Sheikh's Secret Child

by Lynn, Sophia

  The thought made her oddly nervous. She wished Ziyad would return so she could speak with him about it, to see if perhaps they could venture into the city together.

  I want this to be my city, a little like it is yours, she thought. I want to share this city with you…

  She kept that thought in her head of being with Ziyad, of sharing the city with him and wandering it together hand-in-hand, and she stared down at the city below, wishing hard that she would get to see that happen.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Penny woke with a start when she felt the warm sunlight on her face. Her head felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton, and her body felt as stiff as a bundle of wires. Carefully, she stretched out her limbs so she wouldn’t fall over, but when she stood, she felt as if she were a hundred years old.

  Well, that’s what I get for staying in the library and not getting some sleep…

  Checking on her daughter, she found Sola still fast asleep, and she jumped into the shower quickly, not having the heart to do much more than rinse off and scrub her hair. She put on new clothes, but as she changed, she found herself looking in the mirror. There was no doubt about it; her body had changed since giving birth. Her hips were broader, her flesh softer and less toned. Ziyad said he loved every part of her, loved her more since this was the body that had brought their daughter into the world, but sometimes she wondered.

  She heard a soft cry from the nursery, and she went in to find a slightly fussy Sola. Grimacing, Penny changed and fed her daughter then carried her into the living room. Usually she would set Sola down to play, but today for some reason it felt as if she couldn’t let go of her daughter. Sola, usually very easygoing, seemed to pick up on her mother’s mood, pushing her away and crying whenever Penny held her too tight. At last, Penny put her on the floor to explore, and she huddled on the couch by herself.

  She tried to convince herself that she should get up and get some food, at least some juice, but she felt oddly frozen. A curious lethargy fell over her, and it persisted until Sola crawled over to her, hauling herself up with determination on her mother’s knee. With a soft sigh, she picked Sola up, cuddling her a little.

  It would be all right. She had to believe that it would be.

  She hung on to that thought through the early morning, feeding Sola and trying to maintain as close to a normal day as she could. It worked right up until the time the elevator chimed softly and she realized Ziyad must be home.

  With her heart beating in her chest and Sola clasped tight in her arms, she went down to the first floor of the penthouse to meet him. She made it down to the living room just as he was shucking off his jacket, and her glad cry of welcome died on her lips.

  She had at least gotten some sleep on the couch in the library, even if she did feel as if that sleep had been on a bed of rocks. He looked as if he had gotten no sleep at all. Instead, his jacket was rumpled, and his tie was loose around his neck. His hair looked as if he had been raking his fingers through it for hours, and she had never seen him with such dark circles under his eyes before.

  “Oh Ziyad,” she said softly, and he looked up at the wounded sound in her voice.

  “Good morning,” he said, and his voice was hoarse as if he had been drinking all night, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? He never drank, but then he never stayed out all night, either.

  “Are you…are you all right?” she asked timidly, and he sighed.

  “Things are fine,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself more than he was talking to her. “Everything is going to be fine…”

  The anxiety she had felt over him being out all night flared up into something close to a panic, and she regarded him with caution.

  “Ziyad…where were you last night?” she asked, her voice soft. She told herself that she wanted to be reasonable, that she did not want to go flying off the handle like some kind of jealous wife, but every instinct in her was waking up and working its way into some kind of frenzy.

  He glanced at her, making a face.

  “I do not wish to talk about that right now,” he said, and his voice was so deep that it was nearly a growl. “I have been up all night, and it has not been pleasant.”

  She stared at him, wondering when he had somehow changed into another person. It didn’t seem realistic at all that the man who had touched her so sweetly and spoken so kindly just twenty-four hours ago would speak to her like that.

  Without meaning to, she squeezed Sola a little too tightly, and the tiny girl burst into tears.

  “Oh no,” Penny whispered, softening her hold and bouncing her daughter gently. Despite the fact that she was trying to comfort her daughter, she couldn’t take her eyes off of Ziyad, who was slowly taking the tie off. He moved, she thought, like a wounded bear, ready to growl and swipe at anything that looked as if it was going to give him any problems. For perhaps the first time since they had been together, she wanted to run from him, but she felt as if she were planted to the floor.

  He glanced up at Sola’s cry, but he made no move to approach, which even on its own would have been a strange thing.

  “She’s being noisy,” he observed, and it felt as if all of the stress and anger of the past night, hell, of the past year, was boiling up out of her now.

  “Well, then, why don’t you try to make her quiet!”

  The look that Ziyad gave her when she plopped the baby in his hands was almost comical, but she was too angry to enjoy it. He scowled at her as if he couldn’t believe what she just did, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she was comforted by the fact that he took a gentler grip on Sola, holding her so that she was warm and secure.

  “Stop it,” he growled. “This is not the time for…”

  “For what?” she snapped. “For me to have feelings? For me to ask you where the…where you’ve been all night? Is that not something that I’m allowed to do?”

  He scowled at her, something that would have been utterly terrifying if he didn’t have a baby dressed in lavender in his arms.

  “Woman, I am telling you that I am in no mood for a tantrum. I have had a long night, and I have precious little temper left for whatever fantasies you have conjured up in your head.”

  For a moment, she was still. It felt as if the words he had said swept all the strength out of her. She couldn’t believe he could be so cruel, or that he would look at her with that kind of impatience.

  “You’re in no mood for a tantrum? Well, I wasn’t really in a mood for you to stay out all night and leave me wondering when you would ever make it back home, either! You could have called, you could have texted, you could have sent me just a few words to let me know that you were all right…”

  “You sound like a nagging wife,” he snapped, and almost on cue, Sola started wailing.

  The sound of her cries silenced both of them. Something angry went out of Ziyad’s expression, and he cradled his daughter close.

  “I am going to get her some food and a toy,” he said at last. “If you insist on finishing this discussion, we can do it when I have put her in the playpen. Be very careful what you decide you need to finish though, Penny.”

  On that dire note, he walked out of the room, leaving her feeling as if her heart had been replaced with a heavy stone.

  Who was this man? It felt as if the only thing that remained from the man she knew yesterday was his love and care for his daughter. Somehow, Penny herself had been utterly removed from the equation.

  She stood in the living room, and for a moment, she thought she would stay frozen until he got back. Perhaps she would stay frozen until the world ended. Right now, that sounded fine.

  Suddenly, Penny had a flash of how things could go. He would return, and because she felt so frozen, she wouldn’t continue the discussion. She would tiptoe around him, he would be a growling cloud of anger for a few days, and then probably his mood would lighten and everything would return to being what it was before.

  She had seen countless friends and femal
e relatives go through the same thing, where their lives were subject to the seasons of their husbands and boyfriends, and she had always thought it was a living hell. Now she knew it was.

  Penny also knew she couldn’t confront this right now. Instead, she walked to the door, put on some socks and shoes, and entered the elevator. She had no clue where she was going, but Sola was safe in Ziyad’s care. She could leave for a while until her head cleared.

  As the elevator door closed, however, she felt tears start up in her eyes, and she knew that nothing would ever be the same.

  ***

  AS HE CARRIED Sola to her playpen, Ziyad was almost exquisitely aware of his baby daughter’s delicacy. She was so small and fragile, and all she had to protect her in the world were her parents. He knew now in a way he hadn’t known when he first laid eyes on her that the world could be a terrifying place, and the thought of Penny being Sola’s only bulwark for so long softened his irritation.

  He placed a now-placid Sola into her playpen, and for a moment, he simply looked down at his daughter, offering her a finger to wrap her hand around. She looked up at him solemnly, and he felt some of his anger drain away.

  That was the last way he’d wanted to greet Penny, but the meeting with his lawyers had gone into overtime to say the least. He had been out for blood, and they had been trying to restrain him at a time when he certainly did not want to be restrained. All he cared about was making sure that his small family was safe.

  “I will keep you safe,” he swore to Sola, and almost as if she understood him, she smiled.

  When he made his way back to the living room, he was calm. He was ready to tell Penny everything, to comfort her about what a bear he had been, to apologize. He hadn’t intended to snap at her like that, and when he thought of her face just before he had swept off, it made his heart ache.

  “Penny, I’m…”

  He looked around the living room in surprise. With a frown, Ziyad started to look through each room, but as each and every one of them came up empty, the panic that had been biting at the edges of his brain flared up into a fully-formed wildfire. For a moment, every terrible thing that could have happened flashed through his mind, and then he shook it off.

  Instead, he ran for his phone and started dialing. The only thing that would save this situation was fast action.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Penny was startled by how warm and pleasant Najma was. In some ways, despite the arid nature of the desert city, there was something about it that reminded her of Rome. There was some of Rome’s easy Mediterranean hospitality, and also some of Rome’s high sense of fashion and style. In her simple green dress, Penny felt very plain compared to some of the women who went about in high style.

  Being invisible in a big city had never bothered her before, and it certainly didn’t bother her now. She walked close to the edge of the sidewalk, thinking about what had happened and what came next. She had to go back to Ziyad, she had to speak calmly to him and tell him that he could not speak to her like that. After that, hopefully they would put together a plan to prevent that from happening again.

  It was a good plan, and now that she was out of the situation itself, she knew it would likely work. She just needed to walk for a little longer, safely ignored, until she could get her wits about her. Then she would return to the apartment and they could figure out what was going on.

  At least, that was the plan.

  But then suddenly, somehow, she went from being ignored to being the center of attention.

  A voice cried out something in Arabic, and then a tall woman in a suit was striding towards her, a recorder in her hand. For a moment, Penny was convinced that the woman was heading towards someone else. She looked around to see who it could be, and by the time she realized it was in fact her, the woman was nearly on top of her.

  “You were seen with Sheikh Ziyad at the arboretum,” the woman said in lightly accented English. “Who are you? What were you doing there with him?”

  “I…I don’t know what you mean,” Penny stuttered, and she knew with painful clarity that it sounded like the lie that it was. “Please, I don’t want to talk with you…”

  She started walking quickly down the sidewalk, but the woman followed her, still waving the recorder in front of Penny’s face.

  “You were seen with him. Are you his girlfriend? Are you an old lover of his?”

  Penny could feel her face heat red hot with every one of the woman’s fast, hard words. Somehow, they made what she had with Ziyad feel dirty and upsetting, cheap. She couldn’t find anything to respond with, so she simply sped up, but the woman was keeping pace with her, barking question after question.

  She had been invisible when she’d walked down this street before, but now she wasn’t. Suddenly, the woman was drawing attention towards her, and though most of the people were speaking in Arabic, she heard enough of the English to make her head spin.

  Is that the girl that was in the news?

  Yes, she has the red hair, just like the picture did!

  She was with the sheikh?

  Who is she?

  Is she his mistress? How disgraceful!

  Slut…

  The words pounded against her as if they were fists, and now there was a crowd following along as well. The words they were saying were growing uglier and more speculative, and the woman with the recorder was doing everything short of grabbing her arm and turning her around. Penny could feel tears gather at the back of her throat, but somehow, she kept her head down and kept walking. She would not give these people the satisfaction of a response. She would not allow them to beat her.

  She hadn’t realized she had walked so far. The road back to the penthouse looked ridiculously long, and then she realized with horror that she would be leading them right back to the sanctuary that Ziyad had created, straight to the place where her daughter slept. Penny realized she couldn’t do that.

  In a panic, she reached for her phone, hands shaking and ready to dial for someone, anyone to help, but the reporter tried to snatch it out of her hand, leading to it getting dropped on the ground. The crowd seemed to shift at that, and more than one person dove for her phone, causing an uproar that seemed deafening.

  Penny was paralyzed, and for a moment, she was sure that it was over. The mob of people would get out of hand, and she would simply be overwhelmed.

  She took a deep breath, ready to run for it as soon as she saw a break, but then she heard a roar of fury. Penny looked up just in time to see some of the crowd start to run for it, and then cutting through the crowd with a truly impressive rage was Ziyad. At first she could barely believe what she was seeing; it took her a few moments to realize she was actually rescued.

  One of the mob, obviously not realizing who it was, tried to step up to Ziyad, ready to fight, and Ziyad barely spared him half a glance. Instead, he drove his fist into the man’s stomach, leaving him shaking on the street to be gathered up by the police who were behind him.

  After that, the crowd dispersed quickly, leaving only the woman with the recorder next to Penny. Penny could at least admire the woman’s bravery. Even in the face of Ziyad’s anger, she held up her recorder, asking him something in Arabic. In response, he took her recorder from her, dropped it on the ground, and with a single stomp reduced it to rubble.

  “If I were you,” he said in English, “I would get the hell out of here. Perhaps even find a new emirate.”

  It was only then that the reporter took off running down the street, and Penny, collapsing into Ziyad’s arms, knew she was finally safe.

  ***

  THEY WERE SILENT on the ride home, and Ziyad didn’t speak until they were in the penthouse. Penny opened her mouth to apologize for what had happened, and then he swept her up in his arms. She was startled to feel him shaking.

  She started to say something, but then he drew back, shaking his head.

  “Just a moment.”

  She heard him go up to the nursery, and then he was es
corting the babysitter that they kept on retainer when they wanted a day out. They both thanked the woman for her quick service, and then Ziyad and Penny were on the couch, Sola seated comfortably in Ziyad’s lap.

  “I am so sorry,” Ziyad started. “For everything…”

  “I was the one who ran out,” Penny objected, but he held up a hand to forestall her.

  “Please. I need to say this to you.” He took a deep breath, appearing to brace himself before he could start.

  “Yesterday, it came to my attention that a newspaper had somehow gotten pictures of us together when we were leaving the arboretum. I have been very discreet about our relationship, and of course that made the news explode. I was…unprepared for this, to say the least. Last night, I was up all night with my lawyers, trying to figure out what could be done, what should be done, and I allowed my fear and my pain to get away from me. I am so sorry for that; that is what led to our fight this morning, and I will never be able to apologize enough for that.

  “The people you saw…they are only a small sample of the attention we have received. I have hinted at this matter to you before, but my country is a startlingly conservative one. I am working to change it. So are the people I trust most. But it can be unpleasant, and today it even became dangerous.”

  He took a deep breath, and Penny couldn’t resist reaching over to take his hand. He looked at her gratefully, and he squeezed it tightly before he continued.

  “I have been a fool,” he said quietly. “I thought I could protect you by keeping you ignorant of this, and instead I put you into greater danger. Can you forgive me?”

  He looked so desolate that Penny couldn’t resist throwing her arms around him.

  “Don’t keep me in the dark again,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t shut me out. We can do anything as long as we are in this together, I truly believe it.”