“We’ll track them down, but you were the one on scene with a cup of spiked punch at her lips. We caught you breaking school policy—consumption of alcohol on campus is prohibited, even if you didn’t add it to the punch. What would you do if you were in my position?”
Felicia thought back to the trailer she’d grown up in, to the day she’d cried when she’d received the email from the university saying she was in, to how badly she didn’t want to be sent home in disgrace and without a degree. Sitting up straighter, she forced her threatening tears to retreat.
If she was going to be kicked out, then she would fight it the best she could. She would show the dean that even if she wasn’t the richest student or from the best family that at least she had her dignity. Her voice wavered, but she steadied it as she spoke.
“I’d run a full investigation. I’d check all angles of the story, and then I’d figure out what I could do to ensure I didn’t send an innocent person away. Check the evidence, Sir—I didn’t have any liquor bottles on me. If I’d just spiked the punch, what did I do with the bottles?”
“You do know how important Sienna’s family is, don’t you? You can appreciate how much money the Benoit family donated just last year?”
An arctic chill swept over her. She understood then exactly what was going on. The dean did believe her, but he also had his hands tied. She was easy to write up, a lamb to the slaughter with no connections or family of import to speak for her. But the other two—they were wildly connected, and the school couldn’t afford to piss either “good” family off.
“I…please, you can’t do this. I graduate in five months.”
“I’m afraid, Ms. Ryan, that you need to pack your belongings. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Perhaps I can do something,” a new voice said from behind her.
Confused, she turned to see one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen cross the room. He stood close to six-five or six-six in height and had impossibly broad shoulders. His brown eyes were the color of freshly ground coffee, and he had high cheekbones and a strong chin covered by a closely trimmed goatee. His voice carried a hint of an accent, but Felicia couldn’t place it. She’d gotten pretty good at identifying accents, since she’d been in cosmopolitan Cairo for so long, so it was an odd sensation to be so puzzled. Something Middle Eastern, she guessed, but that might have been based as much on his dusky complexion as the sound of his words. But why he was even here—in this of all meetings—she had no clue.
Dean Bauditz leaped to his feet. “Sheikh Ahmed, this is nothing you need to concern yourself with. I apologize for running late, but we had a situation arise.”
The sheikh shook his head and stared intently at her. She shivered under his scrutiny. His gaze unsettled her; it felt as if the man could see right into her soul.
God, do you know how scared I am? How desperate?
“Well, since you were running so late, I couldn’t help but come in to make sure that everything was well. From what I can tell, this young woman deserves a second chance.”
“I can’t do that. I have the witness statements that she was violating school policy, and those other students…”
“Need to be left alone,” the sheikh said, even as he shook his head. Felicia suspected that’s not quite how the dean would have finished his sentence, but it probably struck closer to the truth. “My family has a seat on the board of trustees and has had one for years. Perhaps you know that after our meeting about the new student activities center, I’m scheduled to meet with the university president about our annual seven-figure gift. I’d hate to disappoint him. After all, even my great-grandfather came here. It’s a proud tradition with the Ahmed family, but I wouldn’t want to support an institution that cannot live up to the standards of justice and openness it claims to teach.”
“I…”
“It’s also close to the holiday season, so many holidays,” the sheikh continued. “If ever there was a time you could show mercy, then now would be it. Use that as an excuse if you want, but if you punish an innocent woman, then my family will be forced to make our yearly donations elsewhere and to send our young people to other universities. And what a shame that would be.”
The dean came around his desk to Felicia. Then he took her hand and shook it vigorously as if she were as important as the sheikh, himself. “Ms. Ryan, I’m very sorry for this confusion. It’s all an unfortunate mistake. You’re fine. In fact, I’ll talk with your professors and allow you to begin your winter break early. You won’t need to turn in final projects or take final exams.”
“My grades…”
“They will be preserved, Ms. Ryan.”
“It sounds like we’ve all come to a decision together,” the sheikh said. “Now, Dean Bauditz, if you could start making those arrangements, I would like to speak to Ms. Ryan one-on-one.”
If the dean thought the request was as strange as she did, he certainly didn’t show it, scurrying out of the door as he did. When money talked, apparently, it screamed.
Felicia waited, unsure of what the hell was going on, as the sheikh leaned against the desk in front of her. His well-tailored suit stretched tightly over his muscled chest, making him seem more imposing than he already did. Those eyes of his studied her, traveling her body while his mouth quirked into a satisfied smile. Felicia grew impatient with the silence.
“I…Sheikh Ahmed, I am so grateful to you for stepping in. You have no idea how scared I was about everything. I just don’t understand why you’d help me.”
“First,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “They were going to make an innocent person suffer because of the whims of some rich assholes. I might have benefitted from those sorts of things in my past, but I’m no longer twenty-two and self-absorbed…well, not completely. It wasn’t fair, and I hate injustice.”
“But there’s another reason?” she asked, feeling her words almost catch in her throat.
He leaned forward and nodded. “Yes, and this is going to sound odd, I know, but I need a favor from you.”
“What?”
“I need you to carry my child.”
Chapter Four
She jumped to her feet. She had to be hearing him wrong.
Maybe she’d fallen into the Twilight Zone at some point in the last hour. Not only had her roommate—someone she thought was her friend—and her crush completely screwed her over with a prank, not only was the dean now bending over backwards to make her happy and start her on an early holiday break…oh, no. Now she had the sheikh of a country she’d never heard of asking her to what? Have sex with him? Did they need to clear the papers off the desk first?
She backed away from him, holding her hands out in front of her, an instinctive reaction that wouldn’t really protect her from a man as big as he was. Still, she wasn’t going to just get taken without a fight.
“Are you crazy? If this is the thing that keeps me in school, then you can just shove the offer you-know-where. I’m not doing that.”
He started to stand but didn’t follow through with the motion when she started bolting for the door. “Ms. Ryan, please wait!”
“Wait? You’re going to attack me!”
“I said no such thing. I said I need you to carry my child—that’s different. I meant as a surrogate. My kingdom has very specific rules about inheriting the throne, and in order for me to cement my inheritance, I need an heir in the next twelve months. I can tell already you’re a woman of courage and of integrity. I have a feeling if I start looking through your other records, I’ll see even more good qualities about you.”
“Did you come to donate to a college?” she said, her hand hesitating on the door knob. “Or did you come to seduce a girl? Maybe pick out a broodmare or two, in case the first one doesn’t work out? This is insane.”
“I won’t rescind what I did for you with the dean. What he was trying to do was wrong, no matter how one looked at it.”
“Well, I thank you so much for your mercy,�
�� she said, feeling her breath come out in ragged gasps.
“I’m serious. I’m offering you nine months, at least, in the lap of luxury in my palace, the chance for you to return and finish your coursework after the pregnancy, and five million dollars in your bank account, and I mean five million after taxes. If you invest it carefully, you can live off it for the rest of your life. It will be done through artificial insemination and completely clinical. I just need help, and after seeing you today, I’d prefer you over some willing cow my mother finds at a ball.”
“Yes, how horrible that must be for you,” she said, more than a little sarcastically. “You really are crazy. I don’t care what you did for me, not if it’s a prelude to a crazy request! Some people can’t be bought. I can’t just take a year of my life for this. I can’t.”
She hated Charleston, West Virginia, with a fiery passion, but she’d been gone for almost four years now. She needed to be back to help her little sister. If she coached Elena right then her sister, too, could escape from the trailer park that generations of their family had seemed tied too. They both could leave the dark hollers of the past behind. One more year could be so hard on Elena, but, then again, with the kind of money he was offering, she could bribe her sis’s way into Harvard or something.
Or the sheikh could do it for you…
She shoved that voice out of her mind. It was still too insane. She wasn’t going to entertain this idea, not ever. Her body wasn’t for sale like this, no matter how clinical he was going to make it.
Sheikh Ahmed stood up tall finally, but he didn’t leave his position against the desk. “Ms. Ryan, please consider my offer. I’ll be in town on business for a few more days. Think about what money of this type can do for your future. This isn’t salacious. It’s not about sex.”
She snorted. Things were always about sex in the end. She didn’t trust that a monarch used to getting his way in every other sense wasn’t hoping for more than the turkey baster method and some clinicians setting up her surrogacy. “I don’t know if I’m sold on that. This is the most insane thing anyone’s ever asked me to do, and I won’t risk my or my sister’s future on this scheme. I don’t care if you offer me ten million dollars, I’m not available.”
“I can do that.”
She blinked and felt her jaw drop open. There was no way he’d really just said that. There was no way a complete stranger just offered her ten million dollars—after taxes—for anything. She’d never been worth that kind of money before and never would be.
“What?”
He walked over to her, slowly and with a warm smile on his face. When he stood before her, she couldn’t help but take in his scent, a spicy mix of cinnamon and turmeric that tickled her nose. Pulling out his wallet, he extracted a business card.
“If you change your mind, call me any time in the next three days. The offer’s on the table, and I do want you to think it over very carefully, Ms. Ryan. I think we can help each other.”
With that, he handed her the card and walked out of the office.
***
Her mind churned as she walked across campus toward her residence hall. Everything that had happened in the last hour—God, was it only an hour?—played over and over in her brain. How had she gone from finally talking to her crush to almost being kicked out of school to…what? A strange sheikh’s wife? He hadn’t said anything about marriage. His mistress? Somehow the mother of his child, and she didn’t believe it would just be in vitro, not when he stared at her with that smoldering look. Her face burned at the memory.
And ten million dollars for it.
That kind of money would solve so many problems. It would be enough for her to just be an artist for the rest of her life and never have to worry about a day job if she didn’t want one. It would be enough for her sister to go to any college she wanted, no scholarship needed. It would ease the Ryan family troubles forever, if she let it. Part of her wanted to take it, to throw caution to the wind and do what he asked. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Then again, she’d be selling her body to a strange man, in a fashion. Sure, she could at least tell he was who he said he was, especially with the way Dean Bauditz deferred to him like a scurrying rat.
But it’s insane.
That was the main thing that thundered through her body and her senses, the insanity of the whole thing. It was the only thing on her radar when she opened the door to her dorm room, and she wished to God that it hadn’t been. If she’d been paying attention, she might have seen the sock on the doorknob. As it was, she got an eyeful of Sienna and even more of Louis writhing under some of her roommate’s covers. Torture.
“What’s going on!” she demanded covering her eyes when they jumped apart and she saw pretty much everything of Sienna.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut through the shouting, bumps against the wall, and a litany of curses in French and English. Then someone brushed past her, and she felt the wind from the slamming door. When she dared to open her eyes again, Sienna was at her desk with a t-shirt and shorts sloppily gathered up over her.
At least I’m not seeing everything anymore.
Felicia crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her roommate, who she’d considered a friend until everything had gone so horribly wrong, become so utterly fucked up. “Do you want to explain to me what’s going on? What the hell is any of this about? Why did you set me up so badly?”
Sienna shrugged nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t just been caught in flagrante with Louis. “I needed you the last three and a half years. I wouldn’t have passed at all without you, but I know you. You’re like a genius. If you’d really been trying to help me with my work, if you’d really cared, then I’d be more than just barely passing.”
“I can’t take a whole sociology major for someone else. I did what I could because I know you struggle, and maybe I did too much. I was trying to find the line between helping you and not cheating too much. My reward for keeping you from flunking was to get kicked out of school?”
“You never wanted anything good for me. You hoped that I’d finally just flunk out. I’m glad that I’m graduating early,” she said, standing up and leaning against the lip of the desk. “This is what all of this was about—my graduation. You’ve been trying to sabotage me for a long time, and I want you to feel how I feel, what it’s like to be thoroughly humiliated and have to smile. I don’t get humiliated. You always resented my status.”
“God, you are so self-absorbed. If you wanted better grades, you could have gone to the tutoring center. And I’m sure your parents would have found a way to help you. I shouldn’t have helped you with so much for so long, let alone got you on the honor roll.”
“You didn’t help that well. So now I feel like an idiot, going home to New York with barely a 2.0 GPA. Serves you right to feel a part of the pain and embarrassment I have.”
Felicia shook her head, in complete disbelief over what she was hearing. “I never set out to hurt you. I just wanted to help. If I’d been a better friend, then I would have encouraged you to get help from the university or your parents.”
“I’m not supposed to be like that. No one can know how hard this is for me. It wouldn’t please my parents…I’d rather they think I’m lazy than stupid.”
“You’re not stupid if you have learning disabilities. I shouldn’t have tried to do this all alone, but you didn’t have to try and ruin my life. God, you didn’t have to steal Louis either!” Felicia said, throwing her hands over her head in utter desperation.
Sienna held her chin up high and evaluated her with eyes in narrow slits. “That was a perk. I didn’t have to steal him. He didn’t even know you existed. No one knows you exist. You’re just the shadow around here. You want to break away so badly from West Virginia, but you’ve spent almost four years hiding in the darkest corners of the library and the art studio. I wasn’t ruining that much.”
“God, I’m so glad the dean saw through your bullshit,” Felicia hedged, in no mood to hash out
Sheikh Ahmed’s appearance or his strange deal. “Just get out.”
“It’s my room too.”
Felicia strode forward and glared at her roommate, eyes blazing. “You need to get the hell out right now, or you’re going to end up in traction. And since you’re graduating early—because of me, no less—maybe you can stay somewhere else for a few days. It’d be best for you.”
“Now you grow a backbone. Maybe you should thank me for that.”
“I don’t have to thank you for anything. Hell, you should thank me for the fact you have a college degree at all.”
“Thanks, bitch,” Sienna said, knocking against her shoulder and shoving her just a bit as she did it. “Oh, your sister called. She sounded panicked. You might want to see what she needed. I guess you had your cell off with the dean?”
“You know,” Felicia said as Sienna opened the door. “You might think you’re so amazing because your family is rich or because you’re an ambassador’s kid, but there are other things to be, better things.”
“Smart?”
“Kind,” she corrected. “It’s important to be kind.”
Sienna shrugged. “It hasn’t helped you much.” With that, she slammed the door.
Adrenaline rushed through her for about the billionth time that day. If Elena had called her, then things were bad. They shared calls once a week, on Saturday or Sunday, because of the time difference. Elena should be in school right now—it was mid-morning in West Virginia.
Dialing the numbers with heavy fingers, Felicia felt the tension stretch across her skin until her sister’s voice answered on the other line.
“Felicia, oh thank God.”
All her other troubles melted away when Felicia heard the utter fear in her sister’s voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I mean I’ve had better days, but I’m okay. It’s about Mom.”
Felicia’s hand tensed on the receiver. “What happened? Does she need bail money? I don’t have much saved up, but I can wire about two thousand dollars. I was saving it in case we needed it.”
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