LITMIR.BIZ

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he is.’

      ‘If you’re going to be in his life, I want him to be more than a responsibility,’ Lucy said in a low voice. Khaled made a grunt of disgust.

      ‘Do you think I’m here out of some sense of duty? If that was all it was, Lucy, I could have written a cheque. I want to be in Sam’s life because he’s my son, and I’m his father, and families are meant to be together. To love each other.’

      ‘Like yours?’ Lucy snapped, and then bit her lip as she saw Khaled’s expression close once more.

      ‘No, not like mine,’ he replied after a moment. ‘My own experience is all the more reason to give Sam a proper family. And I’d have thought you’d want the same for him, considering the absence of your own father—’

      ‘I was fine without my father!’ Lucy flashed.

      ‘Were you?’ Khaled queried softly. ‘I wasn’t.’ He stood up, effectively finishing the conversation. ‘Why should I not spend time with Sam?’

      Lucy nibbled her lip, disarmed by the simple question. ‘Fine,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll call the nursery so they can expect you at noon.’

      ‘Good.’ Khaled paused, and Lucy braced herself for what was coming. Somehow she knew it wouldn’t be good. ‘I can spend a week in England,’ he said. ‘And then I want to bring Sam back to Biryal.’

      Lucy jerked back. ‘A week? That’s no time at all!’

      Khaled shrugged, every inch the regal prince who barked orders and didn’t wait for them to be obeyed, who just knew that they would. ‘It will have to be enough.’

      ‘He doesn’t even have a passport,’ Lucy argued, grabbing onto perhaps the most irrelevant detail. ‘Or proper clothes.’ No, that was even more irrelevant.

      Khaled shrugged again. ‘We can have the passport expedited, perhaps through the Biryali embassy. As my son, he is a Biryal national.’

      ‘Is he?’ Her lips felt cold and numb, and her arms came around herself as a matter of instinctive protection. She dropped them. ‘Khaled, I don’t like this. It’s too soon. Sam doesn’t even know you’re his father.’

      ‘We’ll tell him when the time is right. Meanwhile, I’m sure he will be excited to learn of a holiday to a new and exciting destination.’ Khaled smiled faintly. ‘One with spiders.’

      She didn’t need a reminder of those. ‘I want to come with him.’

      Khaled was silent long enough for Lucy to glance at him and see his eyebrow arch speculatively. He looked almost smug, and with a jolt she wondered, Is this what he’d wanted?

      ‘Fine,’ he finally replied with a shrug. ‘But what about your job?’

      Lucy gritted her teeth. ‘I suppose I’ll have to take a temporary leave of absence.’

      ‘At such a critical time?’ Khaled pressed, and Lucy knew it was hopeless.

      Hadn’t she known everything would change once they started down this path? Sam’s life, her life, her job. She forced herself to shrug. ‘Let me worry about my job, Khaled. It’s not your concern.’

      ‘Very well. But we are leaving in a week…regardless.’ He stood up, and for a second his leg buckled underneath him.

      Lucy sprang up, one hand reaching to steady his elbow, but Khaled jerked away.

      ‘Khaled—’

      ‘I’m fine.’ His voice was terse, his face momentarily clenched with pain. ‘I’m fine,’ he repeated, and stiffly he walked to the door. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Lucy,’ he said, and then he was gone.

      I was dazzled by you. You were England’s rugby star…I thought I loved you.

      Lucy’s words, so honestly given, hammered relentlessly through Khaled’s head and in his heart. She hadn’t even loved him, and the man she’d thought she loved… He wasn’t that man any more.

      He leaned his head against the car’s leather seat as his driver pulled away from Lucy’s house onto the darkened street. Pain racked his body, but worse was the desolation that swept him as he considered Lucy’s words.

      He didn’t want to feel that consuming emptiness again. It reminded him of the bleakest time in his life: alone in his hospital bed, refusing visitors, because for anyone—for Lucy—to have seen him like that—helpless, hopeless, with a crippling diagnosis—was more than he’d been able to bear. More than Lucy could have borne, even if she’d thought she could…

      He’d seen what his kind of long-term diagnosis did to someone. He’d watched his father gaze at his mother, first in compassion, then pity, then disgust, and finally resentment and hatred. Oh, he’d disguised it, of course; his father had always been solicitous. But Khaled had seen it, his mother had seen it, and in the end it had caused her to wither away and die from despair rather than disease.

      He wouldn’t let that happen to him; he wouldn’t let it happen to Lucy.

      And it still wouldn’t, he reminded himself with harsh determination. He’d allowed himself a few moments of weakness. Lord, how he’d wanted, needed, to touch her! Even if he couldn’t have her for more than that moment.

      He closed his eyes, battling against the images that danced through his mind anyway, enticing, impossible: Lucy in his bed. Lucy on his arm. Lucy as his wife, with Sam, a proper family…

      The family he’d never had.

      The family he couldn’t have.

      Lucy didn’t want him. She didn’t want Khaled the cripple, she wanted Khaled the rugby star. The man he’d been—laughing, charming—the world as his oyster. That was the man the world had courted and admired, the man everyone had loved. The man Lucy had loved.

      Not as he was now, both weakened and hardened. Weakened by his illness, the endless surgeries and rounds of therapy, the loss of the career he’d found his whole self in; hardened by his father’s constant mistrust and suspicion, his grudging admission of Khaled’s rights as prince, by four years of fighting for just one corner of the kingdom that would one day rightfully be his.

      And Sam’s. This was all for Sam’s sake. The pain he’d have to endure living with Lucy—seeing her, needing her, and not having her, was for Sam. His son.

      And that made it worth it, Khaled told himself. It had to.

      A sudden, insistent trill had him flicking open his mobile. His mouth hardened into a grim line as he saw who was ringing him; it was the Biryali palace’s private number. His father. It was a conversation he’d been avoiding, and yet one he knew was inevitable. Setting his jaw, Khaled opened the connection and spoke into the phone.

      The next few days passed in a flurry. It was strange, Lucy thought, how quickly Khaled had settled into their lives, how Sam—and even Lucy herself—had begun to expect his presence. Somehow the new had become routine. Lucy would set a third place at the table, and Sam would perch on top of the sofa, looking for Khaled’s sedan to come stealing softly down the street.

      And yet, as each day slipped past, Lucy knew she needed to brace herself for irrevocable change. Sam and Khaled had both submitted to the DNA test, which had confirmed what had already been glaringly obvious. She’d taken Sam to the Birayli embassy, and with Khaled’s assistance a passport had speedily been arranged.

      She spoke to the HR manager at work, and was reluctantly given a fortnight’s absence.

      ‘I suppose it’s important?’ Allie the manager asked with a raised eyebrow, and Lucy had smiled thinly.

      ‘Yes. Rather.’

      Nothing was more important than Sam.

      Questions niggled at her with insistent worry. How long did Khaled want

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