His friend was right. Alik lived his whole life moving at a dead run. But he was never running from something. Nothing scared him that much. But he wasn’t really running to something, either. He was simply getting through as quickly, as loudly and recklessly, as possible.
He found it was the loud and reckless things in life that offered the most return in terms of what they made him feel. And he was hungry for feeling. For tastes of what years of existing in survival mode had denied him.
Maybe that, more than Sayid’s comments, had been the deciding factor in why he’d come. That or watching the other man’s life, watching all of the change it had brought about for Sayid to acquire a wife and children.
Either way, when he’d decided to come after his daughter, he hadn’t made the decisions hesitantly or lightly. No, there had been no instant bond between them, but he had hardly expected that. Alik had never bonded to people instantly. Sometimes he simply never did.
Sayid was the exception, and then later, Sayid’s family. But he’d been twenty-eight when he’d met his friend, who was more a brother to him than anything else, and it had been his first experience of caring for another human being.
It still didn’t come easily to him. But swearing his alle-giance? That came as simply as seeing whose name was on the check. It always had for him. Even now that he’d moved into the business of tactical, cutthroat corporate raider, rather than tactical, cutthroat mercenary and overthrower of governments, that fact remained true.
His loyalty could be bought, and once he was purchased, he would defend those he was loyal to till death if he had to. And then, when the job was done, he would break the bonds as easily as they’d been forged.
Again, Sayid was the exception. A job gone wrong, turned into a rescue mission to save the life of the sheikh, even when everyone else had given up, had made their bond unbreakable.
He would simply choose to cultivate that bond with his child. She had bought his loyalty with her blood, a check that could never simply be cashed, could never just disappear.
That meant, no matter what, he would defend her. Fight for her, die for her.
Or pound the streets as long as it took, looking for the woman she called mama.
“I will protect you,” he said to her, looking at her red, tear-streaked face. “That is my promise.”
His daughter was unimpressed with the vow.
He pushed the door to the limo open. “Wait here,” he said to his driver.
He got out, holding Leena, who was squirming and screeching against his chest. People were staring at him, at them. He was used to being able to fly under the radar when he wanted to. Used to making a scene only when he wanted to. But he had no control over this scene.
How a tiny child could assume total control over things with the ease most people breathed astounded him. He walked down the sidewalk, cursing the rain, and the knots of kids in skinny jeans smoking cigarettes and blocking his way.
Cursing his total lack of control.
There was a clothing store, a pizza place and a coffeehouse along the main drag of the shopping center, and he was willing to bet that Jada hadn’t gone far.
He pushed open the door to the coffee place and saw her there, clutching a mug in both of her hands, looking ashen and in shock.
He crossed the coffee shop, wiggling baby attempting to impede his progress, and stopped in front of her table.
“Tell me then, Jada Patel, if you do not take the position as my nanny, what will you do?”
She looked at him, the relief that washed over her so strong it was tangible. And yet she didn’t move to take the baby from his arms. Didn’t try to relieve him.
She didn’t respond. She simply looked at him with eyes that conveyed a depth of emotion he hadn’t known was possible to feel.
“You don’t seem to have a very strong sense of self-preservation,” he said, shifting the baby in his arms. “I have offered you a chance to come and live with my daughter, to continue caring for her. You’ve as much as admitted that you have nothing here if you don’t get to keep her. You have no husband. No girlfriend or other sort of lover, obviously. They would have come to the hearing with you, offered support.”
She looked down into her coffee mug. “No. I don’t have a husband.”
“Then you have nothing to leave behind.”
She looked away, her eyes glassy, reflecting the gray sky outside the coffee shop’s window. “Leaving here isn’t the problem.” She looked back at him. “What assurance do I have that you won’t simply fire me one day? Cast me out onto the street without any warning some day five years down the road and put me in the position of losing her then? I couldn’t bear it. I can’t bear it now, so part of me wants to take the chance, but I am giving you all of my power, the power over my life if I take the position, and I don’t like it at all.”
“I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t like it, either, and yet I see very little in the way of other options.”
Jada fought the panic that was rising inside her. Panicking wasn’t going to help. She had to think. Had to figure out what to do.
She wished, so desperately, that there was someone she could ask. Her friends…she could hardly stand to be around them. They just looked at her with sad eyes, touched her like they were afraid she was cracking, breaking like a piece of delicate glass. And they’d all thought her crazy when she’d decided to adopt.
Her parents had been gone for so long now. Her father when she was a teenager, her mother six years after that.
And then there was Sunil. She would have turned to him, would have asked him what to do. After he’d died, she’d felt like she was drifting. Unable to think, unable to make a decision. The only thing that had gotten her out of bed every day was the knowledge that he would have wanted her to. He would have told her that there would be something else for her. Something good. And while he hadn’t been enthusiastic about adoption during their marriage, she knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone.
The something good she’d been waiting for was Leena. From the moment she’d seen Leena, tiny and pink, swaddled in a blanket with her hospital cap fitted snugly over her mop of brown hair, Jada had known she would give her life for her daughter.
Becoming Leena’s nanny wasn’t even close to giving up her life. But it wasn’t the thought of leaving home that frightened her. She had no home without Leena anyway. It was the fact that, at Alik’s pleasure, at his whim, he could still tear her daughter away from her at any moment.
She would have no parental rights. She would be nothing more than hired help, waiting for the ax to fall. Loss, when it came suddenly, was hideous. But living her life knowing that any day could bring it would be unbearable.
“So what you need is more security?” he asked. “Something that would feel legal and permanent?”
“Yes, something that would feel more stable, so that I wasn’t wondering if you were simply going to sweep through one day and decide I was no longer needed.”
She looked at him, into those stormy gray eyes, and a shiver ran through her body. He had a kind of easy grace, a relaxed posture that made him look like he was at ease with the world, with his surroundings.
But what she saw in his eyes just then proved that he was lying to the world. He was ice beneath the exterior.
“You are the kind of woman,” he said, “who would never sell her allegiance.” The way he said it, with a mix of wonder and admiration, surprised her. “You remind me of someone I know.”
“That’s all very well and good,