The Sheikh's Love-Child

‘No, no. Everything has been lovely. I’m not used to such star treatment.’ She paused, and gestured to the moonlight-bathed gardens behind her. ‘The palace gardens look very beautiful.’

‘I will have someone show you them tomorrow. They are one of Biryal’s loveliest sights.’

She nodded, feeling somehow dismissed. There was a howl inside her, a desperate cry for understanding and mercy.

After everything we had…

But in the end, it—she—had meant nothing to Khaled. Why couldn’t she remember that? Why did she always resist the glaring truth, try to find meaning and sanctity where there had been none? ‘Thank you,’ she managed, and then lapsed into silence as the night swirled softly around them.

Khaled said nothing, merely looked at her, his gaze sweeping over her hair, her face, her dress. Assessing. ‘You haven’t changed,’ he said quietly, almost sadly.

Surprised by what felt like a confession, Lucy blurted, ‘You have.’

Khaled stilled. Lucy hadn’t realised there had been a touch of softness to his features in that unguarded moment until it was gone. His smile, when it came, was hard and bitter. ‘Yes, I have.’

‘Khaled…’ She held one hand out in supplication, then dropped it. She didn’t want to beg. There was nothing left to plead for. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

Khaled arched one eyebrow. ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’

‘Not now,’ Lucy said, suddenly wishing she hadn’t started this line of conversation. ‘Tomorrow. I just wanted you to know… Perhaps we could arrange a time?’ Her voice trailed away as Khaled simply stared, his lips pressed in a hard line, a bleakness in his dark eyes.

‘I don’t think we have anything to say to each other any more, Lucy.’ Startled, she realised he sounded almost sad once more.

‘You may feel that way, but I don’t. I just need a few minutes of your time, Khaled. It’s important.’

He shook his head, an instinctive gesture, and Lucy felt annoyance spurt through her. She hadn’t come to Biryal to be rejected again, and for something so little. Was he not willing to give her anything? Would she always feel like a beggar at the gates when it came to Prince Khaled el Farrar?

‘A few minutes,’ she repeated firmly, and without giving him time to respond, or time to betray herself with more begging, pleading, she moved past him. Her shoulder brushed his and sent every nerve in her body twanging with feeling as she hurried back into the palace.

Lucy didn’t sleep well that night. She was plagued with half-remembered dreams, snatches of memory that tormented her with their possibility. Khaled inhabited those dreams, invaded her heart when her body and mind were both vulnerable in sleep. Khaled, laughing at a stupid joke she’d told, his head thrown back, his teeth gleaming white. Khaled, walking off the pitch, his arm thrown casually yet possessively over her shoulders. My woman. Khaled, smiling lazily at her from across the lounge of his penthouse suite.

Come here, Lucy. Come to me.

And she had, as obediently as a trained dog, because when it came to Khaled she’d never felt she had a choice. What hurt more than her own foolish infatuation was Khaled’s easy knowledge of it. He’d never doubted, never even had to ask.

Muttering under her breath, Lucy pushed the covers off and rose from the bed. The sun had risen, fresh and lemon-yellow in a cloudless sky, and she was relieved to be free of her dreams, for the new day to finally begin.

The day she’d been waiting for since she’d heard of the match with Biryal. The day Khaled would find out he was a father.

As she dressed in her physio scrubs, she found her mind sliding inexorably to the question of how Khaled would react to the news, wandering down that dangerous path. Would he deny it? Deny responsibility? Lucy couldn’t see many other possibilities. You couldn’t trust a man who walked out; it was a lesson she’d learned early. A lesson her mother had taught her. And, after the way Khaled had walked out on her, she couldn’t imagine him taking an interest in his bastard child.

She didn’t want him to; that wasn’t the point. The point, as she’d explained to her mother and to Eric—who’d both disapproved of her intention to come to Biryal—was for Khaled to know the truth. He had a right, just as she felt she’d had a right to a goodbye all those years ago. And now she had a right as well: to finish with Khaled once and for all. To know it was finished, to feel it. To be the one to walk away.

Turning from her own determined reflection, Lucy left her bedroom in search of the others.

Biryal’s new stadium, completed only a few months before, was an impressive structure on the other side of Lahji with a breathtaking view of a glittering ocean. All modern chrome and glass, it was built in the shape of an ellipse, so the ceiling appeared to hover over the pitch.

As Lucy arranged her equipment in the team’s rooms, she saw the stadium was outfitted with every necessity and luxury. Khaled clearly had spared no expense.

‘It seats twenty thousand,’ Yusef, one of the staff who had shown them to the rooms, had explained proudly. Considering Biryal’s population was only a few hundred thousand, it seemed excessive to Lucy. The building also jarred with Lahji’s far humbler dwellings. Yet she had to admit the architect had designed it well; despite its modernity, it looked as if it belonged on the rocky outcropping facing the sea, as if about to take flight.

Lucy was used to before-game energy and tension, although the match with Biryal did not have the high stakes most matches did. There was something else humming through the room, Lucy thought, and she knew what it was.

Memory.

At least a third of the team had played with Khaled, seen him fall on the pitch. Had felt the betrayal of his abrupt and unexplained departure. The reason Brian Abingdon had agreed to this match at all, Lucy suspected, was because of Khaled and the victories he had brought to England’s team in his few years as its outside half.

As the match was about to start, Lucy found herself scanning the crowds for a glimpse of Khaled. Her eyes found him easily in the royal box near the centre of the stadium. As usual, he looked grim, forbidding.

The match started without her realising, and almost reluctantly she turned to watch the play. After a few moments a man came to stand next to her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw it was Yusef.

‘The stadium’s full,’ she remarked, half-surprised that twenty-thousand Biryalis had come to watch.

‘This match is very important to us,’ Yusef replied with a faint smile. ‘Although it’s small to you, this is one of Biryal’s first matches. The team was only organised two years ago, you know.’

‘Really?’ Lucy hadn’t realised the team was quite so recent a creation, although perhaps she should have. Biryal was a small country, and there was no reason for it to possess a national rugby team.

No reason save for Khaled.

‘Khaled began it,’ Yusef explained, answering the half-formed question in Lucy’s mind. ‘When he returned from England. Since he couldn’t play himself, he did the next best thing.’

‘He couldn’t play himself?’ Lucy repeated, a bit too sharply. Yusef glanced at her in surprise.

‘Because of his injury.’

‘He’d always had trouble with his knee,’ Lucy protested, and Yusef was silent, his expression turning guarded and wary.

‘Indeed. Prince Khaled arranged for the stadium to be built as well. He hired one of the best architects, helped with the design himself.’

Lucy knew there was no point in pressing Yusef for more information about Khaled’s injury, even though her mind spun with unanswered questions and doubts. She smiled and tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. ‘It was clearly an ambitious project, especially when Biryal could benefit from so much.’

Yusef gave a little laugh, understanding her all too well. ‘We are a poor country in the terms you understand,’ he agreed. ‘And Prince Khaled realises this. He understands our nationalistic pride, and he built us something we could show to the world. You might think we’d benefit from more hospitals or schools, but there are other ways of helping a country, a people. Of giving them respect. Prince Khaled knows this.’

He smiled, and Lucy found herself flushing. Had she sounded so snobbish, so judgemental? ‘Besides,’ Yusef continued, ‘Rugby will bring with it more tourism, and with that a better and stronger economy. Prince Khaled has taken this all into consideration. He will be a good—a great—king one day.’

A king. King Khaled. The thought was so strange, so impossible. The Khaled she’d known would never have been a king. She’d barely been aware he was a prince. He’d simply been Khaled—fun, sexy, charming Khaled. Hers, for a short time.

Except, of course, he really hadn’t been.

Lucy glanced up at him and saw Khaled lean forward, one white-knuckled hand clasped in the other, watching the match with an intent ferocity. She wondered what had brought him to this moment, what had made him work so hard. What made him look so…unhappy.

Since he couldn’t play himself… Was that really the truth? Was that the reason he’d left so suddenly? And did it really make any difference? Lucy wondered sadly. If he’d loved her, as she’d loved him—had thought she’d loved him—he would have shared such important, life-changing information with her. He would have wanted her to be there.

She’d tried to be there, God knew. She had been turned away from the hospital when a nurse had flatly explained that Prince Khaled had requested no visitors. No visitors at all.

A cry rose from the crowd, and Lucy saw that Biryal had scored. She narrowed her eyes, noticing that Damien Russell, the team’s open-side flanker, was limping a bit, and went to get one of her ice packs.

The next hour was spent fulfilling her duties as team physio, checking injuries, watching for muscle strain, fetching the tools of her trade. She kept her mind purposely blank, refused to think of Khaled at all, even though her body hummed with awareness, ached with tension.

The match seemed to go on for ever. For a fledgling team, Biryal was surprisingly good—thanks to Khaled and his insistence on one of the best coaches in the game, Lucy suspected. She also suspected the England team wasn’t trying as hard as it might, wanting to save its energy and stamina for the more important matches coming up in the Six Nations.

And then finally it was over. John Russell, England’s outside half, spun away from an opposing player in a daring move that sent a ripple of awareness through the stadium like an electric current. When he went on to score, the stadium erupted in cheers.

For a moment, Lucy was startled; Biryal had lost, yet they were cheering.

‘Close match,’ Yusef murmured. ‘And, as you just saw, won by one of Prince Khaled’s signature moves.’

Of course. Lucy had recognised that half-spin; now she knew why. Khaled had invented it. How many times had he been photographed for the press in that almost graceful pirouette?

And now England had taken that from him too.

Lucy didn’t know why that thought slipped into her mind, or why she suddenly felt sad. She didn’t know what Khaled felt, although she could see him smiling now as he walked stiffly towards the pitch to shake hands with the players.

He was limping. The thought sent a ripple of shocked awareness through her. Khaled was limping, although he was trying not to show it. Just as Yusef had intimated, his old injury must have been a good deal worse than anyone had thought.

Than she had thought—and she had been his physiotherapist! Shouldn’t she have known? Shouldn’t she have guessed?

Shouldn’t she have understood?

Lucy shook her head, wanting to stem the sudden, overwhelming tide of questions and doubts that flooded through her. She didn’t want to have sympathy for Khaled, not for any reason. It would only make this trip and everything else harder.

The stadium was in its usual post-match chaos, and numbly Lucy went about her duties, checking on players, arranging care.

At some point Aimee told her there was another party tonight at the palace, a big celebration—for, even though Biryal had lost, they’d played such a good match that it felt like a victory.

Lucy listened, nodded, smiled. Somehow she got through the rest of the afternoon, though both her body and mind ached. She’d never wanted to talk to Khaled more, even as she dreaded it.

Yet he was as inaccessible as he’d been since she’d arrived in his home country, and she wondered if he would ever grant her the opportunity of a moment alone—or if she would have to make one.

From the top of the foyer’s staircase Lucy heard the drifting sound of a classical quartet; there would be no discordant music tonight. Tonight, she saw as she came down the stairs, was a show of wealth as well as a celebration. White-jacketed waiters circulated through the palace’s reception rooms with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres, and King Ahmed stood by the front doors that were thrown open to the warm night air, dressed Western-style in a tuxedo.

Lucy ran her palms down the sides of her evening dress, an artfully draped halter-neck gown in cream satin. It was the most formal piece of clothing she owned, as well as the sexiest, even though the draped fabric didn’t cling or reveal, simply hinted. With her hair pulled back in a slick chignon, she felt glamorous—as well as nervous.

Judging from the crowds below her, she wasn’t overdressed; Aimee’s pink-ruffled concoction made her own gown look positively plain. But she felt it. She felt like she was parading herself for Khaled, never mind every other man who turned with an admiring glance as she came into the foyer.

A few glasses of champagne later, her bubbling nerves had begun to calm. Lucy circulated through the crowd, smiling, chatting, laughing, looking.

Where was Khaled? She wanted to see him now, she wanted that conversation. Fortified with a bit of Dutch courage, she was ready, and she simply wanted it to be over.

Yet he was avoiding her, he must be, for as she wandered through the crowded reception rooms she couldn’t find him anywhere.

Disappointment sliced through her as she surveyed the foyer once more. It was getting late, and her head ached from the more-than-usual amount of champagne she’d consumed. Yet she was leaving tomorrow morning, and this was her last chance. Her only chance.

Lucy’s face felt stiff from smiling, and fatigue threatened every muscle of her body. She felt anger too, a surprising spurt of it. Khaled had known she wanted to talk to him. She’d told him it was important, yet now he was avoiding her.

Or did he just not care at all?

Shaking her head, Lucy turned towards the stairs. Fine; if Khaled was going to act this way again, then he didn’t deserve to know about his son. Message forgotten.

Angry, annoyed and hurt, Lucy stormed down the hallway towards the maze of rooms in the back of the palace. Over the thudding of her heart and the silky swish of her gown, she heard another, surprising sound.

A moan. Of pain.

She stopped, waited. Listened. And she heard it again, a low, animal sound.

After a moment’s hesitation, her medical training coming to the fore, she knocked once and then pushed open the door from behind which had come those terrible sounds.

Another moan, coming from the hunched figure on the edge of the bed.

‘Can I help…?’ she began, only to have the speech and breath both robbed from her as the figure looked up at her with pain-dazed eyes.

It was Khaled.

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