by Lynn, Sophia
CHAPTER FIVE
Khaliq
Five Months Later…
London was different in winter, Khaliq thought. The city bloomed in summer, and in winter, it closed in on itself. The people hurrying along the streets ignored each other desperately, shrugging into their heavy coats against the chill, and even the light seemed more sullen, as if reluctant to share itself with the city.
He remembered his last visit at the end of July, and he couldn't help smiling at the photographer's assistant he had met then. He usually forgot the names of the women he slept with, but for some reason, he could still remember hers. Frannie. It was an oddly old-fashioned name, but it rang in his head like a bell.
I should look her up again. I would like to see her.
Not just see her, if he were being honest. She might be miffed that he had left without a word, but in his experience, that was usually soothed with a few sweet words and perhaps a gift.
After a day of meetings that went on for what felt like forever, Khaliq was even more ready to see Frannie. He had never gotten her phone number, but he remembered her apartment easily enough. There was just a scrap of light left in the sky when he parked and made his way up her steps. He rang her bell twice, and was just thinking that he must have missed her, when there was a sound behind him.
He looked down and found her at the bottom of the steps, looking up at him, her blue eyes brilliant in the dying winter light. She was dressed in a shabby black coat and a cherry-red knit hat, and for a moment, he only took her in, feeling a sensation of mixed pleasure and relief when he recognized her.
Then she turned on her heel and ran.
For a moment, Khaliq simply stared after her in disbelief, and then without a second thought, he launched himself down the steps and was after her. He couldn't have explained it, but the idea of losing her, of letting her disappear, was completely unthinkable.
Khaliq was faster than she was, but it still took him two blocks before he was able to grab her wrist and drag her to a stop. He spun her around, calling her name, and then he looked at her, really looked at her, and his jaw dropped.
Her face was red, she was breathing hard, and now he could see the way her coat stretched over her belly. Her shockingly round belly.
“Frannie?”
She responded by bursting into tears.
***
Frannie
The clinic had been horrible. She had waited for almost three hours before the nurse practitioner could see her, and then the woman had barely looked at her, simply glancing through her chart before shrugging.
“What did you expect? You're five months pregnant. You're going to have nausea.”
“Not like this,” Frannie had said, suddenly terrified she was going to be sent away without any help. “It's so bad, I'm barely keeping anything down, this can't be right...”
“It is, I'm afraid. Try eating slowly, and getting some water with every meal—”
“I have!” Frannie could hear the desperation in her own voice, and she swallowed it hastily before the woman could decide that she was hysterical. “It's just not working. It feels like I'm throwing up every time I look around. I...I can't do anything besides be sick, it feels like.”
“Oh, honey, you're pregnant. That's just the way it is.”
“Look, I'm living alone, the...the father isn't in the picture, and everyone I know who might be willing to help me at all is literally an ocean away...”
Frannie wasn't sure what had convinced the woman. Maybe it was her desperation or honesty, or maybe she had just wanted Frannie out of the way before the next appointment came in to cry at her. Either way, she had left with a bottle of pills that the woman said might at least help her keep some food down.
The weird part, she reflected while leaving the clinic, was that she wasn't worried about herself. Even when she was puking so hard she felt her face burn, she was worried about her twins.
That had been a day. She had been overwhelmed enough by the idea of having a child. When the doctor had turned around and told her that there was not one but two heartbeats, Frannie had felt the world loom over her like some kind of titanic wave. What she hadn't expected was the enormous swelling of love in her heart.
Suddenly, she knew she wasn't alone in the world, not as alone as she had been before. In just four short months, she was going to have not one but two gorgeous baby girls to look out for, and she wanted it more than she had wanted anything else in her life. With the love was an intense amount of fear as well, that she would not be up for it, that she would be too weak, too poor, too sick to give her babies what they needed.
Frannie clutched the anti-nausea medication in her hand as if it were a lifeline. It would allow her to not only nourish herself but also to nourish her precious baby girls.
She thought nothing of the father.
At the very least, she told herself she thought nothing of the father.
What use was it to think of him anyway? He was one of the richest men in the world, and she had slept with him exactly one night. Frannie winced at the idea of trying to approach Khaliq, no, Sheikh Khaliq al Shadid, ruler of Beian, or more likely one of his lawyers. She hated the thought of going begging for her due, and the idea of her life, her daughters' lives, being picked up by the tabloids was like nails on a chalkboard.
She had decided one night not long after she’d found out about the girls that she didn't regret that encounter with the sheikh. She couldn't, and not because it had given her this new and fascinating and frightening and wholly amazing experience. That night had given her a pleasure that she had never even imagined before, and she would never regret that.
Truth be told, she had put Khaliq out of her mind, at least in the daytime. That was why it was such a shock to see him on her doorstep, looking just as handsome, just as gorgeous as when she had last seen him. For a moment, she only drank in his presence, feeling that warmth flood through her body again.
Then it was too much. Frannie ran, and it didn't matter that she wasn't going to get very far or that he knew where she lived. It was just too much for her to deal with, and when he grabbed her, she had felt that welter of emotions rise up, and then there was nothing she could do but cry.
And apologize for it, because she couldn't help herself. She couldn't stop crying, she couldn't stop apologizing, and she knew she was making a spectacle of herself, but she couldn't care about that either. Khaliq had maneuvered her into the nearest shop, a mostly-empty curry shop, and seated her at one of the sticky booths.
He took one of her hands, more to keep her there than to make her feel better, she figured, and he waited patiently until she stopped crying. At least her tears didn't last long. Unfortunately, when she had dried them on the stack of napkins Khaliq had procured for her, she realized that he needed an explanation.
“So. Hi.”
That at least wrung a laugh from him. Khaliq shook his head. “Hi, Frannie. How've you been?”
“Um. Well. Pregnant!”
“I can see that!” There was an awkward pause, and she could almost see Khaliq decide to throw proper etiquette out the door. She wondered if there actually was etiquette for something like this. “What happened, Frannie?”
She blinked. “Um. You were there...”
“No.”
Despite thinking about Khaliq many times in the last five months, she had never really thought about what his reaction would be if he learned about the twins. She hadn't expected flat denial.
“Er...”
“That's utterly impossible. That is not my child.”
Frannie was suddenly very relieved that she had cried herself out. There were no tears left. There was only rage now.
“You're damn straight it is! What the hell are you implying? You're the only person that I've slept with since coming to London!”
He glared at her, crossing his arms over his chest. “That cannot be true. I am not the father.”
“I wasn't asking you to be!” she sn
apped. “I was doing just fine before you showed up on my damned doorstep!”
She hadn't been really, but he didn't have to know that.
“Stop lying. There is no way that's my child.”
“Why would... No. No. I don't care. I'm not doing this at a damned curry shop.” She stabbed a finger at the counter, where the teenage waitress suddenly tried to look as if she were very busy doing anything but eavesdropping. “I'm not here to give anyone a show, and I never asked you to do a damn thing, all right? As far as I am concerned, we can just go back to our own lives.”
There was a tiny part of her heart that broke at that. All right, maybe it was more than tiny, but she could sweep up the pieces later. Right now, she had to make sure she wasn't anyone's damn soap opera.
She stood up from the booth, shaking her head in disgust. At least this would put those late night fantasies to bed, both the ones where she was in Khaliq's arms and the infinitely sillier ones where they were together laughing, living, and raising two sweet little girls.
Well, it's probably better that those dumb fantasies die sooner rather than later.
To her surprise, Khaliq grabbed her wrist. She looked down, ready to spit out something biting, but instead she stared into his eyes. God, she had forgotten how beautiful they were. Instead of being angry or disbelieving, there was something searching in his gaze.
“You're telling me the truth? You've not been with anyone else?”
The spell broke like a mirror hitting a concrete floor. She pulled her wrist from his grasp and glared at him.
“It doesn't matter. Fuck off.”
CHAPTER SIX
Khaliq
After Frannie left, Khaliq slumped in the booth, his head whirling. It felt as if there were too many emotions running through his body for him to be able to process what was going on. Mixed in was a strangely electrifying exhilaration about seeing Frannie again.
Seeing her face had sent some kind of signal through his body that everything was well again. He’d been relieved, as if finding her meant that something was finally right with the world again.
Following shortly on the heels of that relief had been a jealous rage he’d never thought he was capable of. Seeing her body swollen with what had to be another man's child had made him want to roar, to snatch her up in his arms and make sure no one else was allowed to touch her.
And then her revelation...
“Um, what can I get for you?”
Khaliq looked up from his dazed reverie to see the teenage waitress looking at him warily with her order pad.
“Nothing, I don't want anything.”
He expected that would be the end of it, but she got a stubborn look on her face.
“Well, you can't sit there all night unless you buy something. And maybe I would have let you do it anyway if you hadn't done that poor girl like that!”
For a moment, all Khaliq could do was stare at her. There were probably places in London, Tokyo, and New York that would pay him for the privilege of letting him sit still on their property. The prestige of having one of the wealthiest men in the world on their premises was worth any wasted space or free drinks. This entire curry place probably cost less than one of his cars, and the waitress was looking at him like he was lower than the gum on the floor.
Khaliq considered. “I treated her rather badly, didn't I?”
“Terribly!”
“She wasn't trying to hurt me or to trick me.”
“Didn't look like it!”
“I had better go to her, right?”
The girl looked thoughtful. “Maybe give it a few minutes? She looked pretty heated up.”
“Very good advice. Thank you.”
He stood and reached into his wallet, throwing a tip on the table before he strode towards the door. Behind him, Khaliq heard the girl yelp.
“Mister, mister, this is like four hundred...”
“Keep it! I said it was good advice.”
***
At the end of it, Khaliq could only wait a few hours before he made his way back to Frannie's apartment. He stood on the stoop for a few moments, wondering what he was doing.
There was no way the child was his. None.
Was there?
It would change everything. Khaliq took a deep breath. His father had been gone for almost four years at this point, but he would have said that Khaliq needed to slow down and take one step at a time. Well, he would have said it when he wasn't shouting with glee about babies.
One step at a time. Don't start shouting. Don't get ahead of myself.
For a moment, he thought she wasn't going to let him in. He had no idea what he would do then, but he suspected it might have something to do with shouting at her window like a desperate man. He was a desperate man.
To Khaliq's relief, however, the answering buzz came almost immediately. As he climbed the rickety stairs, he found himself disapproving of how steep the steps were and how dark. Were they really safe for a woman who was going to have a child?
Remember, one step at a time.
He braced himself to apologize for their shouting match at the curry shop. He was ready to take the blame and to speak like adults.
Then Frannie opened the door and threw herself into his arms.
There was no helping it. The minute Frannie was in his arms, he clung to her, and nothing had felt half as right in the last few months. Then common sense reasserted itself, and he pushed her back, his hands on her shoulders.
“Frannie, are you all right? Oh hell, are you drunk?”
She looked at him, offended even if her eyes didn't quite focus. “What the... What do you think I am? Of course I'm not! I am having babies!”
“Babies...wait, plural?”
“Yeah, the doctor said. Two. Two girls.”
She pulled away from him to wander back into the tiny apartment, and with a rising surge of alarm, Khaliq followed her.
“Twins, that's— Wait. Frannie. What happened, what did you take?”
She made a face. “I was so upset when I got back that I thought I was going to be sick. The doctor gave me this.”
She threw him a small, rattling vial, and he was relieved to see that it was only anti-nausea medication. He was less pleased to see the warning about intense dizziness and disorientation.
“You've been having morning sickness?”
She laughed, dropping down to lie flat on her bed. For a moment, Khaliq wanted to do nothing but join her there. Instead, he drew up a rickety chair and sat down. Something twinged in his heart when she took his hand, holding it in hers as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“I like to call it a catastrophic gut event where I can't keep crackers down, but yeah. Morning sickness.”
“I'm very sorry to hear that.”
“I was sorry to live it!”
There was something sweetly unguarded about her then, and though there was a thread of sensuality running through their every touch, this only made him feel protective. Something in him ached at the idea of her having been all alone while discovering she was pregnant, having horrible nausea.
“It hasn't been easy for you, has it?”
She sighed, and when she spoke, her voice was the softest whisper. “No.”
“Poor darling. And you were telling me the truth, weren't you? About not having been with another man?”
“Of course I was. I mean... Look at you. Who's going to compare?”
Khaliq hadn't thought that he would be laughing much this trip, but he broke into laughter. “Well, thank you for that.”
“No problem.”
He could see she was drifting off, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier. A silence settled down over the small apartment, and as it did, Khaliq came to realize two things.
The first was that he believed her. His mother and uncle would call him a fool, but there were tests that could prove it for better or worse. Right now, in this moment, he believed her.
The second thing he rea
lized was that there was no way in the world he could leave Frannie there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Frannie
Frannie was having the most interesting dream. She knew it was a dream because she wasn't pregnant, and she knew in her heart of hearts that she was. Instead, she wasn't, and she stretched out luxuriously on her flat belly, suddenly aware that she was resting on a tiger skin rug. No, not a tiger skin rug, but instead, an actual tiger. It was enormous. When she looked off in the distance, she could just barely make out a twitching tail, and when she looked in the other direction, she could see a head like a mountain.
Okay, I should probably be worried about this, but it just feels so good.
She buried her face in the tiger's plush black and orange fur, and as it began to purr, she laughed.
To her surprise, Khaliq appeared, sitting next to her with a shockingly tender expression on his face.
“Oh, it's been a while since I've seen you,” she said.
“Yes. I'm not going to let that happen again.”
That was such a strange thing to say, either in a dream or in real life, that Frannie woke up with a start.
For a moment, she thought she was still dreaming because the tiger was still purring and she could still feel fur under her cheek.
Then she realized that no, she was awake, but there really was a fur of some kind underneath her and she was in a goddamned plane.
“What the hell!”
She sat bolt upright, and Khaliq sat up from the chair he had apparently been drowsing in. He yawned, and she thought it was tremendously unfair that he should be so very handsome when she was this upset and confused.
“You're up. Good. I was getting worried. The palace doctor will be on hand when we get to the airport, and she said you would sleep most of the flight, but you slept like the dead. It was a little disturbing.”
“You know what else is disturbing?”
“Being loaded onto a plane while you're unconscious?”
“YES!”
Khaliq looked momentarily guilty, but he shrugged. “I'm sorry for your confusion and for doing this, but it was of the utmost importance that I get you and our children back home to Beian.”
