The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum (19 page)

What had she said?

She needed to check the baby?

He went to the car and released the seat belt, carrying the picnic basket into the tent where he could unwrap the little girl on a table.

Liz was standing there, his kandora looking far better on her than it did on him, but the pain he could see in her eyes and the lines of strain on her face told him this was going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done.

To examine her own child, yet not touch her with love.

‘You are still her aunt—you can love her,’ he said to Liz, wanting so much to ease her pain. ‘And surely you love all the babies you examine—at least a little bit.’

Liz heard the words but for a moment they didn’t sink in, and then, as her body relaxed and the hurt she was feeling grew less, she turned and smiled at the man who’d uttered them.

‘It seems I keep having to thank you,’ she said, still smiling as she looked down at the tiny baby.

Carefully she checked that all was well, guessing at the baby’s weight, checking breathing and heart rate, stupidly counting toes and fingers—mother stuff—silly, really…

‘She’s all good but must stay warm.’

She wanted to suggest holding her, for warmth, not because her arms ached to do just that, but there were dangers in holding a baby in a moving vehicle.

‘Here,’ Khalifa said, handing Liz lots more towels. ‘We can use these to wrap her in tightly’.

Together they settled the baby once again.

Together, Liz thought sadly. She had so enjoyed the togetherness they’d shared, every moment of it, but now—well, she could hardly expect the man to fall in love with a woman when he’d had to deliver her baby…

She watched Khalifa as he carried the picnic basket to the car, watching the care and concentration he gave to the task of securing it, surprised when he paused. Was he examining his handiwork? Checking everything?

But, no, he was studying the baby, for he smiled and reached into the basket, apparently to touch the tiny girl, his lips moving as if he was speaking to her.

Liz blinked away the tears, telling herself the cause was postnatal hormonal imbalance, not a longing to touch the child in just that way, to whisper to her—damn it all,
to hold her
!

She’s Oliver’s, she told herself, over and over again, but no amount of telling eased the pain.

‘Ready?’ Khalifa called to her, apparently surprised she wasn’t in the car.

‘Coming now,’ she said, sniffing back the unshed tears and gathering the remnants of her courage around her like a tattered cloak.

‘Exactly how early is she?’ Khalifa asked as he took his seat behind the wheel and started the engine.

‘Four weeks, give or take a day or so,’ Liz told him, then had to ask, ‘Why?’

‘I wondered if we should head for the well where I can call for a helicopter, or if it would be safe to drive back to Najme. It will take an hour to the well, then the helicopter will probably be there in three-quarters of an hour, and have you both back to the hospital half an hour after that.’

Liz added up the times, then realised he was telling her this for a reason.

‘There’s an alternative?’

He turned to her and smiled.

‘We could drive. It would mean cutting across the desert but I’ve done it dozens of times and have a GPS. Driving, we could be in Najme in three to four hours. What do you think? Should she be airlifted because that’s quicker?’

This is just another patient, Liz told herself. What would you decide?

The little girl’s responses had been good, her breathing and heart rate fine, there was no reason she’d even need a special crib in hospital, so…

But was she, Liz, leaning towards the drive because she wanted more time with the baby, even if she wasn’t holding her? Somehow, just knowing she was so close was enough at the moment, but at the hospital, someone else would care for her and she herself…

Well, what would
she
do?

What
could
she do?

Keep pretending it was just another baby, a patient like any other?

Her heart cried out in denial, but she’d been so good, so strong in keeping faith with the fact that it wasn’t her baby, she really, really didn’t want to weaken now.

‘I’ll drive unless you tell me she really needs a helicopter.’ Khlaifa’s voice, gentle and understanding, broke into her silent debate. ‘I can understand you wanting to have more time with her,’ he added. ‘For all you’ve denied any maternal instinct, it’s only natural you wouldn’t want to be separated from her.’

He turned his head towards her and she saw the smile that still started so much reaction in her body.

‘You
taught me that,’ he said, then he reached out and touched her cheek, although his eyes were back on the sand across which they travelled. ‘Taught me so many things.’

Like what? she wanted to ask, but perhaps it was better just to accept the compliment—to hold it to herself like a precious gift.

‘What will you do?’ he asked, his attention back on the trackless desert that stretched like an endless red ocean before them.

‘Do?’

‘In Namje,’ he added. ‘You’ll need to be checked by an obstetrician, and you’d be welcome to stay on either in a hospital bed or in an on-call room, close to the baby.’

Close to the baby?

‘Oh, Khalifa!’

His name came out on a sigh and she caught back the maudlin thoughts that once again threatened to overwhelm her.

‘You’re right, I’ll see a doctor…’ she had to smile for she was sitting right beside one, and was a pretty good professional herself ‘…then maybe an on-call room, not to be close to the baby but so I can get on with the work you brought me here to do.’

‘Then stay at the palace. I’ll make sure you have a car and driver available at all times so you can come and go as you wish.’

She could hear the things he hadn’t said—about the baby, and questions about why she was so adamant to stay detached.

‘It’s not just Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘If it was, I’d be okay because he’d want me to love the baby as much as he would. It’s his parents. When Oliver regains consciousness he’ll still be far from well, so his mother will be the baby’s primary carer, and if she won’t let me near Oliver, there’s definitely no way she’ll want me involved in the baby’s life.’

She paused, trying to get all the permutations and combinations of the future that had jostled in her head since Bill’s death into some kind of order. Khalifa, after all he’d done for her, deserved an explanation.

‘I could push to keep her, or at least be allowed access, because legally, right now, she’s mine. But I couldn’t let her become a pawn in a tug of war between myself and Oliver’s parents, particularly if Oliver never recovers completely.’

She turned to Khalifa and touched his arm.

‘That’s likely, as you know, after a head injury. And just think of the joy she’d bring him. A man, broken-hearted over his partner’s death, broken in health as well, then suddenly there’s this little girl, someone to live for, someone to love and cherish…’

She shook her head, sniffed back more tears and added, ‘I couldn’t take that away from him.’

Khalifa’s heart was scrunched with pain for this woman who sat beside him, her own heart breaking so she could bring happiness to someone else. Someone she’d obviously loved, but still…

‘Anyway,’ she said, with false bravado, ‘we’d settled all that long ago. I’m just a bit emotional about it all right now, but I’ll survive. And although the palace is a beautiful serene place, I’d be better off at the hospital. I found out from Laya there’s a breast-milk bank already established at the hospital so I’ll give milk to that. It doesn’t matter if she gets my milk or someone else’s as long as it’s the good stuff. And she’s big enough to go into the ordinary nursery, but if you could wangle Laya to look after her, I’d be very grateful.’

He’d been lost in wonder that she’d shifted so swiftly from the emotional to the practical when he heard her voice waver on the last few words. He stopped the car, unclipped his seat belt and turned towards her, putting his arms around her as best he could and holding her close against him.

‘We’ll work it out,’ he promised,
‘we
, not you. You tell me what you want and you shall have it. I know you’ve had to rely on your own strength for a long time now, but do you think could you learn to lean on me, to let me help you in any way I can?’

He kissed her hair, mussed and sweaty, and rubbed his hands across her shoulders, rubbing at her back, offering comfort in the only way he could, with the physical caresses of a friend.

He felt her head nod against his shoulder and knew he’d have to make do with that for the moment. Right now he had to get them both to the hospital.

Easing her back into her seat, he started the car and they continued on their way. Fortunately the baby slept, for he’d have hated to imagine the emotional battle Liz would have had to fight if the infant had needed comforting or feeding.

Eventually the pink towers and minarets of Namje appeared in the distance.

‘Another mirage?’ Liz queried.

‘No, that’s the real thing,’ he assured her, smiling because he knew from her voice she was feeling stronger now.

Could he really know her so well in such a short time, to be picking up intonations in her voice?

He knew he could, because it seemed he knew her in his bones, as if she was a part of him. How she felt about him was a total mystery, the arrival of the baby hardly a normal scenario for the morning after their first lovemaking.

And now his guilt returned. He’d let his passion for this woman put her and her baby into danger and although everything appeared to be working out all right, the guilt was still there.

The baby gave a cry as he turned into the hospital gates.

‘She must know we’ve arrived,’ Liz said, and although he’d seen her turn and her hand move as if to pat the child, she pulled back, biting at her lip, determined, he knew, not to give in to the welter of emotion that must be wrenching her to pieces beneath her composed demeanour.

He used his mobile to phone the hospital, although they were already in the drive, asking for Dr Hassan and explaining what had happened, requesting she be on hand to examine and admit the infant, asking her to get Laya to meet them. Then he contacted the hospital’s head obstetrician, thankfully in the hospital at the moment, and explained about the desert birth.

‘We’ll go in the staff entrance, and Laya will meet us there to take the baby while I take you to a private room where you can be examined. I’m sure the doctor will want to keep you in as a patient at least overnight, and…’ he turned and touched her cheek ‘…it would make me feel happier if you stayed at least that long.’

‘I can hardly say no when you’ve been so good to me,’ Liz responded, but he knew the distance he’d felt between them at the campsite in the desert was growing stronger—a distance he had no idea how to breach.

* * *

Once examined and pronounced fit, Liz showered and changed into her own clothes, which had miraculously appeared while the obstetrician was with her. Pleased she knew her way around the hospital, she went down to the nursery where Dr Hassan assured her the baby was fine.

The doctor indicated the crib, although Liz hadn’t needed to be told, for Laya was sitting beside it and Khalifa hovering over it.

She didn’t want to see Khalifa—well, she could see him already—but she didn’t want more conversation with him. This was partly because she already felt so beholden to him for handling her typical klutz-like emergency delivery, but also because something seemed to have shifted between them. The closeness she’d felt in the desert had whisked away like a sand sprite, lost for ever in another world.

Not that she could turn around and walk out…

‘I’ve been passed all clear by your doctor,’ she told him as she approached the pair beside the crib. ‘In fact, he tells me you did a splendid job, so there you are. Perhaps a second speciality lies ahead for you.’

She sounded like a robot, rattling on about nothing, but standing here, seeing the little pink face of the child she couldn’t call her own, was tearing her apart, and while she longed to lean into the strength Khalifa had offered, the something that had shifted between them held her back.

She mumbled some excuse and left the room, although she’d intended asking about the procedures in place for donating breast milk. She couldn’t return to her hospital room and brood—madness lay that way—so she walked further down the corridor to where the alterations to the new neonatal unit were well under way.

Khalifa found her there and, thankful the workmen had all departed, he took her in his arms.

‘Talk to me,’ he said, as she had said to him after they’d made love.

‘I don’t know what to say, or what to think, or what to do,’ she whispered. ‘It’s as if I’m waiting for a sign, waiting for something to happen that will tell me which way to turn.’

He didn’t have an answer so he kissed her, because it seemed the next best thing, and holding her like this it was difficult not to kiss her. Her response suggested the coolness between them might have been in his imagination, but common sense warned him that he was holding a very emotionally fragile woman in his arms, and her response might have been nothing more than a desperate need for comfort.

He would keep on kissing her, just for a while, and if that was selfish, because his body had been craving to hold her, then so be it, and hopefully she’d get some solace from it as well.

Eventually she broke away, an experimental smile on her face, so pathetic he wanted to kiss it off.

‘I made a mess of things as usual,’ she muttered. ‘Going into labour like that, ruining what should have been a perfect night.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘What could be more perfect way to finish a night than the arrival of a new child?’

He kissed her again but this time there was no response, and she eased herself away from his body and didn’t even try to smile as she whispered, ‘Oh, Khalifa, I am just so confused at the moment, I don’t know where to turn.’