Two and a half years later
ZAFIR’S STRONG ARM hooked around her and dragged her from sitting on the edge of the mattress, where she was debating between two bathing suits, to half-under his powerful body.
“What are you doing?” she scolded in a whisper, as if she didn’t know. “It’s broad daylight.”
“Freckle inspection,” he whispered back, beginning to unbutton her shirt.
She giggled and combed her fingertips against the beard scuffing his cheek, thinking of the reason he’d given her when she’d asked once why he was so entranced with her spots.
They remind me that there’s no clean line between my English and my Arab halves. I’m an aggregate of both, sifted together into one man.
She’d melted, loving him all the more when he made her feel like she was the absolute most right woman for him.
As he trailed kisses between her breasts and she crooked her knee against his hip, already warming with delicious slithers of arousal, she blinked at the tent ceiling above and marveled at the life she had, wondering how she’d come to deserve it.
He lifted his head to give her a puzzled look. “Did you go somewhere? Because making babies takes two, you know.”
She smiled, always amazed at how attuned he was to her. “Just having a moment of awe that we ever met. Here of all places. We could have met in England, but no, my soul mate was in a protected reserve that only a few select people are allowed to visit.”
“I like to think I would have found you no matter where you were,” he said, opening her top to admire her bare breasts. “But I’m glad it was here. Do you know when I think it happened for me? When I was such an ass to you and you were only trying to help that girl. I felt like the lowest form of life. Sick with guilt. Couldn’t sleep.”
“So you came to my tent, you wicked sheikh.” And the girl was fine. She’d just been here with the tribe for five days and they’d all left a few hours ago. Fern’s challenge now was figuring out how to encourage girls her age to pursue their education rather than marrying before they were out of their teens. And carefully, because the Bedouins had been instrumental in her acceptance by the rest of Q’Amara. She didn’t want to offend them.
Speaking of offended, Zafir was giving her a pointed look. She would have to think about work another time.
“You would have gone away that night, but I didn’t have it in me to let you,” she recalled, sidling her hand up the sleeve of his thobe so she could shape his bare shoulder.
He shifted to settle over her more purposefully. “I like to think I would have left, but I’m glad you didn’t test me.” He obeyed the urging in her touch to lower his head and kiss her properly.
She had to stifle a moan, it was so good.
“There she is,” he said with heated approval, as he cupped her breast and thumbed her nipple, inciting delicious tension in her belly.
They were in perfect synchronicity now. She hooked her calf across his lower back and lifted into him—
The boys’ voices approached. “Mother, are you in there?” Tariq called.
Zafir drew back with a beleaguered sigh, expression ruefully disgruntled. “Excellent timing, as always.”
She snickered and sat up to quickly button her shirt, cheeks hot as she called, “Yes, we’re here, Tariq. What do you need?”
“Ahmed wants you.” A shadow loomed against the front of the tent and separated as their two-year-old son slid off their twelve-year-old’s back. Little hands made indents on the nylon as Ahmed’s stern little voice said, “Mama. Come.”
“I’m coming,” she assured him, wrinkling her nose at her husband as she pushed off their low bed to open the front of the tent.
“Baba!” Ahmad said as he spied Zafir, running right past Fern to scramble onto the bed and tackle his father. He looked just like Tariq except for having Zafir’s green eyes and what everyone agreed was Fern’s pert mouth.
“Oh, yes, I can see it was me he was anxious to see,” she said, sharing a grin with Tariq. He was approaching the age where his shoulders were filling out and a light shadow stood on his upper lip, making her so proud of the man he was growing into, yet so wistful at how quickly he was growing up.
“He and Sadiq were fighting over the orange shovel again,” Tariq said with a long-suffering shake of his head. “He was angry when I tried to give him the red one. Started looking for you and wasn’t happy when he realized you weren’t still there.”
The toddler cousins gravitated to each other like puppies in a pack, but scrapped for the sake of it, Fern sometimes thought. “Do you want to leave him here?” she asked.
“No, I’ll wait until he’s ready to come play again.” He moved to hitch his hip onto the foot of the mattress, laughing when Ahmed rose from vanquishing Zafir to growl and attack him. Tariq caught his little brother and pretended to be overcome, falling onto his back on the mattress beside Zafir.
A wrestling match ensued, one Fern stayed out of as the two boys took on their father, making Zafir laugh so hard he weakened long enough for them to nearly overpower him.
“You could help,” Zafir scolded her in the middle of it, but she only shook her head, chuckling at his situation.
“I’m Switzerland. I don’t take sides,” she claimed, and it was true. She loved them all equally, each for the wonderful person he was.
When they tired and settled, Tariq held out his arms to his little brother. “Should we go find Sadiq?”
Ahmed nodded and Tariq sat up, offering his back. Ahmed clambered onto him, pudgy arms closing around Tariq’s neck. He bounced, and urged, “Go Sadiq. Go!”
“I’m glad you’re having fun with him, but you don’t have to spend all your time minding him,” Fern said, giving in to her mother’s need to smooth Tariq’s hair as he came even with her. “It’s your vacation, too. I know your uncle wants to take you into the desert with the falcons.”
“I know. But he told me that if you and Baba have time alone, you might think about giving me another little brother. Or maybe a sister.”
Oh, good heavens. Fire climbed Fern’s cheeks as she realized what Tariq—what Ra’id—was implying. She looked to Zafir.
He was lounging on an elbow and drawled, “Your uncle said that?”
“He asked me if I wanted more siblings. I said I would so he said I should give you time to think about it and talk about it. If Baba doesn’t mind, I’d especially like it if you gave me sister,” he said to Fern. “We both would, wouldn’t we, Ahmed?”
“Sadiq!” the toddler insisted.
“That’s not how it works, Tariq!” Fern blurted.
“I know how it works,” he said with a rascal’s grin, hitching his brother higher on his back before walking out. “I’m just saying.”
Fern clapped her hands over her cheeks as he left, staring into Zafir’s laughing eyes. “We’re not fooling anyone, are we?” she asked in an askance whisper.
“Apparently not.” He hooked his arm behind his head and beckoned to her like the man he was: a sheikh wanting to lie with his Number One Wife, patting the mattress where he wanted her. “So zip the tent and unbutton your shirt. Let’s finish making another oasis baby.”
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