The Sheikh's Shock Child. Susan Stephens

didn’t share the close relationship you seem to imagine.’

      ‘Even so, that’s no excuse.’

      She couldn’t keep calm. She’d tried. And failed. This meeting could only play out as she’d planned if emotion could be kept out of it. And how could that happen now she’d plunged back into all the grief and guilt of learning about her mother’s death?

      In danger of wasting questions, she was also in danger of wasting precious time, but what would it take for Sheikh Khalid to tell her the truth? She had to find a way to make him, though dredging up the past would be the last thing he’d want to do.

      She resorted to pleading. ‘Can’t you tell me anything?’

      ‘Nothing you’d want to hear,’ he said.

      ‘Try me,’ she said tensely. ‘I know my mother had a problem with drink, and wasn’t always responsible for her actions—that’s why I asked you to go back and bring her out.’

      ‘And if she didn’t want to leave?’ he asked evenly, keeping her locked in his stare.