Shackled To The Sheikh. Trish Morey

me?’ the lawyer asked.

      ‘Someone more suitable to take care of Atiyah. Couldn’t you find someone better to take care of my sister?’

      ‘Ms Burgess comes to us highly qualified. She has an exemplary record with Flight Nanny. Would you like to see her credentials?’

      ‘That’s not necessary.’ He’d already seen her credentials, in glorious satin-skinned detail, and they qualified her for a different type of position entirely from the one she was required for now.

      ‘If you have some kind of problem—’ she started.

      ‘Yes, I have “some kind of problem”, Ms Burgess. Perhaps we should discuss this in private and I’ll spell it out for you?’

      The lawyer looked at them nervously. ‘If you excuse me, a moment, I’ll see how Kareem is going,’ and he too was gone.

      Rashid took a deep breath as he strode back towards the wall of windows.

      ‘What are you doing here? How did you find me?’

      ‘What? I didn’t find you. I was asked by my boss to take this job on. I didn’t know you had anything to do with Atiyah.’

      ‘You expect me to believe it’s some kind of coincidence?’

      ‘You can believe what you like. I was retained to care for Atiyah on her journey to wherever it is that she is going. Frankly, I’d forgotten all about you already.’

      His teeth ground together. Forgotten about him already? In his world, women had always been temporary, but he’d been the one to decide when he’d had enough. He’d been the one to forget, and it grated...

      ‘So you’re a qualified child-care worker?’

      ‘That’s my primary qualification, yes, though I have diplomas in school-aged education and childhood health care along with some language skills as well.’

      ‘You are forgetting about your other skills,’ he growled, his lip curling as he looked out of the window, still resentful at a world going on about its business while his life didn’t resemble a train that had merely changed direction, his life was on a train that had jumped tracks, and he wasn’t sure he liked where it was headed.

      ‘They’re hardly relevant,’ she said behind him, and around and between her words he could hear the sounds of the baby, staccato bursts of cackles and cries, and then a zipper being undone.

      He spun around, angry that she seemed oblivious to the impossibility of the situation, to see her sitting down, the baby in her lap as she dripped milk from a small bottle onto her upturned wrist before putting the bottle to the baby’s mouth, looking every part the quintessential mother with child.

      That was a laugh. She was no Madonna. It didn’t matter what she was wearing or what she was doing, he could still see her naked. He could still remember the way she’d bucked beneath him as she’d come apart in his arms.

      ‘Impossible!’ he said, and even the baby was startled, her big eyes open wide, her little hands jerking upwards, fingers splayed. ‘This cannot work.’

      ‘Hold it down,’ she said, rocking the child in her arms. ‘Do you think I like the situation any more than you do?’

      ‘I want another carer.’

      ‘Why?’

      Because I don’t trust myself with you. ‘Because a woman like you is not fit to look after an innocent child.’

      She laughed. ‘A woman like me? What kind of woman is that, exactly?’

      ‘A woman who goes whoring in the night—picking up men in bars and sleeping with them.’

      She smiled up at him and he felt his ire rise. ‘But a man who goes whoring in the night—picking up women and inviting them back to his hotel room—he is perfectly qualified to be that child’s guardian. Is that what you are saying?’

      ‘This is not about me.’

      ‘Clearly not, or there might be a double standard at work, don’t you think?’

      Frustration tangled in his gut. He hated that she had seen through his arguments but he could hardly tell her the real reason—that he needed more than ever right now to be able to think clearly, without his brain being distracted with replays of last night every time he looked at her. Why couldn’t she see that he didn’t want her—that this would not work? ‘I want somebody else to care for Atiyah!’

      ‘There is nobody else. All Flight Nanny’s employees are busy on other assignments.’

      ‘I don’t want you coming with us.’

      ‘Do you think for a moment that I want to come? As soon as I realised it was you, I wanted to sink through a hole in the floor. So don’t worry, I’m not looking for a repeat of last night’s little adventure. I’m not here because of you. I’m here to take care of the baby, nothing more.’

      A brief knock on the door interrupted his words, and Kareem entered with a bow, and there was no way their visitor couldn’t have heard her words or misinterpreted the tone in which they were delivered. ‘A thousand pardons for the interruption, but the plane will be ready to leave in two hours.’

      And Tora looked up at Rashid. ‘So, do you want to tell everyone why you’d prefer to find another carer, or shall I?’

      Kareem looked to him expectantly, his placid features betraying only the barest hint of surprise, and Rashid cursed the woman under his breath. But he was out of time and out of options, and, besides, what was the worst that could happen? She’d accompany them to Qajaran and then her role would be complete and she would be on the next flight home and he would be rid of the constant reminders of their night of passion together, rid of the distraction of a woman who had turned an already upside-down world spinning through another three hundred and sixty degrees in the course of one night. He could hardly wait. ‘I expected someone older,’ he muttered, ‘but I suppose this one will just have to do.’