The Sheikh's Unsuitable Bride Part 18

But maybe not that different.

'It's easy to see how your sheikh might dazzle you,' her mother said. 'Sweep you off your feet. He's a very good-looking man. And charming too-'

'No.' Then, 'Well, yes. Obviously.'

The difference was that Pete O'Hanlon had dazzled her with his danger. Had tempted her for no other reason than because he could. Because it amused him to take something untouched and mark it as his own. He did not build things, cherish things or people. He destroyed them...

Zahir was nothing like that.

Her mother looked anxious.

'He didn't dazzle me.' At least not intentionally.

All it had taken was one look and she'd lost it. All that painfully learned control, forgotten in an instant, gone in a look.

Okay. That was the same.

But she wasn't an eighteen-year-old with her hormones on fire. She'd kept it together for Freddy. Just...

She turned to her mother. 'How can one look change everything?' she asked, needing someone older, wiser to tell her. 'How can I feel this way about someone I met a couple of days ago?'

He'd looked at her as if she were the first woman and she hadn't wanted to run and hide. She'd wanted to touch him. Had wanted him to touch her.

That was different.

She'd made him laugh.

He'd made her want to dance. Made her feel brand-new...

'I don't know,' her mother replied. 'How do you feel?'

'As if...'As if he had been made just for her. 'As if he's a perfect fit,' she said. 'As if it's...right.'

And that was different too.

She'd known from the moment he'd taken what he wanted that everything about Pete O'Hanlon was wrong. That she'd been an idiot. That the next day he wouldn't even remember her name...

'It's a mystery. They say it's just chemical attraction. s.e.xual attraction is nature's way of keeping the species going. Marriage is society's way of dealing with the consequences.' She smiled. 'Or it was.' She shook her head, sighed. 'It doesn't explain how I knew your father was the one the minute he looked at me, though.' Then, smiling, 'Or maybe it does. Maybe it was no more than l.u.s.t and I just got lucky.'

'It's more than that. You love each other.'

'It takes a lot of love to hold a marriage together for twenty-five years. Not that falling-in-love kind of love, though. It's the love you work at, that evolves, changes to match everything that life throws at the pair of you. But luck helps.'

When Diana didn't respond, she said, 'Maybe this is your time to get lucky. Does Zahir feel the same way about you?'

'It doesn't matter what he feels.' Her voice was more emphatic than her feelings.

That he was feeling something she never doubted. That he desired her. That if she'd been a different kind of woman, one who didn't have to live well one hundred per cent of the time just to make up for the one time she hadn't, they might have had a brief, exciting fling.

But that was all it could ever be.

'In this world, Zahir's world, marriages are arranged. He will marry someone his family, his peers, deem a perfect match.'

Her mother frowned. 'He told you that?'

'We were discussing fairy tales. It came up...'

'There's no room for romance?'

'Respect lasts longer,' she said, managing a smile for her mother. Wanting to rea.s.sure her that this time she wasn't going to fall apart. 'We both agreed that fairy tales are for children.'

'And meanwhile he can dance in the street with any girl who catches his eye?'

'Nothing happened. Truly. If it hadn't been for that photograph...'

If it hadn't been for that photograph they'd be back in their own little worlds. She'd be back on the school minibus. He'd be doing whatever billionaire sheikhs did. 'A couple of kisses, that idiotic dance...'

'Sometimes that's all it takes,' her mother said, laying a hand gently over hers. 'A look, a kiss, for the magic to change everything. How many men have you kissed? I mean kissed wanting more?'

'Only one.'

'Freddy's father?'

Diana looked out across the water. Could see Zahir and her father laughing at something Freddy had said or done. It was the perfect image. A little boy with two strong men to keep him safe. Except that Zahir would be gone in an hour or two and, once they'd left this beautiful place, their worlds would not touch again.

'No,' she said. 'Not Freddy's father.'

'Diana...'

She turned her hand to clasp her mother's fingers. She'd never told. She'd protected Freddy. Had protected her family. Had protected everyone except herself.

It was a secret that had stood between her and her parents for nearly six years. When she'd put up that wall of silence, had refused to confide in them, had refused to cave into the threats of the Child Support Agency, telling them what to do with their money, something had been lost...

'Don't ask, Mum. If you knew, you'd look at him differently. You wouldn't be able to help yourself.'

Instead of pressing her, her mother just squeezed her hand. 'I'm proud of you, Diana. You're a strong woman and Freddy's a lucky boy...'

When the men returned, bearing their trophy fish, her mother took Freddy away to clean him up, her father went to take a nap, leaving her alone in the garden with Zahir.

'We have had no time to talk,' he said, 'and now I have to go.'

'Thank you for giving Freddy such a treat.'

'It was a pleasure. He's a lovely boy. But then he has a lovely mother. Walk with me to my car?'

She followed him up steps at the side of the house to a courtyard. It had been dark when they'd arrived, but now she could see that it commanded a view of the entire creek, and because she knew he was going to say something she didn't want to hear, she said, 'This is beautiful, Zahir. Has it always belonged to your family?'

'No. I came across the house when I was out sailing one weekend. A storm blew up and I took shelter in the creek. The place was uninhabited, falling to rack and ruin, but it was love at first sight and I bought it. Restored it.'

'You've done all this?'

'I made a start, did the early clearance, but life intruded. My family needed me. Then I got involved with the travel business. The truth of the matter is that these days I speak and it is done.'

'But the vision, the dream, is yours.'

'A man needs dreams to sustain him,' he said, turning abruptly away, opening the car door.

'We all need dreams.' Then, because the lie she had told hung between them and she wanted this over so that she could draw a line, begin to move on, she said, 'About Freddy...'

He stopped. 'You think that is why I came here today?' he said, not turning. 'To ask about your son?'

'Didn't you?' Then, when he didn't answer, 'I let you think he was my lover so that you would walk away.'

He straightened. 'Because you did not trust me.'

'No! Because I did not trust myself...'

As he swung round to face her, she faltered. 'Because once, when I was eighteen, I lost my head and hurt everyone who loved me...'

'Is being a single mother such a big deal these days?'

'No, but being a single mother and refusing to name the father is a very big deal.'

Zahir frowned. 'Why would you protect a man from his responsibilities?'

'I wasn't protecting him, I was protecting Freddy. I didn't want him tainted. Didn't want anyone to look at him and say, "Like father, like son..." Always be looking for the first sign that he was going the same way.'

He reached out, caught her elbow, and somehow she was leaning against him, his arm around her, not in an embrace, but as support.

'I was supposed to be the level-headed one in my year. The daughter every mother wanted...' She gulped. 'Maybe that was part of it. I was tired of being good. I just wanted to be like everyone else, part of the gang, but all those boys at school were so...ordinary.'

'And it took extra-ordinary to make you bad?' he said gently.

'Pete O'Hanlon was different. Five years older. And so gloriously, perfectly dangerous.'

The words, his name, had spilled out before she was even aware she was thinking them. More than she'd told her mother. More than she'd told anyone.

'He was the worst nightmare of every woman with an impressionable daughter. And boy, was I impressionable? He'd moved away, no one knew where he'd gone, what he was doing, but his cousin was in the same cla.s.s at school as me and he came to her eighteenth birthday party. The air buzzed when he walked in. Every girl was suddenly taller, more alive. Every boy looked...dull.'

'But he chose you...'

He'd waited until she was leaving. Had caught up with her, offered her a lift home.

'There are more dangerous things than walking home alone in the dark,' Zahir said when, finally, she stopped. 'Where is he now?'

'The morning after I got everything I deserved,' she said. 'He and three other men held up a bank. The police were waiting. He tried to shoot his way out and was killed.' She shuddered. 'I may be wrong, but I don't believe that Sadie Redford would be so quick to invite Freddy over for a play-date with her little girl if she knew that.'

'The sins of the father?'

The only sound was the air humming as the heat intensified. The high pitched note of cicadas stridulating below them in the garden. The blood pulsing in her ears as she waited for him to say something, anything.

'You are his mother, Diana. Nothing else matters.'

'No.' Then, shaking her head, 'Why did you come, Zahir?'

'Because...' He lifted his hand to her cheek. 'Because I could not stop myself.' He did not smile as he added, 'It seems that I am not as strong as you.'

For a moment she thought he would kiss her, but he let his hand fall to his side.

'You should get out of the sun now.' Then, as he climbed into the car, 'I promised Freddy that I would take him sailing tomorrow. I'll be here at six.'

Zahir walked with Shula al-Attiyah in his mother's garden, while their mothers gossiped and kept an eye on them. She was, just as his mother had promised, intelligent, well travelled, lively. Perfect in every respect but one. She was not Diana Metcalfe.

He sailed with Freddy the following morning and afterwards he ate a sumptuous mezza served by Hamid in the shade of the terrace with Diana and her family. Then he walked with Diana in the garden as he had walked with Shula.

He could not have said what they talked about. Only that being with her was right. That leaving her felt like tearing himself in half.

In the afternoon he met Adina al-Thani. She was the girl recommended by his sister for the beauty of her hair. It was a smooth ebony curtain of silk that hung to her waist and it was indeed beautiful.

If it had been chestnut. If curls had corkscrewed every which way, it would have been perfect.

Later, he had dinner with his father, who had just returned from the Sudan. They talked about politics. About the new airline. They did not talk about his marriage. Or the visitors occupying his house at Nadira.

But when he was leaving his father said, 'I want you to know that I'm proud of you, my son. This country needs men like you. Men who can take the future and mould it to their own vision.'

And he wasn't sure if that made him feel better, or worse.

The next day he was forced to remain in the capital, deal with the mountain of paperwork that was coming in from London. Have lunch with Leila al-Ka.s.sami-the one who was not beautiful but had a lovely smile-and her mother.

She, of all of them, came closest to his heart's desire. Perhaps if the smile had been preceded by the fleeting appearance of a dimple, if she had caught her lip between her teeth to stop herself from saying the first thing that came into her head...

As they left, he saw his mother watching him with an expression close to desperation and knew that he was running out of time.

That evening he took Diana on a tour of his 'vision'. Showed her the cottages, the central building that would provide everything a visitor could dream of. The chandlery, the marina. The island where the restaurant was nearing completion. The pavilion where people seeking somewhere different to hold a wedding could make their vows.

She stood beside him beneath the domed canopy looking up at the tiny lapis and gold tiles that looked like the sky in that moment before it went black and said, 'It's beautiful, Zahir.' And then she looked at him. 'Like something out of a fairy tale.'

'Wait until you see the real thing...'

'Oh, but I have...'

'No. Tonight I'll drive you far beyond the reach of manmade light-only there is it possible to see the heavens as G.o.d made them.'

Once darkness fell, he'd take her into the desert and, maybe, beneath the infinity of the heavens, she would be able to understand, he would be able to understand why, despite the fact that she had somehow taken possession of his heart, tomorrow he would have to redeem his promise to his mother. Do his duty as a son.

'I will not be able to come here again during your visit,' he said. 'But I want to give you this gift.'

Diana heard the words. Heard more, perhaps, than he'd intended to say. Something that they had both agreed upon from the very first. That there were no fairy tales.