodile that came to mind rather than rapprochement.

‘Would you feel easier discussing the situation here?” he continued, as smooth as custard.

‘There is no situation to discuss,’ she said, hoping she sounded a lot more determined than she felt. Seeing the man who might just be a murderer standing outside her home had brought back all her fear, yet in some offbeat section of her brain she was simply seeing the man.

Bizarre, to say the least.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t see dozens of men every day, but this was definitely not that kind of seeing.

He’d taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves a little to reveal smooth olive skin that gleamed in the sunlight, while his shirt clung to a body she guessed had been shaped through exercise—not too much, just enough to give definition to hard pecs and wide shoulders beneath the snowy-white material.

She wouldn’t look at his neck, rising from the now tieless shirt—well, only to see it as a strong column...

Ye gods! What was the matter with her? She was standing in the street mooning over a man who was undoubtedly her enemy?

‘I don’t want you in my house,’ she finally said, meaning, I don’t want you anywhere near me, not now, not ever, but especially not now when I’m so damned confused I can’t think straight.

Fortunately, Joe appeared in the doorway at that moment, preceded by Ghost, Joe’s pale German shepherd, and with Nim no doubt right behind, probably peering through Joe’s legs, for all he was supposed to stay inside when people came.

‘The gentleman’s just leaving,’ Lauren said, speaking to Joe but with her eyes on the Sheikh.

‘We need to talk,’ he said to her. ‘It’s imperative. I will not invade the sanctity of your home—’ was there a ‘not right now’ hovering behind the words? ‘—but I shall call for you at seven.’

‘Get into a car with a stranger? I think not! If we do need to talk, then we can talk at your hotel. Where are you staying?’

‘The Regal.’

Lauren nodded.

‘I’ll meet you there at eight,’ she said, hoping she’d spoken loftily enough for him to assume she dined at The Regal regularly, and at the same time wondering desperately what she might have in her wardrobe that she could wear to such a place. And whether Joe would be back from training, or, if not, there was always Aunt Jane who’d stand in...

The Sheikh nodded graciously, before pointing a finger at the gathering in the doorway.

‘Security’s a little lax. I could have shot the dog, then the nanny, and grabbed the boy.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Lauren whispered, then slid limply to the ground, a black cloud closing over her as the events of the afternoon finally caught up with her.

Joe darted forward but Malik was there first, lifting Lauren into his arms and marching towards the front door, telling the dog to sit in such a firm voice it dropped to his haunches.

‘Get a cool, wet cloth,’ he said to the so-called nanny. ‘It’s just a faint. I can feel her coming round already, so I’d better put her down because if she realises it’s me holding her she’s likely to hit me.’

‘You can put her on the couch,’ a small boy said, his eyes wide with unshed tears as he saw his mother in such a helpless state.

‘She’ll be better soon,’ Malik assured the boy who was, without doubt, Nimr, for he was the dead spit of Tariq at that age.

Tariq, the brother Malik had worshipped all his young life and followed around like a puppy.

‘Here!’

The nanny had returned, and the hoarseness in his voice made Malik turn to look at him—to see a face distorted by the scars of operations that had somehow put it back together.

‘I am Malik,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘That’s Joe,’ Nimr said, looking up from where he was wiping his mother’s face with the damp hand towel. ‘Joe looks after us.’

‘I noticed that,’ Malik told the boy, although his eyes were on the mother now—Lauren—dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she slowly became aware of her surroundings. Something that wasn’t entirely guilt fluttered inside him, moved by her paleness—her vulnerability...

Her eyes opened, deep grey pools of fear and confusion—and he had caused the fear, first by arriving as he had and then with his foolish words about their protection.

Although that part was deadly serious. If there really was a threat against his nephew, he’d be better off back in Madan.

He should take the boy home, no matter what.

She sat up so suddenly he was knocked from where he crouched by the couch, landing awkwardly on his butt.

At least it gave Nimr a laugh.

‘You’re in my house!’

Outrage vied with disbelief as Lauren took in this man’s presence. He was so close she could hardly not notice that his eyes were not the black she’d thought them but a surprising warm toffee colour, and right now were looking intently at her.

‘You have to go,’ she said, unable to tell if her hyper-awareness of him—the unsettled feeling in her chest—was to do with the shock she’d had or the man himself.

Whatever it was, she wanted it gone too.

He hesitated, aware of the nanny standing behind him, ready to break him in two if he so much as touched the recovering woman.

He moved back a little, and said gently, ‘I’m sorry, but we do have to talk, and I think the sooner the better.’

Lauren forced her fuzzy brain to sort out the words, and one thing became perfectly clear. This man was not leaving until he’d said what he’d come to say.

And considering that, wouldn’t it be better to listen to him here and now—well, not right now as she had to get Nim’s dinner, her own dinner, too, given that lunch had been a snatched apple and cup of coffee and her stomach was making her aware that she was famished.

She heaved herself upright on the sofa, Nim slipping up to sit beside her and take her hand.

‘I’m all right,’ she assured him. ‘I just forgot to have my lunch and that’s what made me faint like that.’

Lying to her son? She knew full well it was the man’s suggestion that it would have been easy to abduct Nim that had made her mind shut down.

Which left her with the man—the Madani man!

He was standing back—against a window once again—and, much as she hated having him in her house, she knew she wouldn’t be rid of him until she’d listened to what he’d come to say.

‘I have to give Nim his dinner and I usually eat with him so you might as well stay and eat with us. That way we can talk when Nim’s gone to bed. I’ll just have a quick wash—Nim, you need to wash your hands for dinner so you come with me.’

‘You get off to training,’ she added to Joe, who was standing, watching them all. ‘I’m fine now and I’ll have an early night.’

She was leaving the room when she remembered the big black car parked outside her yard, and added to Malik, ‘You’d better get your driver and bring him in for dinner too.’

‘The driver?’

He sounded so incredulous, Lauren almost laughed.

‘Drivers do eat, you know,’ she said. ‘And there’s plenty so it’s hardly fair to leave him sitting out there.’

Well, she hoped there was plenty...

‘Please go out and invite him in.’

* * *

Wondering if this was a quirk of democracy in this country or because the woman didn’t want to be alone with him, Malik went, returning with the driver, who’d protested he was quite okay and happy to wait without food.

But already aware that he was dealing with a stubborn woman, Malik had insisted.

He found the woman in question bent double over a large chest freezer, pulling out various plastic-wrapped containers and muttering to herself.

‘We’re having shepherd’s pie,’ Nimr announced. ‘It’s my turn to choose and it’s my favourite.’

Malik looked at the boy he knew yet didn’t know and felt pain stab into his heart.

‘Oh, yes?’ he said. ‘Do you make it out of shepherds?’

The boy laughed.

‘No, silly! Mum makes it with meat, and puts potato on the top, and it’s yummy and you don’t have to cut it up so it’s easy to eat.’

Malik smiled at the boy, feeling a weird kind of pleasure that the child had offered him this small confidence.

‘Ha, knew I had one!’

The triumphant cry from the freezer had them moving into the kitchen where their pink-cheeked hostess, apparently fully recovered from her faint, had emerged from the freezer in triumph.

Seeing the two men, the driver trying to hide behind the door, her cheeks went a deeper pink.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I tend to cook a lot on my days off, and I always make different sizes of each dish for when Joe’s here—’

‘And when Joe and Aunt Jane both come,’ Nim finished for her, turning to the visitors to hold up four fingers. ‘That’s four, you see, and tonight it’s four too.’

Perhaps embarrassed by her son’s delight in the visitors, his mother had stripped layers of plastic from the frozen dish and set it going in the microwave. And with her back resolutely turned to the two men, she was peeling carrots and cutting chunks of broccoli off a large green head.

Wishing it was my head, no doubt, Malik thought, as she slashed the knife down.

Her shoulders rose as he watched and he knew she was taking a deep breath.

After which, she turned towards her visitors and said quietly, ‘It will be half an hour. Would you like to wait in the living room? Perhaps you’d like a glass of cold water?’

‘Thank you,’ Malik said, then aware of the driver lurking behind him, remembered his manners.

‘This is my driver, Peter—’

‘Cross,’ their hostess finished for him, stepping forward and, to Malik’s surprise, giving the man a hug.

‘Oh, sorry, Peter, I hadn’t realised it was you I made fall out of the car. How’s Susie?’

The man held up crossed fingers.

‘So far, so good, Lauren. You know how it goes.’

‘I do indeed,’ Lauren told him. ‘Now, a glass of water, each of you?’

‘That’d be lovely,’ Peter said, and well aware that he’d lost what little conversational control he might have had, Malik agreed, following the other man back into the living room.

It was Nimr who brought the water, two tall glasses balanced on a round tray.

Malik took his, thanked the boy, and wondered what on earth one said to start a conversation with a four-year-old.

Not that he needed to worry, for the boy sat down on the sofa next to the driver and, easily adopting the role of host, turned to Malik to explain.

‘Susie’s my best friend at kindy. She’s been sick. She wears cute hats because she’s got no hair. No one minds she’s got no hair anyway, and when she first had no hair we all shaved our heads, even the girls, to show it was okay, but she wears the hats because she likes them.’

Malik turned to Peter, who was smiling at the boy.

‘Leukaemia?’ he asked quietly.

A nod in reply, and, although knowing many of the childhood variants of leukaemia had a high rate of recovery, Malik didn’t want to probe too deeply.

Particularly as the earlier conversation and the man’s crossed fingers now made sense. Susie must be in remission at the moment, and Malik knew only too well the tightrope parents walked at such times.

‘And we have rabbits at kindy too,’ Nimr announced. ‘Sometimes in the holidays some of the kids get to take them home but Mum says we can’t because she has to work and Joe can’t be expected to look after a rabbit and me.’

Malik hid a smile. The boy was obviously repeating his mother’s words, but his aggrieved tone left his listeners in no doubt about his opinion of this edict.

‘Do you have rabbits?’ he asked.

Malik shook his head.

‘No rabbits, but we do have many interesting animals where I live, and many dogs that are tall and run very fast and are called saluki hounds.’

Nimr seemed to ponder this information for a moment, then said knowledgably, ‘Hound is another name for a dog. I like dogs, but—’

Malik was pretty sure he was about to hear Mum’s opinion of keeping a dog when they were called into the kitchen for dinner. Considering it was little over an hour since she’d fainted in the gateway, Sister Lauren Macpherson had done a sterling job.

The small wooden table had a blue bowl of flowers in the middle of it and four places neatly set, with water glasses in front of each place.

Nimr had gone in front of them and lifted a tall, plastic jug of water from the refrigerator.

‘See how strong I am,’ he said, holding it a little higher.

‘But not quite strong enough to pour,’ his mother said, as she saved the tilting jug and filled the water glasses.

‘Maybe when I’m five,’ Nimr said, climbing onto what must be his accustomed chair.

He was a confident young man, Malik realised, and polite as well. His work as a paediatrician had brought him into contact with countless children, and he’d learned to appreciate the ones with good manners and the quiet confidence he sensed in the boy.

And something very likeable.

He tried to think back to when he and Tariq had been children, but suspected that Tariq had probably not been likeable even then.

Lovable, yes!

He, Malik, had adored him, as had their mother, but he’d been a tease, daring his brother to do things that they’d known were wrong, laughing when Malik had refused.

Was it that challenge to try everything—good or bad—that had led him to drugs, or simply the jet-setting lifestyle he’d led from his late teens, money giving him the freedom their restricted upbringing had denied them?

CHAPTER TWO

THE MEAL WAS simple but delicious, and, perhaps sensing an atmosphere he didn’t understand, it was his driver who kept the conversation going, with considerable help from the boy, who was happy to join in on any subject.

Although, Malik realised rather sadly, the man was steering the conversation so the boy could join in, no doubt because he had a child of the same age.

He was wondering how he’d react to children of his own—certainly he’d never experienced a meal like this as a child of Nimr’s age. He’d still have been eating with the women and listening to their high-pitched chatter and gossip—

‘Now, I think Sheikh Madani wishes to talk with your mother, young Nim, and Joe’s still at training, so how about I do your bath and bedtime story?’

Peter Cross’s words had broken into Malik’s memories, and Nimr was already excusing himself from the table, only too willing to have someone different supervising his bedtime routine.

‘Thanks, Peter,’ his hostess said, confirming Malik’s suspicions that the man was a close family friend.

Through their children or through the hospital?

He didn’t ask as Lauren was speaking again.

‘I’ll just rinse off these dishes and stack the dishwasher and be with you shortly.’

‘I can rinse dishes,’ Malik said, stacking dirty plates together, before standing up and carrying them to the sink.

He read the surprise on her face, and couldn’t help adding, ‘Don’t judge me by my brother,’ before setting to work on his task, rinsing the plates and passing them to Lauren—he had to get used to calling her that in his mind—to stack into place.

She was silent as she worked, but as she shut the door of the machine and set it to wash, she said quietly, ‘I didn’t know him well—your brother, I mean. He’d barely arrived in Australia when the—the accident happened.’

Which made him wonder if he’d spoken too harshly.

He sought to make amends.

‘I’ve often wondered if I knew him at all,’ he told her, ‘although as children we were inseparable.’

‘It’s because Nim doesn’t have a brother—or even a sister—that I like him to go to kindy where he can play with other children, and he’s so looking forward to going to school next year.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ a deep, slightly fractured voice said, and Malik turned to see Joe in the doorway, back from wherever he had been.

‘Peter tells me you’re wanted in the bedroom for a goodnight kiss,’ he said to Lauren, who, to Malik’s considerable surprise, said quietly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to say goodnight, too.’

‘Joe and I have things to discuss about the new boys’ club we want to set up in the community centre, so we’ll talk in the kitchen,’ Peter said as they met in the short passage. ‘Would you like us to bring coffee in to you and the Sheikh?’

* * *

Lauren shook her head.

This was all getting far too matey, in her opinion, but she was thankful the two men would be there.

‘Do they worry about you, that they are staying close?’ her guest asked, as they walked towards the boy’s bedroom.

‘I doubt that, but they know it would be wrong of them to leave me here with a stranger.’

‘You have loyal friends,’ he said with a smile, and that was a mistake. Not the smile, which was warm and slightly teasing, but the way it made her feel.

Tingles from a smile?

For pity’s sake, this was the man who had quite possibly killed her entire family—except for Nim.

Yet she’d been conscious of that inner—what, tension?—from the moment she’d first seen him and wondered if that’s how Tariq had made Lily feel...

Stupid! That’s what it was.

Especially as the man wanted to take her child...

She opened the door into the bedroom, but the excitement of the visitors had meant she’d left it too late to get her goodnight kiss.

But she could leave one, and she leant over the child she loved with all her heart and kissed him gently on his cheek.

She turned to the man who stood watching in the doorway.

‘He’ll be sorry to have missed you,’ she said quietly, but knew he hadn’t heard her. He was watching the sleeping boy and the sadness she read in his eyes was almost more than she could stand.

She slipped past him, heading for the living room, aware he was following her, horribly aware of him.

She took the armchair and waved the man towards the not-very-comfortable sofa, which had been cheap and had very quickly taken to the shape of her and Nim’s posteriors so no one else’s quite seemed to fit it.

And she wouldn’t think about his posterior either...

‘So talk!’ she said, determined to find out exactly what he wanted. Why he’d come. She knew he’d come for Nim, but she wanted to know why.

‘Do you know much about Madan?’

The question, when it finally came, surprised her, as he’d seemed more like a man who’d cut to the chase and she knew the chase, in this case, was Nim.

‘I know the usual stuff from the internet. It’s a small country, with enough oil beneath its sands to make it wealthy. Incredibly wealthy, if the way Tariq threw money around was any indication. I know my sister hated it, preferring to spend her time jet-setting around the world to glitzy hotels and ultra-trendy resorts—to wherever there was a party going on. Although, to be fair, that all stopped once she became pregnant.’