Then in that heart-snatching tone, he said, “I’m talking about your maternal side. I’m talking about the ingredients that make you a mother.”

* * *

Jalal had no idea what it was.

Maybe it was the stiffness that invaded her body, or the pulse going haywire in her throat, or the blast of horror in her eyes. Or it was all of that and myriad other instantaneous, involuntary signs that coalesced and painted a picture worth a thousand confessions.

It all added up to one thing. One thing that lodged in his mind with the force of an ax. Something devastating. The truth.

Lujayn’s child was his.

Seven

The knowledge mushroomed in Jalal’s skull.

Lujayn had had his child.

He had a child.

“Jalal…”

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Numb to his recesses, paralyzed in soul before body, he stared at her stricken eyes, his ears ringing with the softness of the dread in her voice. His heart, his mind, everything he was made of, swelled with the enormity of the belief, unraveled with the scope of its implications.

Moments ago he’d been just himself, the man he’d been struggling to formulate a peace treaty with all his life. And she’d just been herself. The one woman he wanted, and with whom peace seemed an ever-receding mirage.

Now he no longer knew who either of them were.

They were no longer the once-lovers who sparred and parried with nothing but consuming passion at stake between them. They were two people who shared far more than their unquenchable, if according to her, better-off-suppressed needs.

They shared a life. They had since she’d conceived his child. But by hiding the fact, she’d stopped it from becoming a reality to him. It had only become one the moment he’d known of it.

The instant freeze that had struck him, buried him under layers of icy shock, started to crack under the heat of her dismay. Then she relinquished his gaze, swung around. The curtain of raven gloss cascading down her back arced with the force of the motion, lashed his cheek. Then she was receding like a wobbly image from a dream.

He found himself launching after her, his need to stop her, to demand…everything, propelling him.

He caught her at the door, his fingers digging in her flesh through her long-sleeved jacket, felt like they’d sunk into lava. She twisted in his hold and he brought both arms crossing beneath her heavy breasts, felt as if he’d enfolded a live wire as he subdued her against his vibrating body.

“No more fighting me off, Lujayn.” Was that his voice? That wounded beast’s? “I’m never going to let you walk away from me again.” He turned her around, not knowing if it was his hands that were shaking or the shoulders he held her by, or both. “This is no longer a game.”

She tried to shake off his hands, her eyes escaping his. “Thanks for admitting it was a game all along. But you’re right. It’s not, because I’m not playing. Game over, Jalal.”

He almost ground his teeth to powder as the last vestiges of shock melted in the blast of rising rage. “It was you who’ve played me all along. You never told me you had my child.”

Her gaze met his at his shout, attempted derision, but the dread she’d managed to leash blossomed again, betraying her. “Don’t be ridiculous....”

“No, you don’t.” He gave her back her earlier fury. “Don’t you dare try to misdirect me again. It won’t work. Not only did you have my child and didn’t tell me, you were never going to tell me.”

The acknowledgment in her eyes incinerated any wisps of uncertainty into nothingness.

And he realized. That he’d hoped. For some indication that she’d hesitated in that decision. That it had weighed on her. That she’d afforded him a trace of consideration before ruling him out.

She hadn’t.

He let go of her shoulders, stumbled back under the cruelty of realization, his eyes burning as they searched hers. “Ya Ullah, ya Lujayn…b’Ellahi…laish? Why?”

Her eyes wavered. The vulnerability of consternation gave way to the toughness of control again.

“You’re kidding, right?” she scoffed. “The question is, why should I have told you?”

She truly didn’t see why. How could this be? “You didn’t think I should know I’ve fathered a child?”

Her stiff shoulders jerked. “You’ve probably fathered a dozen children you don’t know or care about. What’s one more?”

His hand rose to his chest, almost convinced he’d encounter something sharp sticking out of it. “Is this what you think? That I’m not only indiscriminately promiscuous, but that I go around having unsafe sex?”

“Seeing as how safe sex wasn’t one of your considerations with me, why should I think other women warranted any better?”

He’d only ever had “unsafe” sex with her. She’d been a virgin and he’d unfailingly observed safety before her. He’d only protected her from pregnancy at first then she’d done so later. He’d thought employing contraceptive measures herself had meant she’d wanted to enjoy full intimacy, something he’d never considered doing before her. What he’d gotten addicted to with her.

And she’d thought he was… “…so callous I care nothing about the consequences, to the women I bed, and to children I must occasionally sire?”

“So you ‘care’? And engage in that delightful practice you royalty types favor in this region, giving your illicit spawn the coveted title of mansoob? So generous of you to ‘occasionally,’ ‘sort of’ proclaim responsibility for your offspring from unsuitable wombs. The children of your servants or anyone inferior to you must be so grateful to be declared illegitimate but ‘associated’ with you. So isn’t it just lucky for me that I don’t need your ‘association’? And neither does Adam.”

Adam. His child was a boy. And he was nineteen months old.

The extent of what he’d missed in that time felt like a noose tightening against his windpipe, suffocating him. And for the first time in his life he knew what it meant to be helpless.

This chunk of his child’s life was gone, and he could never get it back, for either of them.

It must have showed on his face, the anguish and defeat. It twisted her stony expression into a grimace.

“Let’s not pretend this was something you considered at all, let alone with me. You didn’t even acknowledge me, but you would have my baby? But it wasn’t your fault I got pregnant. You probably thought I was protected. I wasn’t. I let contraception go when I married Patrick.”




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