9
THREE YEARS LATER
MATERNITY WARD AT UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
“What’re you going to name him?” Carmen asked as she pulled a chair up to the bed and leaned in close.
Lora took a breath and looked down at her newborn son, freshly bathed and swathed in a blue blanket, his face still puckered, eyes still unfocused. He doesn’t look like Mark at all, she thought. Thank God.
“Damascus,” Lora replied without hesitating. “My prince Damascus.”
Carmen raised a thin, perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Um . . . OK. That’s a bit . . . Middle Eastern, don’t you think?” She glanced at the baby and then up at Lora, smirking a little before whispering: “He is Mark’s, isn’t he?”
“Carmen!” Lora said, eyes going wide, her milk-laden breasts bouncing as she sat up in bed. “What’re you implying?”
Carmen shrugged. “Well, you did spend an hour with Sheikh Amir.”
“Yes, that was three years ago! And he didn’t touch me! And I resent the implication that I would even think about—”
“Whoa, girl,” Carmen said, raising her hands and laughing. “I’m kidding, you moron! Just wishful thinking! Things would be so much better right now if this were the Sheikh’s baby and not that asshole Mark’s.”
Lora closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. She didn’t want to upset little Damascus on his second day on Earth. Things were going to be hard enough for him growing up without a father. Well, not really without a father—more like with a lying, cheating, asshole for a father.
“Where is Mark, anyway?” Carmen said. “Was he here yesterday for the birth?”
“You think I’d let him into the room? Not that he showed up, anyway. Which is a good sign. I don’t want him anywhere near Damascus. Better for a boy to have no father than someone like Mark. God, Carmen. Why didn’t I listen to you? How stupid could I be?! The signs were there, right in front of my face!”
And so were my instincts, Lora thought as the memories of that surreal week in Johaar came rushing back to her. For a moment she felt a sudden yearning for Carmen’s joke to be true: What if this were the Sheikh’s child? But then she shook her head and smiled down at Damascus. This wasn’t going to be a fairytale, she reminded herself. This is reality. The Sheikh would probably have been a cheating dirtbag as well. Nope, no fairytale, hon. That’s why those stories where the king swoops in for the rescue are called fairytales: because they’re make believe. That stuff doesn’t happen.
The pre-nup had pretty much nixed any chance of Lora getting more than just the minimum child-support from Mark. She’d get nothing in the divorce. Truth was, she didn’t want anything in the damned divorce. The man had cheated on her while she was pregnant—not once, not twice, but three times! She wanted him out of her life. Out of her child’s life. Any money she got from him would be tainted, as far as she was concerned—hell, she wouldn’t even take child support if she thought she could make ends meet without it. Mark was toxic, a symbol of her own naïveté, stupidity, and arrogance. Yes, arrogance. After all, she’d fallen into that trap so many women before her had: Where you believe you can turn a cheater into a good husband and a good father.
A good father . . . a good husband . . . a good . . . king? The thought came drifting out of the ether, and Lora was taken back to what she’d read about Sheikh’s Privilege three years earlier: That if a Sheikh allowed a wedding to proceed in his kingdom, he was committing himself to the marriage in a way too.
Stop it, she told herself as she touched the wisps of brown hair on Damascus’s head. You’re just feeling scared and alone and you want some security. It’s a natural feeling and you’ll have to fight it until you beat it back.
“How long do you get for maternity leave?” Carmen asked, breaking her from the daydream.
“Five weeks. Then we’ll see.”
“What do you mean by we’ll see?”
“I mean we’ll see. Things at the University have been a bit . . . unstable.”
“Unstable like how?” Carmen said, frowning and pulling her chair closer.
Lora sighed. “Enrollment has been down this year. Alumni donations have been down. The university endowment fund isn’t doing as well as it needs.” She forced a weak smile. “Maybe your prediction about the library becoming just a room with couches and phone-chargers is going to come true. Problem is, it might happen this year.”
“Layoffs? You’re kidding me, right?” Carmen snorted and swiped the air. “They’re not going to fire a librarian who’s a new single mom. Nobody does that. Besides, don’t you have tenure or something?”
“You know that tenure is only for professors with PhDs. Librarian isn’t a tenure track position. I’m probably OK, but who knows. There are eight assistant librarians, and honestly, most of our jobs could be done by part-time graduate student workers. In fact, they’ve been bumping up the work-study hours, since there’s some kind of tax deduction for that. And after taking time off for the pregnancy . . .”
“You can’t be penalized for taking maternity leave!” Carmen shouted. “That’s illegal discrimination!”
Lora smiled and pulled her newborn son close. “I’m not being penalized for anything except marrying Mark.” Then she glanced down at Damascus. “Though there was something good that came out of that too.”
Carmen went silent and then nodded. “You can sue Mark for more than just child-support. To hell with the pre-nup. We’ll find a good lawyer, and you can get a judge to throw out the pre-nup and take him for everything he’s got. You deserve it, Lora.”
Do I, Lora thought as she gazed dreamily at the pink hospital walls. I married Mark for all the wrong reasons. Hell, part of the reason I signed those papers and took those vows was because I was so turned around after what happened with Sheikh Amir!
And what did happen with the Sheikh three years ago, she wondered. Almost nothing, really. He kissed you before you’d even said two sentences to each other. Then you spent less than an hour with him before storming out of his chambers and marrying Mark. Everything else is just your imagination, just the fantasy of a bookish girl who read too many fairytales of princes and princesses.
They talked for a while and then Carmen left. She’d be back in three hours to take Lora home from the hospital. Lora sat up in bed and turned on her phone for the first time in what seemed like days. She smiled as she scrolled through the “Congratulations!” and “OMG YOU’RE A MOMMY!” messages. Then she lost the smile when she saw the email from work.
“Human resources,” she said, panic ripping through her as she read the brief letter informing her of a meeting with the university’s HR staff the day after she was released from the hospital. “No way. Not like this. They can’t. They won’t.”
But they did, and two days later, Lora Langhorne was walking out of the university’s ugly administrative building with a severance package and a handshake from the HR lady who couldn’t even look her in the damned eye.
“They can’t cut the academic positions,” the HR person had explained, lowering her voice as if she was risking her life by revealing state secrets. “And they won’t cut the athletic coaches and staff, because good sports teams sell tickets and bring in alumni donations.”
What about cutting you? Lora had wanted to ask, blinking in disbelief both at what was happening and at the sudden burst of anger and indignation whipping through her. At some level she’d seen this coming for almost a year: Librarians were not a growth industry—hell, even the head librarian had been restless for months. But to get the message three days after giving birth . . . it just seemed like a joke. A scene from a cheesy daytime soap.
Or perhaps the beginning to a fairytale, Lora thought as she glided out of the HR building, barely conscious of her own footsteps on the stone pathway. She glanced down as she walked, and for a moment th
e gray stone looked like the colorful cobblestones of a street she’d walked three years ago, back when all of this had begun.
She glanced at the letter in her hand, flicking open to the severance package. It was a tidy sum: Not retirement level income, but a good lumpsum payment even after taxes. It included health insurance for another six months, and she also had some savings. She wasn’t going to contest the pre-nup, and so the divorce was going to be quick and painless, which meant Mark would start paying child support almost immediately.
What the hell, she thought as she walked that cobblestone path toward where Carmen was waiting in the car with little Damascus. It was a teenage girl’s fantasy that led me to Johaar three years ago. Maybe it’s that same fantasy that’s leading me back there. And perhaps it’s fitting: I was there for my wedding. Why not be there for my divorce.
10
“We’d be divorced by now if we’d ever gotten married, Marissa. So please spare me the act. Now, what is it you want? Why are you here?” the Sheikh asked, his green eyes going dark when he saw his ex-fiancée perched like an elegant bird of prey on the red divan in the anteroom of Johaar’s Royal Palace. She had black hair and blue eyes, a striking combination that the Sheikh had once found captivating. Now it just sickened him.
“Amir,” she said. “It’s been three years. Things are different now. I’m different now. I wasn’t ready back then. In some ways I was still a child, still just—”
“Please stop right there,” said the Sheikh, raising a hand and glaring at his attendants before waving them out of the room. “You were very much a woman back then, and you are very much a woman right now. What you did was unconscionable, and it is over, Marissa. Once and forever. You made your choice back then, and there is no going back.”
Marissa’s blue eyes flashed as she stood and walked through the anteroom and into the Palace’s day-chambers. The Sheikh watched her strut across the floor like she owned the damned place, and for a moment he considered having her physically thrown out the front gates. But he took a breath and slowly followed her instead, glancing at her slender buttocks move beneath the dark blue sundress that seemed a bit too short for her height.
She stopped in the center of the room and turned, glancing at him with a half-smile that he knew she’d rehearsed in front of the mirror a hundred times. He’d seen her do it. Amir had no problem with vanity—hell, he enjoyed looking at himself in the mirror too. But Marissa was at a different level. An unhealthy level. Perhaps a dangerous level.
“Amir,” she said, still in that half-turned stance, bottoms sticking up, chest pushed out, lips full and red. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“Tell that to the child whose chance at life you took away,” Amir said without blinking, his voice dead, his eyes cold. “My child. Your child!”
Marissa blinked but remained fixed in her pose. “I understand you’re living in the world of a hundred years ago,” she said, “but nowadays a woman has the right to have an abortion.”
“Agreed,” said the Sheikh. “And a man has the right to walk away from a woman and never look back. Which is what I did three years ago. Goodbye, Marissa. It would be polite to offer you some tea and refreshments, but I am choosing to offer you nothing more than an escort to the front door and perhaps a car to the airport.”
“You’re still angry after all these years,” she said softly, shaking her head. “Amir, we can have another child. Ten more children. I’m ready now. I wasn’t then. Everyone deserves to be forgiven. How can you be so cold-hearted?”
“Marissa,” the Sheikh said, walking up to her but not close enough for her to touch him. “Three years ago you were pregnant with my child. Then you decided you did not want to look fat in your wedding dress, and you chose to have an abortion.” He clenched his fists and closed his eyes as he tried not to raise his voice. “A woman who ends a life so she can look good in a photograph dares to call me cold-hearted?”
Marissa blinked again, and the Sheikh could see the wheels turning behind those blue eyes. “I did it for you, Amir. I knew it would look bad to have the Sheikh’s wife pregnant before marriage. I made the decision to preserve your reputation! The reputation of the Royal Families of Johaar and Monestonia.”
The Sheikh paused as he considered her words. He didn’t believe her for a moment, but he was trying to figure out why she was here. It certainly wasn’t because she was pining away for him. Perhaps she thought she loved him, but he knew she was not capable of truly loving anyone but herself. And her showing up here was too sudden to be a coincidence.
Slowly he circled her as he rubbed his stubble and thought. Marissa was a minor Princess of the small European kingdom of Monestonia. She was not in line for the throne: There were two cousins in the direct line of ascension, and she could not realistically hope to be queen. Was that why she was here? Was she hearing the clock tick? Not her biological clock—she was still barely twenty-six—but the clock that told her time was running out if she wanted to wear a crown on her head. Had she decided that Amir was her best bet at getting a crown? Had she spent the past three years weighing her options before deciding that her best bet was still to be Queen of Johaar because she wasn’t going to be Queen of Monestonia or anything else?
“Drop the charade, Marissa,” he whispered, finally getting close enough where he could smell her French perfume, see the makeup laid thick on her fragile white skin. “You’re here because you want something.”
“I want you, Amir,” she said, her blue eyes softening to where he almost believed her.
“Do not waste my time. Yes, clearly you do want me, but not in the way you would have me believe. What is your game here? You may as well just tell me, because I am not going to believe any manufactured stories about how you are a changed woman or how ready you are to be a mother or whatever else you have scripted for this visit.”
Her blue eyes almost flashed red as her lips tightened. But she stayed quiet for a long moment, blinking twice as if considering her options once again. Then she nodded and walked over to the set of green velvet couches with old teakwood frames and sat herself down, crossing her legs and then uncrossing them as she made herself comfortable.
“All right, Amir,” she said, her tone signaling that perhaps she was indeed ready to come clean. “Here goes. Have you been following the news about Monestonia?”
Amir raised an eyebrow. He’d barely been following the news about his own kingdom, let alone some inconsequential monarchy in Eastern Europe. He blinked and shook his head.
“My cousins have both announced their intentions to abdicate,” Marissa said, her blue eyes almost changing color again in a way that made the Sheikh wonder if she was human. “They’ve made public statements that the age of kings and queens is past, and once their father and mother pass on, it will be the end of the monarchy. They have no interest in becoming figureheads sitting on thrones, they say.”
Amir grunted and shrugged. “That is not shocking,” he said. “Monestonia’s monarchy has been mostly for show anyway. Your uncle and aunt never did exercise the full extent of their power. Your country already holds elections for some state officials. I can see it becoming similar to the situation in England. The monarchy is just for show.”
“But the show is important!” Marissa said, leaning forward on her seat, her tight cleavage aimed squarely at the Sheikh. “The show is everything!”
Amir sighed. “All right, Marissa. Go on. What do you want?”
“I told you,” Marissa replied firmly. “I want you. As my husband.”
“You know that is impossible,” Amir replied without a moment’s hesitation. “That will never happen. We do not love each other, and we never will.”
“Who gives a damn about love? This is about something bigger, Amir.”
“Yes. Your ego. Now get out before I have you unceremoniously thrown out.”
Marissa calmly le
aned back on the green velvet, crossing one leg over her knee and folding her arms across her chest. “You’re still so angry, Amir.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “And it’s not just anger at what I did three years ago. You’re angry with yourself too.”
“Yes. For ever trusting you. Now I told you to get out, did I not?”
Marissa laughed and shook her head. “You are still a child, aren’t you? Just a hot-headed teenage boy with big muscles and a crown on your head. You say I have a big ego, insist that I am a horrible person. Perhaps. But at least I know who I am and I accept it. I know that I get pleasure from looking good and feeling good and getting my good side photographed for the glamour magazines. You, on the other hand, Great Sheikh, have no idea what you want to be when you grow up.” She paused, those blue eyes narrowing in triumph. “Am I right? I am, aren’t I? You’re so angry at yourself right now, and you’re taking it out on me because you can’t face whatever it is you hate yourself for! What is it that you can’t forgive yourself for? Your father? Your mother? Some other woman?”
Amir almost stumbled over a wooden figurine as he took two steps towards Marissa. She was a shallow, vain woman, but there was something in what she’d said that hit home. He blinked as he took a seat across from her and stared into her cold blue eyes. The past three years had been very hard for him in a way he couldn’t quite understand. Perhaps he’d never really come to terms with his father’s death. Perhaps it was that same old fear that he’d end up like the old man before his time. Perhaps it was something else.
Or perhaps . . . perhaps it was someone else.
An image of a woman in a yellow sundress whipped past his mind’s eye as he stared at Marissa, and suddenly he could taste that woman’s lips again, smell her feminine scent again, feel the warmth in her big brown eyes once more. He could picture her walking into his chambers the day before her wedding, partly terrified, partly excited. And he could hear himself telling her that her marriage would fail, that she was marrying a man who did not give a damn about her.
Privilege for the Sheikh Page 6