by Lynn, Sophia
With a gentle tug, she was in his arms. One hand came down to caress her cheek with the utmost gentleness before tilting her face up for a kiss. It was a kiss that asked nothing of itself and yet made her whimper just a little bit with how powerful it was. She could feel his passion for her in every touch, and she could feel how much he needed her as well. The raw emotion there coursed through her, and she wanted nothing more than to surrender everything she was over to him. Nothing had ever called to her the way this man did.
Without thinking of it, her arms were around him, pulling him closer. They kissed, lost in their own sensual haze, and then she felt his body respond to hers, elemental and male, and she knew that she had to stop things before they got altogether out of hand.
“Wait,” she murmured. “Stop. We need to talk before...before we can...”
For a moment, his arms tightened around her, and she wanted nothing more than to fall back towards him. However, though it took everything she had, she took a step back, and he sighed and nodded.
“I think you have some of the worst timing in the world, but yes, let's talk. Would you like to go up to the library?”
“You have a...? Of course you do. Please, I would love that.”
The library was not an enormous room, but it was lined with books, and a round table dominated the center of it. Off to one side right next to a gorgeous bank of windows was a couch, and that was where he took her.
“I love this room,” she said, looking around. “It's so unexpected...”
“I took my lessons from tutors in a room very much like this one when I was young,” he said. “Perhaps someday Sola could do the same.”
It struck her as such a lonely thing, to be taught alone and in a place with no other children, but she dismissed it. If she were honest with herself, school hadn't been so wonderful for her that she would object if Ziyad had something better to offer.
“So I think we need to decide where we are,” he said, and she looked at him.
“I agree,” she said slowly. “But before we do that, there are some questions I would like answered.”
Ziyad tilted his head slightly to look at her, but he nodded. “To be honest, I have a few things I would like to know about you as well. Would you like to start?”
“Yes...why didn't you come back? To Rome, I mean?”
He was silent, and she fidgeted with the edge of her sweater. It was a question she had turned over and over the entire time they had been apart.
“It may not be important to you, but...but it is very important to me,” she added.
He took her hand in his, warm and loving, and for a moment, they were simply still together.
“It is very important to me too,” he said gravely. “And you have every right to demand an explanation. It is strange, but sometimes it feels as if no time has passed at all between then and now. Sometimes, it feels painfully new, us being apart like this...”
Penny held her breath, because she knew exactly what he meant. Sometimes it felt as if she hadn't seen him for a million years, and then other times, the sadness and pain reared up, making it feel as if it had been just a short while since he had disappeared. Still, she didn't encourage him. Right now, it was up to him to explain himself, and she had made plenty of excuses for him over the years, excuses that had thinned until finally she’d had to give them up.
“At the end of the day, it was fear and stress,” he said softly, not looking at her. “My father had just died, and though he prepared me well for the governance of the country, he could not prepare me for all of it. In all of the confusion of that time, in all of the pain and all of the newness of being the sheikh, I told myself that I could not bring you into it. When I look back, however, what I see is cowardice. I see someone who was so afraid that he could not bear to have the one person who might have comforted him, who had brought him more peace than he had ever deserved to have.
“For that, I will apologize for the rest of my life, if that is what you wish. Even if I had decided that we could never be together, there were kinder ways by far to tell you than to let you know by way of a messenger. I didn't realize--I didn't think at the time that that would hurt you, but when I think of it now, I can see that it must have. Please...please believe me that it was never my intention to hurt you or to harm you. All I wanted was to make sure that you were as well taken care of as you could be...”
It took Penny a few moments to find her voice, and with it, she came up with the old fear at the back of her mind, the one that had haunted her in the months of pregnancy and even now could have her waking up, tears of grief in her eyes.
“So it wasn't a pay off?” she asked, her voice trembling a little. “It wasn't just you saying that you’d had a good time and now you were done?”
He looked shocked. “No! My god, what you must think of me. No, I would never do that to anyone, and to think that I would do it to you...!”
She started to say something, but then he swept her into his arms, hugging her fiercely. It felt like this was the embrace that she had been waiting for. He made her feel as if she would never be alone again, and though she liked to think she wasn't a child who believed in fairy tales, it was something that made her warm.
Finally, he released her, and she wiped at her suspiciously damp eyes.
“Sorry,” Penny sniffled. “After Sola was born, it felt as if I was always getting overwrought about things. I'm going to blame my hormones for being so very different after giving birth.”
Ziyad nodded, but his face was still serious. “I do have a question that I need to ask you.”
“All right. I suppose that's fair.”
He paused, and she could see the doubt and turmoil on his face. He was a man who lived his life by decisive action. To see him so hesitant was a strange thing, but after a moment, he looked up at her again.
“Why didn't you tell me about Sola?”
She blinked at him, and he looked away.
“You must have known you were pregnant while you were still in Rome,” he said. “Then you carried her and gave birth to her, and then she was a newborn who was growing... Why in all that time did you choose to keep her from me?”
He swallowed hard, and she could tell this was something painful for him. Something that must have troubled him over the past week.
“Surely you must have known that if you needed me, I would have helped? Perhaps even if I couldn't have been there, I could be relied upon to...”
She couldn't stand to hear it any longer. She placed her hand over his mouth, making his eyes open in surprise.
“No,” she said gently. “I didn't know about Sola until after you had left Rome. I'll show you her birth certificate, if you like. I must have gotten pregnant not long before you left, and I definitely did not even begin to suspect until much later. Looking back, it should have been obvious, but I was a lot more naïve about things at the time. When we were actually together, I had no clue. Believe me, if I’d thought that I was pregnant, you would have been the first one to know it, I swear. After...”
She bit her lip. She wasn't sure if she had ever made herself so vulnerable to him before, which was a strange thing to say about the only man who had ever seen her fully naked. Still she hesitated, and then Penny decided that if he could find the courage to ask her that question, then she could find the courage to answer it.
“After that... I don't know. Every step of the way, I wanted to. I wanted to know what you thought of this doctor or that hospital, or how you felt about the idea of having a midwife, or what you thought of the other parents at the neo-natal group. I wanted you with me at strange moments, and sometimes I cried at night because I felt so alone with something as enormous as the pregnancy and the responsibility for a child.
“But I was afraid. I was afraid that if I reached out for help, you would reject me. Perhaps you would simply be silent, or worse, you would be irritated. Then you would send me out of your life, and I would know for sure that you had never
cared about me at all, and that was something I could not bear.”
To her shock, he stood up and stepped away from her. For a frantic moment, it felt as if all of Penny's worst fears had come true. He was leaving, and there was nothing she could do about it, and her body simply ached with the idea of his being gone again.
Instead of leaving her, however, Ziyad pulled her up to her feet. Shocked, she looked up into his eyes, and she had never seem them so dark or so serious.
“I am so, so sorry for everything that I made you think,” he said harshly. “I can't... I am so sorry, and I swear to you, right now in this moment, that I will do my utmost to make sure that never happens again.”
Penny didn't know what to say to that, but then she was being snatched up into a tight hug, held so tightly and so securely that it took her breath away. In that moment, she believed him. This was a man who would never let anything stand in their way again, and she loved him for it.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say it, but she couldn't. Even if a part of her cried out to say the words that had been in her heart for so long, she couldn't. That would change with time, she thought, but perhaps not today.
When he finally released her, she stepped back to look up at him.
“So this is our new beginning?” she asked. “This is where we begin again?”
“Sort of,” he said with a slight smile. “This is where we start getting back to where we should have been all along...”
Chapter Fifteen
The next few weeks passed in a blissful blur for Penny. There were a few bumps here and there as she and Ziyad found their way together. She had never thought that fitting someone else into her routine would be so challenging, but whenever he wasn't performing his duties to his emirate, he was learning more about Sola, asking Penny why she did things one way rather than another, trying to figure out his place in all of it.
One of their first real conflicts came about when he collapsed on the couch next to her one night after Sola had had a particularly fussy day. Their daughter was generally a happy baby, but the flipside seemed to be that when she got agitated, it could take a great deal of time and effort to calm her down again.
“Tomorrow, we should look into hiring a nanny,” he said, shaking his head. “Having someone else take her on when she's fussing would be fantastic.”
Penny had laughed until she realized how very serious Ziyad was. Then she had stared at him blankly, not really understanding what he meant.
“Like...you want someone to come in and look after our daughter?”
“Of course,” Ziyad said as if it were a foregone conclusion. “I know some families who have nannies starting from the time the little ones are brought home from the hospital. I had assumed that we would give it a few weeks until you were more comfortable in Najma, but that it was something that we would be doing eventually.”
Penny stared at him, shocked.
“I take very good care of Sola,” she said, her voice rising a little. “Are you telling me that I can't handle her?”
Ziyad looked shocked, and he straightened up to look into her eyes.
“Not at all,” he said in surprise. “It is just that we are wealthy enough to do as we like, and at the end of the day, there are some tasks that can be handed over to people who will perform them just as well as we would.”
Penny felt as if something in her was burning. All she knew was that she could not let this happen. She shook her head hard and got up from the couch. When Ziyad tried to take her hand, she shook him away.
“I'm fine,” she said, aware that her voice was more than a little waspish. “I just...I just need to walk for a moment, and then I'll come back and talk rationally.”
She went to her own room for a few minutes of peace. She had her own room just as he had his, and they had slept separately ever since she’d come to Najma. She knew it was for the best, but for the last few weeks, she had been longing for him. The small taste she’d had of what they could be like together back in DC wasn't enough, not anymore, and she outright craved him. Right now, however, she was grateful for the space apart, because it gave her time to think.
Finally, Penny thought she had a good grip on her temper, and she returned. Ziyad looked oddly relieved, and it occurred to her to wonder if he thought she was going to leave permanently every time they had a charged confrontation.
“I can't stand the idea of getting a nanny,” she said. “It feels to me that if I get a nanny, I will be breaking some kind of tie with Sola that I do not want to break. It feels like I am not living up to my job of taking care of her. It would be another thing, I think, if I was busy and wanted to work, or if I was somehow incapable of caring for her. But for you to get me a nanny for her now, I think I would only see it one of two ways. First...you think I am uninterested in caring for my daughter--”
“No, of course I would never think that!”
“--or second, that you think I am not taking good care of her.”
In response, Ziyad stood up and gathered her into his arms. “Never. I will never think that.”
She let him comfort her for a moment, because her nerves were shockingly on edge, but then she pulled back to look at him quizzically.
“If you don't think either of those things, why did you want to get a nanny? I mean, I spend all of my time at home, and when I go out, I take her with me.”
He shrugged. “I suppose it is because every other couple I know has a nanny or two. Having a nanny allows them to do as they please without worrying about what kind of care their child is getting. And of course, that was how I was raised, though how much of that was because my mother died young, I don't know. It never seemed like such a bad way to grow up...”
There was something slightly lost in his voice that made Penny's heart cry out. She wasn't even sure if he knew it was there. Of course if he had been raised by women who were paid for the task, he would think it was fine.
“There's nothing wrong at all with hiring a nanny,” she said emphatically. “After all, if the child is getting enough love and care, I'm not sure it matters where it is coming from. However, I think that I'm doing pretty well, and if I'm not, then you should let me know.”
“You are doing an amazing job,” he said with a smile. “I have never known anyone as devoted as you are, and that is nothing but the truth. However...”
“However?”
“However, I will say that there are some things in Najma I think you would love, but they are a little complicated, if not impossible, with a baby in tow. I suppose things can wait until Sola is a little older, or perhaps you are not interested at all, but it does make me a little sad, that's all. This is a beautiful country, and I wish you could see a little more of it than what exists in the tower.”
Penny reached out to squeeze his hand. Surprised, he took it and looked at her, slightly startled to see her grin.
“Well, I can't say I disagree with you there,” she said with a smile. “Why don't you let me introduce you to the idea of a babysitter?”
Chapter Sixteen
Of course, things were different in Najma. The babysitter turned out to be a very skilled woman from an internationally recognized childcare firm who came with a list of recommendations a mile long. Penny sat with the woman for an hour to make sure she got along well with Sola and vice versa, and relaxed when she saw how Sola responded.
After that, she and Ziyad decided that was more than enough preparation to get them out the door for at least a day.
“God, it feels strange,” she mused. “Ever since she was born, I've been with Sola, and now the idea of leaving the house without her feels...I don't know.”
Ziyad chuckled a little. “Well, if it helps, I've only been with her for a month or so, and I feel the exact same way. You were right about the nanny, it turns out. This is good for now, and if we ever end up tied up with things when she gets a bit older, it might be a good idea. But right now, I have to say that knowing you are with her is a
good thing.”
Penny stretched, feeling oddly both bereft and free at the same time. There had been a brief moment of near-panic when she had put Sola in the other woman's arms, but after a short whimper, Sola had been quiet, and Penny and Ziyad had made their escape.
Now they were in his car, zipping through the streets as if he owned them, and she couldn't help sneaking glances at him out of the corner of her eye. There was something so ridiculously handsome about him, and a part of her couldn't help but feel as if time had rolled back somehow. She wouldn't have given up Sola for anything, but right now, she felt like she was back in Rome, ready to be seduced and enchanted by the man driving the car with devastating ease and grace.
“You still haven't told me where we are going,” she said. “All you said was to dress lightly.”
“That's very observant of you,” he said solemnly. “I hope that Sola inherits her observation skills from you.”
Penny snorted at him, lightly slapping him on the arm. “And I really hope she gets your sarcastic sense of humor. I'm sure that will help her out a lot as she moves forward in life. Still don't know where we're going, though.”
“And of course you have noticed that I am still not telling you.”
“Fine, keep your secrets.”
She might have teased Ziyad, but there was a part of her that was just fine with not knowing. She didn't need to know where they were going to enjoy the sun through the car’s windows, or to enjoy the way Ziyad's thigh muscles bunched and flexed when he braked. Somehow, it had been the most natural thing in the world to set her hand on his thigh while they were driving.