Izzy registered that she had to come clean. ‘I found out that I was pregnant,’ she told her sister baldly.
‘How the hell—’ Maya exclaimed and then added with startling insight, ‘Bathroom guy? I knew I wasn’t getting the whole story.’
‘Bathroom guy,’ Izzy confirmed, grateful for once that her sibling was that quick on the uptake.
‘Right, so you’re pregnant,’ her twin murmured with laden stress on that condition. ‘And right now, I’m…er…working in Italy.’
‘You got a job abroad?’ Izzy gathered with admiration. ‘Congratulations. I expect, considering how fast your talents have been snapped up, that the position pays very well?’
There was an unexpected silence before Maya responded brightly, ‘The benefits are unbelievable. My stay in Italy promises to free Mum and Dad from all their financial problems!’
‘My goodness,’ Izzy muttered, undeniably impressed by her twin’s superior earning power. ‘But what a shame that the dream job has to be abroad!’
‘Well, can’t have everything,’ her twin sighed feelingly. ‘So, where are you?’
‘Zenara,’ Izzy admitted.
‘Where’s that?’ Maya questioned, delighting Izzy with her ignorance. ‘And you’re living there with this guy?’
‘Yes.’ Izzy grimaced, reluctant to tell fibs to her sister and hoping she wouldn’t ask too many more difficult questions. She would tell Maya the whole story when she got home again but if she spoke up now, her twin would be worried sick, and she didn’t need that stress when she had just embarked on a demanding highly paid job in a foreign country. But sooner than that she would definitely have to tell Maya about Rafiq’s true identity and share the news that they were married.
‘He wants us to stay together until the babies are born,’ she admitted.
‘Babies…like more than one baby?’ Maya exclaimed in excitement.
‘Twins,’ Izzy confirmed. ‘But it’s too soon to know the gender yet.’
‘Heavens, I’m going to be an auntie!’ Maya cried with satisfaction and the dialogue veered off awkward questions into territory that Izzy could more easily cope with.
‘All right, you’re being suspiciously silent here about the important stuff. Tell me all about bathroom guy.’
‘He’s…he’s gorgeous.’
‘You’re not that shallow,’ Maya told her.
Izzy reddened at her end of the phone. ‘He’s very responsible, decent, maybe a little old-fashioned.’
‘Nothing to complain about there when you fall accidentally pregnant,’ her twin commented bluntly. ‘Why shouldn’t he be responsible? They’re his kids too. At least he’s not trying to run away.’
‘Rafiq is not the running-away type.’
Having completed her call, Izzy walked into the ridiculously large and luxurious dressing room off the bedroom and opened doors and drawers, amazed to find them packed with brand-new garments and she leafed through them in awe. Rafiq had said she had no clothes because she had only brought along a couple of casual summery outfits in her carry-on case and he had made good on that deficit, so good indeed that she was staggered by his generosity. There were drawers full of fine lingerie, rails lined with dresses, both long and short, and all appeared to be maternity wear. It was good that he was aware of that issue with clothing, she told herself even while her instincts shrieked no, no, no, don’t want that aspect to be so important that it shadows everything else for him.
So, you go and say thank you like a well-brought-up woman, she reflected, reasoning with her less grateful self, crushing it down because she was being unreasonable. After all, he wouldn’t have needed to marry her or clothe her had she not been pregnant, therefore it was downright irrational to be annoyed that he was quite that aware of her condition. And it was not as though she could afford to buy a hot-climate wardrobe for herself or any maternity wear, she reminded herself. In any case her cropped jeans were already straining at her thickening waist and all her bras were too tight.
Knocking on the door politely, she walked into his empty bedroom.
‘Rafiq!’ she called lamely, knowing in frustration that there was no way she could track him down easily in the giant building and simply hoping against hope that he was still somewhere within hearing distance.
The bathroom door opened and he emerged, wrapped in a towel, and she grinned.
‘So, back where we started, with you half naked,’ she commented cheerfully, rejoicing in the vision of him standing before her, all lithe and bronzed and damp. ‘I like it.’
Rafiq was shocked by that earthy honesty and struggled to hide it. Odd as it seemed, it had never really occurred to him that a woman might like to look at a man naked as much as a man liked to look at a woman and, acknowledging that, he felt off-puttingly out of his depth even though he was incredibly flattered and aroused by the appreciation that glowed in her sapphire eyes. That unabashed glow in her gaze had an immediate effect on him and he gritted his even white teeth, striving to suppress his arousal.
‘I wanted to say thank you for the clothes…but there are so many,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m never going to get to wear all of them!’
‘You will be here for months,’ Rafiq pointed out levelly. ‘Through the hottest season.’
Izzy tried and failed to swallow as she studied him, her attention involuntarily glued to that tall, lean, powerful physique of his, the muscles indented in his torso that shifted with his every slight movement, the flatness of his stomach and the little dark silky furrow of hair there that snaked down out of sight below the towel. Her mouth ran dry. ‘Not as hot as you,’ she mumbled while thinking, I didn’t just say that, I didn’t.
‘You find me…hot?’ Rafiq breathed without any thought at all.
Colour claiming her cheeks in a feverish surge, Izzy simply nodded with a jerk.
The silence seethed, dark golden eyes welded to blue like heat-seeking missiles, and she felt her whole body leap into awareness, jolting her with embarrassing sensation as her breasts swelled and the peaks tightened and that hollow hungry pulse throbbed between the slender thighs she pressed tightly together.
A phone rang,
