Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin by Trish Morey Read Free Book Online Page A

she couldn’t blame her family alone.
    It was pointless even thinking about it, no matter how much Rafiq’s return to Qusay had made her wonder how things might have been if she’d made a different decision all those years ago.
    Instead she tried to focus on the young woman’s story, andwhy she was here now, travelling across the desert with such a tiny infant. It was not ideal, the woman acknowledged, but necessary, as her husband’s mother was seriously ill in hospital in Shafar, and they had promised to take their new baby, named Maisha in her honour, to meet her. But her husband was impatient, and had been pushing their aging vehicle too hard. It was lucky they had made it as far as the oasis before the radiator had blown completely.
    The toddlers, no more than eighteen months old, had been content to wait at their mother’s side while she fed the baby, but now demanded more of their mother’s attention. They wanted to paddle in the shallows, and they wanted their mother to take them. Both of them.
    Their mother looked lost, though the babe at her breast had thankfully finished feeding and was now sleeping, and Sera could see the woman was trying to work out how to juggle them all.
    ‘Mama, plee-ease,’ the toddlers insisted, and their mother looked more conflicted than ever.
    ‘I could hold the baby,’ Sera suggested, ‘if it might help?’
    And the mother looked at her briefly, taking less than a second to decide whether to entrust this stranger with her tiny baby before making up her mind. She smiled, propping the baby up on her shoulder and patting its back. ‘Bless you,’ she said.
    The baby joined in with a loud burp that set the girls off with a fresh round of giggles. The girls’ laughter was infectious, and Sera found herself joining in the glee before the mother passed the baby over to her waiting arms. The infant squirmed as it settled into the crook of her arm, nestled into her lap, while the mother swooped her robe over one arm and kicked off her sandals, her own smile broadening. She held a twin’s hand securely in each of her own, and the trio ventured gingerly into the water, the girls shrieking with delight as they splashed in the shallows.
    In her arms the baby stirred and sighed a sigh, blowing milky bubbles before settling down into sleep, one little arm raised, the hand curled into a tiny fist. So tiny. So perfect. Sera touched the pad of one finger to its downy cheek. So soft.
    She smiled in spite of the sadness that shrouded her own heart—sadness for the missed opportunities, the children she’d never borne and maybe now never would, and ran her fingers over the baby’s already thick black hair, drinking in the child’s perfect features, the sooty lashes resting on her cheeks, the tiny nose, the delicate cupid’s bow mouth squeezed amidst the plump cheeks.
    So utterly defenceless. So innocent. And then her mind made sense of it all. Maybe it was better that she’d never had children. After all, she’d proved incapable of even taking care of her own tiny kittens.
    The children laughed and splashed and squealed in the shallows, and the baby slept on, safe in Sera’s arms.
    When one of the drivers laid out a blanket with refreshments for them, and the children whooped and fell on the picnic, their hunger now paramount, Sera told the mother to look after the girls first. Once again the mother smiled her thanks as she helped her hungry toddlers feast.
    Not long after, with the radiator cooled and refilled, their car was pronounced fit to go and the mother thanked Sera as she scooped her sleeping infant back into her arms. ‘But you haven’t had anything to eat yourself yet,’ she protested, as the remains of their quick repast were already being cleared away.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sera replied honestly, for the woman had given her a greater gift—the feel of a newborn in her arms and the sweet scent of baby breath.
    Although that gift had come with a cost, she realised,