The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum

by Meredith Webber

  Madness!

  Had she said something wrong? Liz wondered. Done the wrong thing, giving the list and plans to Phil—somehow made a mistake in this strange situation in which she found herself?

  Unease coiled in Liz’s stomach as she eyed the man—His Highness—though today he was more a doctor in his civvies, just standing there.

  Lost in thought, or just plain lost?

  She was lost, so she knew the feeling, but why would this man be feeling lost, here in his hospital, in his country?

  Could it be that he was lost as she was, emotionally?

  Of course he would be, she told herself. His wife and child had died. How long would it take to get over such a thing?

  For ever?

  His state of mind was enough to distract her—just a little—from the usual array of bodily reactions she was experiencing in his presence, although seeing him every day made it easier somehow to cope with—or simply hide—the fizzing and sparks.

  ‘Are you worried about the unit, or is it your patient’s condition bothering you?’ she asked, to break a silence that had become uncomfortable.

  It took a moment but her words must eventually have penetrated his distraction.

  ‘Neither,’ he said, then he turned and left the room, not having checked his patient at all, although the ICU doctors were in and out all the time.

  * * *

  It was two days before she saw him again, and this time he whisked into the room with enough purpose in his stride for her to guess this was a medical visit and nothing more. He was also in full highness uniform of white gown and headscarf, so imposing her breathing stilled, faltered, and hitched somewhere in her chest before she pulled herself together.

  She concentrated on the baby, in the corner this morning while she changed his feeding tube, and forced herself to breathe normally—to ignore the man in the white gown and folded red and white checked headscarf.

  Although hadn’t she wanted to talk to him about something?

  Something that had been worrying her?

  Work, brain, work! she ordered.

  What had it been?

  Oh, well, if she couldn’t remember, surely it hadn’t been important enough to bother him with it.

  Or had it?

  Before she’d sorted out an answer to that question, he’d finished with his patient and was gone.

  And, of course, she’d remembered her concern.

  She pressed the little bell that would summon the nurse on duty from the tea room and when Laya appeared, left her in charge of the baby, hurrying down the corridor to catch Khalifa.

  ‘There was something I wanted to talk to you about,’ she said, coming up behind him and touching him lightly on the shoulder.

  He turned abruptly, as if her touch had stung him, and she wondered, briefly, if one shouldn’t touch a highness. Then her concern for her patient’s wellbeing swept that worry aside.

  ‘The woman, the baby’s mother, she’s not had family visiting, or anyone outside on the veranda. Laya said she was from the south and you spoke of an Endless Desert. Do you think perhaps her family don’t know they can visit—or maybe they don’t know she and the baby are here? Has anyone tried to contact them? I don’t know the protocol, of course, but I walk around the other wards and see the families by the windows and I love the idea of such support for the patients, but our little mother and her baby seem to have no one.’

  Khalifa just stared at her, and again she wondered if she’d done the wrong thing—spoken out of turn, interfered where she shouldn’t.

  But when he spoke it was against himself, not her.

  ‘Have you bewitched me in some way that not only do I allow you to rearrange the ICU to suit your ideas but I’ve let slide my concentration on my own patient? Of course her family should be somewhere near her, although…’

  He looked concerned and she’d have liked to touch him again—a comforting pat on the arm, nothing more…

  Instead, she prompted him.

  ‘Although?’

  ‘She is from the desert, from one of the tribes who are finding the new ways more difficult to accept. The fact that the family aren’t here tells me we haven’t made it clear enough that they are free to come and go, to visit when they wish, and remain within their family group on the veranda. We’re not getting the message across that although the buildings are different, our customs can remain intact.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ Liz told him, and she meant it because the more she saw and heard of this man, the more she understood his deep, abiding love for his land and his people, and his concern for every one of them.

  Khalifa knew it wasn’t an empty assurance. She really meant it, as if she already knew him in ways even friends might not fathom.

  The thought was so strange it took him a moment to process it, then he dismissed it as some fantasy that was part of whatever happened to his brain whenever he was around this woman.

  Though his brain’s reaction wasn’t nearly as bad as his body’s. Two days since he’d seen her, and one glimpse in that ICU room had had his body hardening, heating, burning…

  Escape had been the only answer, although, now she’d caught up with him, hadn’t he come to the hospital this morning to tell her something?

  Of course, the paediatrician!

  ‘On the subject of your patient,’ he began, reverting to head of the hospital, even head of the country mode, ‘I should have told you earlier. A trained neonatal paediatrician will be here…’ he checked his watch ‘…within the next hour. She’s flying down from Al Jabaya and will take over the care of the baby here at the hospital.’

  Liz Jones turned towards him, her eyes narrowing slightly.

  ‘You’re sacking me?’

  The question was asked lightly, but it was not quite a tease.

  ‘Just freeing you up to do the work I brought you here to do,’ he replied, equally lightly—he hoped! ‘You will be welcome to visit the baby, of course, and I know you’ll want to talk to Dr Hassan when she arrives, but this afternoon a driver will collect you and your luggage and drive you out to the palace. Four o’clock at the main entrance? That would suit you?’

  She wanted to argue—he could see it in the stiffening of her body and the flash of some emotion in her eyes. Not anger, he thought, perhaps offence at his attitude. A dislike of taking orders? He had no idea, but once again, when he knew full well he should be distancing himself from her, the woman had intrigued him to the extent that he was making guesses at her reactions.

  Enough!

  Anyway, she’d relaxed again, her face now blandly composed.

  ‘Four o’clock at the front entrance,’ she repeated, and he sensed she’d have liked to snap a salute. ‘I’ll make sure I’m there.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  OF COURSE he was waiting for her. Yes, a driver would have been far more sensible, but where this woman was concerned he seemed to have lost touch with what was sensible. No matter how much he told himself there was other work to do, that there were things he shouldn’t be putting off, he couldn’t overcome his urge to see her reaction to his city, to the drive to his home, to his home itself.

  ‘Is this chauffeuring a part-time job, something you do for extra cash when you’re not being a highness?’ she teased as he took her bag from her hand and tossed it in the back seat of the big, black, four-wheel drive vehicle.

  ‘I was going home anyway,’ he said, not quite a lie as he could work from the palace. But the ‘highness’ jab had struck home.

  ‘Highness is nothing more than a title, like Mr or Dr,’ he told her. ‘It was never used in our country until recently when the paparazzi began to shove it in front of our names. Now suddenly every tribal leader in the region is His Royal Highness, as if we’re European royalty. The problem is, our people are picking up on it as well.’

  He glanced towards his passenger.

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  But apparently she didn’t hear the question, for
as he’d asked it she’d turned to look out the window. The moment coincided with his driving out of the hospital gates and they were passing a new souk that had sprung up at the entrance to the new building, market stalls appearing almost overnight, selling everything from herbs and spices to women’s underwear.

  ‘Oh, the colour! I didn’t see this as we drove in,’ his passenger murmured. ‘Can we stop? May I get out and have a look?’

  He pulled over on the other side of the road, tossing up in his mind whether to stay in the car, knowing there’d be deference if he walked through the market yet wanting to share the experience with her.

  The latter won and he slipped out of the car, coming around to take her arm as she clambered awkwardly down from the high seat.

  She breathed deeply, taking in the many different aromas of the market, smiling already, although they hadn’t entered any of the narrow pathways between the stalls.

  ‘What is the smell?’ she asked, turning to him, the delight in her smile causing havoc in his chest.

  ‘Spices, rosewater, incense, coffee, lemons—a mix of all those and probably a dozen other things,’ he told her, keeping his hand on her elbow and guiding her across the road, nodding to people who greeted him but concentrating on keeping her steady on the rough, stony ground.

  ‘Oh, look at that—pyramids of colour. How do they do that? What is it?’

  She’d stopped only metres down the first alleyway where tall cones of gold and russet and green and black drew the eye.

  ‘This is the spice seller,’ he explained. ‘Spices and herbs.’

  He pointed to the drying herbs hanging in bunches from the supports that held the sheltering tent upright.

  ‘So, tell me what the spices are,’ she demanded, moving closer, her hands not quite touching the solidly built cones of spices.

  The fact that she assumed he knew which spice was which amused him. Names of spices? He knew the tastes but…

  Asking the stallholder, he translated.

  ‘The deep red is paprika, the yellow is tumeric, the greenish-grey is cumin and the black, of course, is pepper. In the big glass jar, saffron threads—see.’

  The stallholder had pulled some threads of saffron from the jar and handed them to Khalifa.

  He pressed them into Liz’s hand, feeling the softness of her skin—

  ‘But such huge stacks of it when all you use is a pinch,’ Liz said, sniffing at the saffron, half turning towards him so the softness her breast was pressed against his hand and the havoc in his body strengthened to chaos.

  ‘I think they do it to attract attention to the stall,’ he said, hoping the prosaic reply had hidden his reaction to her closeness.

  ‘Well, that works!’ she said, smiling at him in such a natural way he wanted to stay right here, holding her arm, surrounded by the noise and scents and bustle of the souk, possibly for ever.

  But she’d plunged on, finding a tall, silver coffee pot and holding it up, turning it this way and that to catch the few rays of the sun penetrating the narrow passage between stalls.

  ‘It’s a design from the south,’ he said, pointing to a triangular symbol etched on the side. ‘That’s one of the tattoos the desert women might have worn to ward off evil spirits.’

  She put the pot down, serious now.

  ‘I forgot to ask you. What happened with the relatives of your patient? Did you get in touch with them?’

  ‘My grandmother has gone down to visit them. She will tell them what has happened and bring back as many of the relatives as wish to come.’

  ‘Your grandmother? You still have a grandmother? You are lucky!’

  He had no doubt that she meant it, and remembered now her telling him of her parents’ deaths then her brother being killed.

  ‘You have no living relatives?’ he asked, and she shook her head, then she smiled and for the first time that he could remember, right there in the colour and clamour of the souk, she patted the bulge of her stomach.

  ‘Well, I suppose you could say this one will be a relative—a niece or nephew. We’d thought later…’

  Liz felt the tears sting her eyes and couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Right here, in a marketplace, in a strange country, with a strange man, she was about to give in to the tears she’d held back for so long.

  And that she was going to give in to them she had no doubt, for they were welling up inside her like a wave about to crash onto the shore.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she gabbled at her host, and without waiting for his reply she plunged back the way they’d come, past the silver coffee pot and the pyramids of spices, heading blindly for the big black vehicle, thankful it had tinted windows so her feeble-minded collapse wouldn’t be witnessed by the crowds of people entering and leaving the marketplace.

  Khalifa put his arm around her, sheltering her from the crush, feeling the tension in her muscles as she drove forward, helping her into the car, closing the door, and quickly starting the car. Just down the road and off to the left was a small oasis, rarely visited as most people preferred the big parks in the centre of the city.

  It was a beautiful place, where the red desert sands met the soft green of the tiny area, the sand hills slowly moving closer to the water but the vegetation fighting back.

  He took her there, aware that some emotion was tearing her apart, helpless to help her as she held her hands to her face, unable to stop the tears that streamed between her fingers or the sobs she muffled with her fists.

  But once he’d stopped in the shade of a squat date palm, he could put his arm around her and draw her close to his body, hoping human contact might be of comfort.

  Holding her, was, of course, a huge mistake on his part, for this close he could smell the fragrance of her hair, the scent of her body, feel the softness of her flesh, the rise and fall of her breasts as she struggled to regain her composure. He stroked her arm—her skin silky smooth, lightly tanned, with fine, sun-kissed golden hairs that flirted with his fingertips.

  And his flesh, weak as it was, delighted in all of this; his skin heated—that thin line between attraction and lust dangerously close.

  Thankfully, she moved, just slightly, in his arms, then pushed away, her glasses dropping onto the floor of the car, her hands rubbing furiously at her face, dashing away remaining tears, reddening her cheeks, tousling her hair, so when she turned to him she could only shake her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, I truly am! I had no idea all that emotion was going to come pouring out! I didn’t even know it was in there! And, believe me, I don’t do tears—not like that. Blame the hormones.’

  She was acutely embarrassed and angry with herself as well, that much was clear to see, but…

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of in emotion,’ he said quietly. ‘We all feel it, so can’t we be allowed to show it?’

  He won a smile—not the reaction he’d expected but one he enjoyed nonetheless.

  ‘Do you?’ she teased, and he must have looked bemused because she clarified the question for him. ‘Show emotion?’

  ‘Me?’ he said, but he had to smile, teasing her back. ‘But I’m a highness, remember. It wouldn’t do for me to be weeping all over the place.’

  He touched her lightly on the cheek.

  ‘Seriously, though, those tears probably needed to come out, hormones or not. It’s all very well to carry on working as if nothing has happened in your life, but losing your brother, your last living relative, that must have brought terrible pain.’

  She turned away from him—from his touch?—and…

  A memory stirred, a recent memory that had been lost in his emotional reaction to holding her in his arms.

  ‘You said the child…’

  How to put it?

  ‘The child you’re carrying—a relation—a niece or nephew? It’s not your child?’

  For a moment he thought she was going to ignore him, then she rested her hands on the bulge of her belly, smoothing the mat
erial of her tunic over it.

  Hesitating…

  Debating whether to tell him something.

  ‘The baby is Bill and Oliver’s,’ she said quietly. ‘I think I told you how they saved my sanity and kept me going when our parents died. They were my only family, and I loved them both. For years they’d talked of having a child, of getting a donor egg, finding a woman willing to be a surrogate, but every time they discussed it with me—Bill was a lawyer and Oliver’s in finance so I was the best person to talk to about it—I felt this twinge deep inside me. It took me a while to figure it out, but in the end I knew it was something I could do for them—that I wanted to do for them.’

  ‘To carry their child?’

  She looked up at him, her eyes clear now, and smiled, a smile so full of loving memories he felt his heart tear.

  ‘It made sense, you see. Using my egg would be as close to Bill’s DNA as we could get, so Oliver donated sperm and that was it.’

  ‘You make it sound so normal, but carrying someone else’s child? Giving over nine months of your life to provide your brother and his partner with a baby? Was it legal? And personally did it not bother you in the slightest? Did it not bother the two men that you wanted to do it?’

  She shook her head, the dark red hair, which had come out of its knot as she’d cried, now tumbling about her shoulders.

  ‘The legal side was okay. Surrogacy is legal as long as it’s not for profit. And of course it bothered Bill and Oliver, especially when the bloke I was going out with at the time was so horrified he dropped me like a hot potato. But once they knew I was serious, they were delighted, and just so excited. They made me see a counsellor first, and they discussed it with the same psychologist, but eventually it all fell into place.’

  Liz smiled as she remembered the joyous delight of that time—a sad smile maybe, but the pair had been beside themselves.

  ‘They went nuts,’ she told Khalifa. ‘They made recordings of their voices singing lullabies and talking—recordings I could play to the baby day or night, always changing them, telling the baby things about their lives and the lives all three would have together.’

  ‘And you? Where we you in all of this?’