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He hurried out of the room.
Dr Jones … The name echoed in Khalifa’s head.
Something about the woman was bothering him, something that went beyond her apparent disregard for her pregnancy. Was it because she’d challenged him?
Not something Zara had ever done.
But Zara had been his wife, not his colleague, so it couldn’t be that …
Was it because Dr Jones running from something—the father of her baby?—that she’d leapt at his offer to come to Al Tinine? There had been no consultation with anyone, no consideration of family or friends, just how soon could she get away.
Yes, she was running from something, it had to be that, but did it matter? And why was he thinking about her when he had so much else he hoped to achieve in this short visit?
It had to be her pregnancy and the memories it had stirred.
The guilt …
He, too, left the room, making his way back to the neonatal ward, telling himself he wanted to inspect it more closely, telling himself it had nothing to do with Dr Jones.
She was bent over the crib she’d been called to earlier and as she straightened he could read the concern on her face. She left the unit, sliding open the door and almost knocking him over in her haste to get to the little alcove.
‘Sorry,’ she said automatically, then stopped as she realised whom she’d bumped into. ‘Oh, it’s you! I am sorry—I’m a klutz, always knocking things over or running into people. My family said it was because I live in my head, and I suppose that’s right at the moment. The baby in that crib was abandoned—found wrapped in newspaper in a park—and the police haven’t been able to trace the mother. We call her Alexandra, after the park.’
Liz heard her rush of words and wondered what it was about this man that turned her into a blithering idiot, admitting to her clumsiness, thrusting ancient family history at a total stranger.
‘The baby was found in a park?’
Despite the level of disbelief in the man’s voice, her toes curled again. This was ridiculous. It had to stop. Probably it was hormonal …
‘Last week,’ she told him, ‘and, really, there’s nothing much wrong with her—she was a little hypothermic, occasional apnoea, but now …’
‘Who will take her?’
Liz sighed.
‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ she admitted. ‘She’ll be taken into care. And while I know the people who care for babies and children are excellent, she won’t get a permanent placement because she obviously has a mother somewhere. And right now when she desperately needs to bond with someone, she’ll be going somewhere on a temporary basis.’
Why was she telling this stranger her worries? Liz wondered, frowning at the man as if he’d somehow drawn the words from her by …
Osmosis?
Magic?
She had no idea by what. Perhaps it was because he was here that she’d rattled on, because worrying about Alexandra was preferable to worrying about her own problems.
‘You think the mother might return to claim her? Is that why the placement is temporary?’
Liz shook her head.
‘I doubt she’ll return to claim her. If she’d wanted her, why leave her in the first place? But if the authorities find the mother, they will do what they can to help her should she decide to keep the baby. It’s a delicate situation but, whatever happens, until little Alexandra is officially given up for adoption, she’ll be in limbo.’
Like me, Liz thought, and almost patted her burgeoning belly.
The man was frowning at her.
‘You are concerned?’ he asked.
‘Of course I’m concerned,’ Liz told him. ‘This is a baby we’re talking about. She’s already had a rough start, so she deserves the very best.’
It didn’t add up, Khalifa decided. This woman’s attitude to a stranger’s child, and her apparent disregard for her own pregnancy, although perhaps he was reading her wrongly. Perhaps this was her work face, and at home she talked and sang to her unborn child as much as Zara had to hers.
She and her partner talked and sang—
‘Will the authorities also look for the baby’s father?’ he asked, and surprised a smile out of her.
‘Harder to do, especially without the mother, although Alexandra’s plight has been well publicised in local and interstate papers. The father may not have known the mother was pregnant. A man spends the night with a woman, and these days probably takes precautions, but there’s no sign that flashes up in the morning, reminding him to check back in a few weeks to see if she’s pregnant.’
There was no bitterness in the words and he doubted very much that her pregnancy had resulted from a chance encounter. Klutz she might be, but everything he’d read about her suggested she was very intelligent.
Though klutz?
‘What’s a klutz?’
Now she laughed, and something shifted in his chest.
Was it because the laughter changed her from a reasonably attractive woman to a beautiful one, lit from within by whatever delight the question had inspired?
Because the blue eyes he was drawn to behind the glasses were sparkling with humour?
He didn’t think so. No, it was more the laughter itself—so free and wholesome—so good to hear. Did people laugh out loud less these days or was it just around him they were serious?
‘It’s a word we use for a clumsy person. I’m forever dropping things—not babies, of course—or knocking stuff over, or running into people. Hence the really, really horrible glasses. Rimless ones, thin gold frames, fancy plastic—I kill them all. Bumping into a door, or dropping them, or sitting on them, I’ve broken glasses in ways not yet invented. I tried contact lenses for a while but kept losing them—usually just one, but always the same one. So I had five right eyes and no left, which would have been okay for a five-eyed monster, of course. Anyway, now I go for the heaviest, strongest, thickest frames available. I’m a typical klutz!’
She hesitated, as if waiting for his comment on klutz-dom, but he was still considering his reaction to her laughter and before he could murmur some polite assurance that she probably wasn’t that bad, she was speaking again.
‘Not that you need to worry about my work abilities, I’m always totally focussed when I’m on the job. In fact, that’s probably my problem outside it—in my head I’m still in the unit, worrying about one or other of our small charges.’
Yes, he could understand that, but what he couldn’t understand was how freely this woman chatted with a virtual stranger. Every instinct told him she wasn’t a chatterer, yet here she was, rattling on about her clumsiness and monsters and an abandoned baby.
Was she using words to hide something?
Talking to prevent him asking questions?
He had no idea, but he’d come to see the unit, not concern himself with this particular employee.
Which was why he was surprised to hear himself asking if there was somewhere other than this alcove off the passageway where they could sit down and talk.
‘Of course! We’ve got a canteen in the courtyard, really lovely, but I suppose you’ve seen it already. I’ll just let someone know where I’ll be.’
She stepped, carefully, around him and entered the unit, stopping to speak to one of the nurses then peering behind a screen and speaking to someone before joining him outside.
‘How much space do you have at this new hospital of yours?’ she asked, the little frown back between blue eyes that were now sombre.
He glanced back at the unit, measuring it in his mind.
‘I’ve set aside an area, maybe twice the size of what you have here,’ he told her, and was absurdly pleased when the frown disappeared.
‘That’s great,’ she declared, clearly delighted. ‘We can have decent, reclining armchairs for the visiting parents and a separate room where mothers can express milk or breastfeed instead of being stuck behind a tatty screen. Beginning breastfeeding is particularly hard for our mothers. The babies have been getting full tummies with absolutely no effort on their part because the milk comes down a tube. Then suddenly they’re expected to work for it, and it’s frustrating for both parties.’
She was leading him along a corridor, striding along and talking at the same time, her high-heeled strappy sandals making her nearly as tall as he was.
A pregnant woman in high-heeled strappy sandals?
A doctor at work in high-heeled strappy sandals?
Not that her legs didn’t look fantastic in them …
What was he thinking!
It was the pregnancy thing that had thrown him. Too close to home—too many memories surfacing. If only he’d been more involved with Zara and the pregnancy, if only he’d been home more often, if only …
‘Here,’ his guide declared, walking into the leafy courtyard hung with glorious flowering orchids. ‘This, as you can see, is a special place. Mr Giles, who left the bequest for the hospital, was a passionate orchid grower and these orchids are either survivors from his collection or have been bred from his plants.’
Khalifa looked around, then shook his head.
‘I did notice the courtyard on one of my tours of the hospital, but didn’t come into it. It’s like an oasis of peace and beauty in a place that is very busy and often, I imagine, very sombre. I should have thought of something similar. I have been considering practicality too much.’
His companion smiled at him.
‘Just don’t take space out of my unit to arrange a courtyard,’ she warned. ‘Now, would you like tea or coffee, or perhaps a cold drink?’
‘Let me get it, Dr Jones,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. ‘You’ll have …?’
‘I’m limiting myself to one coffee a day so I make it a good one. Coffee, black and strong and two sugars, and it’s Liz,’ she replied, confusing him once again.
‘Liz?’ he repeated.
‘Short for Elizabeth—Liz, not Dr Jones.’
He turned away to buy the coffees, his mind repeating the short name, while some primitive instinct sprang to life inside him, warning him of something …
But what?
‘Two coffees, please. Strong, black and two sugars in both of them.’
He gave his order, and paid the money, but his mind was trying to grasp at the fleeting sensation that had tapped him on the shoulder.
Because of their nomadic lifestyle in an often hostile country, an instinct for danger was bred into him and all his tribal people, but this woman couldn’t represent a danger, so that couldn’t be it.
But as he took the coffees from the barista, the sensation came again.
It couldn’t be because they drank their coffee the same way! Superstition might be alive and well in his homeland, but he’d never believed in any of the tales his people told of mischievous djinns interfering in people’s lives, or of a conflagration of events foretelling disaster. Well, not entirely! And a lot of people probably drank their coffee strong and black with two sugars.
Besides, he only drank it this way when he was away from home. At home, the coffee was already sweet and he’d drink three tiny cups of the thick brew in place of one of these …
CHAPTER TWO
COULD ten days really have flown so quickly?
Of course, deciding on what clothes she should take had consumed a lot of Liz’s spare time. Khalifa … could she really call him that? So far she’d avoided using his name directly, but if she was going to be working with him she’d have to use it some time.
Not that she didn’t use it in her head, sounding it out, but only in rare moments of weakness, for even saying it started the toe curling—and she had to stretch them as hard as she could to prevent it happening.
Anyway, Khalifa had given her a pile of wonderful information brochures about his country, explaining that the capital, Al Jabaya, was in the north, and that his eldest brother, while he had been the leader, had, over twenty years, built a modern city there. The southern part of Al Tinine, however, was known as the Endless Desert, and the area, although well populated, had been neglected. It was in the south, in the oasis town of Najme, that Khalifa had built his hospital.
For clothes Liz had settled on loose trousers and long shift-like shirts for work, and long loose dresses for casual occasions or lolling around at home, wherever home turned out to be. Wanting to respect the local customs, she’d made sure all the garments were modest, with sleeves and high necklines.
Now here she was, in a long, shapeless black dress—black so it wouldn’t show the things she was sure to spill on herself on a flight—waiting outside her apartment block just as the sun was coming up. Gillian, who would house—and cat-sit, waited beside her.
‘Your coach approaches, Cinderella,’ Gillian said, as a sleek black limousine turned into the street.
‘Wrong fairy-tale, Gill,’ Liz retorted. ‘Mine’s the one with Scheherazade telling the Sultan story after story so she didn’t get her head chopped off next morning.’
Had she sounded panicked that Gill looked at her with alarm?
‘You’re not worrying now about this trip, are you? Haven’t you left it a bit late? What’s happened? You’ve been so, well, not excited but alive again.’
The vehicle pulled up in front of them before Liz could explain that sheer adrenalin had carried her this far, but now she was about to depart, she wasn’t having second thoughts but third and fourth and fifth right down to a thousandth.
Better not to worry Gill with that!
‘I’m fine,’ she said, then felt her toes curl and, yes, he was there, stepping smoothly out of the rear of the monstrous car just as she tripped on the gutter and all but flung herself into his arms.
He was quick, she had to give him that—catching her elbow first then looping an arm around her waist to steady her.
She’d have been better off falling, she decided as her body went into some kind of riotous reaction that was very hard to put down to relief that she hadn’t fallen!
‘You must look where you are going,’ he said, but although the words came out as an order, his voice was gruff with what sounded like concern.
For her?
How could she know?
And did it really matter?
The driver, meanwhile, had picked up her small case and deposited it in the cavernous trunk so there was nothing else for Liz to do but give Gill a quick kiss goodbye and step into the vehicle.
In the back.
With Khalifa.
‘Wow, look at the space in here. I’ve never been in a limo!’ she said, while her head reminded her that it had been years since she’d talked like a very young teenager. Perhaps she was better saying nothing.
‘Would you like a drink? A cold soda of some kind?’
Khalifa had opened a small cabinet, revealing an array of beverages. The sight of them, and the bottles of wine and champagne—this at six-thirty in the morning—delighted Liz so much she relaxed and even found a laugh.
‘You’re talking to a klutz, remember. I can just imagine the damage a fizzy orange drink could do to this upholstery. Besides, I’ve just had my coffee fix so I should manage an hour’s drive to the airport without needing further refreshment.’
It was the laugh that surprised him every time, Khalifa realised. He hadn’t heard it often in the last ten days but every time it caught his attention and he had to stop himself from staring at his new employee, her face transformed to a radiant kind of beauty by her delight in something. Usually something absurd.
‘So tell me about Najme,’ she said, a smile still lingering on her lips and what sounded like genuine interest in her voice.
He seized the opportunity with both hands. Talking about Najme, his favourite place on earth, was easy.
And it would prevent him thinking about his companion and the way she affected him—especially the way she’d affected him when he’d caught her in his arms …
‘Najme means star. It has always been considered the star of the south because of the beauty of the oasis on which it is built. Date palms flourish there, and grass and ferns, while reeds thrive by the water’s edge. When oil was discovered, because Al Jabaya was a port from ancient times, used for trading vessels and the pearling fleet, it seemed right that the capital should be built there. So my brother and his advisors laid out plans and the city grew, but it virtually consumed all his time, and the south was not exactly neglected but left behind. Now it is up to me to bring this area into the twenty-first century, but I must do it with caution and sensitivity.’
He looked out the window as the sleek vehicle glided along a motorway, seeing houses, streets, shops and factories flash by. It was the sensitivity that worried him, bringing change without changing the values and heritage of his people.
It was because of the sensitivity he’d married Zara, a young woman of the south, hoping her presence by his side would make his changes more acceptable.
And then he’d let her down …
‘Is the hospital your first project there?’ his colleague asked. Pleased to be diverted, he explained how his brother had seen to the building of better housing, and schools right across the country, and had provided free medical care at clinics for the people in the south, but he had deemed the hospital in Al Jabaya to be sufficient for the country, even providing medical helicopters to fly people there.
‘But the people of Najme, all the people of the south, have always been wary of the northerners. The southern regions were home to tribes of nomads who guarded trade routes and traded with the travellers, providing fresh food and water, while Al Jabaya has always been settled. The Al Jabayans were sailors, pearl divers and also traders, but their trade has been by sea, so they have always been in contact with people of other lands. They are more … worldly, I suppose you would say.’
‘And you?’
The question was gentle, as if she sensed the emotion he felt when talking of his people.
‘My mother was from the south. My brother’s mother was from the north, so when she grew old, my father took a second wife—actually, I think she was the third but that’s not talked of often. Anyway, for political reasons he took a wife from a southern tribe, so my ties are to the south. My wife, too, was a southerner …’
He stopped, aware he’d spoken to no one about Zara since her death, and none of his friends had used her name—aware, no doubt, that it was a subject he wouldn’t discuss.
‘Your wife,’ Liz Jones prompted, even gentler now.
‘She died in childbirth. The baby was premature, and she, too, died.’
Liz heard the agony in his voice, and nothing on this earth could have prevented her resting her hand on his.
‘So of course you want the unit. It will be the very best we can achieve.’ She squeezed his fingers, just a comforting pressure. ‘I know it won’t bring back your wife or child, but I promise you it will be a fitting memorial to them and be something you’ll be proud of.’
Then, feeling utterly stupid, she removed her hand and tucked it in her lap lest it be tempted to touch him again.
This time the silence between them went beyond awkward and, aware she’d overstepped a boundary of some kind, Liz had no idea how to ease the tension. She leaned forward, intending to take a drink from the cabinet—but as she’d already pointed out, spilling fizzy orange soda all over the seat and undoubtedly splashing her new boss probably wasn’t the answer.
Instead, she pulled one of the information leaflets he’d given her from her capacious handbag and settled back into the corner to read it. If he wanted the silence broken, let him break it.
He didn’t, and, determined not to start blithering again, she refused to comment when the car sailed past the wide road that led to the international air terminal. Sailed past the road to the domestic one as well, then turned into another road that led to high wire fences and a gate guarded by a man in a security uniform.
To Liz’s surprise, the man at the gate saluted as the gates swung open, and the limo took them out across wide tarmac to stop beside a very large plane, its sleek lines emphasised by the streaks and swirls of black and gold paint on its side. It took her a moment to recognise the decoration as Arabic script and she could be silent no longer.
‘What does it say?’ she asked, totally enthralled by the flowing lines, the curves and squiggles.
‘Najme,’ her host replied, and before she could ask more, he was out of the limo and speaking to some kind of official who waited at the bottom of the steps.
The driver opened the door on Liz’s side and she slid out, not as elegantly as her companion had but, thankfully, without falling flat on her face.
‘This gentleman will stamp your passport and one of my pilots will check your luggage,’ Khalifa told her, all business now. ‘It is a precaution he has to take, I’m sure you understand.’
Totally out of her depth, Liz just nodded, grateful really that she had no decisions to make. She handed over her passport, then hovered near the bottom of the steps until a young man came down and invited her inside.
‘Khalifa will bring your passport and the pilot will put your luggage on board,’ he told her. ‘I am Saif, Khalifa’s assistant. On flights I act as steward. He prefers not to have strangers around.’
Liz smiled to herself, certain the young man had no idea just how much he’d told her about his master. But there was no time to dwell on these little details for she’d reached the top of the steps, and entered what seemed like another world.
There was nothing flashy about the interior of the plane, just opulent comfort, with wide, well-padded armchairs in off-white leather, colourful cushions stacked on them, and more, larger, flat cushions on the floor near the walls of the aircraft. A faint perfume hung in the air, something she couldn’t place—too delicate to be musk, more roses with a hint of citrus.
‘Sit here,’ Saif said, then he waited until she sank obediently into one of the armchairs before showing her where the seat belt was and how a small table swung out from beside the chair and a monitor screen opened up on it.
‘You will find a list of the movies and other programmes in the book in the pocket on the other side of the chair, and you can use your laptop once we’re in the air. Press this button if there’s anything you require and I will do my best to help you.’
Saif turned away, and Liz realised Khalifa had entered the plane. He came towards her, enquired politely about her comfort, handed back her passport then took the chair on the other side of the plane.
‘All this space to carry two people?’ she asked, unable to stop herself revealing her wonder in the experience.
‘It can be transformed into many configurations,’ Khalifa replied. ‘The flight time is fifteen hours, and I thought you might be more comfortable in a bed, so the back of the cabin is set up for your convenience.’
‘With a bed?’
It went beyond Scheherazade’s fantastic stories, and now Liz forgot about hiding her wonder.
‘I’ve read about executive jets, but never thought I’d experience anything like this. May I have a look?’
Was it the excitement in her voice that stirred the man? She had no idea, but at least he’d smiled, and as she felt a slight hitch in her breathing, she told herself it was better that he remained remote and unreachable—far better that he didn’t smile.
‘Wait until we’re in the air. The aircraft door is closed and I assume the pilot is preparing for take-off. Because we have to compete with both the international and the domestic flights for take-off slots, we can’t delay. But while we’re on the ground, Saif could get you a drink. Perhaps champagne to celebrate your first flight in an executive jet?’
‘I can celebrate with orange juice,’ Liz said, and although Khalifa was sure he saw her right hand move towards her stomach, she drew back before she touched it. The mystery of her pregnancy—or her attitude to it—deepened. He’d seen a lot of Liz Jones in the last ten days, and not by even the slightest sign had she acknowledged the baby she carried.