The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum by Meredith Webber Page B

to the baby day or night, always changing them, telling the baby things about their lives and the lives all three would have together.’
    ‘And you? Where we you in all of this?’
    He sounded stern, almost angry.
    She met his gaze, knowing other people had found the decision hard to accept but wanting this man to understand.
    ‘I did it willingly. It was my idea to carry their child—you have to believe that. Oh, I knew the dangers. I knew I couldn’t get too emotionally attached to the baby, but Bill and Oliver were so besotted that was easy.’
    ‘Until the accident?’
    Emotion closed her throat again but she was not going to cry! Not again!
    Instead she nodded.
    ‘Bill was killed, Oliver is in a coma, and the poor baby is in limbo.’
    ‘But surely now you’ll keep him or her,’ Khalifa protested.
    Liz sighed.
    ‘You’d think it would be that easy, wouldn’t you? But, in fact, if Oliver comes out of the coma, and if he still wants the baby, really it’s his.’ She tried for a smile but knew it hadn’t worked too well when Khalifa reached out and drew her close again, holding her against his body, stirring her body so heat moved in places she hadn’t known existed and tremors of excitement not only fizzed but bounded along her nerves.
    She wanted to snuggle closer, to bury herself in him—not an easy task given the size she was—but to lose herself in sensation for just a short time would be so blissful, so soul-restoring. She snuggled just a little bit…
    * * *
    The kiss began as nothing. All he did was hold her close to comfort her, then press his lips against a bit of skin that was right there beside them. The pale bit near her temple where a pulse fluttered as his lips touched it.
    How it became a lip kiss he later couldn’t work out, but lips had certainly been involved and awkward as it had been in the front of a vehicle, with a very pregnant woman, it had galvanised his body in a way he’d never felt before.
    She tasted of peach and honey and warmth and woman, her lips opening to him, her breath coming in little gasps that tightened his body even more. His hands found her breasts, and a tiny moan escaped her lips, catching on his tongue—igniting him.
    A thousand reasons not to be here—not to be doing this—were thundering in his head, but nothing mattered except the kiss…and holding her and having her kiss him, feeling her hot, soft body up against his, tasting the honey and the peaches and the woman…
    He supposed it had to end, yet he felt distinctly put out when she drew away, rubbing her hands across her face then turning to look at him.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she cried. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake! I can’t believe I did that!’
    He was assuming she meant the kiss, but when she pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and reached out towards him, he realised the kiss, apparently, had meant nothing more than comfort and her distress was the result of something quite different.
    As she rubbed ineffectually at a bright yellow streak of saffron across his kandora, he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or amused.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told her, taking her hand and closing it gently over the handkerchief.
    She looked at him now, at his face—met his eyes, her own seeming naked, defenceless, without the terrible glasses.
    ‘None of it?’ she asked.
    ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘As to that, I don’t know! Can you deny the attraction between us?’
    A shake of her head, a grimace, then she sighed.
    ‘At least I can blame my hormones being out of kilter,’ she said, attempting a smile so valiant it made his toes curl. ‘What’s your excuse?’
    And when he didn’t answer—how could he when he didn’t know?—she spoke again.
    ‘And what’s even more bizarre is how you could possibly be attracted to so hugely pregnant a woman? Is it a kinky thing?’
    He laughed and reached out to push the hair back off her face.
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ he told her, knowing she deserved