The Call of the Desert (11 page)

That all too disturbing thought drove him up out of his chair and to the phone. He picked it up and gave instructions to the person on the other end.

When Julia emerged from the bathroom there was a pretty young girl dressed all in white waiting for her. She said shyly, “My name is Nita. I’m here to help you get changed.”

Too bemused even to wonder where Kaden had disappeared to, Julia let Nita help her, and within half an hour she was dressed and ready again. At precisely that moment Kaden reappeared at the bedroom door, resplendent in another tuxedo. He held out his arm for Julia, who took it silently.

This time her dress was a deep purple colour. A tightly ruched strapless bodice gave way to swirling floor-length silk which was covered in tiny crystals. The effect was like a shimmering cloud as Julia walked alongside Kaden.

She could feel the ever-present tension in his form beside her, and marvelled at the irony of the whole situation. She was arguably living every little girl’s fantasy, here in this fairytale castle, yet with the bleakest of adult twists.

She had to end this tonight—before he did. Before he could see how helplessly entangled she’d already become again.

A few hours later, when the crowd had watched Sultan Sadiq lead his new wife from the ceremonial ballroom, Julia was exhausted, and more than relieved when Kaden took her hand to lead her from the room. Her traitorous blood was humming in anticipation as they neared the bedroom. But she forced ice into her veins.

When they reached the room she extricated her hand and went and stood apart from him. He was surveying her warily, and she realised just how little they’d really communicated all weekend—as if he had been deliberately trying to avoid any conversation or any kind of intimacy beyond sex. It galvanised her.

She hitched up her chin. “The couple I was talking to earlier are leaving Burquat tonight, on a private flight back to England. They’ve offered me a seat on the plane if I’m ready to go in an hour.”

Julia was vaguely aware of tension coming into Kaden’s form. “You can’t wait until tomorrow morning, when I am going to take you home?”

She shook her head, almost dizzy with relief that she was taking control of things. That Kaden wasn’t coming closer, scrambling her brain. “There’s no need. I need to get back. I’ve got work this week. I’ve got a life, Kaden. I think it’s best if we just say this is over, here and now. What’s the point in dragging it out?”

Kaden was seeing a red mist over his vision. So many conflicting things were hitting him at once. No woman had ever walked away from him, for one thing. But a dented ego had never been his concern. It was Julia,
standing there so poised and cool, as if ice wouldn’t melt in her mouth. When only hours before she’d been raking his back with her nails and sobbing for him to release her from exquisite pleasure.

Jerkily Julia moved to the drawers and picked up what looked like a jewellery box. She was already gathering her things to start packing. Filled with something that felt scarily close to panic, Kaden took a step forward and noticed how skittishly she moved back. Her face had an incredibly vulnerable expression but he blocked it out, and it was only then that he noticed—at the same time as she did—that some jewellery had fallen from the box after her skittish move.

He watched as she bent to pick up the trinkets and then, as if in slow motion, something gold fell back to the floor. Before he even knew what he was doing he’d stepped forward and picked the piece up.

Julia stood up. Her heart had stopped beating. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Kaden straightened. The distinctive gold chain with its detail of a love-knot looked ridiculously delicate in his huge hand. He didn’t even look at her.

“You still have it.”

Julia didn’t have the strength to berate herself for having brought it. She swallowed and said, far more huskily than she would have liked, “Yes, I still have it.”

Even now her fingers itched to touch the tell—tale spot where it usually sat, and she clenched her hand into a fist. Kaden looked at her and his face was unreadable, those black eyes like fathomless wells.

“You always touch your throat …” He reached out his other hand and touched the base of her neck with a long finger. “Just here …”

Julia gulped, and could see his eyes track the movement. With dread in her veins and a tide of crimson rising upwards she could only stand still as Kaden carefully stepped closer and opened the necklace, placing it around her neck and closing it as deftly as he had the day he’d bought it for her.

She felt the weight of the knot settle into its familiar place, just below the hollow at her throat. Kaden took his hands away, but didn’t move back. Julia couldn’t meet his eyes. Mortified and horrifically exposed.

Kaden looked at it for a long moment, and then he stepped back. When she raised her eyes to his they were blacker than she’d ever seen them. His face was set in stark lines. “If you’re sure you want to go home now, I’ll see that Nita comes to help you.”

Julia shook her head, feeling numb. She wasn’t sure how to take Kaden’s abrupt
volte face
, when moments ago he’d looked as if he was about to tip her back onto the bed and persuade her to stay in a very carnal way. Now he looked positively repulsed. It had to be the necklace. He was horrified that she still had it, and what that might mean. Memories, the sting of rejection—all rushed back.

“It’s fine. I don’t need help.”

Kaden saw Julia’s mouth move but didn’t really hear what she was saying. All he could hear was a dull roaring in his head, the precursor to a pounding headache. And all he could see was that necklace. It seemed to be mocking him. He could still feel its imprint on his hand.

A tightness was spreading in his chest. He had to get out of there
now
. He backed away from Julia. Gathering force within him was the overwhelming sensation of sliding down a slippery slope with nothing to hold onto.

Julia watched the play of indecipherable expressions cross Kaden’s face. She felt like going over and thumping him. She wanted to wring some sort of response out of him … But then she felt deflated. How could she wring a response out of someone who had no feelings?

She swallowed painfully. “I … It’s been—”

She stopped as he cut her off. “Yes,” he agreed grimly. “It has. Goodbye, Julia.”

And with that he turned and was gone, and all Julia’s flimsy control shattered at her feet—because she felt as if she’d just been rejected all over again.

Less than an hour later Kaden was in his own private plane, heading back to Burquat. He’d actually had a meeting lined up the following morning, with some of Sultan Sadiq’s mining advisors, but had postponed it. The fact was he’d felt an overwhelming need to get as far away from B’harani as possible, as quickly as possible.

He looked down at his hand. It was actually shaking. All he could see, though, was that necklace, sitting in his hand, and then around Julia’s neck. It was obviously the necklace she went to touch all the time. It hung in exactly that spot, and when he’d put it on she’d looked
guilty
.

The question was too incendiary to contemplate, but he couldn’t help it: who would keep and wear a cheap gold necklace for twelve years? It was the only piece of jewellery, apart from his ex-wife’s wedding rings, that he’d ever given to a woman, and he remembered the moment as if it was yesterday.

Kaden’s mind shut down … He couldn’t handle the implications of this.

He watched the B’harani desert roll out below him,
and instead of feeling a sense of peace he felt incredibly restless. His hands clenched to fists on his thighs, he didn’t even see the air hostess take one look at his face and beat a hasty retreat.

Kaden assured himself that for the first time since he’d met Julia he was finally doing the right thing. Leaving her behind in his past. Where she belonged.

“Y
OU
are definitely pregnant, Julia. And if the dates you’ve told me are correct I’d say you’re almost three months gone—at the end of your first trimester.”

Julia’s kindly maternal doctor looked at her over her half-moon glasses,

“Why didn’t you come to me sooner? You must have suspected something, and we both know your periods are like clockwork.”

Julia barely heard her. Shock was like a wall between her and the words. Of course she’d suspected something for the last two months, but she’d buried her head in the sand and told herself that fate couldn’t be so cruel—not after years of trying for a baby with her husband. Hence the reason why her doctor knew her so well.

But then the problem hadn’t been on her side. It had been her husband’s.

The doctor was looking at Julia expectantly, and she forced herself to focus. “I just … I couldn’t believe what it might be.”

Her doctor smiled wryly. “Well it’s a baby, due in about six months if all goes well.” She continued gently, “I take it that as you’re divorced the father is …?”

“Not my ex-husband, no.” Julia bit her lip. “The father
is someone I once knew, long ago. We met again recently …”

“Are you going to tell him?”

Julia looked at her friend. “To be honest? I don’t know yet … what I’m going to do.”

The doctor’s manner became more brisk. “Well, look, first things first. I’ll book you in for a scan, just to make sure everything is progressing normally, and then we can take it from there— OK?”

One month later

Kaden paced in his office. The ever-present simmering emotions he’d been suppressing for about four months were threatening to erupt. Julia was here. Outside his office. Right now. She’d been waiting for over an hour. He would never normally keep anyone waiting that long but it was
Julia
, and she was here.

He ran a hand through his hair impatiently. What the hell did she want? His heart beat fast. Did she want to continue the affair? Had she spent the last months waking in the middle of the night too? Aching all over? He felt clammy. Would she be wearing that necklace?

He clenched a fist. Dammit. He’d hoped that by now he’d have chosen a wife and be in the middle of wedding preparations, but despite his aides’ best efforts every potential candidate he’d met had had something wrong with her. One was too forward, another too meek, too sullen, too avaricious, too fake … The list was endless.

And now he couldn’t ignore the fact that Julia Somerton had come to Burquat, going unnoticed on the flight lists because of her married name. In Burquat all
repeat visitors were noted. She’d made her way to the castle and now she was sitting outside his door.

His internal phone rang and he stalked to his desk to pick it up. His secretary said, “Sire, I’m sorry to bother you, but Dr Somerton is still here. I think you should see her now. I’m a little concerned—”

Kaden cut her off abruptly, “Send her in.”

Julia finally got the nod from Kaden’s secretary, who was dressed not in traditional garb, as everyone used to be when she’d been here last, but in a smart trouser suit, with a fashionable scarf covering her hair. She’d been solicitous and charming to Julia, but Julia had noticed her frequent and concerned looks and wondered if she really looked so tired and dusty.

Her flight from London had left at the crack of dawn, and the journey from Burquat airport in a bone-rattling taxi with no air-conditioning had left her feeling bruised and battered. Thankfully, though, the incessant morning sickness she’d been suffering from had finally abated in the last month, and she felt strong enough to make the journey. Physically at least. Mentally and emotionally was another story altogether.

She knew that she’d lost weight, thanks to the more or less constant morning sickness, and she was pale. She couldn’t even drum up the energy to care too much. She wasn’t coming here to seduce Kaden. When he’d said that clipped and cold goodbye in B’harani after seeing the necklace it couldn’t have been more obvious that he’d been horrified. She’d watched his physical reaction and known that any desire had died a death there and then.

Julia stopped herself from touching her neck now, and reminded herself that the necklace was safely back
in the UK. She stood up and walked to the door. The secretary had told her to leave her suitcase by her desk. Julia hadn’t even booked into a hotel yet, but she’d worry about that after.

The door swung open and she took a deep breath and stepped into Kaden’s office. The early evening sunlight was in her face, so as the door shut behind her all she could see was the formidable outline of Kaden’s shape.

She put a hand up to shade her eyes and tried to ignore the wave of
déjà-vu
that almost threatened to knock her out. The last time she’d been in this room—

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Julia?”

So cool
.

Julia forced herself to breathe deep and focus on getting the words out. “I came because I have to tell you something.”

Kaden finally stepped forward and blocked the light, so now Julia could see him. She felt her breath stop at being faced with his sheer male beauty again. And also because he had a beard—albeit a small one. His hair was longer too. He looked altogether wild and untamed in traditional robes, and her heart took up an unsteady rhythm.

Stupidly she asked, “Why do you have a beard?”

He put up a hand to touch it, almost as if he’d forgotten about it, and bit out, “I’ve spent the last ten days in the desert, meeting Bedouin leaders and councils. It’s a custom among them to let their beards grow, so whenever I go I do the same. I haven’t had time to shave yet. I just got back this morning.”

Julia found this unexpected image of him so compelling that her throat dried. He was intensely masculine anyway, but like this … Her blood grew hot even as she
looked at him. And he was looking at
her
as if she’d just slithered out from under a rock.

He quirked a brow. “Surely you haven’t come all this way to question me on my shaving habits?”

A wave of weakness came over her then, and Julia realised she hadn’t eaten since a soggy breakfast on the plane—hours ago. She cursed herself. She had to be more careful. But in fact, whether fatigue or hunger, whatever it was created a welcome cushion of numbness around her.

She looked at Kaden again and willed herself to be strong, straightening her spine. “No, I’ve come for another reason. The truth is that I have some news, and it affects both of us.” She continued in a rush, before she could lose her nerve. “I’m pregnant, Kaden. With your baby … Well, actually, the thing is, it’s not just one baby. If it was I might not have come all this way. But you see, I’m almost four months pregnant with twins … and the thought of two babies was a bit much to deal with on my own … and I know I could have rung, but I tried a few times … but that’s when you must have been away in the desert and I didn’t want to leave a message …”

Kaden lifted a hand. He’d gone very still and pale beneath his tan. “Pregnant? Twins?”

Julia nodded, hating herself for babbling like that. She’d wanted to be ultra-calm and collected, but now she was in front of Kaden she felt as if she was nineteen again. She wanted to run into his chest and have him hold her—but that scenario was about as likely as a sudden snow shower inside the palace.

“You look like you’ve
lost
weight—not as if you’re pregnant.” He sounded almost accusing.

Julia stifled a slightly hysterical laugh when she
thought of the sizeable bump under her loose top. She was already wearing stretch-waisted jeans.

His hand dropped. His eyes narrowed. He looked even wilder now. “And you say these babies are mine?”

At that insulting insinuation Julia actually swayed on her feet. Kaden came around his desk so fast it made her feel even dizzier. She put out a hand, as if that could stop him.

“Do you really think I came all this way for the good of my health? Just to pass off some other man’s babies as yours?” Her voice rang with bitterness. “Believe me, I’ve been actuely aware of the awful irony of this situation for months of sleepless nights now. One baby I could have coped with. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to tell you. But two babies …”

Kaden’s eyes raked her from head to toe. His lip practically curled. “I used protection.”

Julia’s chin went up. “There is a failure rate, and clearly it failed.”

The enormity of what Julia was saying, and to whom hit her then like a ton weight. Two babies. Who would be unwanted and unloved by their father. It was so much the opposite of what she’d once dreamt of with this man that the pain lanced her like a sharp knife right through the heart.

Everything was becoming indistinct and awfully blurry. That numbness was spreading. But in the face of his overwhelmingly hostile response Julia had to assert her independence. She had a horror of him assuming she’d come for a hand-out.

Faintly, Julia tried to force oxygen to her brain and to be articulate. “These are your babies, Kaden, whether you like it or not. And now that I’ve told you I’ll leave.

I don’t expect anything from you. I just wanted you to know that they exist … or will exist in about five months, all being well.”

She turned on her heel, but it seemed to take an awful long time—as if everything had gone into slow motion. And then, instead of getting closer to the door, she seemed to be moving further and further away. With a cry of dismay as black edges appeared on her peripheral vision, Julia felt herself falling down and down. Only faintly did she hear a stricken “
Julia
!” and feel something warm and strong cushion her back before the blackness sucked her down completely.

“Why is she taking so long to come round?” Kaden asked the wizened palace doctor impatiently. He didn’t like the metallic taste of fear in his mouth. “Shouldn’t we go straight to the hospital? I told you she’s pregnant.”

The doctor was unflappable and kept his fingers on Julia’s wrist, checking her pulse. Kaden had laid her down on the couch in his office before bellowing for his secretary to call Dr Assan. She’d been so limp and lifeless, her cheeks paler than he’d ever seen, dark bruises under her eyes.

And he’d kept her waiting all that time—after a long journey. She was pregnant. His conscience stung him hard.

Dr Assan looked at Kaden pacing near to him. “We’re just waiting for the paramedics to come and then she will be taken to the hospital for a full examination. But as far as I can tell she is fine—probably just tired and dehydrated. You said she flew from England today?”

“Yes—yes, I did,” Kaden agreed irritably. He was used to things happening quickly, and even though it
was only a couple of minutes since she’d collapsed time seemed to have slowed down to the pace of a snail.

With a granite-like weight in his chest, he cursed himself for lashing out just now and insinuating that he might not be the father. Of
course
he believed her when she said the babies were his. She’d looked shell-shocked, not avaricious. He knew with a bone-deep certainty that she wasn’t mercenary enough to make a false claim of paternity.

In five months’ time he would have a ready-made family.

The thought was overwhelming.

Just then a knock came to the door, and in the flurry of activity Kaden concentrated on what they were doing to Julia. When they produced a stretcher to carry her out to the ambulance Kaden reacted to a surge of something primal, and waded in and picked her up into his arms himself, ignoring the paramedics.

Dr Assan motioned for them to follow Kaden as he strode out with Julia in his arms. Kaden was oblivious to the sea of people hurrying after him. He was only aware of the swell of Julia’s pregnant belly against his chest, and something powerful rose up within him. His gut clenched tight. In his arms Julia stirred, but he didn’t even break his stride as he looked down to see those pools of grey on him. Dazed and confused.

For a moment he forgot everything and reacted only to those eyes, and to the sensation of relief rushing through him. “Don’t worry, you’re safe, and I’m going to take care of you.”

Julia was warm and secure in a dark place. But someone kept prodding her and shining a light in her eyes.
Instinctively she moved away from the light, but it kept following her until eventually she opened her eyes, and then it blinded her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, but heard a kindly voice saying, “Julia, you need to wake up now. You’ve given us all quite a fright.”

In her hazy consciousness she heard an echo of Kaden’s voice.
Don’t worry … I’m going to take care of you
…

Without really knowing where she was or what was happening, she spoke from a place of urgent instinctive need, “Kaden … where is Kaden?”

A moment of silence, and then she felt his presence. A hand on hers. The relief was overwhelming. “I’m right here.”

And at his touch and his voice it all came back. She wasn’t nineteen any more. She was thirty-two, and pregnant with his babies. And he didn’t want her—or them. Instantly she was cold and wide awake. Her eyes opened to see Kaden towering over her where she lay in a hospital bed, austere and remote in his robes and with that beard. She pulled her hand away, knowing that he must be hating her so much right now.

She looked to the man who had to be the doctor. “What happened?”

“You’re severely dehydrated and fatigued. You’ll need to be supervised on a drip for at least twenty-four hours. But apart from that everything is fine, and your babies are fine too. You just need rest and sustenance.”

Julia immediately put a hand to the swell of her stomach and felt Kaden take a step back from the bed. She couldn’t bear to look at him and see the censure in his eyes. The disgust he must feel that she was here, with
this unwelcome news. The last woman in the world he would have picked to be the mother of his children.

She wondered again if she should have come, and her own doctor’s words came back to her. “Julia, twins are a monumental task for anyone to take on board. You should not do this by yourself. You
must
include the father.”