by Ella Brooke
“Thank you,” she said, taking the cell with trembling hands. Then she dialed up the connection. As Gaila slipped out of the room, the screen flickered to life and Celeste came onscreen. “Hey, I need to come home.”
Chapter Twelve
“Do you think that Olivia’s been acting oddly today?” Rami asked Waheed as he pushed the papers on his desk aside. “She’s been so quiet.”
Waheed shook his head. “Sire, if you’ll forgive my forward nature.”
“Your always forward by nature, Waheed, it’s why I keep you around.” Rami smiled a bit at that, but his heart wasn’t in it. “What is it?”
“I never thought that marrying an American infidel was a good idea. You may have been able to ply her with luxury and trips and, ahem, other things, but if she’s finally having homesickness hit her, if she’s not happy, then it’s understandable. My original intention was for house arrest. I didn’t expect a love connection.”
“But you haven’t been with her. It was something magical in Dubai, and since then she’s been so happy, all until yesterday. Then she just seems different. I don’t know what happened. I let her talk with Ms. Holmes again. It should be making her happy, to see part of her old life. I don’t understand.”
“Yes, I can’t imagine how having a direct line to a friend she hasn’t seen in months would make her wish she were back home in New York or traveling again in London.”
“Waheed,” Rami said, his tone like ice. “You only have so much room and permission to be forward with me.”
“Of course, sire, but I need to protect you, even from yourself. I’ve been expecting things with the American---”
“She has a name!”
“I’ve been expecting things with the American to go south, truly I have.”
“Well, I won’t let them. There has to be a way to reach her, and I’ll start with dinner tonight. Have the chef cook up the finest French meal he can provide. It’ll be like that first night of our honeymoon in Dubai. We can recapture that magic, I know we can.”
“Sire…”
“Do it, Waheed, immediately.”
***
He cut into his crepe with delicate strokes, his attention focused completely on Olivia. Her eyes seemed shiny with unshed tears and her breath came in shuddering gasps every few minutes. Why was she like this? What could he possibly have done to offend her in the last few days?
I must find out. I can’t lose her, not like I lost Etana.
“Red, my love, what’s wrong? You have to tell me,” he said. If Waheed were here or his father were alive, both men would say that he was being too solicitous. Sheikh Ramul would have demanded absolute compliance and did, even from his mother. However, that’s not what he wanted. He’d already forced Olivia into enough. He knew he couldn’t make her open her heart’s secrets to him, but he could make the dinner friendly enough that she might take the plunge herself. “Are you alright? You look so very sad.”
Olivia swiped at her eyes, and if she thought she was being subtle, then his sheikha was sorely mistaken. “I’m fine. I haven’t been sleeping well. I think I have this crink in my neck and a bit of indigestion lately. I think that if I get past what’s ailing me and get some sleep, then I should be fine.”
“It seems like more than that. Yesterday, you mentioned children. I’d never ask that of you so early in our relationship. I want time to show you the world, to let you reap all the benefits of being essentially queen of Yomarani. Then there’s your career. I know you want to do more with design. I’d be happy to help there. Obviously, there’s more than enough time to get to children, to have that conversation when you’re ready.”
She looked up at him, her eyes so shiny and luminous, like deep green pools of sorrow. “I just don’t know what I want.”
“What do you mean?”
Olivia didn’t get a chance to answer. Before she could, a thunderous noise resounded through the halls along with the shattering of glass. Alarmed, Rami bolted to his feet and barked orders at his guard. But as they were all mobilizing, American soldiers burst into the room with machine guns raised. From between them, a man in a neat three-piece suit stepped to the fore. He held up a piece of paper and passed it to Rami.
Enraged, the sheikh read the decree between shaking hands. “What?”
“I’m Colton Raine from the American embassy. Ms. Celeste Holmes and our British compatriots have been on the line with us. We’ve been working the legal loopholes for months. You let Ms. Joiner come with us, or it will result in an international incident. You have no right to her now.”
A cold blast shot through Rami’s heart, as if an Arctic wind was curling through his chest. “What?” He turned to his Red and eyed her. “You don’t want to go, do you?”
Olivia held her head high even as her chin wobbled a bit as she spoke. “I have to, Rami. I just can’t stay. Not anymore.”
She surged forward and he grabbed her arm, out of instinct more than out of rationality. “You can’t go. I won’t allow it.”
Tears finally sprang from his beloved’s eyes as she spoke. “You can’t stop it.”
There was the sound of a gun being cocked, and Rami looked up to find Mr. Raine staring at them both. “Again, we wouldn’t want to cause an international incident. Now, Sheikh Zaman, let the girl go.”
***
Nothing felt right.
She’d been at the American embassy in London for over a week. It was her pit stop there and a way to spend time with Celeste before she finally made her way home to New York City. Celeste treated her like she hadn’t even been gone. They’d gone shopping at the most exclusive places (on Celeste’s dime, obviously), lunched, had tea, and spent long nights talking with each other. Okay, more accurately, Celeste talked about anything and everything---how she’d worked tirelessly to arrange Olivia’s rescue for months, the ups and downs currently in fashion, and even the snowy and wretched London weather. But as they neared their seventh night together, it became obvious that Celeste couldn’t continue to talk about the real issues weighing on her mind.
Finally, after exhausting every bit of chitchat and persiflage possible, Celeste broached the Issue that Shall Not Be Named with Olivia.
“So?” she asked, taking a sip of her club soda. “What are you going to do with it?” As if Olivia could possibly be confused about the meaning of her friend’s words, the other woman gestured toward her abdomen. “I know some good doctors here in town, ones who helped friends of mine when they got in trouble. I could arrange…”
“No!” Olivia snapped, unsure of where such a fierce protective streak had come from. She didn’t want to be a mother, was terrified she’d be awful at it, but there was no way she’d ever get rid of anything she and Rami had made together, let alone a child. She might not be the right mother for the life growing inside of her, but there was some woman out there who would be. “I think I need to get home to the States and talk to adoption agencies.” She smiled sadly and rubbed her slight bump. “This baby can make someone so happy. It was only that one time that managed to make this miracle. I don’t want to screw them up, but I know someone can be the right mom.”
Celeste frowned. “Do you want to do that to your body?”
“I’d never do anything but carry him or her. Rami and I…we made something good, and I think that matters. I’m just sorry I’m messed up.”
“You’re not ‘messed up,’ luv.”
“Yes I am. I’m almost thirty with no job. I work for hours each day till I collapse when I was an assistant, and the most I know about mothering comes down to which nanny service has the best people to hire out to raise my kid for me. I haven’t even spoken to my dad since I graduated from college, and he ended up with a new stepfamily. You know, apparently the kind you stick around for. No kid wants a mom who doesn’t know how to mother. I need to find some nurturing couple where this is the one thing they can’t have on their own, one that already has a nursery set up and a slew of names picked out.�
�
“You sound so sad when you talk about where your baby will end up. If you want to keep it…”
“Yes?”
Celeste sat up taller and then drained her drink. “If you do, then you can. There’s no shame in that. You seemed so wrecked on Skype that day, and I thought you’d start feeling better now that you aren’t a prisoner, but I don’t know if that’s true anymore.”
Olivia sighed and stroked her belly, thinking of how many times she and Rami had made love since their first time in Dubai, how often they’d joined together, almost as if their souls had entangled and become one. She missed him, and what she’d done wasn’t right, to hide the child from him, but at the same time, she’d be so bad at being a mother. He and the baby both deserved so much more.
“I wasn’t a prisoner. You can point fingers at me and yell ‘Stockholm syndrome,’ but it wasn’t like that at all. He was sweet and considerate.”
“I’m sure Belle said that about the Beast.”
“Yet she married her Prince Charming that way too, didn’t she?” Olivia asked. “I just can’t bring a child into that either, can I? How do I explain when they’re old enough? ‘Oh, you know, your dad and I met when I was in his dungeon for breaking and entering.’ I can’t…but I miss him, and I think about him a lot. Sometimes I daydream about what it would be like to have him and our child. We’d be at the park or something simple, and he’d push the child so high on the swing, and it would be simple but good.”
“That’s not exactly the reality,” Celeste said, her tone low and considerate.
“But he’s a sweet man. I hate that I’m so screwed up, that I can’t be the one for him.”
“I think you need more time to rest, luv,” Celeste said, as she stood up and kissed her forehead. “When you’re back in New York, figuring everything out, then you’ll see how much better distance probably is. I think you need to settle your feelings for him once and for all.”
“That’s what Gaila said.”
“Who?”
“My servant. God, that sounds weird or snotty or possibly both. Gaila was the older woman who helped take care of me there. She’s the one who snuck the unmonitored phone to connect us. I don’t know what I want. I wasn’t happy there, and I’m even more miserable here.”
Celeste sighed and stroked her cheek. “You’ll figure it out. Just listen to your heart.”
“But what if it’s guiding me in the wrong way?”
“It can’t do that.”
***
Two Months Later
She wasn’t in New York. She wasn’t in London. God, she was stuck back at her mother’s home in Bel Air, Maryland, and feeling every inch the beached whale she was by now. There was no way for her to make rent and keep things working with no job in New York City, so she’d begged for her mother’s mercy and come home. Now she was chided every day and had that death glare from her mother once she got home from her judge duties. Of course, Anna Beth Sewell (she’d gone back to her maiden name long ago) was the preeminent judge of Montgomery County. Her almost twenty-nine-year-old daughter pregnant by a foreigner? Now she was a disaster and an embarrassment.
Sighing, she leaned back against her headboard and stroked the expanse of her stomach. Since leaving Yomarani, she’d gained about fifteen pounds and felt like a stranger in her own body. The one salvation in any of this was her talented OB/GYN, who was a rock against the rain of bullshit that was her mother. Somehow, she’d find a way for her and her son, for the baby she’d fallen in love with since she’d first seen the ultrasound. There was no way she could give him up after seeing his little limbs and nose. No way she could part with him once she felt the first kick. He was hers, and she’d have to learn on the fly how to be a good mother. Maybe she could start by doing the opposite of everything her own mother did.
It was nice that she’d let Olivia stay, but she suspected her mother was only doing it to give out lectures and guilt trips every minute she possibly could.
“Oh little one, what have I done?”
“I’d like to know the answer to that question as well.”
She blinked. There was no mistaking that masculine bass of a voice or the whiff of cloves that always surrounded Rami. Shocked, Olivia craned her neck to see him standing in her doorway with a huge stuffed teddy bear clutched to his chest. Instinct prompted her to try jumping up from the bed, and she groaned when her new roly-poly body resisted that effort. Falling back onto the mattress, she let out an “umph.”
“Let me come to you, Red,” Rami said.
She frowned back at him even as he handed her the bear. Its soft fur felt so luxurious and she gaped back at him. “Is this mink?”
“Only the best for the next sheikh or sheikha of Yomarani. I’ve been looking for you for a month.”
“Huh?”
“Gaila came clean with me. She told me exactly why you left. Apparently, she believes in that old adage, ‘If you love something, then let it go free,’ but she assumed you’d be back far sooner. Once I knew you were with child, of course I went crazy trying to find you. It took longer than I anticipated since I had no idea your mother was where you were staying or that different names were involved.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “I had no idea you were looking for me. Why would you after what I did?”
He lay down next to her on the bed and then started to reach out to her rounded belly. Rami paused before he touched her and then looked at Olivia with wide, imploring eyes. “May I?”
“You’re welcome to touch our son, of course.”
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing before her. “Our son?”
“Yes, and now you have to hate me because I ran.”
“No, I need to understand why you did it,” he said, resting his hand on her stomach, his face wide with wonder. “If I can understand why you ran, then I can understand how to win you back.”
“I ran because I’m a mess, Rami. My mom barely talks to me, and she was never around when I was a kid. When we do ‘talk,’ it only means that she’s lecturing me about what a failure I am. Dad’s been gone since forever. I don’t know how to be a good parent. I’m so scared of how to take care of him.”
“But you’re keeping him?”
“Of course, but I just…how can I be a good mother when I never had one? I think you deserve more than me, than what a mess I am. You deserve so much more.”
Rami kissed her temple, and she had missed the scrape of his goatee against her skin. “I have more. I fell in love with you from the moment I met you at Aladdin’s Den. There was something special about you, so raw and honest. You add in your bravery and selflessness, the ways you worked to save your friend…how could I not love you?”
“Because I’m ordinary and unemployed and a screw up. Because I don’t know how to do anything right.”
“I disagree. Besides, I had a wife before and a daughter.”
“What?” she stiffened in his embrace, wondering if he were the type to jettison a whole family as her father had been. “I don’t understand.”
Rami regarded her, his golden honey eyes full of raw pain. “Etana was wonderful and outspoken, like you, a complete spitfire. Then she had a troubled delivery and…they didn’t make it. I’ve waited almost six years to try and have a family again. I want this so badly, Olivia. Let’s try. I know how overwhelming it can feel to prepare to be a parent. We all worry we’ll mess up, and, you know? We probably will, but we’ll probably do a lot right as well. Please, I have another shot for a family and so do you. We can be exactly who we want to be and the kind of parents we’ve always dreamed of being.”
Rami leaned forward and kissed her, his tongue tangling devilishly with her own. “I love you, Olivia Joiner, and I’ll never find anyone else like you. Please, come home with me.”
“Home?” She liked the sound of that, the enticing nature of a place where she belonged and a place where she was loved.
“Yes, come home, my sheikha. Your people need y
ou, our son needs you.” He kissed her again, this time trapping her bottom lip between his teeth before he spoke. “I need you.”
“Even if I’m a fat, pregnant mess?”
He set the bear on the floor beside the bed and straddled her. God, how she wished she hadn’t worn her fluffy flannel sushi pajamas, that she had anything else to show for herself.
I must look like an idiot.
“I think,” he said, stroking her neck, “that you’re never been more beautiful to me.”
“What?”
He reached down and unbuttoned her flannel top with alacrity that impressed her. “I’ve missed you.” Rami grinned down at her breasts that had already started to swell and grow with her influx of hormones. “I’ve missed so much of you.”
She wanted to object, to say that she wasn’t anything special, but then his talented tongue was flicking over the rigid peak of her right nipple. She bucked her hips against his as best as she could and let out a gasp.
“Rami, please, I need you too.”
Usually, he’d tease her, make her wait for everything, but already his right hand had snaked its way under the waistband of her pants and was stroking through the soft down of her hair. Then he slid one finger over her private lips, its soft caress driving her mad. She moaned again, glad her mother would be in court for hours. Then she bucked against him once more.
“Now, please.”
“I love when you need me,” he said as he broke away from her nipple just long enough to say that.
He slid the pants off of her and her panties as well; Olivia helped where she could by wriggling her hips so that they slipped off more easily. Then he caressed her thighs, his fingers skimming over the backs of her knees, making her laugh at the tickling sensation creeping over her. His tongue was still flipping fast over her nipple, massaging it into a stiff peak and making her ache for full release. Wetness pooled between her thighs and she was so ready for him, and also so glad she’d read What to Expect When You’re Expecting. She knew for a fact that sex, if done gently, wouldn’t hurt the baby. Otherwise, she might be too freaked out to try this, no matter how much her most sensitive bundle of nerves throbbed.
