“No, the dedicated doctor that she is, Farrah kept her silence and faces my wrath.”
Her heart sank to her toes. “I told her this had nothing to do with you, Zafir. Don’t punish her because you’re angry with me.”
“Worry about your own fate.”
Beating down the fear that swamped her, she tried to be rational. “I don’t understand your reaction, Zafir.”
“No? Then let me explain it to you. You found out that you were pregnant with my child, and decided to flee Behraat without a word.” He ran a shaky hand over his face, the starkness of the gesture contrasting sharply with the fury in his words. “And to think I was honoring your wish, that I was being respectful... How dare you hide something so important from me?”
Something so important. Was it?
Suddenly she had springboarded into a category that merited his precious time and attention? That more than anything pierced her, robbing her of her innate decency, turned her bloodthirsty. “Are you so sure that it is yours then, Zafir?”
An icy mask fell over his face, and he loosened his grip on her and thrust her back from him with infinite care. He studied her with a detached coldness that turned the blood in her veins into ice. “No, I don’t know that, do I?”
Plucking the phone from the wall, he barked a command to be connected to Farrah. Ordered a DNA test and slammed the handset into the wall without waiting for a response. It dangled by the cord, back and forth, the rubbery sound of it reverberating in the silence.
Lauren gripped her forehead, all fight deflating out of her. She had pushed him until the veneer of his civility was ripped at her feet. She had no one to blame except herself.
And she wondered, with an instinct she didn’t understand if she had hurt him with her callous words.
Her throat was like sandpaper when she spoke. “It is yours, Zafir.”
His back to her, he remained dangerously silent.
Despite all the disappointments she’d faced, she had never been a spiteful person. She hadn’t intended her departure as a malicious move. She simply refused to let her child endure the same uncertainty, the same gut-wrenching pain of learning that he or she didn’t feature highly in its parents’ life.
“It’s not possible to perform a DNA test so soon in the pregnancy,” she whispered. “I will get one done as soon as it is safe and send you the results.”
When he turned and looked down at her, she realized she was pathetic, imagining things that weren’t possible, still so weak where he was concerned.
Because there was no hurt in his gaze. A smile, if the cruel curve of his mouth could be called that, bared his teeth, the triumphant light in his stance letting butterflies loose into her stomach.
Cold calculation glinted in his gaze, as though he was devising ways to punish her and having fun while doing it. “You’re not going anywhere, not until you give birth to my child. After that, you can disappear into the sands of the desert for all I care.”
* * *
Zafir watched as Lauren paled, held his gaze defiantly, realized he was serious and then fell back into her seat with a soft thud.
Instinct and something else, something shameful and useless and weakening like honor maybe, something the great Rashid Al Masood had taught him when he had been a boy, kicked in, and he found himself shooting out of his seat to help her.
No.
He shoved away the chivalry, crushed the very code of honor he had embraced early in his life after hearing whispered taunts about his parentage.
He’d always been discreet about how he’d indulged his lust, had cautiously distanced himself from Tariq and his wild, orgiastic parties.
All because he had been determined to not be the cause of some woman’s distress.
The only time he had weakened, the only time he had forgotten that he could never let any personal attachment distract him was with Lauren. And her betrayal plunged the dagger the deepest because he had thought her above it.
If she had left, if she had disappeared...he would be unaware of the existence of his child. Just as he hadn’t known of his parentage until just a few years back.
She tucked herself into the leather seat, retreating as far back as possible, as though she didn’t trust him. The irony of it would have amused him if he wasn’t seething with the need to punish her.
And he knew how to punish that independent, strong mind of hers, knew her weakness. An insidious thrill shot through him, cooling the edge of his anger.
“You’re bluffing,” she finally said, trying for defiance but failing.
He stretched his legs, settled into the seat opposite her and took his own sweet time answering.
Let her stew in fear, he thought with a bitterness that spread like an infection. Let her wonder what the powerful, arrogant sheikh would do with her now.