by Sophia Lynn
The first time she had to go to work properly, however, Abir had startled her.
“I'll take them,” he said, as if it was normal, as if of course he would take their kids.
She gave him a skeptical look.
“You will. You'll take them.”
“Of course. I have the routine down, and if necessary, you and Lauren are only a call away, aren't you?”
Lia bit her lip. It felt as if they were crossing a line that they couldn't cross back over. They had come a long way, but were they ready for this yet?
“We are. But um. There's three of them and only one of you. You've not had all three of them on your own before.”
Abir gave her a fond and slightly exasperated look.
“It has to happen at some point, doesn't it?” he asked. “After all, it's not like I'm helpless. And if I have any issues, Siraj and Nidal are here.”
“Your security detail is not equipped to help you deal with cranky toddlers,” she said. “And besides, that's well beyond their pay-grade. Terrorists are one thing. A Viola that doesn't want to be put down for a nap is quite another.”
That was another thing that had taken some getting used to. Abir had had to argue with his palace security and with his ministers for his extended absence from home. His word was technically law, and while he could theoretically do as he pleased, there were, as he had told her, expectations.
“They're a formality,” he said, “I promise. You'll start to ignore them after a while.”
She hadn't, actually, and more than once, she had startled everyone by trying to go out and make sure that the security officers posted outside her house or Abir's had food or water. They had looked more uncomfortable than not with her intrusion, but she supposed that like anything else, it was a work in progress.
Her phone chimed again, and when she read the message, Lia flinched.
“Okay, I really need to get downtown. You're sure you have this?” she asked, and Abir nodded firmly.
“We are going to be just fine. Do what you need to do and then come back. You'll find that the house is standing and the children are fine.”
“All right. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”
She dropped kisses on the heads of her playing children, who paid exactly no attention to her departure at all, and then, like it or not, she was out the door.
Lia had thought that the real separation anxiety had been dealt with ages ago when she had first returned to work, but on her way out the door, she was startled by her urge to stay. Hunter wanted to show Abir something he had drawn while Henry was sitting with Viola, 'reading' a book to her as she listened intently.
It's my family, she thought, slightly surprised. I don't want to leave them at all.
Then her phone chirped again, reminding her that yes, this was a real crisis, and yes, she did need to show up to do her job, and she forced the door closed behind her.
Lia liked her job, loved it as a matter of fact. Every day, she got to work with people who were passionate about the books that they were putting into the world, who were devoted to getting voices that had not been heard before up to where they could make a difference, and who loved stories as much as she did.
It was a challenging day, featuring an author's legal team and some truly unfortunate decisions that had been made in good faith along the way, and Lia found herself consumed by it, only rising up out of the morass to check her phone a few times throughout her workday. Around noon, there had been nothing from Abir, and she sent him a text
I'm just checking in, she told herself. Not doing anything else. There's nothing wrong with checking in, he's never been on his own so long with the kids before this.
She sent the text, thought about sending another one, and then just when she had decided she was going to, she got a text in return.
“All good here! Just getting lunch ready!”
It was followed by a string of smiley faces and thumbs up, a sure sign he had passed the phone to Henry, who felt as if emojis were their own form of language, and she put her phone away with a smile. It was going to be all right, of course it was.
It wasn't until she was back on the train heading home that she got a text from Lauren. She answered it, blinking at the message.
“So did you ever stop laughing yourself sick?”
Huh?
“What are you talking about?”
A brief pause.
“You mean he didn't tell you?!”
“Tell me what?”
Lia was just beginning to get worried about what she should have been told when a picture came through.
It took her a moment to figure out what was happening, and then she started to laugh.
It was Henry and Viola, covered in what looked like an enormous quantity of brownie batter, and just beyond them, a gleeful Hunter was actually using a spoon to scrape the brownie batter off of Henry's arm, the chocolate around his mouth evidence that he had been doing that for a little while.
“When did he send this to you?” Lia texted when she had gotten her composure back
“Just a few hours ago! The poor guy, he got a little lost, I think. Too many dirty little kids, not sure what needed to happen first. I got him on the right track.”
“Thanks! We owe you one!”
Lia couldn't restrain a smile as she made her way up to the door. It didn't matter if she was confronted with a mess. It was more about being with her family again, and maybe just a little bit about teasing Abir.
She came in the door to the smell of something delicious baking and a chorus of hellos from the living room. She wondered briefly when she had started thinking of Abir's house as her house as well, but that mattered less than the three children who were all demanding her attention at once. She admired their pictures, and then when they had dissipated, she turned to Abir, who was doing some work of his own on his tablet at the dining room table.
“Whatever that is smells great,” she said, nodding at the oven.
Abir frowned one last time at the tablet and set it aside to give her a smile. It came to her in that moment that she would have liked nothing more than to lean over and to kiss him, but she held herself back. They weren't... well. Were they? She didn't know. She didn't want to rock whatever little peace they had found for themselves in the here and now.
“It's a trick that Lauren was telling me about,” he said. “It's croissant dough rolled up with jam inside it. It's not incredibly healthy, but it's hot, and I thought you would like something sweet tonight. I took the liberty of ordering from that Italian place we had last week.”
“Oh, Luigi's? That's great. And yes, I've been craving something sweet all day. I was just, you know, for some reason, thinking of brownies.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, Abir gave her a look of such startled and frozen guilt that she couldn't help herself. She started to laugh even harder than she had on the train, shaking her head.
“Lauren told you,” Abir said, chagrined. “It was fine. I was only asking her for some... consulting experience.”
“It's fine, it's fine. Clothes can be washed. So can kids. What happened?”
Abir rubbed his eyes, and her laughter died down to a soft chuckle. The poor guy. This really wasn't his area of expertise, but he was learning.
“It was incredible. One moment I had a bowl of chocolate brownie batter, the next I had two monsters covered in chocolate and a third who was looking to become so.”
“I'm not a monster,” Henry shouted from the other room, and a chorus of agreements came from Hunter and Viola.
“You can be,” Lia called back, and she turned to Abir with a grin.
“You know, they're not really joking when they say that you can never take your eyes off of them. It's just impossible. I didn't come home to a devastated kitchen, so it's a win.”
“I will take the win,” he said with a grin of his own. “I swear. I have untangled trade negotiations with three countries on the verge of walking ou
t of the conference entirely, and I was somehow less exhausted then.”
“Get some rest now,” Lia said. “I'll take over. That is to say, I will get the sweet treats out of the oven, and I will answer the door for spaghetti.”
There was something incredibly sweet about that evening, Lia thought as they got the kids bathed and put to bed. It wasn't a balloon ride over the countryside or an escape to sunny Paris, but there was something about caring for three children, their three children, together that made her heart swell and grow sweet. More than once she found herself looking at Abir out of the corner of her eye, taking in his calm with the kids, his gentleness and his clear love for them, and she was a little breathless.
He still makes my heart beat faster, she realized. It's just that it's beating faster for different things now. This feels like… this feels like it could really be our second chance together.
They both ended up in the living room after the kids were in bed. Lia wondered for a moment at when they had gotten so very comfortable with each other that they could sit side by side on the couch together, letting the stress of the day roll off of them.
“And thank heaven for the laundry service. That chocolate was just caked on, and you should have seen the bathwater after I got the three of them cleaned...”
“How much longer can this last?” Lia said suddenly. It was as if the warm soft glow of the single lamp they had left lit was loosening her and relaxing her in a way that she hadn't been in a long time. Maybe she had never been this relaxed, she didn't know.
“What?” Abir asked, turning to her curiously, and she waved a hand to encompass the house, the kids, Abir himself.
“All of this,” she said. “All of the – Abir, you're the Sheikh of Shujae.”
“Well, given the fact that that is in fact the role that I have been raised to take up since I was small, yes I am—”
“Don't get clever with me,” she snorted. “For real. You are the sheikh of one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East. You've been making a good go of it. You've somehow been running a country via telecommuting and as far as I can tell, doing a good job of it—”
“Thank you.”
“Ha, well. What I want to know is what happens when you need to go home. When your duties come up and no matter what you feel, you have to abide by them.”
Abir flinched.
“You remember me saying that,” he said. It wasn't a question.
“Christ, Abir, of course I do. I was ready to – to throw my heart at you, and you turned around and told me you were getting married.”
She had thought the wound was healed over. She had thought that in the intervening years, she had learned to put it away. Now, sitting on a couch with Abir years from where they had been, she found that there was still a rawness to it that could take her breath away.
“I'm sorry,” Abir said, his voice soft. “I can't tell you how sorry I was, how sorry I still am. My father's health was failing. It was something that was expected of me. It was my duty.”
“Yeah,” Lia said, swallowing hard. “You said that too.”
“I wouldn't make the same decision today.”
She frowned, her head coming up. He wasn't looking at her, instead staring off into the middle distance. The look on his face was pensive, serious, but not sad.
“I am Shujae,” he said finally. “It's something that my ancestors have said, both to good effects and to ill. We must live for the country, but to do that, we must live. I am no longer willing to sacrifice everything I care about simply to bow to tradition.”
Lia's heart beat a heavy tattoo in her chest. What would it have been like to hear those words four years ago, if Abir had truly believed them, if he had really been willing to act on them? Things might be very different indeed.
“I hope that's true,” she said quietly. “If you are here for the long haul, those kids sleeping upstairs are going to need it to be true. I will too.”
“Our children, even when covered in batter, are a joy and a revelation. I will always do what I must to hold them first, to be their father in any way that they need.”
There was a silence then, and Lia told herself that it was everything that she had wanted. This was the most important thing, to know that Abir would be there for Henry, Hunter and Viola no matter what, that his duty wouldn't rob them of having their baba. She needed to know that he would be there, and Abir's calm resolve told her he would.
That's all I need, she told herself firmly. That's all that's important.
She was just ready to tell Abir good night and retreat to her own bedroom, when he took her hand in his. She caught her breath at the surprise, at how warm his hand was and how it felt enveloping hers.
“I told you I was sorry, back then,” he said.
“You did. Over and over again.”
“And you told me that I should never speak to you again. That if you ever wanted to speak to me again, you would tell me, but that I shouldn't hold my breath.”
“Yes, I remember saying that.” God, she had been so furious. She could remember saying that and many other things less kind.
“Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?”
Lia felt as if she had been struck in the chest.
“God, Abir, couldn't you guess?”
“Tell me.” There was a ragged note in his voice again, and his hand closed over hers more tightly. “Tell me why, if you were pregnant, if you knew you were going to have my children, you didn't tell me.”
There were perhaps a hundred answers she could have given him. She could have said that as precarious as her life was, she had it handled. She could say that she was afraid of what the media circus might do, what people all over the world might say about three innocent children who only had the bad luck of having unwise parents. It would have been true, and then they might never have to speak about it again.
However, what came out was nothing but the truth.
“Because you didn't want me,” she cried softly. “Because that's what it meant under all of the rest, wasn't it? You didn't want me, and how could I know that you would want three kids who were partially me, and— Abir, you didn't want me!”
She had told herself years ago that she wasn't going to cry over Abir any longer. She had, in fact, told herself this many times, and every time, she had been wrong. There was always the stressed night, the midnight longing, and now she couldn't resist the tears rolling down her face. She uttered a soft and frustrated cry, standing to flee, but Abir refused to let go of her hand.
“Lia—”
“It's true,” she said miserably. “Maybe you wanted me, but it wasn't enough, and—”
A moment later, she found herself crushed to Abir's chest, his strong arms going around in the embrace that it felt as if she had been craving for the last four years. For pride's sake, she might have pushed away, but instead she only clung to him.
“Cry if you need to,” Abir whispered. “It's all right. I'm so sorry, darling. I will say it until I die if that's what you want. But I want you. I have always wanted you. I never stopped wanting you.”
“Do you want me now?” Lia asked, taking a deep breath. She felt as if she were teetering on the edge of some high windswept cliff. She could step back to safety, but she thought as the winds gusted around her that she was more likely to fall.
“Every day of my life,” he said. “Of course I want you.”
Lia took a deep breath and threw herself over the cliff.
She leaned up to kiss Abir full on the mouth, and a split second of surprise later, he was kissing her in return, his arms tightening around her, his lips moving over hers.
“Tell me you want me,” she murmured against his mouth. “Tell me that, please.”
“I want you,” he said immediately. “I have never wanted anything more than I want you right this moment, right here and right now.”
His mouth gentled just slightly, and his kiss moved lower, down her chin and lifting her head so he
could nuzzle at her throat. There were already sparks of desire flying through her body, and it was as if she was setting herself aflame with his kisses, where his hands grazed her face, where he was pressed to her.
“Let me take you to bed,” he whispered, coming back up to nuzzle at her ear. “Let me make up in some small part for what we have lost...”
“Yes,” Lia murmured, and then she yelped as he swept her up in his arms. She forgot sometimes, how very strong he was, and he carried her up the first flight of stairs and the second to the isolated master bedroom.
“Good grief,” Lia said, looking around in surprise. “Were you keeping this all to yourself?”
The master bedroom was as large as the kitchen and living room of her own house put together. It was lavishly decorated in the heavy red and gold style that she recognized as being traditionally of Shujae, and the bed, oh the bed looked as if it was a good mile wide.
“Of course I was keeping it all to myself,” Abir retorted. “I wasn't going to share it with anyone who wasn't you, was I?”
Something about the way he said that made her want to pause, to make him explain exactly what he meant, but then he was kissing her again, supporting her with his hands on her rear and kissing her mouth as if he had never tasted anything half as good, never kissed anyone half as perfect.
Lia lost herself in the kiss, and then he was laying her down on the bed, coming to rest over her with the weight of his body supported on his elbows but pinning her deliciously to the mattress.
“We were too fast the night of the party,” he murmured between kisses. “It was too dark, too rushed—”
“I had a good time,” Lia said with a giggle, and she got a light playful nip to her shoulder for her sass.
“I did as well. What I'm saying, Lia, is that right now, I want you to have a better than good time. I want all of you. I want to see you. I want to feel you.”
Lia sighed as Abir went to work on her clothing. It was sensual in a way that she didn't have words for, having him reveal her layer by layer.
