Craving Beauty

Nine

They were almost ready to leave for Zulheil two days later, when Marc got a call that changed all their plans.

"Becky's been found," he told her.

Heart in her throat, Hira went with him to see the child, who'd been admitted to a hospital in Lafayette. Becky's new adoptive parents were there as well, out of their mind with worry for their baby girl.

"Mr. and Mrs. Keller?" Marc's voice was gentle. She could almost see him rethinking his ideas about how to reunite Brian and Becky. The woman sitting there with red eyes looked as if she hadn't eaten for days, and her husband's face was haunted.

"Yes?" Mr. Keller looked up, hope lighting up his eyes for a second. "Are you a doctor? Did she wake up?"

"No. But I might be able to help."

Mrs. Keller's eyes were bleak. "How could you? I know who you are, Mr. Bordeaux, but your wealth can't help us. She's wasting away and no specialist can tell us why. God, my poor baby. She's so tiny, so fragile."

Hira moved to sit on a hard plastic chair beside Mrs. Keller and took her hand. "You must not worry. My hus­band can indeed help. Tell them, Marc."

He pulled up a chair to face the Kellers, his jaw taut. "This may come as a shock, but when Becky was placed in the orphanage from which you adopted her, she was separated from her twin, a little boy. It was the first time they'd ever been parted from each other."

Mrs. Keller gasped, the hand in Hira's suddenly bruisingly strong. "No, no! Dear Lord. She never said a word. Not once."

"Brian lives in an orphanage that we have a connec­tion to," Marc continued, voice low and deep. If Hira hadn't known him, she'd have thought him utterly calm. But because she did know him, she could see the worry weighing down his heart. "And he's almost as bad as Becky. They need to be together."

There was no hesitation. "Anything. Do anything," Mrs. Keller said. "If you have to take her away to live with Brian, you can even do that. Just save my baby." Her husband nodded. "Please, just save her. Please."

Hira felt tears prick her eyes. There was no question in her mind that these people loved their child. Looking at Marc, she knew he understood that, too. While she sat with the Kellers, he left the hospital. When he returned, Brian's thin arms were wrapped trustingly around his neck, that small body cradled in a protective embrace.

The Kellers took one look at that sweet face and love whispered across their expressions.

"They look so alike," Mrs. Keller whispered. "He's a bit healthier than her. Someone's managed to make him eat."

"I'll give you recipes for some things he likes," Hira offered.

"Me?" The woman's smile trembled. "You'll let us keep them both?"

"It's my husband's decision, but he loves Brian. He won't do anything to harm him." Her faith in the good­ness of the man she'd married was absolute.

Marc walked straight into the hospital room. He emerged moments later without Brian. "He crawled into the bed, took her hand and started telling her to wake up."

Mr. and Mrs. Keller went to look through the glass partition into the room, unwilling to disturb the reunited twins, but clearly needing to be nearby.

Once they were out of earshot, Hira found herself in the odd position of having to comfort her aloof husband. He'd sat down on one of the plastic chairs, his strong body in a defeated posture, while she was standing.

"It's all right, husband." Hesitantly she dared to touch his bent head in a light caress. "You got to Becky in time."

You saved two children's hearts, she thought, emotion choking her throat.

Marc didn't shrug off her hand but stared ahead at the white hospital wall in front of them, "She's in crit­ical condition," His voice was flat, without emotion.

Biting her lip, Hira moved to stand right beside him, her hand on his shoulder. "But she's alive. That's what you must concentrate on. In my land, the old healers be­lieve that the spirits of the injured can hear the prayers of the living. We must call out and bring her home."

Marc raised his head. "Do you truly believe that?"

"With all my heart and soul."

To her surprise, he wrapped one arm around her body and laid his head against her stomach. "Brian will die with her if she doesn't wake." His acceptance of her care shook all of her beliefs about their union.

"He believes she'll live." Hira stroked his head, pray­ing both for the children and for Marc. Her husband was a good man. He didn't deserve such suffering.

"He's a child."

"Perhaps that is so. But he has a connection with her that we can't doubt after seeing them. There are those who say twins are not two people but two pieces of the same soul. If that's true, we must double the strength of our prayers." The warm weight of him leaning against her gave her the strength to be his hope. For once some­one needed her for more than her face and body.

Her husband didn't say another word but neither did his face settle into those fatalistic lines again. When he walked off to get them coffee, he touched her cheek in a fleeting caress that she couldn't understand but felt the power of. Her American husband was no ordinary man.

To everyone's shock, Becky regained consciousness two hours later. The Kellers were incoherent with joy, and Mrs. Keller was cuddling Brian as if she'd never let him go. Though it hurt Hira, she saw that the little boy felt at home in her arms, as if he knew how much they loved Becky and would love him, too.

"They belong to the Kellers," she said to Marc, when they got home that night.

His face was tight. "Yes. Tomorrow, I'll begin the process that'll ease their adoption of him. I'm going for a walk."

"In the dark?" Worry for him sparked inside of her.

Without answering, he grabbed his jacket from the hall closet. Desperate, she reached in and pulled out hers, too.

"Where the hell are you going?" he growled at her. She'd never seen him look more forbidding. But she knew he'd never needed her more than he did at this mo­ment. "For a walk."

He moved closer. "I want to be alone."

She knew he was deliberately crowding her with his body, trying to intimidate her. But he'd done too good a job of demonstrating that he'd protect her to his last breath. "Okay. I'll walk in the other direction."

"Don't be a fool. You'll fall into the bayou and give some lucky gator his dinner. It's dangerous out there." He grabbed her jacket and threw it back into the closet.

She put her hands on her hips. "Husband, if you leave now, you have no way of stopping me from leaving."

His jaw squared. "You'll stay put."

"You really think I'll obey?"

His eyes were suddenly bleak. "I need to..."

She pushed his own jacket out of his hands and took his face between her palms. "You need to stay at home and let your wife share your pain. It's my pain, too."

Her every heartbeat reverberated with his sense of loss. Marc wasn't a man who loved easily, but he loved Brian, of that there was no question in her mind. And now he was being asked to give up one of the precious pieces of his soul.

For a moment she thought he'd walk away, unable to accept the tenderness she offered. Then his arms slipped around her body, and he held her so tight she could barely breathe. Uncaring, she wrapped her arms around him and silently promised that they'd get through this together. They weren't alone anymore, either of them.

Somehow the hurt boy from the bayou and the lonely beauty from the desert had become a unit, a pair, a sin­gle beating heart. Her dependence on him should've scared her, yet all she felt was the dawning of a hope so exquisitely powerful she was humbled by it.

Only seven days later Marc stood beside Hira in front of the hospital and watched the Kellers drive off with both Brian and Becky, after having been granted tem­porary guardianship of Brian. Even the bureaucrats had seen that the children needed to be together. His heart felt as if it were being ripped out of him, but he smiled. Not for anything would he spoil the children's joy.

After they were gone, he turned to Hira and pulled her into an embrace. As he'd known she would, she began to stroke his back. Despite the pain he could feel in her, she was trying to comfort him. Her generosity of spirit kept throwing him, systematically destroying all his old ideas about beautiful women and their icy hearts.

"Home," he whispered, his voice husky with pain.

She nodded against his chest.

However, home wasn't the haven he'd expected it to be. Hira disappeared while he was parking the car. Angry at her for teaching him to need her and then not being there when he needed her so desperately, he began to head out to the bayou. It had always held welcome for him.

That was when he heard the muffled sobs coming from the small formal sitting room they used for guests, the one place his wife knew he avoided, much preferring the re­laxed parts of the house. The heart he'd protected for so long seemed to shudder at the hurt in her ragged tears.

Taking a deep breath, he turned the knob and entered. It took him a moment to find her. She was sitting curled up against one corner, her arms around her knees, her heavy fall of hair a curtain. She'd come to cry in private.

Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to leave her to her grief. Something in him rebelled against that course of action. This was his wife in distress. He could never leave her, just like she hadn't let him walk away that night after they'd come home from the hospital. Decision made, he strode over to sit down beside her, tugging her into the vee of his legs before she could stop him.

She jerked in surprise, and a tear-stained face met his. "Wh—Leave!"

"No." He forced her head back against his chest. "You cry as much as you want, princess, whenever you want. But you cry in my presence."

She hit his chest with her fist. "I do not u-use tears to get m-my way!"

"No," he acknowledged, his proud wife would never use tears to sway him. Apparently, neither did she trust him enough to be vulnerable to him. Well, damn it, from today, that was going to change. "I don't like you crying all alone."

She didn't speak again. Instead she lay against him, tears streaming quietly down her face. He held her and stroked her until there were no more tears and the birds outside were settling down to sleep.

"Better?" he asked, wiping her face with consciously gentle fingers. He was aware that he had calluses. He'd crawled out of the bayou but it still called to him. Being behind a desk was alien to him.

She nodded and turned her face a little, giving him permission to complete the job. He did, feeling a dan­gerous squirt of pleasure at the tiny gesture. It spoke of deep-rooted trust as her lonely tears hadn't. Per­haps, he thought suddenly, there was more to her cry­ing alone than her acceptance or rejection of his help.

"I had begun to think of him as my own." Her voice was barely a whisper.

"Me, too, cher. Me, too."

Slim arms slipped around him. "They'll be happy with the Kellers. They're good people."

"I had them triple-checked. No problems in the mar­riage. No indications of violence. They adore children but they're infertile," he told her. "Brian and Becky em­body their dreams. People cherish their dreams."

"Yes." Hira nodded. "Yes. Dreams are to be cherished."

"Why do you cry alone?" he asked. Why don't you need me as much as I need you, the wounded boy in­side, him wanted to ask.

Her silence went on until he thought she wouldn't an­swer.

Then, "My father often reduced my mother to tears purely for his own amusement. I swore I would never let anyone humiliate me that way."

"I would never..." He was so blindsided by hurt he couldn't complete the sentence.

Slender hands cupped his cheeks, and when he glanced down, Hira's tawny eyes were looking into his, wide and startled. "No, Marc! I didn't mean... I know." she whispered. "I know you would never, ever do that to me."

There was no way he could doubt the honesty of her desperate confession. "Then why?"

She swallowed. "Instinct. I've never had anyone to go to before." It was a simple answer but one that spoke of years of pain. Such habits didn't develop overnight.

The memory of seeing her eyes sparkling with withheld tears made him ache deep within. "Crying all alone isn't healthy." He didn't like the thought of her hiding away her hurts, or what such actions revealed about her past.

"Do you ever cry?"

He thought of the rock in his heart at the loss of a child he'd thought of as his own. "No."

"That is not healthy, either."

He was stumped. "I'm your husband. Aren't Zulheil wives supposed to follow their husband's commands?"

"Only the old ways state that. I've begun to explore the new ways that my father forbade. They say a wife can disobey her husband if she has good reason."

"Well, hell." He found himself smiling. "Are you going to turn into an American woman?"

"Perhaps partly. Would that displease you?"

He chuckled. "I have a feeling that even if it did, it wouldn't matter to you."

A pause. "You could make my existence difficult."

There were so many facets to his wife that she kept surprising him. "Cher, I make your life hell, anyway, so what would change?" He'd meant to make her laugh but she remained silent on his chest. Hugging her, he said,

"Hey, come on. I'm not that bad, am I?"

"You're not cruel," she said a long while later. "As a husband, you're more than I could've wished for. But I wouldn't have chosen you for myself if I'd truly been given a choice."

It was a kick to his gut. "I see. Why?"

"Because you can't give me what I most desire."

"And what's that?"

"Love of a kind that's rare in this world. Love that will not stop or dampen when I am old and have wrin­kles, when I'm no longer the beautiful woman men covet. Love that will cherish me though I may become ill or hurt. That is what I most desire."

The quiet declaration of lost hope hit him with the strength of a Mack truck doing eighty miles an hour. She'd put into words what he'd wanted but had never been able to articulate. "You've experienced such love?"

"It's the most wonderful thing in the world."

"Romaz?" he forced himself to ask.

"No." Her answer gave him some peace at least. "That was my first brush with love. 'Puppy love' as they call it here. No, I've never experienced that kind of love and perhaps I never will, but I've seen it in the love our sheik has for his wife."

Marc couldn't disagree. There was something be­tween Tariq and Jasmine that outshone the stars. "Why can't you imagine me giving you that?"

She snorted. "Husband, you have something against beautiful women. I'm not stupid. I know you married me to show the world that you could own something this beautiful." There was no trace of boast in her voice, just blunt honesty.

"I will not argue that you cherish me, that you treat me as a human being with thoughts and feelings and the right to live my dreams. But I can't forget that you se­lected me as a trophy, as if I were something to own.

"You acceded to my father's desire to have us wed, though you only knew my face. I've tried but I can't get over the fact that my worth to you is determined by my beauty alone."

"That's a big call to make." Anger vibrated within him. Perhaps he'd started this marriage the wrong way, but never had he thought of Hira as an object. Not even when they'd married. And in the weeks since they'd said their vows, powerful emotions had taken root in him, emotions that defied her summation.

"Can you say that it is untrue?"

"Yes, I damn well can. I don't see you as a thing. You're the woman who coaxed Brian to eat and you're the woman who held me when Becky lay in the hospi­tal bed. You read encyclopedias in your spare time, watch music videos when you think I'm not looking and are addicted enough to strawberry sorbet that I have to make sure there's a new carton in the freezer every three days."

Hira's eyes widened at his recitation. She hadn't been aware he knew of her craving for that particular ice cream, had just assumed the housekeeper bought it from a standing order. As for the music videos...

"I don't see you as a thing. I see you as a woman un­like any I've ever known." Marc's tone dared her to dis­agree with him.

"But would you have married me if you'd known my love of books and economics?" she persisted. He'd wanted a beautiful wife, not a smart one.

He chuckled. "Cher, I'm damn glad you turned out to be an intelligent woman. At the beginning of our marriage, I thought I might've let my hormones tie me to a woman who'd bore me within a week. Whatever else you might do, you'll never bore me."

"I see. I may have misjudged you, husband. For that I say sorry." A spurt of fire warmed her heart. It whis­pered that she could trust him with her budding emo­tions, that he'd cherish the love that had crept up on her while she'd been busy arguing with him.

"Don't." His voice turned rough. "You were right about some of it. I did want to show the world I could hold someone like you."

Ice froze the fire. "I see."

"No. You don't." He sighed and dropped his chin onto her hair. "I guess you deserve to know, after every­thing you've had to put up from me. I grew up poor. Coming from Zulheil, you can't imagine the kind of poverty into which I was born. I scrounged around for food, knowledge, anything. Even before Muddy, some­times I stole so I could eat."

Hira hurt for the boy he'd been. His pride was so much a part of who he was that the stain on his honor would've hurt him terribly. "It pains me that your mother didn't hurt for you. I find it a thing I cannot understand."

"Yeah. Well, she was as mean as he was—most of the scars on my lower back are courtesy of her. When I was too young to get away, she used to beat me until she took the skin off my back."

"No mother would do such a thing!" Hira rose up on her knees, her gaze on his face. "No, husband. Please...no?"

Marc was stunned at the anguish in her eyes. "It no longer matters—it's in the past," he found himself saying.

Her hands rose to cradle his face. "But, outside and inside you have scars from it."

"I guess." He shrugged. "Don't worry about it."

She frowned but to his pleased surprise, leaned for­ward and gave him a soft kiss. "I'll worry if I wish. Tell me why you don't like beautiful women."

"Why did I think you'd be accommodating?" He kissed her to forestall comment. "My story isn't very original. I was a poor boy but a smart, athletic one. I also worked sev­eral jobs. One of them was as gardener and car washer to the Barnsworthy family. They were, and still are, one of the richest and oldest families in the area. I fell for Lydia Barnsworthy and asked her on a date. Confidence has never been my problem." It was a joking comment, an at­tempt to hide the emotions evoked by the memories.

"A date?"

"A high school dance," he elaborated. "Lydia said yes, but when the day came, she stood me up and went with someone else. And she made sure everyone knew what she'd done."

"What did she look like, your Lydia?"

"Slender ice blonde." To the teenage boy, she'd been everything that was gracious, but now he saw the cruelty beneath the beauty. These days it was Lydia who chased him, much to his amusement and total disinterest.

"I've seen a picture of her in one of your American fashion magazines," Hira startled him by stating. "She's quite beautiful...if one likes cold women."

He hid his grin at the catty comment. "That certainly doesn't apply to you. You're the hottest woman I know."

It had taken him too long to realize that beneath the armor of self-protective ice, she had so much spirit it burned hot enough to keep him warm for life.

"So you wished to show the Barnsworthy family and others that you could aspire to a woman of beauty." Her husky tones pulled him back to his story.

"Put like that, it sounds adolescent," he grumbled. "But it's part of the truth. The second part is, I saw you and wanted you. Without reason or thought. I just knew that you were mine. So I took you."

His wife stared at him, as though she didn't know quite what to make of that. Then she narrowed her eyes. "But you haven't shown me off to these people. Am I not good enough?"

"I've found that I don't want to show you off. You're for my eyes only." His tone was hard.

Her eyes widened. "Husband, you sound very... possessive."

"Yes." He was, he realized, very possessive where his wife was concerned. So possessive that he didn't want to share her with anyone, certainly not with the bitchy crowd that frequented those glamorous parties.

Unfortunately, as if he'd conjured it put of thin air merely by thinking of it, it became impossible to avoid going to one of those very same parties. With their travel plans to Zulheil being rescheduled, they were going to be in town on the date when an illustrious member of the business community was being given an honorary dinner.

"We have to attend," Marc told Hira the night before the dinner, pulling off his shirt. He'd arrived home only an hour ago after an intense day at the office. To his de­light, his wife had waited up to have dinner with him. Such a little thing, but it meant so much, coming from the fiercely independent woman Hira was blooming into. "I respect Artie and it'll hurt him if we don't go when he knows we're still in the city."

"That's fine, husband." Hira closed her textbook and put it on the bedside table. "I don't mind attending these functions. It's one of my duties as your wife."

He gave her an exasperated look, trying not to be se­duced by the sight of her in that lacy black slip she'd shimmied into. "Do you do everything because they're duties?" He wondered if she'd worn the sexy garment to tempt him, and his heartbeat accelerated. A woman who purposefully dressed to pleasure her husband had to have some feeling for him. Some need.

She thought about it. "No. I lie with you because I wish to. We are together too many times for it to be duty."

Then she gave him a slow, sultry smile. "I wouldn't dress this way for you if it was only duty." A teasing light in her tawny eyes, she shrugged a slender strap off one honey-skinned shoulder. "Oops."

He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. "Hell, I guess I think of these things as duty appearances, too. At least you'll make it bearable." Keeping his eyes on her, he peeled off the rest of his clothing.

She held out her arms. "Come to bed, husband mine."

He walked over, determined to say what he had to be­fore the light of welcome in her eyes reduced him to in­coherent passion. "I want to warn you—the crowd at these parties will stab you in the back if they have the slightest indication that you're vulnerable."

"Me? Vulnerable?" She gave an exaggerated sniff. "I am ice, husband."

"I'd forgotten." He stopped by the bed, waiting for her to shift so he could climb in beside her, and begin doing things to her that would leave her drenched in sweat. Pleasing his wife turned him on like nobody's business.

"You're so hot."

Instead of accommodating him, she moved until she was facing his erection. "Hot, hmm?"

His whole body shuddered as she dipped her head and took him to his own private vision of heaven. "Yup, damn hot." Those were the last words he said for a long, long time, because his desert beauty was in the mood to pleasure her husband.

Slowly.