The Santina Crown Collection. Кейт Хьюит

this what every woman who’d ever given birth had experienced?

      ‘I can’t bear it!’ she cried.

      ‘Yes, you can. You can, Ella. You can do anything you want to do because you’re strong. The strongest woman I ever met.’

      At any other time such words would have moved her but now they were nudged onto the periphery of her mind as another great contraction racked through her. Ella bit hard down on her lip as something in her body changed and she looked up into Hassan’s black eyes, saw the question written in them and realised that something very powerful was happening. ‘I think the baby’s coming right now,’ she gritted out. ‘Oh, Hassan! Hassan, please help me!’

      He moved just in time to see the slick crown of a head appear. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he said unsteadily. ‘You’re amazing. You’re nearly there.’

      Dimly she remembered what she’d been taught: not to push until the need to push was unbearable. Guided by that and governed by an instinct as old as time itself, she held on to that thought. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, her face contorted with effort. ‘Yes.’

      He heard the keening sound she made and his heart began to race. Every sense intensified, he moved as if he was on some sort of autopilot. ‘That’s perfect,’ he said roughly. Suddenly, he was aware that he was looking down at the baby’s matted black hair and a great lump rose in his throat. ‘Just one more push, Ella. Do you think you can do that?’

       ‘Yes! No! I don’t know!’

      ‘Yes, you can. Ella, you can.’

      The moan she made sounded as if it had been torn from some unimaginably deep place inside her and Hassan stretched out his palms to form a miniature cradle just as his baby was born into them.

      His baby.

      He felt the slippery unfamiliarity of new life in his hands and his heart clenched with terror as nothing else happened. The whole world seemed suspended in that moment of absolute silence before a lusty cry split the air.

      His eyes blurred with tears and he looked down to see the wriggling form of a tiny yet perfect human being in his hands, which he quickly wrapped in the soft blanket before laying the child gently on Ella’s stomach.

      Her voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘Is … is everything okay?’

      ‘She’s perfect, my darling. Perfect. Just like you.’

      Ella’s hand was trembling as she reached out to touch her baby, amazement and relief compounded by the realisation that Hassan was crying. And that he had been there for her.

      He had been there for her when she most needed him. On every level he had delivered. He could be the man she wanted him to be: emotional and strong and equal.

      She gave a ragged breath as she heard helicopter propellers descending from out of the desert sky, and even while she was glad that help was arriving, she wanted to hold on to that private moment for ever. Just the three of them in their own little world. With none of the fears that once they stepped outside that tent, Hassan would go back to being the cool and distant man of the past.

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      HASSAN shut the door of the studio behind him and began to walk down the wide marble corridor towards the nursery suite. His heart was heavy but he knew he could not put off this moment any longer. It was time to accept and face up to the truth.

      He’d been waiting for the right moment. For Ella to properly recover from the birth. For the doctors to give both mother and daughter the thumbs-up. And for this terrible sense of remorse to leave him.

      Yet it wouldn’t leave him. It clung to him like glue. Deep down he knew there was only one thing which would make him feel better—ironically, the very thing which would bring his world crashing down about him.

      He found Ella standing by the window in the main salon, looking out onto one of the smaller fountains where a plume of water formed a graceful curve. Barefooted beneath her cream silk robe, her hair was hanging loose down her back and she turned round when she heard him enter. Her blue eyes were as bright as usual but he saw darkness in their depths, as if she, too, had recognised that the moment of truth was here.

      ‘Your father has been on the phone,’ he said heavily.

      ‘Oh? What did he say?’

      He saw the faint lines crisscrossing her pale brow and realised that she must have lived much of her life like this. On a kind of knife edge, never knowing what her father was going to do or say next. His mouth hardened. And hadn’t it been exactly the same when she’d met him? Hadn’t he brought that same element of uncertainty into her life? He wondered why he had never seen that before, but the answer came to him almost immediately. He’d never seen it because he’d never allowed himself to see it.

      ‘He wants to know whether we are planning to go to Alex and Allegra’s wedding.’

      She looked at him. ‘And what did you tell him?’

      ‘I said that we hadn’t decided. Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it, Ella? We haven’t decided so many things, and I don’t think attending your sister’s wedding is top of the list of things we need to resolve.’

      Ella nodded, but his words made her heart plummet. She knew they couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable, yet she was afraid to face up to it. Afraid of what lay ahead—of a cold and empty future without her husband by her side.

      Hadn’t she hoped that they could just forget the past and move on? Capitalise on the love—yes, love—which had pulsed through the air between them after their baby had been born. That moment of pure and unfettered joy when their eyes had met and they had silently acknowledged the new life they had created.

      She looked at Hassan now, wondering whether they should postpone any decisions for a few days longer. He still looked slightly shell-shocked, even though it had been a week since they had returned from the desert. The longest seven days of her life, and easily the most eventful.

      They’d been dazed and disorientated as they had entered the celebrating city of Samaltyn, cradling their newborn daughter with pride. They’d called her Rihana because they both liked the name, and when Ella had discovered it meant ‘sweet herb,’ that had clinched it. Because hadn’t Hassan been making sweet, herbal tea when she’d gone into labour? For a while she’d been on such a high of hormones and emotion that it was all too easy to pretend they were like any normal couple who’d just had a baby.

      But now the intensely intimate memories of the birth had started to fade, leaving a couple who had resolved nothing. Who had begun to eye each other warily, as if each waiting for the other to make a move. She found herself wishing that she was back in that simple Bedouin tent again, where she had felt so incredibly close to Hassan. But she couldn’t keep getting herself into medical emergencies just to get him to show some feelings, could she?

      ‘You said you wanted to go home,’ Hassan said roughly, his words breaking into her thoughts and sounding almost like an accusation. ‘Have you thought any more about that?’

      Ella winced as his stark words brought reality crashing in. During the ecstatic days following Rihana’s birth, it had been all too easy to forget about her insecurities, but Hassan’s question brought it into such sharp focus that she could no longer ignore it. Her insecurity was all bound up in her marriage, she realised, in her relationship with him. And nothing had changed.

      Yes, during those heightened and unbelievable moments in the desert, she’d felt as close to him as she’d imagined it was possible for a man and woman to feel. When the helicopter had landed and the obstetricians had rushed in and taken over, before leaving the two—no, three—of them alone again for a few minutes, it had seemed a very precious time indeed.

      Their eyes had met over the dark head of the baby who had latched so eagerly onto her breast and she thought she’d read something other than dazed pride in Hassan’s