Liz Fielding - The Sheik's Unsuitable Bride

‘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 reassure 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 class 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.’