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him none. Worst of all, he had no idea why he’d done it so…gently.
    That was for his daughter, he told himself. He didn’t want to enter her room, her life, with anger polluting those first magical moments. Children picked up on moods, deciphered tension between adults. And he wasn’t poisoning her mood or introducing fear and anxiety in her life for any reason, was even willing to make peace with her mother, if only around her, for her sake.
    “Stop crying. I won’t have my daughter see me for the first time with her mother weeping beside me. She’d forever link me with your pain.”
    “A-and she’d be right…you’re destroying me.”
    He grimaced his distaste at her exaggeration. “Cut the melodrama, Carmen. Or are you willing to risk scarring her impressionable psyche just to paint me black in her mind?”
    “No, no…I’d never…never…” She almost fell at his feet, forced him to take her full weight, his hands around her rib cage, so close to the breasts that were now shuddering with emotion, that had once shuddered in his palms, beneath his chest in ecstasy. She raised rabid eyes to his and wailed,
    “Don’t take my daughter away…I’d die without her.”

Three
    F arooq stared down at Carmen for a stunned moment.
    He had heard about the power of tears before, had had them shed for his benefit on countless occasions, by both women and men. The only power they’d held over him was that of testing the limits of his goodwill. But her tears…
    Ya Ullah, hada mostaheel— it was impossible the way they affected him, the way her outburst had.
    She thought he intended to take her baby away.
    It was only in this moment that he realized he’d stormed in here not knowing what he intended.
    He’d gotten the intel sixteen hours ago, had been on his fastest jet within an hour, had spent the time on the nonstop transcontinental, transatlantic haul seething with realizations and convictions. Some of the latter had been of how an exploitative mother didn’t deserve to keep her child.
    He now realized those thoughts had colored the way he’d stated his intention of having his daughter, making it sound as if he’d snatch her away from Carmen.
    He believed that drastic action should be reserved for women who were a danger to their offspring. But, couldn’t he equate a mother who used her daughter to maintain a luxurious lifestyle with an alcoholic or a drug addict?
    Rage shot to another zenith as he looked down into her drenched eyes. Then, to his further fury, her anguish fractured his grip on his convictions.
    As their eyes meshed, all he could think of was that this was no act. This wasn’t someone afraid for her income. This was someone who feared something far worse than death.
    Could it be true? She’d conceived Mennah for an ulterior motive, but she now loved her? And that much?
    He could take her— his— daughter from her as easily as taking a toy from an infant. Considering what she’d done to him, he should at least entertain retribution. The thought only scorched him with mortification.
    She had to be some sort of witch.
    But then, all he’d meant when he’d declared she couldn’t fight him was that she couldn’t deny him his right to his daughter. She’d taken his words to their worst possible conclusion. That was in keeping with the fear she claimed had driven her to run away. So could he believe that had really been the reason she’d run?
    Laa, b’Ellahi. He couldn’t. He knew the truth.
    Still, whatever her motives then, for some maddening reason, against a hundred insisting he shouldn’t, he believed her fear now. Worse, he had no desire to see her so anguished. Though he had every right to hurt her, he didn’t want to. Not this way.
    Damning himself for a fool a thousand times for feeling he should kneel and beg her forgiveness for making her feel this way he rasped, “I won’t take her away. Now stop crying.”
     
    Among the crashing in her head, the detonations tearing