Except that this time, he couldn’t see that there was a right answer. Only a swirling selection of options—and none of them were good. The facts were unassailable. A woman with a baby and a man who did not wish to become a father.
Who should never become a father.
He felt a dark dread begin to creep over his heart as he wondered whether history always repeated itself. Whether humans were driven by some biological imperative over which they had no control. Driven to make the same mistakes over and over again.
‘Not here,’ he said, his voice tight with restraint. ‘I don’t intend discussing something as important as this in the front seat of a car. Do up your seat belt and let’s go.’
But he could see that her hands were trembling as she struggled to perform the simple action. He leaned forward to help her, and her proximity left him momentarily disorientated. The warmth radiating from her body seemed to have intensified the spicy scent of her perfume. The sunlight was bouncing off the ebony gloss of her hair and her lips looked so unbelievably kissable that he was left with the dull ache of longing inside him.
And wanting her would only complicate things. It would cloud his mind and his judgement at a time when he needed to think clearly.
Clipping in the seat belt, he quickly moved away from the temptation she presented and started up the engine.
For a while they were silent as they stop-started through the busy streets, where outside the world carried on as normal. While inside...
He shot her a glance and saw that her face looked as white as chalk and he found himself unexpectedly shocked at the sight of her physical frailty. ‘Have you eaten?’ he demanded.
She shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You should be. You haven’t had any lunch.’ And neither had he. The morning had passed in a dazed kind of blur ever since he’d met Leila at the Harley Street clinic, where she had been dropped off by Sara, a princess who had once worked for him.
He was still remembering the look on his assistant’s face this morning when he’d told her to clear his diary for the rest of the day. Surprise didn’t even come close to it. He could just imagine the gossip reverberating around the building as people started second-guessing why Gabe Steel had done the unimaginable and taken an unscheduled day off work.
And when they knew? When they discovered that the man who was famous for never committing was to become a father? What then?
‘You need to eat,’ he said implacably.
‘I don’t want anything,’ she said. ‘I feel sick. I’ve felt sick for over a month.’
‘Is that intended to make me feel guilty, Leila? Because you’d better know that I won’t accept all the blame.’ He sent out a warning toot on his horn, and the cyclist who had shot out from a side road responded with a rude gesture. ‘If you hadn’t come on to me in a weak moment, then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this intolerable situation.’
Wondering briefly what the weak moment had been, Leila leaned her head back against the seat as the cool venom of his words washed over her. Yet, she couldn’t really condemn him for speaking the truth, could she? It was intolerable—and there wasn’t a thing that was going to make it better. A wave of panic hit her and the now-familiar refrain echoed around in her head.
She was ruined.
Ruined.
Outside the car window, London passed by but she barely noticed the brand-new city which should have excited her. She felt like an invisible speck of dust being blown along and she didn’t know where she was going to end up. She was with a man who did not want her but was forced to be with her, because she carried his child within her belly.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked.
‘To my apartment.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t be seen at your apartment. My brother might find out.’
‘Your brother is going to have to find out sooner or later—and this isn’t about him or his reaction to what’s happening. Not any more. This is about you.’ And me, he thought reluctantly. Me.
Without another word he drove to his apartment and parked in the underground garage before they took the elevator to his apartment. The rooms seemed both strange yet familiar and Leila felt disorientated as she walked inside. As if she was a different person from the one who had arrived here in the early hours of this morning.
But she was.
Yesterday nothing had been certain and there had still been an element of hope in her heart, no matter how misplaced. But with the doctor’s diagnosis, that hope had gone and nothing would ever be the same. Never again would she simply be Leila, the princess sister of the Sultan. Soon she would be Leila, the mother of an illegitimate child—a baby fathered by the tycoon Gabe Steel.
The man who had never wanted to see her again.
She tried to imagine her brother’s fury when he found out but it was hard to picture the full extent of his predictable rage. Would he strip her of her title? Banish her from the only land and home she had ever known? And if he did—what then? She tried to imagine supporting herself and a tiny baby. How would she manage that when she’d never even held a baby?
She was so preoccupied with the tumult of her thoughts that it took her a few minutes to realise that Gabe had left her alone in his stark sitting room. He returned a little while later with his suit jacket removed and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. She noticed his powerful forearms with their smattering of dark golden hair and remembered the way he had slid them around her naked waist. And wasn’t that a wildly inappropriate thing to remember at a time like this?
‘I’ve made us something to eat,’ he said. ‘Come through to the dining room.’
His words made Leila’s sense of disorientation increase because she came from a culture where men didn’t cook. Where they had nothing to do with the preparation of food—unless you counted hunting it down in the desert and then killing it.
She told herself that he wasn’t listening to what she’d said—and she’d said she wasn’t hungry. But it seemed rude to sit here on her own while he ate and so she followed him into the dining room.
This was not a comfortable room either. He was clearly a fan of minimalism, and the furniture looked like something you might find in the pages of an architectural magazine. Tea and sandwiches sat on a table constructed from dull metal, around which was a circle of hard, matching chairs. The table sat beneath the harsh glare of the skylight, which made Leila think she was about to be interrogated.
And maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. She certainly had a few questions she needed to put to the man now pushing a plate of food towards her.
She held up the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t—’
‘Just try,’ he interrupted. ‘Is that too much to ask, Leila?’
The hard timbre of his voice had softened into something which sounded almost gentle and the way he said her name suddenly made her feel horribly vulnerable. Or maybe she was imagining that. Maybe she was looking for crumbs of comfort when all he was doing was being practical. She realised that she felt weak and that if she didn’t look after herself she would get weaker still. And she couldn’t afford to do that.
So she ate most of the sandwich and drank a cup of jasmine tea before pushing away her plate. Leaning back against the hard iron chair, she crossed her arms defensively over her chest and studied him.
She drew in a deep breath. ‘You can rest assured that I don’t expect anything from you, Gabe. You’ve made your feelings absolutely plain. That afternoon was a mistake—we both know that. We were never intended to be together and this...this baby doesn’t have to change