LITMIR.BIZ

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power to her bones, realization seeped through, until everything crashed back into her awareness.

      This wasn’t the past. He wasn’t carrying her to his bed, or anywhere else where he’d ravish her with pleasure. This was now. In the oppressive present.

      She might have imagined the words he’d said pledging he wouldn’t take Mennah from her.

      She convulsed in his arms from the resurrected dread. His scowl deepened, and his hold firmed as he shouldered open her bedroom door. “Be still. You passed out.”

      “Put me down. I’m all right now.”

      “I’ll put you down on your bed. B’Ellahi, quit struggling.”

      She shook her head, crushing his lapels in spastic fingers. “You said you w-won’t …?”

      He didn’t answer her amputated question, deposited her on her bed with utmost care, leaning over her with arms flanking her head. His eyes swept down her length as they’d always done, as if he were struggling with the decision about which part of her to ravish first.

      When he had her quaking, he swept back up to her eyes, drawled, “I won’t take Mennah away from you, Carmen. I’m not the monster you insist on painting me.”

      “I never thought you were a monster.”

      “No? The man you claim to think would have forced you to abort your baby, or would take her from you to banish her somewhere, make her live her life unknown and illegitimate so he’d secure his position? If this isn’t a monster, what is?”

      “I’m sorry, Farooq. So sorry.” She clung to his forearms as he began to withdraw, desperate to make him understand. He extricated himself as if from slime. She shuddered. “I was so afraid … it was too huge, I couldn’t afford a margin of error, could only consider worst-case scenarios. I was afraid you’d think I’d lied on purpose, meaning to compromise you. I didn’t know you long enough to know how you’d react to perceived betrayals or threats. And then it wasn’t about you, or me. It was about her. Everything is about her. She’s everything to me. Everything.”

      Emotions she couldn’t define blasted from his eyes, flaying her. It was a minute before he had mercy on her. He wrenched his gaze away, razing her single bed, her room, instead. She felt him wrestling his temper under control and began to realize the depth of his affront, his fury.

      Everything he’d said was the opposite of what she’d imagined. It shriveled her to know she’d taken extreme actions that had hurt him on so many levels …

      No. They had hurt him on only one level—where Mennah was concerned. He suffered anger that she’d hid the baby, offense that she’d dared fear him concerning any child, even one conceived without his will and knowledge. What they’d shared was not worth mentioning except to reference her exit act, which he’d made clear had been so pathetic he’d seen right through it.

      Suddenly a gurgle tore through the silence. One of the sounds Carmen lived to hear. Mennah’s. As if she was right between them.

      Farooq stiffened, his eyes slamming back to hers for a moment of incomprehension. The sounds continued, the cooing and burbling with which Mennah entertained herself upon waking up. Astonishment invaded his eyes as they fell on the miniature receiver buckled on Carmen’s waistband. Then he murmured, clearly not to her, his deepest baritone soft with amazement, “Ya Ullah, she’s awake …”

      He exploded to his feet and toward the nursery right next door. Strength flooded Carmen’s limbs and she flew after him, catching his arm as his hand gripped the door handle.

      “Let me go in first.”

      His gaze burned down on her for a moment, accentuated by Mennah’s happy babblings emanating from the receiver and through the door. The feel of his muscles flexing in her grasp screamed down her nerves.

      He turned away, a shake of his arm making her hands fall away like shedded leaves, making her believe he’d disregard her request.

      He stared sightlessly at the door for one more moment then exhaled heavily. “Zain. Fine. Again I ask you to show me my daughter, Carmen. I hope you won’t faint again to put it off.”

      Her body heat shot up another notch, this time not with awareness. “You think I was pretending?”

      A growl rumbled from his gut, impatience made into sound. “Does it matter what I think?” Before she cried out a denial he ground on, “Laaken Laa … no, I don’t think even you can pretend such a dead faint. Now quit stalling.”

      “Great,” she grumbled. “To be exonerated from a con, only because you think my acting abilities aren’t up to pulling it off. And I’m not stalling. You think I’d leave her alone for long even to thwart you? Now, can you move aside? I’ll call you in when …”

      He seemed to expand, blocking her way like a barricade. “I’m letting you walk in ahead, not alone. Don’t test my patience anymore, Carmen.”

      “Or you’ll do what?” she bristled.

      He raised both eyebrows. “So, the falling-apart act is over and now comes … what? The hellcat one?”

      She exhaled forcibly, letting out some of her tension. She couldn’t walk into Mennah’s nursery seething. “Who’s wasting time now? Now move out of my way so I can go to my daughter. She’s content to lie in her crib yammering to herself when she wakes up, but I never leave her alone for more than a few minutes.”

      He gave a theatrical gesture, inviting her to precede him.

      She opened the door a crack.

      “You make her sleep in the dark!”

      The hiss lodged between her shoulder blades. She closed the door, glared up at him. “You have a problem with that?”

      His scowl was spectacular. “You should leave a night-light on. She’ll get scared if she wakes up in pitch-black like that.”

      Her lips twisted. “And this is your expert opinion as an experienced dad?” Again the growl rumbled from in his gut, softer, no doubt because he feared Mennah might hear. She challenged him again. “Does she sound scared to you?”

      His jaw muscles clenched in what she could only describe as grudging concession.

      God, had he always looked that—that indescribable?

      Struggling to bring yet another pang of response under control, she found herself saying, “My mother never made me sleep in the dark, and I developed a phobia of darkness. It took me years of agonizing self-conditioning to get over it.”

      Why was she explaining her actions as if she was defending her maternal ability? He could hear with his own ears that Mennah wasn’t in the least disturbed to be awake in a dark room, had already conceded that, no matter how unwillingly.

      And what was that strange expression that flared in the depths of those lion’s eyes of his?

      Slowly she started to reopen the door. He took the door from her, closed it again. “This is the first time you’ve mentioned your mother.”

      She stared up at him, huffed a sarcastic breath. “And you’re what? Surprised I had one?”

      “Had?” he probed. “She’s dead?”

      She nodded, her throat closing all over again. “Cancer.”

      “When?”

      “Just over ten years now. She died on my sixteenth birthday.”

      His eyes narrowed, the amber intensifying. “On the very day?”

      She nodded, tears she hadn’t shed then brimming.

      What was he doing, interrogating her this way? What was she doing, pouring out information about herself? She’d never talked about her past with him. There was so much she’d never wanted to

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