Instinctively she opened to him—she knew him—and his kiss deepened. Hardened. As he angled his head and pulled her closer.
There was a squawk. A protest from between them. And Tora’s attention snapped back to the child in her arms—to where it should have been before she’d been seduced by the shadows. She turned her face away, freeing a hand to push at the hard wall of his naked chest.
‘Rashid, stop.’
He blinked, feeling sideswiped all over again. This woman did things to him. She made him forget himself and his determination to lock down his emotions when he was around her. She made him forget everything. He’d been so blindsided by lust that he’d forgotten completely about the child in her arms—his own tiny sister. And he’d known all along that he would be rubbish caring for an infant, and still he felt ashamed.
‘Is...is she all right?’
‘She’s fine,’ Tora said, rocking her in her arms. ‘No harm done.’ Although the quake in her voice told him otherwise. ‘Maybe you should go back to your suite.’
He reached out for her. He didn’t want to go. ‘Tora—’ but she spun away.
‘Stop it! Don’t you care about this baby at all?’
‘I adopted her, didn’t I?’
‘Lucky Atiyah.’
‘Look,’ he said, shaking his head as he turned it towards the heavens, ‘I didn’t ask to take on the care of an infant. I don’t know the first thing about babies.’
‘Well, maybe you should start learning because frankly, Atiyah deserves better. You have a ten-week-old child who has lost her parents and you treat her like something you wished you could shove away in a filing cabinet somewhere and forget about.
‘Don’t you understand? She’s not a thing, Rashid, she’s a child. A baby. She needs to be nurtured, not merely tolerated. She needs love and smiles and someone who truly cares about her. Instead, she got stuck with you—sullen, resentful, miserable you—and I can’t work out why you have to be that way. Have you forgotten what it’s like to be a child?’
His jaw was so tightly clenched, he felt a muscle pop. ‘No, as a matter of fact I haven’t, but rest assured I don’t plan on sending Atiyah to boarding school to be looked after by strangers the first chance I get, so I guess I do know something about bringing up children, even if it’s nowhere near your high standards. But thanks anyway, for pointing out my failings so succinctly.’ He turned to leave and this time it was her that stopped him.
‘Rashid,’ she said, concern swirling in her gentle eyes. ‘Is that what happened to you? How old were you when they sent you away?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said on a sigh, raking a hand through his hair. ‘Other than the fact it makes me the most useless person ever to be appointed guardian of anyone, let alone an infant like Atiyah.’ He looked down at the baby, now settled again. ‘She deserves better.’ He turned his eyes up to Tora’s. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted you. Goodnight,’ he said, and he was gone.
Tora stepped breathlessly back into her suite, meeting a distraught-looking Yousra coming the other way. ‘Is everything all right? I heard voices,’ she said as she caught sight of the child in Tora’s arms. ‘Oh, no. I should have woken. Did she cry? I am so sorry not to let you sleep.’
‘It’s okay,’ Tora soothed her. ‘I would normally be awake at this time and I was only half asleep. You go back to bed.’
And the younger woman bowed. ‘If it pleases you, Sheikha.’
‘Call me Tora,’ she said. ‘I am much more comfortable with that.’
‘But...?’
‘Tora,’ she insisted. ‘As I call you Yousra. We are both looking after Atiyah after all. We should be friends.’
The young girl smiled uncertainly and bowed some more. ‘If you are sure, Sheikha,’ and Tora smiled as the young woman withdrew.
Tora settled Atiyah back into her bed and watched her for a while, marvelling at how placid she was in the wake of having had her world turned upside down, a world that at ten weeks she’d only just been getting to grips with. Tora ran one fingertip across her downy cheek. She was a little sweetheart, no two ways about it.
A sweetheart with a tortured brother. What had happened that he felt so incapable of loving Atiyah? What kind of childhood had he had? Boarding school, and from an early age by the sounds. But why, when his father had only recently died? Why would he have done that?