Sheikh's Woman

“Oh, just when you took the baby from me…I…” She pressed her hands to her eyes. Not when he took the baby, but the sight of him holding the infant as if he loved her and was prepared to protect and defend the innocent.

“Tell me!”

She lifted her head to see him watching her with a look of such intensity she gasped. Suddenly she wondered how much of her past she had confided to her husband. Was he a tolerant man? Or had he wanted her to lie about her life before him?

She stammered, “Did—did—?” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Did I tell you about…Jonathan? Jonathan Ryder?”

But even before the words were out she knew the answer was no.

Three

“Tell me now,” Ishaq Ahmadi commanded softly.

She wanted to lean against him, wanted to feel his arm around her, protecting her, holding her. She must have that right, she told herself, but somehow she lacked the courage to ask him to hold her.

She had always wanted to pat the tigers at the zoo, too. Now it seemed as if she had finally found her very own personal tiger…but she had forgotten how she’d tamed him. And until she remembered that, something told her it would be wise to treat him with caution.

“Tell me about Jonathan Ryder.”

Nervously she clasped her hands together, and suddenly a detail that had been nagging at her in the distance leapt into awareness.

“Why aren’t I wearing a wedding ring?” she demanded, holding both hands spread out before her and staring at them. On her fingers were several silver rings of varied design. But none was a wedding band.

There was a long, pregnant pause. Through the glass panel separating them from the driver, she heard a phone ring. The driver answered and spoke into it, giving instructions, it seemed.

Still he only looked at her.

“Did I…have we split up?”

“No.”

Just the bare syllable. His jaw seemed to tense, and she thought he threw her a look almost of contempt.

“About Jonathan,” he prompted again.

If they were having trouble in the marriage, was it because he was jealous? Or because she had not told him things, shared her troubles?

She thought, If I never told him about Jonathan, I should have.

“Jonathan—Jonathan and I were going together for about a year. We were talking about moving in together, but it wasn’t going to be simple, because we both owned a flat, and…well, it was taking us time to decide whether to sell his, or mine, or sell both and find somewhere new.”

Her heart began to beat with anxiety. “It is really more than two years ago?”

“How long does it seem to you?”

“It feels as if we split up about six months ago. And then…”

“Why did you split up?”

“Because…did I not tell you any of this?”

“Tell me again,” he repeated softly. “Perhaps the recital will help your memory recover.”

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to share it with him, to make him her soul mate. Surely she must have told him, and he had understood? She couldn’t have married a man who didn’t understand, whom she couldn’t share her deepest feelings with?

“I got pregnant unexpectedly.” She looked at him and remembered that, sophisticated as he looked, he was from a different culture. “Does that shock you?”

“I am sure that birth control methods fail every day,” he said.

That was not what she meant, but she lacked the courage to be more explicit.

“Having kids wasn’t part of deciding to live together or anything, but once it happened I just—knew it was what I wanted. It was crazy, but it made me so happy! Jonathan didn’t see it that way. He didn’t want…”

Her head drooped, and the sound of suddenly increasing rain against the windows filled the gap.

“Didn’t want the child?”

“He wanted me to have an abortion. He said we weren’t ready yet. His career hadn’t got off the ground, neither had mine. He—oh, he had a hundred reasons why it would be right one day but wasn’t now. In a lot of ways he was right. But…” Anna shrugged. “I couldn’t do it. We argued and argued. I understood him, but he never understood me. Never tried to. I kept saying, there’s more to it than you want to believe. He wouldn’t listen.”

“And did he convince you?”

“He booked an appointment for me, drove me down to the women’s clinic…. On the way, he stopped the carat a red light, and—I got out,” she murmured, staring at nothing. “And just kept walking. I didn’t look back, and Jonathan didn’t come after me. He never called again. Well, once,” she amended. “A couple of months later he phoned to ask if I planned to name him as the father on the birth certificate.”

She paused, but Ishaq Ahmadi simply waited for her to continue. “He said…he said he had no intention of being saddled with child support for the next twenty years. He had a job offer from Australia, and he was trying to decide whether to accept or not. And that was one of the criteria. If I was going to put his name down, he’d go to Australia.”

His hair glinted in the beam of a streetlight. They were on a highway. “And what did you say?”

She shook her head. “I hung up. We’ve never spoken since.”

“Did he go to Australia?”

“I never found out. I didn’t want to know.” She amended that. “Didn’t care.” She glanced out the window.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Where is the hospital?”

“North of London, in the country. Tell me what happened then.”

Her eyes burned. “My friends were really, really great about it—do you know Cecile and Lisbet?”

“How could your husband not know your friends?”

“Are Cecile and Philip married?”

He gazed at her. “Tell me about the baby, Anna.”

There was something in his attitude that made her uncomfortable. She murmured, “I’m sorry if you didn’t know before this. But maybe if you didn’t, you should have.”

“Undoubtedly.”