by Jane Porter
Her father, who had once adored her mother, ended up despising her. Foolish, weak, ridiculous, he’d call her. And then years later after the divorce was finally settled and her mother turned to pills to cope, she’d sit and cry and cry, I’m foolish, and weak, and ridiculous.
Men despised ridiculous women. And women despised themselves when they became ridiculous.
Rou could not become ridiculous. She couldn’t bear for Zayed to ever despise her. She wouldn’t give him the opportunity, either.
Her chin lifted a notch. “I miss my work. I need to return to work.”
He leaned back in his chair. “That’s fine. We agreed that you would continue to work, and that you’d travel for your work.”
He didn’t care, she thought. She didn’t matter. And pain burst inside her, hot, livid, scorching. He would never care for her. He couldn’t, too damaged by guilt and loss. “But I won’t be returning,” she said quietly, fighting to stay in control. “I have an office, and a home, in San Francisco. It’s pointless being here. I’m not needed here and I am needed there. Besides, we agreed the marriage was just temporary, so why drag it out?”
He lifted his hands. “Why, indeed?”
Her heart was breaking and he didn’t care. He didn’t care at all. “So that’s that,” she flashed, pain and fury getting the best of her. “That’s all I had to do? Pack my bags, book a ticket and go?”
“You’re not a prisoner. You were free to leave anytime you wanted.”
His lack of expression, his lack of emotion, his lack of everything pierced her, wounding her to the core. She’d given up so much for him and it meant nothing to him. “I see how it is then,” she said, voice trembling with rage. “You’ve met your responsibility. You’ve done exactly as you were required. Married. Become king. And now you have no more need of me.”
“I never said that.”
“No, but since marrying me you’ve scarcely spent a moment in my presence. We’ve had five nights together out of two weeks. The rest of the time you’re absent. You don’t even return calls. Do you dislike me so much, King Fehr? Is it that difficult, that uncomfortable to spend time with me?”
“I’m not avoiding you to punish you—”
“So you are avoiding me?”
He took a deep breath as if fighting for patience. “I have work to do. Staff and cabinet members and dignitaries to meet. The country was without a ruler for nearly a month, and there’s much that happened, much that needs to be attended to.”
“But not your new wife. She’s just a woman. An afterthought.”
“Now you’re being childish.”
“Maybe,” she said slowly, “but at least I’m honest. At least I can say I need more.” Her lips curved into a fragile smile. “At least I can admit I needed you.”
She waited for him to speak, waited for him to say something that would make sense of the past couple weeks, weeks where she’d tried so hard to be patient for him, and available for him, and do everything she’d want someone to do for her. But he never thought of her. He didn’t have the time or ability to think of her.
Seconds crept by without Zayed speaking. Instead he looked at her, his gaze shuttered, his beautiful hard face impassive, and she realized he was hollow and he wanted to remain so. He liked feeling nothing. He liked being dead. But she didn’t. Getting close to Zayed had made her aware that feelings and emotions could be good things. Feelings and emotions could add to your life, not detract.
But not if they weren’t returned.
And not if they weren’t shared.
“My passport?” she whispered, extending her hand.
He reached into his desk, unlocked an inner drawer and retrieved her passport. Although he held it in his hand he made no move to stand up and give it to her. He just held it.
Say something, she mentally willed. Say something that will help me forgive and forget. Something that will allow me to stay.
But he said nothing, and after a long minute she walked to the desk, reached out and took the passport from his hand.
“Goodbye, Zayed,” she said calmly, meeting his gaze, willing the terrible hurt inside her to be still. “Good luck.”
Zayed let her go.
From his chair behind his desk he watched her walk out the door, passport gripped tightly in her hand.
If he felt anything, he refused to acknowledge it, suppressing every emotion with ruthless intent. Better to let her walk away now, he told himself. She didn’t belong here. She’d never belonged with him. At least this way she’d be safe.
He’d rather hurt than have her hurt, although he knew she already hurt. He had hurt her, despite his promise to protect her. He’d tried to protect her, though. He’d tried to stay away, minimize his impact on her life, keep her from getting entangled in his world and his problems. But his world was complicated and consuming, and he didn’t know how to be the king Sarq needed and the man she needed, and his loyalties were clear. Sarq came first. His family second. And Rou…?
He shook his head, jaw clamped so tight it ached.
Rou was tough, and smart. A scientist with a huge career. She’d be fine. She’d always be fine.
Ten minutes later, he heard an engine motor and then from his window he glimpsed one of the palace Mercedes disappearing down the drive toward the gates surrounding the palace compound.
Regret, hot and bitter, rushed through him.
He would miss her. He had missed her these past ten days. God only knew how close he’d come to falling in love with her.
As it was, he didn’t sleep well at night. He’d wanted to pick up the phone every other hour in Isi to call her just to hear her voice. She’d been beautiful when she’d stormed his office earlier. The sun had kissed her cheeks, giving her a golden glow while her hair had new, lighter, brighter highlights. In her emerald-green tunic and white slacks she’d looked fierce and fiery and oh so proud.
And oh so hurt.
Regret squeezed his chest, wrapping his heart in a viselike grip.
His Rou. He hoped she’d be fine. She had to be fine. She wasn’t a fragile female. She was a modern woman with a demanding career. She’d forget him in no time. He on the other hand…
Zayed put a hand to his temple where it throbbed. It had pounded for days now. Nothing helped it. Nothing would.
If he weren’t Zayed Fehr…
If it weren’t for the curse…
She’ll be fine, he silently repeated. You’re the one that might not recover.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHARIF FEHR Found Alive.
Heart pounding, stomach churning, Rou read the Chicago Tribune newspaper headlines again.
Eighty Days After Disappearance, King Sharif Fehr Alive.
Her hands shook so badly, and the churning in her stomach became genuine nausea. Rou held her breath a moment, battling the queasy sensation, and tried to read the paper, but her hands were still trembling so much that the paper shook, making it impossible to read two words, much less the entire article.
Jerkily she set the paper on the small Chicago coffee shop table and smoothed it flat.
Sharif alive? Alive. Her hands felt clammy and her mind raced. Was it possible? Could it be possible? If so, it was a miracle. A miracle.
My God, Jesslyn. Jesslyn and the children. They must be ecstatic. Over the moon.
And Zayed. Zayed…
Tears filled Rou’s eyes and she fiercely wiped them away, trying to read the small print so she could get the whole story.
Following the devastating crash of the royal Fehr jet, Sharif Fehr, badly burned and injured, was rescued from the wreckage by an itinerant Berber tribe. The tribe of nomads didn’t recognize King Fehr, and the king, due to head injuries, didn’t know who he was, either. A month ago, Khalid Fehr, the king’s youngest brother, heard a rumor about a traveling Berber tribe seeking medicine for an injured man and acted on the lead. It had taken him nearly four weeks to locate the tribe in the Sahara but once he did, he recogni
zed his brother immediately. The family has been reunited in Isi, Sarq, where the king is currently undergoing medical care.
Rou stopped reading, put a hand to her stomach, praying the nausea would subside. She didn’t want to throw up, not here, not now.
Don’t think about it, she told herself, it’ll pass, it always does, and in the meantime, Sharif is alive, and rescued by his brother no less.
She reached out to the paper, ran her fingers across the headlines. So if Sharif was alive, what did that mean for Zayed?
But just thinking of Zayed made her chest burn and her throat ache, and she had to swallow very hard to make the lump in her throat go away.
Zayed wasn’t her concern. Not anymore. They didn’t speak—but when had they?—and they’d had no other communication other than in the beginning, just after she’d left. He opened an account for her in San Francisco and wired in the funds he’d promised—millions. And every month he sent more.
She never touched the account. Never even opened the bank statements that came to her house. She didn’t want his money. She didn’t want him to fund her research center. She didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d done enough. He’d broken her heart.
Four hours later, Rou stood at the podium in the downtown Chicago hotel’s conference center giving her speech on the biological and chemical effects of falling in love to one thousand members of the American Association of Marriage and Family Counselors. She was talking to the professional therapists about the powerful chemical cocktail that early love was, and how laboratory research had shown that dopamine’s effect on the brain was powerful, and addictive, resulting in cravings, behavior changes, sleep disruption and erratic thought.
She talked about how painful the end of relationships were, especially relationships still in that heady, newly in-love stage when dopamine still flooded the system, resulting in physical and emotional pain.
In her cool, clear, scientific voice, a voice that betrayed none of the anguish she’d gone through in the weeks following her departure from Sarq, she lectured on the painful effects of dopamine withdrawal, a withdrawal process that could last months, but would eventually diminish with time. Exercise and activity could help a client cope a little better, but nothing would completely take away the suffering as the suffering was real.
She theorized that one day scientists would develop a broken-heart pill much like the pills one took for depression, but that was years away.
With her speech concluded, she took questions for twenty minutes and then she was done.
Rou stepped off the stage, away from the bright lights into the darker wings, where she grabbed the first thing she found—a plastic rubbish bin—and threw up.
And again.
My God. How was she going to do this? How was she going to get through? She’d never wanted to marry, never wanted to have kids, and now she was heartbroken, eight weeks pregnant and terrifyingly alone.
She could handle being alone. She couldn’t handle being pregnant and alone. God only knew what kind of mother she’d be.
King Zayed Fehr stood in the wings of the stage and watched Rou speak. She’d always been slender but was now downright thin, and unusually pale in her simple black suit, a suit he’d hoped she would have replaced with something more flattering, never mind fashionable. She spoke well, though, he thought. Her voice was strong and clear. She made good eye contact with the audience. She answered every question with perfect confidence.
She was doing fine. He’d been right to let her go. She was a cat. She’d always land on her feet.
He was glad that he’d come to see her speak, glad to witness her continued success. The conference room held a thousand and tonight it was packed. He hadn’t been able to buy a last-minute ticket and ended up paying a janitor off to let him in, which was why he stood in the wings in the shadows next to the janitor’s trolley of cleaning supplies.
But now she was finished and walking off the stage, walking straight toward him. He stepped farther back into the shadows, not wanting to be seen. The moment she left the stage’s bright lights, the moment the dark velvet curtains on the sides concealed her, she lurched at the trolley, grabbed the janitor’s plastic waste bin and threw up.
She threw up again, and, falling to her knees, sat hunched over the bin, shoulders shaking, body heaving as tears ran down her face.
Rou was sick. The shock of it propelled him forward.
They were in the back of his chauffeured limo heading to the hospital, and Rou was livid. He wasn’t listening to her. He wasn’t paying her any attention. But then, when did he? “I’m not sick,” she repeated, putting down her window a crack to get some of the night’s cold fresh air. Cold air always helped her nausea. Ice did, too.
“You’re in denial then—”
“I’m not in denial,” she interrupted hoarsely, fingers curling into her palms as she willed her stomach to settle. She couldn’t get sick again, and not here in the back of his car. “And I don’t need a hospital. There’s nothing they can do for me—”
“You don’t know that,” he practically roared.
And Rou, who’d never heard him use anything but a quiet voice, blinked, stunned by his display of temper, and then because it was all so impossible, laughed.
She didn’t laugh hard. It was soft, mirthless, because life was so brutally unfair.
“What’s so funny?” He was still angry and his voice had a definite edge to it.
“You. Us. All of this.” She leaned gingerly against the car door, trying to stay as still as possible. “The fact that you had to marry the one woman in the world that didn’t want you. The one woman who never wanted to marry, or have kids.” Her eyes shone, and she swallowed convulsively because the nausea was getting worse, not better and it was just a matter of time before she threw up again. “I’m not sick, Zayed. I’m pregnant.”
They ended up at the hospital anyway. Zayed either didn’t believe her or needed proof, and the doctor, on hearing Zayed’s name, immediately ushered them into a room with an ultrasound.
In the small, curtained examination room, the young doctor moved the wand this way and that, staring at the screen intently. Then he nodded, expression intently focused. “Mmm-hmm,” he said, moving the wand again and getting a clearer picture. “Okay. So that’s what we’re dealing with.”
Zayed leaned across the bed, trying to see the dark screen. “What?” he barked, strain written in the hard set of his beautiful features.
The doctor turned the screen toward them so they could see, and he pointed to the image. “Two heartbeats.” His finger pointed to one, and then another, and then he looked up at them and smiled. “Twins.”
For a moment Rou thought she’d faint, and then she fought for air even as her head spun. Twins? “Not possible,” she choked, “not possible.”
“They run in my family,” Zayed answered flatly, no emotion in his voice. “Jamila and Aman.”
“But not possible,” Rou repeated hoarsely. One baby was bad enough, but two? Hot tears gathered, stinging her eyes.
The doctor turned off the machine and rolled back on his stool. “Congratulations, you are definitely expecting.”
Twenty minutes later, they were back in his car, and Zayed’s driver was heading toward Rou’s hotel to get her things. Rou wasn’t speaking, and although Zayed kept a watchful eye on her, he didn’t try to fill the silence, either.
She’d been pregnant for eight weeks, probably had known for a month, and she’d never told him.
Probably never intended to tell him, he realized with a heavy sigh. Not that he blamed her. He hadn’t been very supportive of late.
He felt a twinge of conscience. Or ever.
But it’d be different now. She was having his children. His children. Babies. Two.
A boy and a girl…or…?
He pictured Jamila and Aman as little girls and how they’d run through the palace playing hide-and-seek, and he felt another twinge, this time of sorrow. His si
sters had been such beautiful girls.
Rou stirred in her corner of the car. She clutched a paper bag in her hand just in case she needed to throw up again—which was likely—since she’d thrown up in the hospital’s parking lot.
Zayed watched her profile as the driver ferried them back to her hotel. She stared blindly out the window, her expression completely blank. He saw no emotion in her face and that troubled him most. “Are you all right?” he asked as kindly as possible.
“No.”
“What can I do?”
She just shook her head, and then shook it again. “I can’t have a baby,” she said roughly. “I can’t have one, much less two.”
“I will help you.”
“No.”
“Laeela, darling—”
“Not your darling. Not your laeela. I am nothing.”
“Just my wife.”
“We are not married.”
“We are married, and we will always be married. I will never divorce you. I have taken vows—”
“You and your stupid vows!” she cried, finally turning on him. Tears glimmered in her eyes, and her cheeks were dark with color. “You live in a world of vows and curses, superstition and ghosts, and it’s a world I don’t fit in, nor do I want to be in. I believe in science. I believe in an objective reality. I believe in cold, hard facts. And the facts say you will never, ever love me, and I will not give my life to a man that can’t love me.”
She was beyond control, beyond reason, and she jammed her thumb to her chest. “I deserve more, Zayed. I deserve so much more.”
And then she was crying, hunched over, face covered with her hands, crying as though her heart would break.
In her plain black suit, with her pale hair in a simple ponytail. Zayed stared at her as if he’d never seen her before.
She loved him.
She didn’t say the words. She didn’t have to. He saw it in her eyes when she looked at him. Heard it in the anguished tone of her voice. Felt it in the wrenching sobs of her body.