Читать книгу The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum - Meredith Webber, Meredith Webber - Страница 6

‘JUST because some bloke with more money than sense has bought the place, we don’t need to go into a full-scale meltdown. He’s bought the hospital, not our bodies and souls. We have to—’

Dr Elizabeth Jones was addressing her slightly panicked night shift staff outside the special care neonatal unit of Giles Hospital when a deep, slightly accented voice interrupted her.

‘This word “bloke”? It means?’

She turned to face the source of the voice and her heart thudded to a halt, flopped around a bit and then went into a gallop rhythm she couldn’t recall ever having felt before.

He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, or even astoundingly good looking—he was just so, well, very male!

Arrogantly male!

His bearing, the slight tilt of his head, the imperious look in his near-black eyes, all shouted leader of the pack.

‘Oh! Um—it’s actually nothing. Aussie slang, you know—means a man …’

The words faltered out in dribs and drabs, her brain too busy cataloguing the stranger’s attributes to construct sensible sentences.

Smooth olive skin, the slightest, neatest of clipped beards and moustache emphasising a straight nose and a strong jaw, not to mention framing lips like—well, she couldn’t think how to describe the lips, although the words ‘eminently kissable’ had sneaked into her head.

He wore a dark suit, though the way he wore it—or maybe it was the suit itself—made her wonder if she’d ever really seen a man in a suit before.

‘I see!’ the lips she’d noticed before the suit mused. ‘So the “bloke” who bought the hospital has more money than sense?’

It was the accent making her toes curl in her strappy sandals and sending feathery touches up and down her spine.

It had to be!

‘It was a stupid thing to say,’ Liz added, back in control. Almost. ‘It’s just that this particular hospital is hardly a money-making concern because part of the original trust that set it up ensures we treat a percentage of non-paying patients, although—’

She stopped before she insulted the man further—if this was the man with more money than sense—by assuming he’d change that rule. In fact, from the day the staff had learned the hospital was on the market they had all assumed it would be changed. After all, who in their right mind would invest in a business that ran at a loss?

Who would invest in a business that ran at a loss? Khalifa could see the words she didn’t say flashing across her face.

An interesting face—arresting. Though maybe it was nothing more than the black-framed glasses that made it that way. What woman wore glasses with heavy black plastic frames these days? They did emphasise her clear creamy complexion but certainly didn’t match her hair, ruthlessly restrained in a tidy knot behind her head, yet still revealing more than a hint of deep red in the darkness of it.

Intriguing, but he was here on business.

‘I am the bloke you speak of, but I do not intend to make money from the hospital,’ he assured her and the small group of staff who’d been her audience when he’d approached. ‘I will continue to run it according to the original charter, but I hope to be able to bring some of the equipment up to date, and perhaps employ more staff.’

He paused. He’d intended outlining his plan to a meeting of the heads of the different departments, and had walked down to look again at the special care unit because it was his main interest. But now he was here, perhaps a less formal approach would be better.

Or did he want to spend more time studying the woman with the black glasses?

‘My name is Sheikh Khalifa bin Saif al Zahn. Just Khalifa will suffice. I have bought the hospital in the hope that you, the staff, can help me and that I can, perhaps, offer those of you who wish to take part an interesting and hopefully enjoyable experience.’

The blank looks on the faces of the small group told him his explanation hadn’t worked.

‘I have built a new hospital in my homeland—an island state called Al Tinine—and it is operating well. My next wish is to set up a special care neonatal unit like this one. I am hoping to bring staff from my hospital to work here to gain an insight into how you work, and I would like to think some of the staff at this hospital would enjoy working for short periods in my country.’

He was certain this further explanation had been perfectly clear—perhaps the blank looks were caused by surprise.

Then the woman—he knew from photos she was Dr Elizabeth Jones, the one he wanted most of all—although in the photos she hadn’t had the ghastly glasses and hadn’t looked quite so—attractive?—stepped forward, knocking a pile of papers from the top of a filing cabinet and muttering under her breath before holding out her hand. One of the other women began gathering the papers, tapping them into a neat pile.

‘How do you do, Dr Khalifa?’ Dr Jones said formally, adding her name. ‘Forgive us for reacting like dumbstruck idiots, but it isn’t often anyone takes notice of our small hospital, let alone wanders in and offers us a chance to visit other countries. As for new equipment, we should be dancing with glee and cheering wildly. We make do with what we have and our success rate here in the special care unit in particular is first class, but the money from the trust that set up the hospital has been running out for some years.’

Khalifa heard the words but his brain had stopped working.

The woman he wanted, now she’d stepped out from behind the filing cabinet on which she’d been leaning, was undoubtedly pregnant. Not a huge bump, but pregnant enough to notice.

The shadow of pain, the fiercer thrust of guilt that chased him through each day had registered the bump immediately.

Dr Elizabeth Jones was as pregnant as Zara had been the last time he’d seen her …

Realising he’d dropped the conversational ball, Dr Jones spoke again.

‘It sounds a wonderful opportunity for our staff to travel to your country and I’m sure we’d be very happy to welcome staff from your hospital, to learn from them as well as show them how we do things.’

There was a slight frown creasing the creamy skin, as if she wasn’t absolutely certain of the truth of her words, but before he could decide, or even thank her for her kindness, a faint bell sounded and the group of women broke away immediately.

‘Excuse me,’ the doctor said. ‘That was an end-of-shift meeting we were having. The new shift is on duty and I’m needed.’

She whisked away from the makeshift office—was one small desk and the filing cabinet in this alcove off the hall all they had?—and entered the glass-walled room where two lines of cribs held tiny babies. Two women—nurses, he assumed—in black and white patterned smocks leant over one of the cribs, straightening as Dr Jones joined them. Uncertain as to the isolation status of the ward, he remained outside, watching through the glass as she bent over the crib, touching the infant’s cheek with one finger while reading the monitor beside it.

One of the nurses had wheeled a small trolley laden with drugs and equipment to the side of the crib but in the end Dr Jones straightened and shook her head, writing something on the chart at the end of the crib and stroking the baby’s cheek, smiling down at the tiny being, before leaving the unit.

‘You’re still here!’

She spoke abruptly, obviously distracted by whatever it was that had summoned her to the baby’s crib, then she proved his guess correct by adding, ‘She has a little periodic apnoea but I don’t want to put her back on CPAP.’

‘Has she just come off it?’ he asked, and the woman frowned at him.

‘You understood that? I was really thinking out loud. Very rude, but I suppose if you’ve built one hospital and bought another, you probably do know a few things about medicine.’

‘I know a few,’ he said. ‘Enough to get me through my medical degree and a follow-up in surgery.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flashing a smile that almost hid a flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. ‘It’s just that health care seems to have become big business these days and the business owners don’t necessarily know anything about medicine. But I’m holding you up. You’ll want to see the rest of the place, and talk to staff in other departments, won’t you?’

‘Not right now,’ he began, uncertain now that the woman’s pregnancy had thrown his plans into disarray. ‘You see, I’m particularly interested in this special care unit because I had hoped to persuade you to come to Al Tinine to set one up. I have heard and read so many good things about the work you do here, running a small unit that offers premature babies surprisingly successful outcomes on a limited budget.’

She studied him, her head tilted slightly to one side, and he wondered what she was seeing.

A foreigner in an expensive suit?

A bloke with more money than sense?

Guilty on both counts!

‘So are you looking for something similar in size? Will there be limitations on the budget of the unit you wish to set up?’

Shocked by the assumption, he rushed into speech.

‘Of course not—that wasn’t what I meant at all. Naturally, we won’t be looking at gold-plated cribs, but I would want you to have the very best equipment, and appropriate staffing levels, whatever you deemed necessary for the best possible outcomes for premature infants born in the southern part of my country.’

She smiled again—not much of a smile but enough to light a spark in the wide blue eyes she hid behind the chunky glasses.

‘Gold plate would probably be toxic anyway,’ she said, then the smile slid away and the little crease of a frown returned. ‘My next question would be, are you setting it up as a working, effective unit that will give preemie babies the very best chance of leading normal lives later on, or are you putting it in because you think hospitals should have one?’

The question shocked him even more than the previous assumption had, although would he have considered it if not for Zara’s and the baby’s deaths?

That thought angered him.

‘Are you always this blunt?’ he demanded, scowling at her now. ‘I expect you to set up a properly organised special care neonatal unit with some facilities for infants who would, in a larger hospital, go into a neonatal intensive care unit. I understand you have such facilities in your unit here at Giles, which is one of the reasons I chose this hospital.’

No need to tell her that the other reason was because he’d heard and read such impressive reports of her work with neonates.

‘Fair enough,’ she said easily, apparently unperturbed by his scowl and growling reply. ‘But when you said “you”, did you mean “you” as in someone from the unit or me personally?’

Direct, this woman!

‘I did mean you personally,’ he told her, equally direct. ‘It is you I wanted—or was you.’

‘And having seen me, you’ve changed your mind?’ The words were a challenge, one he could see repeated in the blue eyes for all she hid them behind those revolting glasses. ‘Too tall? Too thin? Wrong sex, although the Elizabeth part of my name must have been something of a clue?’

‘You’re pregnant.’

He spoke before he could consider the implication of his statement, and as her face flushed slightly and her eyes darkened with some emotion he couldn’t read, he knew he’d made a mistake.

A big mistake!

‘So?’

The word was as steely as the thrust of a well-honed sword, but as he struggled to parry the thrust she spoke again.

‘Pregnancy is a condition, not an illness, as I’m sure you know. I have worked through the first thirty-two weeks and I intend to continue working until the baby is born, returning to work …’

The fire died out of her and she reached out to support herself on the filing cabinet behind which her ‘condition’ had originally been hidden. The air in the alcove had thickened somehow, and though he knew you couldn’t inhale things like despair and sadness, that was how it tasted.

‘Actually—’ the word, her voice strong again, brought him back to the present ‘—a trip away right now might be just what the doctor ordered. I presume if you’re setting up a neonatal unit you already have obstetricians and a labour ward so my having the baby there wouldn’t be a problem. As far as this unit is concerned, we have visiting paediatricians who are rostered on call, plus there’s a new young paediatrician just dying to take over my job, so it would all fit in.’

The steel was back in her voice and he wondered if it came from armour she’d built around herself for some reason. She’d shown no emotion at all when she’d talked about her pregnancy, no softening of her voice, just a statement of facts and enquiries about obstetric services.

Neither did she wear a wedding ring, although handling tiny babies she probably wouldn’t …

‘Well?’

Liz knew she’d sounded far too abrupt, flinging the word at him like that, but the idea of getting away from the turmoil in her life had come like a lifeline thrown to a drowning sailor. She was slowly learning to live with the grief of Bill’s death, but Oliver’s continued existence in a coma in this very hospital was a weight too heavy to carry, especially as his parents had banned her from seeing him.

Oliver’s state of limbo put her into limbo as well—her and the baby—while the unanswerable questions just kept mounting and mounting.

Would Oliver come out of the coma? Would his brain be functioning if he did? And would he want the baby?

She sighed, then realised that the man had been speaking while she was lost in her misery.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and this time heard him asking about passports and how soon she could leave the country.

‘Right now, today!’ she responded, then regretted sounding so over-eager. ‘To be fair, I’d need a week or so to bring my replacement up to date. She’s worked here before, which is why she wanted to come back, so it won’t take much. And it’s not as if I won’t be coming back—you’re talking about my setting up the unit and getting it running, not offering a permanent placement, aren’t you?’

The man looked bemused, but finally he nodded, though it seemed to her that his face had hardened and the arrogance she’d sensed within him when he’d first spoken had returned.

He didn’t like her—not one bit.

‘There is no one with whom you should discuss this first?’ he asked.

Liz shrugged.

‘Not really. Providing I leave the unit in good hands, the hospital hierarchy won’t complain, and as you’ve probably already discussed your idea of staff swapping with them, they won’t be surprised. And this first trip shouldn’t take long, anyway. It will be a matter of organising space, equipment and staff. It’s not as if you’ll be taking in babies until those are all in place.’

Now he was frowning. It had to be the pregnancy. He obviously wasn’t used to pregnant women working. Well, it was time he got used to it.

The silence stretched, so awkward she was wondering if she should break it, but what could she say to this stranger that wasn’t just more chat? And though she certainly hadn’t given that impression earlier, she really didn’t do chat.

Relief flooded her as he spoke again.

‘Very well. I will be in touch later today with a date and time for our departure. I have your details from the HR office. In the meantime, you might make a list of equipment you will require. My hospital is the same size as Giles, and I would anticipate the unit would be similar in size to this one.’

The words were so coldly formal Liz had to resist an impulse to drop a curtsey, but as the man wheeled away from her, she gave in to bad behaviour, poked out her tongue and put her thumbs to her ears, waggling her fingers at him.

‘He’d have caught you if he’d turned around,’ her friend Gillian said, before taking up what was really worrying her. ‘And what on earth are you thinking? Agreeing to traipse off to a place you’ve never heard of, with a strange man, and pregnant, and with Oliver the way he is, not to mention leaving all of us in the lurch?’

Liz smiled. The sentiments may have been badly expressed but Gillian’s concern for her was genuine. Could she explain?

‘You know Oliver’s family won’t let me near him,’ she began, ‘and Carol is the perfect replacement, and she’s available so no one’s being left in the lurch. That said, what is it you’re most worried about—the pregnancy, the strange man, or that I’ve never heard of this Al Tinine?’

‘It’s the decision,’ Gilliam told her. ‘Making it like that. It’s totally out of character for you. You took months mulling over doing the surrogacy thing—could you do it, should you do it, would you get too attached to the baby? You asked yourself a thousand questions. And while I know you’ve been through hell these last few months, do you really think running away will help?’

Liz shook her head.

‘Nothing will help,’ she muttered, acknowledging the dark cloud that had enshrouded her since Bill’s death, ‘but if I’m going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable somewhere new. Besides, setting up a unit from scratch might be the distraction I need. I love this place, would bleed for it, but you know full well the staff could run it without much help from me, so it’s hardly a challenge any more.’

‘But the baby?’

Gillian’s voice was hesitant, and Liz knew why. It was the question everyone had been wanting to ask since the accident that had killed her brother and put his partner in hospital, but the one subject they hadn’t dared broach.

Liz shrugged her shoulders, the helplessness she felt about the situation flooding through her.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she admitted slowly. ‘The accident wasn’t exactly part of the plan when I agreed to carry a baby for Bill and Oliver, and with Oliver the way he is and me not being able to even see him, who knows what happens next? Certainly not me! All I can do is keep going.’

She suspected she sounded hard and uncaring, but from the moment she’d agreed to carry a child for her brother and his partner, an agreement made, as Gillian had reminded her, after much soul-searching, she’d steeled herself not to get emotionally involved with a baby that would never be hers. She’d played it music Bill and Oliver loved, told it long stories about its parents, cautious always to remember it was their baby, not hers.

It would never be hers.

Now its future was as uncertain as her own, and she had no idea which way to turn. No wonder the challenge the man had offered had seemed like a lifeline—a tiny chink of light shining through the dark, enveloping cloud.

Then another thought struck her. Had the man said ‘our’ departure? Did he intend to hang around?

She felt a shiver travel down her spine, and her toes curled again …

Khalifa sat in the hospital’s boardroom, listening to his lawyers speaking to their counterparts from the hospital, but his mind was on a woman with heavy-framed glasses, a pregnant woman who seemed totally uninvolved in her own pregnancy. Zara had been transformed by hers, overjoyed by the confirmation, then delighting in every little detail, so wrapped up in the changes happening in her body that any interest she might ever have had in her husband—not much, he had to admit—had disappeared.

To be fair to her, the arranged marriage had suited him as he’d been building the hospital at the time, busy with the thousand details that had always seemed to need his attention, far too busy to be dealing with wooing a woman. Later, Zara’s involvement in her pregnancy had freed him from guilt that he spent so little time with her, though in retrospect …

He passed a hand across his face, wiping away any trace of emotion that might have slipped through his guard. Emotion weakened a man and the history of his tribe, stretching back thousands of years, proved it had survived because of the strength of its leaders. Now, in particular, with El Tinine taking its place among its oil-rich neighbours and moving into a modern world, he, the leader, had to be particularly strong.

‘Of course we will do all we can to assist you in selecting the equipment you need for the new unit in your hospital,’ the chief medical officer was saying. ‘Dr Jones has updated our unit as and when funds became available. She knows what works best, particularly in a small unit where you are combining different levels of patient need. I’ll get my secretary to put together a list of equipment we’ve bought recently and the suppliers’ brochures. Dr Jones will be able to tell you why she made the choices she did.’

He hurried out of the room.

Dr Jones … The name echoed in Khalifa’s head.

Something about the woman was bothering him, something that went beyond her apparent disregard for her pregnancy. Was it because she’d challenged him?

Not something Zara had ever done.

But Zara had been his wife, not his colleague, so it couldn’t be that …

Was it because Dr Jones running from something—the father of her baby?—that she’d leapt at his offer to come to Al Tinine? There had been no consultation with anyone, no consideration of family or friends, just how soon could she get away.

Yes, she was running from something, it had to be that, but did it matter? And why was he thinking about her when he had so much else he hoped to achieve in this short visit?

It had to be her pregnancy and the memories it had stirred.

The guilt …

He, too, left the room, making his way back to the neonatal ward, telling himself he wanted to inspect it more closely, telling himself it had nothing to do with Dr Jones.

She was bent over the crib she’d been called to earlier and as she straightened he could read the concern on her face. She left the unit, sliding open the door and almost knocking him over in her haste to get to the little alcove.

‘Sorry,’ she said automatically, then stopped as she realised whom she’d bumped into. ‘Oh, it’s you! I am sorry—I’m a klutz, always knocking things over or running into people. My family said it was because I live in my head, and I suppose that’s right at the moment. The baby in that crib was abandoned—found wrapped in newspaper in a park—and the police haven’t been able to trace the mother. We call her Alexandra, after the park.’

Liz heard her rush of words and wondered what it was about this man that turned her into a blithering idiot, admitting to her clumsiness, thrusting ancient family history at a total stranger.

‘The baby was found in a park?’

Despite the level of disbelief in the man’s voice, her toes curled again. This was ridiculous. It had to stop. Probably it was hormonal …

‘Last week,’ she told him, ‘and, really, there’s nothing much wrong with her—she was a little hypothermic, occasional apnoea, but now …’

‘Who will take her?’

Liz sighed.

‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ she admitted. ‘She’ll be taken into care. And while I know the people who care for babies and children are excellent, she won’t get a permanent placement because she obviously has a mother somewhere. And right now when she desperately needs to bond with someone, she’ll be going somewhere on a temporary basis.’

Why was she telling this stranger her worries? Liz wondered, frowning at the man as if he’d somehow drawn the words from her by …

Osmosis?

Magic?

She had no idea by what. Perhaps it was because he was here that she’d rattled on, because worrying about Alexandra was preferable to worrying about her own problems.

‘You think the mother might return to claim her? Is that why the placement is temporary?’

Liz shook her head.

‘I doubt she’ll return to claim her. If she’d wanted her, why leave her in the first place? But if the authorities find the mother, they will do what they can to help her should she decide to keep the baby. It’s a delicate situation but, whatever happens, until little Alexandra is officially given up for adoption, she’ll be in limbo.’

Like me, Liz thought, and almost patted her burgeoning belly.

The man was frowning at her.

‘You are concerned?’ he asked.

‘Of course I’m concerned,’ Liz told him. ‘This is a baby we’re talking about. She’s already had a rough start, so she deserves the very best.’

It didn’t add up, Khalifa decided. This woman’s attitude to a stranger’s child, and her apparent disregard for her own pregnancy, although perhaps he was reading her wrongly. Perhaps this was her work face, and at home she talked and sang to her unborn child as much as Zara had to hers.

She and her partner talked and sang—

‘Will the authorities also look for the baby’s father?’ he asked, and surprised a smile out of her.

‘Harder to do, especially without the mother, although Alexandra’s plight has been well publicised in local and interstate papers. The father may not have known the mother was pregnant. A man spends the night with a woman, and these days probably takes precautions, but there’s no sign that flashes up in the morning, reminding him to check back in a few weeks to see if she’s pregnant.’

There was no bitterness in the words and he doubted very much that her pregnancy had resulted from a chance encounter. Klutz she might be, but everything he’d read about her suggested she was very intelligent.

Though klutz?

‘What’s a klutz?’

Now she laughed, and something shifted in his chest.

Was it because the laughter changed her from a reasonably attractive woman to a beautiful one, lit from within by whatever delight the question had inspired?

Because the blue eyes he was drawn to behind the glasses were sparkling with humour?

He didn’t think so. No, it was more the laughter itself—so free and wholesome—so good to hear. Did people laugh out loud less these days or was it just around him they were serious?

‘It’s a word we use for a clumsy person. I’m forever dropping things—not babies, of course—or knocking stuff over, or running into people. Hence the really, really horrible glasses. Rimless ones, thin gold frames, fancy plastic—I kill them all. Bumping into a door, or dropping them, or sitting on them, I’ve broken glasses in ways not yet invented. I tried contact lenses for a while but kept losing them—usually just one, but always the same one. So I had five right eyes and no left, which would have been okay for a five-eyed monster, of course. Anyway, now I go for the heaviest, strongest, thickest frames available. I’m a typical klutz!’

She hesitated, as if waiting for his comment on klutz-dom, but he was still considering his reaction to her laughter and before he could murmur some polite assurance that she probably wasn’t that bad, she was speaking again.

‘Not that you need to worry about my work abilities, I’m always totally focussed when I’m on the job. In fact, that’s probably my problem outside it—in my head I’m still in the unit, worrying about one or other of our small charges.’

Yes, he could understand that, but what he couldn’t understand was how freely this woman chatted with a virtual stranger. Every instinct told him she wasn’t a chatterer, yet here she was, rattling on about her clumsiness and monsters and an abandoned baby.

Was she using words to hide something?

Talking to prevent him asking questions?

He had no idea, but he’d come to see the unit, not concern himself with this particular employee.

Which was why he was surprised to hear himself asking if there was somewhere other than this alcove off the passageway where they could sit down and talk.

‘Of course! We’ve got a canteen in the courtyard, really lovely, but I suppose you’ve seen it already. I’ll just let someone know where I’ll be.’

She stepped, carefully, around him and entered the unit, stopping to speak to one of the nurses then peering behind a screen and speaking to someone before joining him outside.

‘How much space do you have at this new hospital of yours?’ she asked, the little frown back between blue eyes that were now sombre.

He glanced back at the unit, measuring it in his mind.

‘I’ve set aside an area, maybe twice the size of what you have here,’ he told her, and was absurdly pleased when the frown disappeared.

‘That’s great,’ she declared, clearly delighted. ‘We can have decent, reclining armchairs for the visiting parents and a separate room where mothers can express milk or breastfeed instead of being stuck behind a tatty screen. Beginning breastfeeding is particularly hard for our mothers. The babies have been getting full tummies with absolutely no effort on their part because the milk comes down a tube. Then suddenly they’re expected to work for it, and it’s frustrating for both parties.’

She was leading him along a corridor, striding along and talking at the same time, her high-heeled strappy sandals making her nearly as tall as he was.

A pregnant woman in high-heeled strappy sandals?

A doctor at work in high-heeled strappy sandals?

Not that her legs didn’t look fantastic in them …

What was he thinking!

It was the pregnancy thing that had thrown him. Too close to home—too many memories surfacing. If only he’d been more involved with Zara and the pregnancy, if only he’d been home more often, if only …

‘Here,’ his guide declared, walking into the leafy courtyard hung with glorious flowering orchids. ‘This, as you can see, is a special place. Mr Giles, who left the bequest for the hospital, was a passionate orchid grower and these orchids are either survivors from his collection or have been bred from his plants.’

Khalifa looked around, then shook his head.

‘I did notice the courtyard on one of my tours of the hospital, but didn’t come into it. It’s like an oasis of peace and beauty in a place that is very busy and often, I imagine, very sombre. I should have thought of something similar. I have been considering practicality too much.’

His companion smiled at him.

‘Just don’t take space out of my unit to arrange a courtyard,’ she warned. ‘Now, would you like tea or coffee, or perhaps a cold drink?’

‘Let me get it, Dr Jones,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. ‘You’ll have …?’

‘I’m limiting myself to one coffee a day so I make it a good one. Coffee, black and strong and two sugars, and it’s Liz,’ she replied, confusing him once again.

‘Liz?’ he repeated.

‘Short for Elizabeth—Liz, not Dr Jones.’

He turned away to buy the coffees, his mind repeating the short name, while some primitive instinct sprang to life inside him, warning him of something …

But what?

‘Two coffees, please. Strong, black and two sugars in both of them.’

He gave his order, and paid the money, but his mind was trying to grasp at the fleeting sensation that had tapped him on the shoulder.

Because of their nomadic lifestyle in an often hostile country, an instinct for danger was bred into him and all his tribal people, but this woman couldn’t represent a danger, so that couldn’t be it.

But as he took the coffees from the barista, the sensation came again.

It couldn’t be because they drank their coffee the same way! Superstition might be alive and well in his homeland, but he’d never believed in any of the tales his people told of mischievous djinns interfering in people’s lives, or of a conflagration of events foretelling disaster. Well, not entirely! And a lot of people probably drank their coffee strong and black with two sugars.

Besides, he only drank it this way when he was away from home. At home, the coffee was already sweet and he’d drink three tiny cups of the thick brew in place of one of these …