“Hmm … filet mignon with mushroom sauce?” He turned his eyes to her. They weren’t back to impassivity at all, the harshness she’d seen in them that night in his penthouse polluting the amber. “Expecting a guest? Or is it a sponsor?” She gaped at him. His voice dipped into an abrasive bass. “I hope you’ve had enough of the shocked routine and will contribute to what started as a monologue and is now bordering on a soliloquy.”
Contribute. He wanted her to contribute. She had exactly four words to contribute. The sum total of what was left of her mind.
“Why are you here?”
Something feral flashed in the depths of his wolflike eyes. “So, you deem to end the mute show. If only to put on the dumb one.”
Each word was a lash on her rawness. “Please … stop.”
He inclined his head, a predator at leisure, his prey cornered, with all the time in the world to torment it. “Stop what? Critiquing your below par performance? You have only yourself to blame for that. It seems you haven’t been honing your craft of late.”
“Please … I don’t understand.”
“More acts, Carmen? Don’t you know the key to a successful acting career, especially an offstage one, is sticking with your strengths? My advice: never try the particular roles you just churned up for my benefit again. They neither suit nor work.”
“For God’s sake, stop talking in riddles. Why are you here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Intent on dramatizing to the end, aren’t you? Or are you just intent on testing the limits of my patience? The reason I’m here is self-evident.”
She shook her head. “Not to me. So please, drop your act and just say what you came here to say, and then—please—leave me alone.”
He seemed to expand like a thundercloud about to hurtle down destruction, a beam of the day’s dying sun striking a solar flare of rage in the gold of his eyes.
“I once told you that I have my fill of games. I thought you had enough intelligence not to join the would-be manipulators who swarm around me. At least not to try the same trick twice. Evidently I’ve overestimated your IQ. This will be the last time I take part in one of your games, so savor it while you can. Try another at your peril.” He inclined his head at her, sent her heart slamming in her chest. “You want me to pretend I don’t know that you know why I’m here? Zain. Fine.” He gave a pause laden with the irony of someone about to deliver something redundant, the disgust of being forced to play an offensive game of make-believe.
Then he drawled, smooth and sharp as a razor, “I am here for my daughter.”
Two
Farooq’s words shot through Carmen, pulverizing the framework holding her heart in place. Yet something kept her on her feet and conscious. Probably hope that she was hallucinating. “W-what did you say?”
He exhaled, the icy armor not back in place, the underlying volcano seething through the cracks. “Spare me further theatrics. You had my daughter. You have my daughter. I am here for her.”
He knows about Mennah.
How could he know about her?
He somehow did, had said … said …
I am here for my daughter.
What did that mean? Here for her … how? It couldn’t mean what it sounded like. It couldn’t mean he … he …
He wanted to take Mennah away from her.
The ground softened. An abyss yawned beneath, pulled at her …
But no. No. Not even he could take a baby away from her mother. This wasn’t Judar, where he was the law. This was America.
But how did he find out? Had he had her investigated, found out she’d had a baby, done the math and come to the conclusion Mennah might be his? Why would he want her even if he realized she was? He couldn’t consider her anything but a disastrous mistake.
That first night he’d had no protection, and even in the inferno of arousal, he would have stopped if she hadn’t assured him she was safe. She’d been certain she was. She’d had a dozen reports from as many specialists declaring her infertile.
He’d told her in blatant detail how he wanted to invade her, feel his flesh inside hers without barriers, to pour himself inside her. It had sent her up in flames in his arms …
Stop. Stop. She couldn’t let those memories assault her now. He hadn’t been risking repercussions, had believed her assurances. That was why she’d known his reaction would be violent if he found out about her pregnancy. He would have looked upon it as an ultimate breach of the trust he didn’t give easily. Most important, she couldn’t have projected how damaging it would be to him, a prince in line to the throne of one of the world’s most conservative and richest oil states, to have an illegitimate child.
Suddenly her heart nearly fired out of her ribs.
Could he be here to make sure Mennah disappeared, so she’d never compromise his position?
Out of her mind with dread, she asked, “What makes you even think my daughter can be yours?”
His answering stare was long and pitiless, lava coursing beneath the dark, hard surface.
Then he dipped one hand inside his jacket, as if he were extracting a gun.
Next moment she wished he had pulled one out, had shot her straight through the heart with it.
He pulled out a photo instead. Of Mennah.
A photo of Mennah sitting in strange surroundings. Holding an unfamiliar toy. Wearing unknown clothes. Mennah was laughing at the camera, secure, pleased, knowing how to please.
Mennah was only like that around her.
In the few times she’d seen other people, she’d clung to Carmen, fearful, tearful. If someone had managed to get her alone …
Was she losing her mind? How could she be wondering that?
She’d never left Mennah alone, except when she was sound asleep in her crib, like now. She’d diverted her career to work from home so she could be with her daughter at all times.
How had he gotten his hands on Mennah?
“I—I’ve never left Mennah. When—how did you get the chance to—to—”
“I didn’t.” His voice slashed across her babbling. “This isn’t a photo of your … of my daughter. This is a photo of my sister, Jala, at Mennah’s age. Mennah is also my feminine replica at that age. That Mennah is mine is indisputable. So let’s drop the hysterics and get to the point of all this.”
“Wh-what is that?”
“That I’ll never forgive you for keeping her from me.”
Farooq’s gaze clung to Carmen as she flinched as if at the lash of a whip, his fascination beyond his control.
But that was an improvement on what had happened when she’d opened her door with that smile ready on her lips. Everything had stilled then. Thought, heartbeats. Time itself had seemed to stop.
Then it had hit a screeching reverse, catapulting him to the moment he’d first laid eyes on her in that conference hall a year and a half ago.
As a tycoon and a prince, he had the world’s most spectacular beauties flaunting their assets and practicing seduction for his benefit. His attention had to be worked for extensively, was held with utmost effort for periods never surpassing days.
Then she’d come forward, hesitant, prim, and his focus had been captured and his lust aroused, effortlessly. Absolutely. A surge of something he’d never