Sheikh's Secret Child

by Lynn, Sophia

  “That was…” Ziyad sighed. “That was magnificent. You’re magnificent.”

  She laughed a little at his enthusiasm.

  “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been called magnificent before,” she said teasingly. “I could certainly get used to it, and to making love in a flood of butterflies.”

  “Don’t get too used to it,” he said with a slight grin. “Even I can’t empty out a national treasure on a whim. Just…perhaps once in a while.”

  She found herself looking at him with consideration, a slightly curious expression on her face.

  “You really do belong to Najma, don’t you?” she asked softly.

  For a moment, there was a haunted expression on his face, and he nodded.

  “I do,” he said, looking down. “This place is me. It belongs to me, and in a very real way, I belong to it as well. If you stay, you will learn that sooner rather than later.”

  She thought about that for a moment.

  “Is it a good thing, do you think?” she asked. “I think of Sola, you see, and she is so small. I know that once upon a time you were small as well, and this emirate is something you grew into. But sometimes, the country seems to trouble you, and she is my daughter.”

  Ziyad nodded his understanding. “You would like to spare her a life of pain. I understand that. I have only known her for a very short time, but at the end of it, I do know her, and I do love her, and I understand what you mean. I think I would do anything to spare her pain, but I believe as the daughter of the sheikh she would be spared as much pain as possible, if that makes sense? I can protect her from the world.”

  Penny was still for a long time. “But can you spare her the pain that you were given?”

  If he had said yes, she would have known it for a lie immediately. She didn’t know what she would have done if he had decided to lie to her.

  Instead, he only shrugged.

  “All I can do is swear to do my best,” he said softly. “She is precious to me, and I would not allow her to be harmed. Both of you are…so, so precious to me.”

  With a soft sigh, she rested her head on his shoulder. Everything felt both unreal and far too real. It was perfectly logical that they would be sitting on a bench in a butterfly house after making love. It was perfect.

  As she watched, an enormous butterfly easily the size of her hand detached itself from a nearby tree. It floated down in lazy circles until it was hovering right in front of them. Stilling her breath, Penny stretched her hand palm out towards it, and to her delight, it lit on her with just a puff of air. It was a bold scarlet, a gorgeous creature, and with a stunned smile, she turned to Ziyad.

  Her lover did not look surprised at all. Instead, he only smiled.

  “I have always know you were special,” he murmured. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that such creatures of air and beauty agree.”

  He dropped a gentle kiss on her cheek, careful not to frighten off her new friend, but then he sighed.

  “We should get dressed,” he said, and she wondered if she detected a small amount of regret in his tone. “As much as it would be lovely to see the rest of this place naked with you, that is likely something that we should avoid. Come on, time to get up.”

  She made a little mewling sound of protest, but she allowed him to drag her up to her feet and back to her clothes. They felt a little like limp rags in the humidity of the butterfly house, but she knew they had to go back on. She pulled her hair out of her neckline with a sigh, but then Ziyad was there, offering her his arm with a smile.

  “I don’t think I have ever seen you look so handsome,” she blurted out, and he laughed at her.

  “You are a very easy woman to please,” he said, and she felt confident enough about things that she gave him a cheeky wink.

  “Well, make sure that you keep pleasing me, then.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  For almost three weeks, things went well. When he could be at home with them, Ziyad was as attentive a father as anyone could ever want. He was fascinated by Sola, taking every opportunity to hold her and to learn about her. Penny could never bore him with stories about their daughter’s birth and about how she had grown. Most of these stories made Ziyad smile, but there were some that made him sad.

  When he had to leave the room once while she was telling him about the birth, she set the drowsing Sola back in her crib then went to him.

  She found him standing in his study, looking out pensively over the emirate that he had said more than once was his, just as he belonged to it. There was something stiff in his body that told her to tread lightly, and so she padded towards him, coming to wrap her arms around his waist from the back. She was startled when he stiffened, but then he turned around to pull her into his arms. This wasn’t an embrace that was meant to arouse her; instead, she realized he was seeking comfort. Startled, Penny hugged him firmly, and then she looked up at him.

  “Something troubles you when I speak about Sola being born,” she said quietly. “Do you think I should stop? I am never trying to wound you when we do that, please, I hope you know that.”

  He nodded slowly when she spoke, and when Penny was done, he took her hand and kissed it gently. There was something thankful about that kiss, but also something penitent about it as well, she thought. The idea made her wince, and she looked up into his dark eyes.

  “I am finding it difficult to forgive myself for not being there,” he said softly. “I think about how alone you were, how anything could have happened to you and how brave you were.”

  “And then Sola appeared, and it was all worth it,” Penny said firmly. “I will never regret anything that gave me Sola, and neither should you. If you had been there… Well, I know things would have been better, and I would give almost anything to have had you there. Otherwise, well. The past is the past, and I am willing to leave it there.”

  She thought for a moment, and then she brightened. “Put it this way, would you miss such a thing again?”

  “No, never,” he said startled.

  “Good. Then we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?”

  He blinked at her calm assessment of things, and then he laughed.

  “You are truly an exceptional woman,” he said, kissing her on the head.

  “I want you to stop thinking about the past, all right?” she said, looking up at him with clear eyes. “I can see you go back there sometimes. Sometimes it’s because of something I say, and sometimes I think it just happens because you are thinking too much. I know why you do it, and I understand, but you need to remember that nothing really lives in the past. Just ghosts and memories. Sola and I…we’re here right now. We don’t want to be without you. We…we need you here.”

  She wondered if she could see Ziyad stand up a little straighter after the words she spoke. He took a deep breath and nodded.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Entirely right. Thank you.”

  After that, they spoke no more about it, but she thought he was a little more present then, a little more aware of what was going on, and a little less likely to slip into a past that could only hurt them.

  She wondered if he had caught her slight slip. What had wanted to come out was we love you. It was getting harder and harder to keep it in as the days went by, but for some reason, whether it was pride or something else, she could not let the words past her lips. They were absolutely true. She could feel them burn in her heart, ache in her throat. She wanted to shout it to the skies, and she wanted to whisper it to him every night.

  But for some reason, she couldn’t.

  Sometimes, when she was playing with Sola or reading in the library, she wondered about it. Finally, Penny decided it was because of the risks she had taken in their relationship. She had said it first, and all but said it a second time that day in the butterfly house, and she wasn’t sure she could say it again without him saying it first.

  Penny sighed one night, snuggling Sola a little closer.

 
; She hoped he said it soon. She missed saying it to him a great deal.

  ***

  ONE AFTERNOON, ZIYAD looked up and realized he was happy with his life. The expression must have shown on his face, because the minister of finance became flustered, stumbling over his notes and apologizing for his clumsiness.

  Ziyad made a gesture for him to keep going, but his mind was elsewhere.

  He had always thought he was content enough. He was rich, he was powerful, and there were very few whims he could not indulge if he didn’t wish to. However, things had changed, and now he knew what real happiness could be. He knew that it didn’t lie in nights out on the town, or in private jets that could fly him halfway around the world if he so wished. Instead, happiness was a red-haired woman carrying a dark-haired child, and he knew they would be waiting to greet him when he came back to his home.

  This is what it means to be truly happy, he thought in wonder.

  He spent the rest of the day in a daze, and when the session was dismissed shortly after four, he knew what he had to do. He called ahead to make sure that Al-Kadath was still open for a very personal endeavor, and then he drove there as quickly as he could.

  Al-Kadath was a shop that was almost as old as the emirate. He had heard his father and grandfather discussing it at one time, talking about how long the shop had been open and how faithfully it had always served the sheikhs of Najma. It was a tradition for the sheikhs to go to Al-Kadath as if they were ordinary men, but of course nothing but the extraordinary could so keep the loyalty of the men of his lineage.

  The shop was small but possessed some of the best security and anti-theft protections in the world, and once he was inside, it was as if he were in another world. The man behind the counter was small and dark, unsmiling with a truly heroic mustache.

  “Good evening to you, Sheikh Ziyad,” the man said solemnly, and taking a deep breath, Ziyad started to speak.

  By the time he was done, the shop keeper was nodding, taking notes and making suggestions. Just a short hour later, they had agreed on an exorbitant price and a design of the shop keep’s own making.

  “No one else will have another like it,” he swore, and Ziyad grinned.

  “Good, because the woman it is for is a gem in her own right, and I would not like to see her shamed.”

  He walked back into the street, feeling as light as a feather, but that ended when a man started walking towards him.

  “Sheikh Ziyad! Sheikh Ziyad, a moment, please…”

  Ziyad wanted nothing more than to return home to his woman and his child, but he turned to the man. This too was a lesson his father had taught him, that even the least of men might have knowledge he wished to know.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you care to comment on the pictures that were released to the Shining Star?”

  Ziyad scowled at the recorder that was pushed into his face. The man was a reporter, and Ziyad had no time for a press conference.

  “No comment,” he said shortly and began to walk, but the reporter would not be denied.

  “You will want to make a report at some point,” the man insisted. “If you are going to account for your actions, you should do it with...”

  Ziyad spun towards the man with a speed that startled the reporter. In a moment, he had his forearm pressed hard against the man’s throat, pinning him to the wall.

  “If you want to bother me, you have succeeded quite well,” he said shortly. “Otherwise, believe me when I say that I have nothing for you.”

  He dropped his arm and left the man gasping on the street. Ziyad walked briskly towards his car, but something about the man’s words stuck with him. He had been reared his whole life to remember that the press would wait for him to mess up, would catch him at his worst, but something about the man’s words disturbed him.

  He wasn’t sure why his fingers were shaking when he went for his phone, but there was something coiled in readiness in the back of his mind when he brought up the page of the Shining Star, a publication that was all about gossip and half-true stories.

  Unfortunately this time, the story was intensely true and deeply personal.

  There must have been someone at the museum when he and Penny were leaving. Thank heaven they hadn’t been inside, but they had been positioned in the garage, and somehow they had gotten pictures of himself and Penny crossing to his car. If they hadn’t been loudly declaiming his vice and wondering about the sordid relationship he had with this unknown woman, he would have liked the pictures a great deal.

  Penny’s red, red hair was loose around her shoulders, and one picture had captured her smiling at him as he set his hand at the small of her back. The intimacy between them might as well have been written on their faces, and the Shining Star was quick to leap in with speculations about who she was and what she was doing so close to the sheikh. A quick glance down to the comments told him the people of the nation were already leaping into the frenzy, and he flinched away.

  Najma was his home, and he would always love it, but there were some attitudes that felt like they would take a thousand years to change.

  Out of the morass of sick fury he felt, one thought rose up as clear as crystal. He couldn’t let this hurt Penny and Sola. He couldn’t allow this to touch them. He had to protect them at all costs, and as he started to drive, he called his lawyer.

  ***

  PENNY KNEW ZIYAD got home at strange times, but this evening, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing around in curiosity. He was late, even for him, and if he didn’t get home in fairly short order, he wouldn’t even be able to put Sola to bed, something that he typically loved to do.

  Finally, she had to admit defeat and tucked Sola into her crib. She wondered if it was her imagination that there was something fussy about her daughter that night. Sola was usually an easy child to put to sleep, but tonight she cried a little, requiring a bit of rocking and some singing before she finally drifted off into a restless slumber.

  Penny concentrated on putting her child to bed, but then she had nothing to do but stay up and fret. She paced in the penthouse, which suddenly felt at once cavernous and enormous. Ever since they had slept together at the butterfly house, she and Ziyad had not spent a single night apart. Somehow, the idea of doing so now was strangely shocking.

  I know he’s busy. He had that meeting with the finance minister today, and that is definitely something that can run long. I imagine they might have chosen to get food afterward…

  She tried telling herself comforting things, because it was never a good idea to dwell on disaster, but even she knew it was unlikely. He never went to dinner without telling her so and letting her know it was a good idea to eat without him.

  Finally, she gave in temptation to text him. She didn’t like to do so very often, as it made her feel oddly dependent, but as it was nearing nine, she figured she had a good reason to do so.

  Fine, will be late, might need to spend the night here.

  The message was curt and incredibly sharp, and she winced back from it as if he had growled at her. For a few moments, she stared at the phone in her hand, startled and strangely shaken. It was just a text. It didn’t mean he was angry with her or anything like that.

  Despite her calm rationalizations, however, a part of her didn’t believe it. He had been late before, and he had never needed to spend the night anywhere but in his own bed at the penthouse. He certainly had never had to be so sharp with her before. As he was fond of mentioning, he was the emirate, and it would certainly wait for him.

  Then that meant there was something going on, something that she wasn’t being told.

  Her mind instantly filled with visions of Ziyad with other women, something that hadn’t happened since she had arrived in Najma. Once they had touched each other, kissed, shared breath, stroked each other’s skin, it had never crossed her mind that he might want to be with someone else. Now, though, when she was alone and the night outside was turning to deepest black, she could imagine it
all too clearly.

  She remembered how she had met him, and she knew well how attractive he was. Even if it wasn’t his looks that attracted other women, his money and position would have done it, and her sense that he would never betray her warred with her fears.

  He has never said he loves me, she thought with a chill.

  Over the last few weeks, the lack of those words had come to haunt her. It felt to Penny as if she could hear their echo in strange spots in their conversations, places where she should have said it to him, even places where he had seemed to want to say it to her. Yet somehow, no matter how tender their other words or how much pleasure they had given each other, those three words never came out.

  She wondered sometimes if she regretted saying those words to him in the first place, but she never could bring herself to actual regret. She had meant them the first time she’d said them, and if she were honest with herself, she still did. She still loved every part of the man. She just had no idea whether he loved her in return, and in the end, that was not something she could bear alone.

  Penny tried to calm herself down. He hadn’t told her there was a reason to be angry or worried, and that meant she shouldn’t be. She trusted him with their daughter, and that meant she should trust him with her heart…didn’t it?

  Penny curled up on the couch in the library, leaving the lights low to give it the impression of beautiful candlelight. This was where they’d had that talk when she and Sola had first come to Najma. They’d sworn to move ahead instead of back in that moment, and she had to believe it. She had to believe in a future they could share, one that all three of them could live in together.

  She looked out the window at the sparkling city below. Despite the fact that she and Sola had lived in Najma for months now, she had not actually ventured into the city on her own before. Instead, it glittered underneath her like a beautiful spread of diamonds, unknown and beckoning. Penny wondered briefly if it would ever be a home for her, if she would ever walk in the streets as easily as she had in Washington DC or Rome. She supposed it was the same for every mother with a young child. The world grew smaller and then expanded again as the child herself grew. For so long, Sola had been her world, and she liked it, but now she could feel herself start to push against the barriers. Suddenly a part of her craved the wider world, when it never had before.