A Wife For The Surgeon Sheikh. Meredith Webber

away from this man. Somewhere quiet where she could think quietly and halt the panic.

      But in two strides he had overtaken her so he now stood directly in front of her—less than a foot away—towering over her with some kind of inner presence that made her feel more queasy than afraid.

      Strange, unsettled butterflies rioted in her stomach, zapping their disquiet along her nerves. Up close, the man’s face was beautiful—not in a pretty-boy way but with hard carved features: a thin straight nose separating those deep-set eyes; high ridges of cheekbones; and lips full enough for his mouth to scream sensual but not too full—not fleshy, just there, unsmiling...

      ‘The child’s name is Nimr!’

      The words were like a slap.

      So much for her thinking she’d scored a point on him earlier.

      ‘We call him Nim,’ she retorted. ‘Easier than trying to roll that unfamiliar “r” at the end. But, yes, it’s spelled Nimr on official documents.’

      ‘And yet you asked what boy?’

      Sarcasm iced the words and Lauren felt them cut into her skin—saying Nim’s name had brought back the fear. Just because this man said he’d give his life for Nim, what proof was that?

      For all Lauren knew, he could have been behind his brother’s death.

      As soon as she thought it, she knew she shouldn’t have gone there—memories threatened to swamp her again and right now she needed to be strong.

      As for his assumption that Nim would want to be King of the godforsaken country this man was talking about—well, that was for the future, and for Nim himself to decide!

      ‘Nim was left in my care and that’s where he stays,’ Lauren said, not adding Lily’s almost hysterical warning of deadly danger. Of people—Tariq’s family members even—trying to track her down to kill her and her son. And Lauren, for her sins, had dismissed it all, sure Lily had been exaggerating—blaming her state on a hormone-fuelled fantasy.

      That was until the accident, and then when Nim had been taken...

      Don’t go there, she told her frantic thoughts.

      ‘And now I need to leave,’ she said, taking a side step, hoping to get behind him to the door—

      Which proved hopeless.

      She tried a glare, one that usually sent overexcited adolescents straight back to their beds, but felt it bounce off him.

      ‘Perhaps we should begin again, discuss this in more congenial surroundings. As Mr Marshall said, I had some business with the hospital, and thought you might feel more at ease meeting me here with other people’s knowledge of the meeting. But there are other places...’

      He touched her, oh, so lightly on the shoulder as he spoke, and fire spread through her body, confirming the danger she’d felt in this man from the beginning.

      Was this how Lily had felt when she’d first met Tariq?

      ‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ she told him, forcing her voice to stay firm. ‘Nim is my child, properly adopted. He stays here!’

      ‘With security lights all around your house, and alarms hard-wired back to the police station, and a guard to follow him wherever he goes?’

      Panic swelled in Lauren.

      He did know where she lived! And how they lived! The only thing he didn’t know was her constant fear...

      But there was no way this man was going to get her child!

      ‘He’s not a guard, he’s a nanny,’ she snapped. ‘Most working mothers have them!’

      ‘Six-two male? SAS-trained? Do most Australian working mothers have such a nanny?’

      She stepped back, aware of giving ground, but she couldn’t yell at him successfully when she was so close. Something about the man flustered her and she was pretty sure it wasn’t fear...

      She took another deep breath.

      ‘I lost my entire family in that accident—everyone but Nim—and no one can tell me how or why it happened, or, worse, who the target was. I don’t know whether it was my sister and our parents, or your brother.’

      ‘There was a doubt about the intended victim?’ he demanded, his voice sharp with tension as he broke into her explanation.

      Closing her eyes briefly to regain a little composure, Lauren explained.

      ‘My father had many business interests in the west, from mining to pastoral holdings and beyond. The police thought...’

      She couldn’t go on, remembering the horror of those days when grief had been overwhelming her and policemen had been constantly asking questions—

      ‘Tell me.’

      His voice was gentle now, not a plea exactly but with enough emotion in it that she understood he needed to know.

      ‘It was only when Nim was snatched they turned their attention to your brother.’

      ‘Someone took the child?’

      His eyes blazed with anger now, but the memories were pressing down on her and she had to get the story told before she broke down from the remembered terror.

      ‘A police family liaison officer was staying with me. The detectives were there one morning with so many questions, their voices unsettled Nim. He was only tiny. So I took him out for a walk in his pram, and someone hit me on the head and ran off with him.’

      She tried to quell the memories of her pain and fear. She had thought that not only had she lost her parents and Lily but the baby as well—the baby she’d promised Lily she’d protect.

      Had he read it in her eyes that he steered her back into a chair.

      ‘Sit, take deep breaths! They found the child?’

      He asked the question in the same calm voice he’d used to make her sit.

      She nodded.

      ‘At the airport, dressed all in pink, travelling on a passport as Lucy someone, two parents travelling with her. It was luck, nothing more, that they found Nim—another twenty minutes and they’d have boarded, the plane doors would have shut.’

      ‘And the couple?

      Lauren looked up at the man hovering impatiently in front of her.

      ‘They admitted to being paid to kidnap the child and take him to the United States, where he could be sold to adoptive parents in some quasi-criminal deal. But they denied all knowledge of the accident. Further police investigations couldn’t prove they’d been involved.’

      She read confusion in his eyes and understood it, for those few months of her life still seemed unreal to her.

      But this man needed answers, so she picked up where she’d left off earlier.

      ‘So, yes, I have security to protect my child, but none of it intrudes on his having a normal childhood. That is one thing I work very hard to ensure.’

      Lauren paused, needing to catch her breath, needing to see his face—his expression—as she finalised this business.

      ‘So, really, there’s nothing else to discuss. I’m guessing you spent a considerable amount of money to track me down, but Nim is mine now—a little Australian boy with a future here, not in his father’s country. So I’ll be getting home to my son.’

      ‘Son? You have adopted him?’

      She’d been expecting more objections to her leaving, not this shocked disbelief.

      ‘Lily left him with me that night, telling me to take great care of him—telling me again of threats. To do that when she was...’ Lauren made a huge effort to pull herself together ‘...gone,