And as she frowned at that strange noise once again, she felt a presence behind her, and before she could scream a black hood came down over her head, a needle slid into her soft arm, and those green-eyed aliens held hands with the pregnancy-pixies and they all danced an Irish jig in the swirling dreamscape of Gracie Garner’s nightmare.
23
FIRST MONTH
“Do not be ridiculous. You have to eat. You have been here three days and you have not eaten. You will starve to death, you foolish woman!”
Gracie Garner stared at Queen Zareena across the large teakwood table in the day-room of the Southern Wing of Mizra’s Royal Palace. These sprawling, lavish rooms with pink sandstone walls and sandbrushed marble floors had been the setting for Gracie’s golden nightmare of the past three days, and she stared blankly at the tall, thin woman in the black hijab and the sequined veil which was now hanging down and away from her face.
She’s pretty, Gracie thought. This was the first time she had actually seen Zareena’s face clearly, and the olive-skinned woman had beautiful high cheekbones underlining deep-set eyes that seemed to be the color of dark sand. Hollow, sunken cheeks though, like this woman didn’t eat very much herself.
“I won’t starve to death because the goddamn Navy Seals are going to parachute in here and kill your medieval asses. Then I’ll eat a Snickers bar on the plane-ride home, thank you very much,” Gracie said. She was lightheaded and woozy, though she had in fact eaten a few pieces of fruit from the heavy, gold-plated bowls that were all over her chambers. She’d also snacked on some nuts, dates, and kefir, along with drinking tons of water and a fair amount of sickeningly sweet tea that she was kinda addicted to now.
“You and your Navy Seals and Snickers bars,” Zareena muttered. “They will not come, because nobody knows you are here. Now please eat some warm food, and then we can begin.”
“Begin what?” Gracie said with a frown. She’d been here three days, two of which were a whirlwind of recovering from whatever the hell drug had knocked her out. Then jet lag, paranoia, anger, fear, thoughts of suicide, fantasies of murder, more anger, some indignation, a bit of self-pity, some despair, and now, thankfully, straight-up sulkiness.
“The vetting process,” Zareena said, looking at her nails and then back up at Gracie.
“Who’s vetting what?” Gracie said, that frown digging deeper.
“I am vetting you. What do you think?”
“What do I think? I think you are insane and unhinged, as is your husband. Who is where, by the way?”
“The Sheikh has agreed to stay away for a period of one month,” said Zareena.
“Ah. So this mysterious vetting process is going to take one month?”
Zareena shrugged. “Could be shorter. Probably longer. A lot depends on you.”
Gracie sighed now, glancing at the bowl of steaming vegetable rice pilaf and the fragrant spiced lentils to the left. There was fresh pita bread, hummus, some kind of lamb dish, and . . . OK, stop. We are on a hunger strike!
“Depends on me? And how is that?” Gracie said.
Zareena leaned forward on the table now, pushing the succulent pilaf closer to Gracie to where aroma of saffron spice almost made her swoon.
“OK, Ms. Garner,” said Zareena firmly. “Here it is for you, in plain English. My husband has kept me abreast of his affair with you. He has told me of his intentions. And he—”
“His intentions? Which are what, may I ask? I mean, I’d ask him, but—”
“Allow me to finish, and then you may rant,” Zareena said with a steadiness that made Gracie actually want to shut up and listen. “My husband cares for you, and I believe you care for him. At least he believes you care for him, and I see no reason to question that belief.”
Gracie blinked and looked down at her hands as the queen continued.
“Dhomaar tells me you are aware of our personal marriage situation. Yes?”
Gracie nodded silently.
“Good,” said Zareena. “So you understand that I am . . . I am delighted that Dhomaar has found the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life.”
“The rest of his life. He said that?” Gracie said softly, wondering if that tingle was hunger or something else.
“He has said it to you as well, has he not?” Zareena asked matter-of-factly.
“Well, not quite like that,” Gracie started to say. “OK, yes.”
“And do you feel that way about him?”
Gracie frowned. “I mean . . . um . . . it’s kinda hard to answer that now that I’ve been, you know, kidnapped by his wife. With his knowledge, it appears! That sorta kinda might change things, don’t you think, you psychotic, fanatical, witch!”
Zareena sighed and slammed her palms on the table, pushing herself to her feet. “As I said, how long this vetting process takes depends on you. But if for a moment you think I will accept a woman into my royal family, to raise a child who will be heir to the kingdom of my ancestors, to be the lifelong consort and partner to my husband and cousin, a man I care for deeply and truly . . . yes, if you believe that I will succumb to your sulking and ranting, your threats of Navy Seals and firebombing, your weak attempts at inducing guilt, and your pathetic display of a hunger strike, then you are not the smart and strong, practical and sensible, stable and serene woman my husband says he is in love with. I will vet you before accepting you into this home. And you will treat me like I am the goddamn Queen.”
She stood there and crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at Gracie. But Gracie slumped in her wooden chair and crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at Zareena.
They held eye contact as the sun moved across the desert sky, and finally Zareena exhaled and nodded.
“Very well. I will return at the end of the month. There will be attendants at your beck and call, medical staff if you need it. And the Southern Wing of the Royal Palace has over thirty rooms and chambers, gymnasia and entertainment centers, indoor gardens and outdoor fountains within the palace walls. You are a prisoner here, make no mistake. But you cannot say that I am placing any physical hardship upon you. As for mental hardship . . . well, Ms. Grace Garner. You will have one month of solitude to ponder the truism that at least some of your mental state is your responsibility—kidnap victim or not. Good day, Ms. Garner.”
Zareena snapped her fingers as three hijab-clad attendants walked out through the large double-doors leading to the central dome of the palace, and now Grace was alone. Alone with a lot of very good-looking food, and a strange feeling of . . . of . . . never mind. She wasn’t going to give in. She could out-sulk anyone, even a goddamn queen!
We’ll see who blinks first, she thought as she looked around and slowly let her fingers crawl towards the warm pita bread.
Those double-doors opened now, and Gracie pulled her hand back and crossed her arms over her chest again. It was just an attendant with a small tray, and Gracie looked up at the veiled woman and raised an eyebrow.
“Yes?” Gracie asked.
The attendant placed the tray on the table, bowed, and backed out of the room, and Gracie almost broke a smile when she looked down and saw a gold-rimmed plate, in the center of which was a very nice arrangement of three double-sized Snickers bars.
24
SECOND MONTH
Zareena looked at herself in the gold-rimmed mirror of her private chambers in the Eastern Wing, and she sighed and shook her head at her reflection.
“If this were a fairy tale, I would be the evil stepmother,” she muttered as she leaned forward and carefully applied her standard black eyeliner.
Not any more though, she told herself with a smile that was part happiness part surprise. It had been almost two months now, and Grace Garner had . . . well, she had impressed the Queen. The woman has something, Zareena had told herself when the first month passed and word c
ame round that Gracie was eating fine and appeared happy or at the very least not particularly depressed or even lonely.
That had been the first sign alerting Zareena to the inner strength of this woman: the ability to handle solitude—especially under duress. After all, as Zareena had made clear to Gracie over the course of their lengthy discussions in the second month (when Grace had decided it was time to talk . . .), Grace was being vetted not just for suitability to be her husband’s “consort” or “secret wife” or whatever they chose to call the arrangement, but Grace was being vetted for a situation where she might actually become Queen!
“You’re kidding,” Gracie had said just two days ago, when Zareena had felt comfortable enough and close enough to the woman to express the unlikely but possible situation.
Zareena had shrugged, smiling mischievously as she took a seedless date from the plate between the two women. “I should not be telling you this because it gives you incentive to poison me in my sleep, but yes. If I am to pass—whether tomorrow or in fifty years—then Dhom will be free to take a wife. And that wife will be Queen. So yes, Grace. You should know this.”
“Oh, God,” Grace had said, touching her neck and then squeezing Zareena’s arm with a warmth that had sent a tingle through the queen in the most uncomfortable of ways. “Oh, God, I’m so humbled. I can’t even believe we’re talking about this. I can’t even believe—”
“I cannot either,” Zareena had said, looking down at the way Grace’s tender white hand lay draped over the Queen’s slender brown forearm. “It is a testament to you. I did not expect . . . I did not expect to be talking about such things with you, Grace.”
Gracie had frowned. “What do you mean? I thought you had this vetting process all planned out. Like bulleted lists. I’m surprised there isn’t a Powerpoint. Or is there?”
Zareena had smiled and drawn her arm away, cognizant of Alma’s presence in the background of the large open courtyard between the Southern and Eastern wings, where they could see the domes of the palace rising up into the diamond-studded night sky of the Mizrahi desert.
“Listen, Grace,” Zareena had said. “I am truly taken by surprise by how we have connected. I mean, I was of course aware of your intelligence, your psychological profile, your—”
“My what?” Grace had said, frowning and snorting. “You been reading my Facebook quizzes?”
“You have no idea,” Zareena muttered, blinking and swallowing hard as she prepared to come clean. She had wondered for a moment if she was perhaps getting played by Grace, Zareena the master-manipulator getting out-manipulated by the disarming straightforwardness of this curiously strong schoolteacher from Oklahoma. But Zareena quickly overruled that part of her because it just felt . . . it felt right to do so! The queen had been led this far by what felt right, what felt like the universe’s way, what felt like the twisted pathway to their shared destinies: hers, Dhom’s, Gracie’s, and of the kingdom that was bringing them together.
So Zareena looked up at the heavens and took a breath and swallowed hard once more. Then she talked.
She talked about salted oases and signs from the universe, failed attempts at getting pregnant, and her beliefs about the female body. She talked about searching for surrogates, and tracking the menstrual cycles of American women. She talked of the purity of her own beliefs, and acknowledged the twisted madness in how they played out. Most of all, she talked of Dhom not knowing about Grace until the two first met in the Grand Ballroom, that the first meeting was a set up but still real. Supremely real. After all, that was the point of it all!
“It was real,” Zareena said, desperately searching Grace’s eyes for some sign that this woman could handle the twisted truth. “You and Dhom are real. I swear it.”
“I know,” said Gracie, her eyes firm, her voice steady, her back straight. “I know.”
“Of course,” Zareena had said, first in relief, but then cocking her head at how calm Grace seemed. “Of course you know Dhom and you are the real thing. Of course. You must feel it when you are with him. You must sense it in every touch, every kiss, every embrace. You must—”
“Yes, I know what we have is real, even though how we got to it was through a deception,” Gracie said, reaching for the queen’s arm in the darkness again, squeezing tight, holding on as Zareena blinked in embarrassment at the tingle she was certain Grace would pick up. “But I also know about the rest. Well, I mean, I didn’t know I was being tracked and monitored and . . . and how they hell does anyone track a woman’s cycle? Shit, even I barely know when Aunt Flo’s gonna pop in this month!”
“I do not understand,” Zareena had said quietly, moving her arm away and placing it down at her side.
“What? The Aunt Flo thing, or . . .”
“Do not mock me,” Zareena said. “I can still have you beheaded and fed to the camels.”
Grace had laughed and clapped her hands before going serious and leaning forward on the small table in the rapidly darkening courtyard. “I may have been kinda dumb in all this, but I’m not that dumb. I mean, it took me a few weeks to put it together. But come on: Royal family. No kids. No heir. Dhomaar always muttering about filling me with his seed. Putting the best of him in me. Ovulation. Clearly he was out to make a kid.”
Zareena had frowned. “And you are . . . you are not upset? Not offended? Not going to rant and sulk, call for firebombs and Navy Seals?”
Gracie took a breath and shrugged. “Well, perhaps it hasn’t completely sunk in, or maybe it’s the past two months of this weird dream I’ve stepped into. So with the caveat that I absolutely reserve the right to a future rant and perhaps a firebomb, the truth right now is . . . is that given where things seem to be heading, I’m sorta at peace with how things started.” She shrugged. “I know I want to be angrier. But for some reason I’m not. I guess . . . I guess it’s just kinda complicated being a woman in today’s America. The bottom line is that people meet and fall in love in all kinds of messed up, twisted, ridiculous ways. There’s arranged marriages happening in the U.S. all the time. There’s other weird matchmaking that I don’t want to think about. You said it earlier: What Dhom and I shared is real, and it was real from the first meeting. God, Zareena, you made sure the first meeting would be real! Maybe you didn’t expect it to play out exactly this way, but you were our matchmaker! Twisted, sick, loony, and certifiably mad. But shit, what a story for the kids!”
Zareena had squealed with relieved laughter, almost bursting into tears as she laughed again and reached out, caressing Gracie’s smooth round cheek with an affection that Grace didn’t seem to mind. They shared a long moment of silent connection, with the stars watching, the moon sighing, the palm trees bearing silent witness. Then finally Zareena pulled back and stood to leave.
“Trust me,” said the queen. “If you think womanhood in today’s America is complicated, try being a lesbian in yesterday’s Arabia.”
25
THIRD MONTH
“Firstly, she is not a lesbian. Secondly, I am committed to you and you alone. And thirdly,” said Zareena as she turned and looked sternly at the seething Alma. “Thirdly, I am Queen, and I do not have to explain myself to anyone.”
“Are you my queen when you put your face between my legs and slide your tongue into my forbidden slit,” Alma snapped. “When you spread my buttocks and push your royal fingers into—”
“Enough!” Zareena shouted, her dark face going red. “I will not hear this. You are mad if you think there is a need to be jealous! I have not touched another woman in twenty years!” She swallowed now, taking a breath as she narrowed her eyes at the shivering Alma. “But as I said, I am Queen, and I do not need to explain myself to anyone. Anyone!”
Alma bowed her head and stepped back. But before leaving the room she stopped and turned. “In other words, there is a need to be jealous.”
“I sleep alone tonight,” said the Q
ueen, holding in her rage that was fueled by just a nagging little bit of . . . guilt. “Do not return to my presence until I call for you.”
Alma paused as if shocked. Then she bowed again and left without another word.
Zareena sighed as she pulled her hijab off over her head and let it drop onto the hand-woven Persian rug by her massive old bed. A part of her understood Alma’s feelings. But Alma had her place, and this was the lay of the land. All of them carried the burden of their royal lives—attendants included. Lovers included. Alma would get over it soon enough.
Now the Queen’s mind drifted back to Grace Garner. Dhom had arrived in Mizra at the beginning of this third month, and from all outward signs their reunion had been electric, ecstatic, scandalously loud to the point where the Queen had hurriedly replaced the Southern Wing’s attendants with her most trusted insiders to keep the rumors to a minimum.
Of course, the rumors would only rise and spread as Grace began to show. And as Grace began to be seen more around the palace. Although Grace was still technically confined to the Southern Wing, it was clear that soon she would have the run of the palace—now that the Sheikh was back and all seemed well in the world.
Ya Allah, how the universe continues to surprise me, Zareena thought as she rolled her beige panties down her slim thighs and walked to her large teakwood dresser near the bed. To think I truly allowed myself to believe that if the discussions with Grace had gone in a different direction, that if Grace had laughed at the suggestion of living here unmarried with Dhom to raise a child with him and his lesbian-cousin wife . . . yes, I was prepared to take the child by any means necessary. Blackmail. Coercion. Manipulation. Torture? Hah! By God, I was the evil stepmother!
And Snow White has won me over, has she not, Zareena thought as she pulled open the top drawer and reached inside, her pussy tightening as she reached for the thin satin cloth she had hidden away back there . . . hidden away after finding it crumpled up in Dhomaar’s tuxedo jacket—the one he wore to the Grand Ballroom, the night it all began.
Surrogate for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 7) Page 15
