Chapter Seven
Adil was prepared to take his time, even if his body cursed him for being seven types of a fool for letting the woman seated on the couch next to him get away.
He had to admit, he had been surprised. When he had met Annabel in the streets of New York, and even when she had rescued him from his would-be assailants, he had been impressed by her passion and her strong sense of right and wrong. He had liked her temper, and he had enjoyed her sharp tongue.
He had been attracted to her in a roundabout sort of way, but he was sure that he had been with more attractive women, women that the world would call beautiful.
However, there was no doubt in his mind that the woman that had writhed so attractively on his lap, whose face had flushed with pleasure and whose lips had turned ruby with passion was beautiful. There was something about her that could turn heads anywhere she went, and now that he had had an opportunity to feel her body through their clothes, he was eager to see more.
However, his ancestors had not conquered the desert by moving too quickly or too hastily. Adil decided that he was ready to be at least a little patient as well, and he allowed her to retreat a little farther away. It only meant that her eventual fall into his arms would be the sweeter, and he knew that that was the truth.
At first, they kept each other to simple questions. Favorite foods, favorite colors and favorite movies were simple enough, and he could see her relaxing into it. He could see her calming like a mare that had been spooked. She was agitated at first, flinching a little from questions that might have been threats, but then as he was unfailingly gentle and quiet, she calmed.
They went on like that for almost an hour, and to his delight, it was her that led the way into deeper waters.
"I feel like I've been asking this question of myself for a week, so I figure that it is only right that I give you a chance to answer..."
"Very egalitarian of you," he commented, and she smiled at him briefly. Adil wondered if he had ever met a smile that was warmer than hers.
"Yes, thank you. But... honestly, why me? You've told me that you want a good and strong mother for a child, and I suppose that I can understand that... but what about the first day on the corner? Why me then? I know it was an accident, but... you stopped, and then..."
He watched in fascination as a blush deepened across her cheeks, because they both remembered what had happened after that.
"Well, it was an accident that I bumped into you. I may be a bit of a cad, but I'm really not the type to plan something like that... as to the rest, well, I suppose it has to be because of your eyes."
"My eyes?" she asked and he was intrigued all over again.
Other women would have said it in a flirtatious way, smoky or simpering, inviting him to tell them more about their eyes, how beautiful they were or how alluring. With Annabel, however, the look on her face was pure confusion verging on disbelief.
He chuckled and raised an eyebrow at her.
"Do you not believe me?"
"Well, put it this way. I've had these eyes for more than thirty years, and no one has ever said that they were so lovely that they couldn't be missed..."
"But they are," he said, and there was a warmth to his voice that he could tell she responded to. "They are an almost silvery blue, a blue that I have not seen very often in all my life, and I have traveled over the world. When you are angry, which I have seen rather more often than I would like, they are closer to gray, and when you laugh, they are almost the color of the sky. When you are full of pleasure, well, perhaps that is my very favorite. That is when they are like the sky before a storm."
She looked almost hypnotized by the time he had finished, and she had to shake her head slightly. At some point, she had come to sit a little closer to him, but now she moved away again. He was not perturbed at all. It looked like winning over the beautiful Annabel would be a long game, and right now, he relished that.
"I think that you are being overly kind and overly romantic," she said, but there was a slight hint of wistfulness there that tugged at his heart. How had she lived all her life and not heard such things before? It seemed especially unfair because all of his words, no matter how flowery they were, were absolutely true. Surely someone had noticed her beauty before. Surely someone had seen to the pure depth of passion that was hidden inside her.
They continued their game, and as he was pulled farther and farther into it with her, Adil was startled when he looked up and realized that he had stopped looking at it as a game at all...
***
Annabel had known that she could listen to Adil talk for hours, but she was startled to realize that he could listen to her talk for hours as well. When she paused for breath, she realized that her throat had gone dry.
"I'm talking about myself too much," she said apologetically. "I'm sorry."
Adil made an exasperated if fond expression.
"You know that you keep apologizing for that," he said. "I am prepared to ask for a forfeit of an extra question every time that you do."
"I... am not sure what kind of punishment that is," Annabel said in surprise, and he grinned at her.
"I suppose it is my way of cheating," he said carelessly. "I find that I simply want you to keep talking.""
She couldn't help but giggle a little at that. At some point in the long flight, they had become hungry and pulled from the full refrigerator a tray of meat, cheese and fruit. The remnants of their meal lay between them. She wasn't really hungry, but she plucked a grape from from the stem to roll between her fingers.
"All right then," she said. She was aware that her voice sounded light and shy, but that had ceased to bother her. "Well, what do you want to hear."
"Tell me... tell me how you gained your most treasured thing."
She shot him a wry glance.
"You must know by now that my most treasured thing is my daughter. Is this your way of asking me about my ex?"
"You should take the question however it is you like," he responded diplomatically, but there was a gleam in his eye that told her he had guessed right.
"Though I suppose that if you wish to do so, you could simply pay a forfeit..."
"A forfeit. on my forfeit.? You, my lord, should have been a lawyer. So what would that forfeit. be?"
His eyes roved her body in a way that was frankly possessive. She wondered if she should have been insulted or threatened, but there was a part of her that responded to his gaze. He was a man that would protect what was his, and she suspected that, at his point, she firmly belonged to him, no matter the terms of their contract.
"I think I would take that dress," he said finally. "Not to keep. I mean, it wouldn't fit me at all. But I might take it and keep it until Marissa woke up. It might be fun to keep you in your lingerie answering my questions, after all...I would be generous though. I know there is a blanket tucked under the couch. Perhaps I would let you wear that, if you would ask very, very politely."
Annabel had to swallow hard because something about his words had made her mouth go very dry. She knew that the moment she nodded, he would do it. He would keep her next to nude, and that would not be a terrible thing as comfortable as the jet was, but she would be bare, and he would still be asking those questions, watching her shiver and swallow and fidget...
"All right, you get your extra story," she said, trying to laugh it off. "My most treasured possession."
She took a deep breath, because while the story wasn't a particularly difficult one, it did not show her in the best light. There were times when she wanted to go back and to shake the girl that she had been, but then she wouldn't have had Marissa, and that would be unthinkable.
"All right, first you have to know that I was a different person in my twenties. I was shy right out of high school, I didn't finish college because the money ran out, and I had been bounced back and forth between no less than nine jobs that could have been done by monkeys. Most of them automated, leaving me without any kind of position at all, so I was living in Queens with a pair of roommates that I didn't particularly like, and my life was going no where.
"So that's the scene, and then just when things are beginning to look really dire, I meet Iain. He's British, which I liked, and he started working at the cafe across the street. The cafe was just what he did to pay rent, though. In reality, he was a sculptor and an actor, and according to him, he was always on the verge of getting discovered."
She shook her head, grimacing a little as Adil shot her a dubious look.
"I know, I know, in retrospect it sounds ridiculous and the red flags are so bright you can't see anything else. He talked a good game, and he was always going on about how mankind was doomed, and how he was doomed even with all this talent, and I... found myself falling for him, sort of. I guess I thought I was, because I had never felt anything for anyone else, and he was charming and funny and confident. He seemed like just the thing that a woman should want."
She made a face to let him know how foolish she had been, but he did not look scornful at all. Instead there was something almost dreading in Adil's eyes, as if he knew how this story went, and he did not like it.
"I was still pretty nervous though. I mean, I had never been with anyone before, not really. Too busy, too poor, too one thing or the other, and it took him almost six months to talk me into bed."
She thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged.
"It wasn't terrible, even if it was my first time. It was... dull. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. After a while, it got to be pleasant enough, and I guess I liked being held afterward? However I never really got into it, and by then I'd figured out that he wasn't any great prize, either."
She thought for a moment, going over her own words, and found them true. This was not a story she had told for a long time, and Annabel had wondered if time would shed new light. It hadn't, however, and all the parts were just where she had left them.
"I was just on the verge of breaking up with him, or maybe letting him break up with me when I missed a period. We had only skipped the condom once, and it was meant to be a safe time, so I guess I'm just a little more fertile than might be supposed? Good for your purposes, then."
She laughed a little, and she could still remember being that woman so fraught and frustrated, standing in the bathroom with a pregnancy test in her hand. In that moment, all of the doubt had fallen away.
"It was as if the sun had come out on a cloudy day," she said softly. "It was as if I had walked through a snowy field and stepped into spring. I knew that I was going to be a mother and that that was the only thing that mattered, the only thing at all."
"You knew what you wanted to do?"
"Immediately!" Annabel said with a laugh. "The first and most important thing that I needed to do was to protect the little child growing inside me. I needed to make sure that he or she was safe. After that, I wasn't too worried.
"I went to Iain, who went dead white and started saying that it couldn't be his, that I had to be a cheater and on and on until I managed to get across to him that I didn't want anything from him, not even money. He didn't even stop long enough to put in his resignation at the cafe, he was just gone two weeks later."
Adil could feel a growl deep in his chest, but he stuffed it down. He could deal with it later. It was a wound that had been dealt to Annabel, and she didn't look as if it bothered her any longer.
"And so I started to prepare. I found the apartment that you saw, I found a good OBGYN, I created a network of people who were willing to help... and after about twenty hours of labor that looking back really wasn't so awful, I had the most precious thing in the world to me. I had Marissa, and even if Iain was a jerk and even if I was a bit of an idiot, I wouldn't go back and change a single thing."
Her story ended, and impulsive, Adil reached over to gather her into his arms. She submitted to his embrace, sinking into it, but while there was still that deep warm there, this embrace wasn't about passion.
"What's the matter?" she asked, peeking up at him, and Adil made himself laugh a little.
"It made me a little sad," he admitted. "I am now even gladder that I made the choice I did for the mother of my child, but the idea of you being with a man who could not appreciate you.. that sounds terrible."
"It was worse than being alone, I'll tell you that," she said, "but now is it my turn yet?"
"Yes, it is your turn," Adil laughed, and somewhere inside him, a truth about Annabel clicked home. She would never tell him a story to make him pity her or to anger him or to manipulate him. She would tell him a story because she thought it was funny or because it was the truth or because it was something she thought he needed to know. It was an engaging thought, and he resolved to think about it later on as she sat up. She did not move back to her side of the couch, however. She sat comfortably in the circle of his arms and looked at him with consideration.
"Do you believe in love?"
The question startled him, and he looked at her in surprise.
"Why, what do you mean?""
She shrugged, perhaps a little shy but unwilling to withdraw her question.
"It's something that I've wondered before, after some of the things you've said. You talk about never marrying and only having an heir, and you've talked about all the things you used to do. So I want to know, do you believe in love?"
"That is a very good question," he said thoughtfully. Her eyes looked unexpectedly bright, and he wondered what kind of stake she had in the question. He would have thought that a woman who had had a past like hers would not set such store by it, but he had been wrong before.
"I do, but not in the way that you are thinking of," he said at last. "I believe that my parents found a working relationship that they could be proud of. I believe that they both loved me very much, and that my mother and her aunts loved each other as sisters should. I believe that there are many people that believe that they love each other."
He paused long enough that Annabel wondered if that was the end of his answer, but then he shook his head.
"I believe that there are many kinds of love, perhaps, but that the love between a man and a woman... well, there is attraction there, certainly. There is lust, and there is a need for a bond that will help them support a household. Those things can be profound and deep, but they are not love."
He looked at her then, and there was something she had never seen in his eyes before. It was hard, and she wondered if it was so vicious because it had been wounded once upon a time.
"No, I do not believe in the kind of love that you are thinking of. I think that there is lust most often, and after that some kind of exchange of needs at best. I do not believe in it."
He shrugged as if the matter was somehow distasteful to him, and he stood away from her. His sudden departure left her cold, and she curled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her as she watched him move towards the refrigerator. He had discarded his jacket at some point and his tie as well. Now in his wrinkled shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he looked more handsome than ever, but she felt that he had put a distance between them that wasn't there before.
"Do you want anything to eat?" he said. "Perhaps some wine?"
"If I am trying to deliver a healthy baby, I should not," she said with a shrug. "No big loss to me, I have never cared for the stuff."
"Ah, then more for me."
She felt a strange chill go down her spine as he poured himself a glass of deep red wine.
Remember this, something small and cold inside her said. Remember this. There are many faces to this man, and this is one he is not aware he is showing you.