Nobody's Baby

by Jane Toombs

  “Shh,” she cautioned. “You’ll wake Danny.”

  Zed caught at the tag ends of his anger, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Spacing the words evenly, he said, “Talal can’t be my twin. It’s impossible.”

  “Why does the idea infuriate you so? I mean, I can understand why you wouldn’t care to have a twin like him, but—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the man.”

  “No? I suppose everyone who acts like he has a divine right to order everyone else around is high on your list of good guys.”

  “Can’t you get it through your head he comes from another culture? He doesn’t necessarily react the way we would.”

  “So because Talal was raised in Kholi, you’re saying that makes it all right for him to turn his back on his responsibilities?”

  A muscle jumped in Zed’s jaw with his effort to keep from shouting again. “I’m wasting my time talking to you,” he growled, and stalked off, grabbing his jacket before opening the door and stomping from the house.

  Good riddance, Karen told herself angrily as she heard his pickup roar away. At least there wouldn’t be any question what bed she slept in tonight. Not that she would have slept with him tonight, anyway. He had to be the most unreasonable man in the entire world.

  Is it my fault he came into my room this afternoon and started making love to me while I was asleep? I can’t help it if I was confused when I woke up in a darkened room. Nor can I be blamed because he and Talal look so much alike.

  Zed hadn’t returned by the time she was ready to go to bed. “Who cares?” she asked aloud as she crawled into her own bed, denying how lonely her words sounded and how empty the house felt without him there.

  She fell asleep, but woke after several hours and lay listening to the still-not-familiar-creaks and groans of the house. The wind had come up and whistled around the outside corners, reminding her of when she was a child in bed at night during New York winters. The sound hadn’t bothered her then—rather, she’d felt secure, safe in a warm nest, protected from the windy cold outside.

  This house was safe enough, and she was certainly warm under the covers, but now the sound of the wind seemed to mock her. She remembered how her mother, at Steve’s wedding, had advised his new bride never to let the sun go down on a quarrel. Who knew if Francine had listened? Or whether following that advice would have prevented the divorce?

  I’m certainly not heeding my mother’s words, she thought unhappily. The sun is long set.

  Glancing at the clock, she noted the time. Nearly three. Rising, she first padded quietly into the nursery, covering Danny, who was sound asleep. Then she approached Zed’s ajar bedroom door, hesitating before pushing it open. What could she say to him that might heal the widening breach between them? Uncertain just what she meant to say or do, she pushed open the door and padded slowly toward his bed. Before reaching it, she held.

  In the dim light from his open blinds she could see his bedspread had not been turned down. The bed was empty. Zed was not in it.

  Telling herself he could have fallen asleep on the couch, she’ hurried into the living room. He wasn’t there. Nor was he anywhere else in the house.

  At three o’clock in the morning Zed still hadn’t come home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next weekend Jade came to the ranch with a long string of wedding arrangements for Karen to okay. Since she was getting married in Nevada rather than at their home in New York, Karen’s parents were asking her to make all the arrangements, while insisting they would foot the bill. Though grateful for their generosity, Karen felt guilty because she couldn’t work up a proper enthusiasm for the preparations.

  Halfway through Jade’s explanations, Karen sighed and said, “I wish it was all over.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Jade told her. “This setting-up stuff is a pain.”

  “It’s not so much the arrangements. I mean, you’re doing most of the work. It’s just that—” She broke off and sighed again.

  Jade raised her eyebrows. “I take that to mean you and my brother haven’t forgiven and forgotten.”

  “Are you talking about that night he lit out like a wounded bear and didn’t come back until God only knows when?” She’d told Jade about the quarrel without revealing its exact cause, expecting that Zed already had talked about it. She’d been wrong. Zed hadn’t confided in his sister.

  “That night and whatever else is making you so jumpy around each other,” Jade said.

  “It was only an argument. There was nothing to forgive,” Karen said. “Not really. Even if he never did tell me where he was until way after three.”

  “I can make a pretty good guess. One of his high school buddies inherited Lucky Joe’s Casino just outside Genoa. My bet is he was in there hoisting a few with J J.—Joe Junior. J.J.’s on the guest list, by the way. And what do you mean, there was nothing to forgive? If two people have a fight there’s always something to be forgiven—usually on both sides.”

  Karen couldn’t bring herself to tell Jade what the real problem was. Ever since the night they’d argued, Zed hadn’t once tried to make love to her, hadn’t indicated by word or gesture that she’d be welcome in his bed, hadn’t even kissed her good-night.

  “We were arguing about Talal again,” she said finally, which was partly the truth.

  “Give it up,” Jade advised. “Either Talal will show again or he won’t. Why argue about it?”

  Danny, sitting at the end of the table in his high chair, flung his plastic bell-ball off the tray, following it down with his gaze until it hit the floor with a loud tinkle. He chortled and then looked expectantly at Jade. “Te,” he said.

  “We’re playing the auntie-will-pick-it-up-so-you-can-throw-it-down-again game, are we?” Jade asked him.

  “The baby book says he’s doing it because he’s learned a new skill, but he learned that particular one over a month ago. I keep hoping it will pass,” Karen said.

  “Pass it will, probably into another phase that’ll drive us all nuts before he gets tired of it,” Jade said, picking up the toy and holding it. “It’s a good thing you’re such a cute little guy that none of us can resist you,” she told Danny.

  “Te!” he exclaimed, reaching toward her, obviously demanding she hand him the ball.

  Jade shook her head in resignation and complied. Karen hid a smile when the toy promptly hit the floor again. The back door opened and Zed came in, wiping the dirt off his boots onto the mat. The snow had melted and mud was everywhere.

  “Da!” Danny said, his attention now focused on Zed.

  “Good,” Jade said. “Let Da play with you for a while. He just loves to pick toys up from the floor.”

  Zed shucked off his jacket and lifted Danny from the high chair. “Driving the girls crazy, are you, Tiger?” he said. “Nothing like getting a head start.”

  Shifting the boy onto his hip, he plucked a mug from the tree and headed for the coffeepot. Before he got there he held, his head cocked as though listening. “We expecting anyone?” he asked.

  Karen then heard the muted roar of an engine—Zed had the most acute hearing of anyone she’d ever met. “Not that I know of,” she said, rising. “Go ahead, have your coffee. I’ll see who it is.”

  “Sports car,” he said. “Dual pipes. I’ll bet on foreign. Could be J.J. I’ll take care of it.”

  Karen sank back down and he left the kitchen.

  “So,” Jade said, picking up one of the cards she’d brought with her, “do you want to go with this bakery for the cake or not?”

  “Why not?” Karen said. “They sound fine. Maybe you should run the flower arrangements past me again. I wasn’t paying close attention the first time. I know I definitely do not want gladiolas—or is it gladioli? I never can remember.”

  Jade shuffled through the papers she’d brought, muttering, “Flowers, flowers, I know you’re in here somewhere. Ah, there you are. The florist suggested white and pink as the color scheme, with
some blue sprinkled in, honoring the ‘something blue’ superstition, I guess. They said—” She broke off to stare as Zed reentered the kitchen.

  Her blank expression made Karen turn to look. She gasped and got up hastily.

  “You remember Karen,” Zed said to the man with him, a man with a walking cast on his left leg, supporting himself with a cane. “Jade, this is Talal Zohir, Danny’s father.”

  “My God,” Jade muttered, obviously completely taken aback.

  Karen didn’t blame her. This was Jade’s first glimpse. Since the last time Karen had seen him, though, he’d shaved off his beard so that now he was the exact image of Zed. Danny, in Zed’s arms, stared at Talal with his mouth open.

  “I’m happy to see you again, Karen,” Talal said. “Jaida, I’m very pleased to meet you, my sister.”

  Jade stood and raised her chin. “It’s Jade,” she said, “not Jaida.”

  Talal nodded. “I used the Arabic name. If it troubles you, I’ll try to remember to call you by the American variant.”

  “Why did you call me sister?” Jade demanded.

  “Shall we go into the living room?” Karen asked, trying to play the polite hostess as she coped with her shock—she’d never expected to see Talal again—as well as an impending sense of doom.

  “By all means,” Zed said. “We’ll sit down where it’s comfortable. Talal looks like he needs to get off that leg.”

  The situation didn’t seem quite real to Zed—Talal in his house—even though he’d been confident of Talal’s return. “Coffee?” he asked as they trailed into the living room.

  “None for me,” Talal said. Jade and Karen shook their heads.

  I could use some, Zed thought, but gave up the idea in favor of sitting down to hear what Talal had to say.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Jade said to Ta-lal as soon as they all were seated.

  “I’ll do so shortly,” he told her. “Karen, if you would be so kind as to bring me a small stool to rest my leg on?” After she fetched an ottoman from the den, he thanked her, adding, “Ah, that’s much better,” as he propped the casted leg up on the stool.

  Talal looked from one to the other of them, ending with Jade. “You are my sister,” he said, “for the same reason that Zeid is my twin. Because we share the same parents—the same mother, Ellen Adams, the same father, Shas Zohir.”

  “Twins!” Zed exclaimed. “But—”

  “I anticipated your objection,” Talal said. “I was not born in Kholi as I had always been told, as, in fact, my birth certificate states. My birthplace was Los Angeles, California. I was the firstborn of twin boys. You were the second born, Zeid. I have also unearthed long-hidden photographs that show us together.”

  Astounding as the news was, Zed accepted Talal’s words as true without asking to see the photos. “How did you learn this?” he asked.

  “In good time, my brother.” Talal leaned forward, gazing intently at Danny. “Hello, son,” he said softly. Reaching into a pocket, he extracted a red rubber ball, somewhat the worse for wear. “This was once Uncle Zeid’s,” he said, tossing the ball to Zed.

  Holding the ball in one hand, Zed stared at it, aware this was the red ball from his memory. Danny poked a finger at the ball, drew it back and resumed his study of Talal.

  “I apologize for leaving so abruptly when I was in the Monterey hospital,” Talal said. “Until I forced the truth from my—our—grandmother, I could not make any arrangements for the boy. I had to get at the truth before anything else was done. Now that I have, I’ve returned to take care of what I must do. In view of the blood typing, I have no doubt Danny is my son, but, of course, I must make absolutely certain, because the authorities will demand proof.”

  “The authorities?” Zed repeated, not quite certain what Talal was driving at.

  Talal shrugged. “All governments tangle themselves in red tape, yours as well as mine. I’ll have to prove to both that Danny is my son before I arrange to bring him home to Kholi.”

  Zed stiffened, feeling Talal’s words stab into his heart. “No!” he cried, clutching the boy to him. “You can’t take Danny! Absolutely not!”

  “But he is my son,” Talal said, his voice calm. “Of course I intend to raise him. After all, he is a Zohir. He is a part of our royal family.”

  “You can’t take him,” Zed repeated. “He belongs with us, with Karen and me.”

  Danny began to whimper. Karen sprang up and hurried to him, saying to Zed, “Please let me take him.”

  Realizing his tight hold on the boy and his angry voice might be frightening Danny, Zed reluctantly gave him to Karen, who resumed her seat, cradling the boy protectively.

  “What’s this about a royal family?” Jade asked, pushing a strand of hair away from her eye.

  “The Zohirs are Kholi’s ruling family,” Talal said. “You didn’t know?”

  “I’m not an expert on the Middle East,” she said. “And my name is not Zohir.”

  “It is,” Talal corrected. “Though born posthumously, you are the legitimate daughter of Shas Zohir. In Kholi you would be addressed as Princess Jaida.”

  “Let’s hear the entire story,” Zed said grimly.

  Removing a packet from his jacket pocket, Talal took out two photographs, extending them toward Zed. “If you will be so kind,” he said, gesturing toward his leg as if in apology.

  Zed rose and took the pictures. In the first he recognized his mother standing next to a handsome man with dark hair and beard. Each held the hand of a small boy, boys exactly the same in size and appearance. One of the boys was him, he knew, from the similarity to photos his grandparents had taken of him when he was small. The other boy had to be Talal. In the second his mother was alone, sitting in a chair with her two little boys flanking her. She appeared to be pregnant.

  “Those were taken at our grandparents’ home,” Talal put in. “Our mother lived with them after our father was killed. That is, she lived with them until she managed to escape from Kholi and return to America.”

  “Escape?” Zed echoed, his attention diverted from the pictures. Seeing Jade gesturing at him impatiently, he crossed the room and handed her the photos.

  “Our mother was free to leave at any time—but without us. Our grandfather was reluctant to give up his grand-sons, the only ones he had, to have them raised in a foreign country, not as proper Arabs. I can understand his feelings, whether or not I approve of what he did. Grandmother, as his wife, naturally agreed with him.”

  Talal made an odd gesture, touching his head with his hand, as though seeking to adjust something that wasn’t there. He frowned briefly and went on. “Our grandfather no longer lives. I doubt he would ever have admitted the truth. This is what our grandmother, under some pressure from me, finally told me. Our mother, unhappy in Kholi and determined to get away before she delivered another child to be held as a hostage, found a way to escape with us. At the last moment her plans went awry and, though she managed to bring you with her, I had to be left behind or she would have risked being caught and stopped.

  “You and I were born prematurely when our mother made a trip to California to visit her parents some three years previously. Once we weighed enough to leave the hospital, our father promptly returned all three of us to Kholi. So my grandfather Zohir worried that our mother might somehow be able to claim me, since I was Amer-ican born. In order to protect against this, he had his brother, Kholi’s ruler, intervene to alter my birth certificate to show I was Kholi born. It was also agreed I would never be told the truth, never be told I had a twin.”

  “I was never told, either,” Zed admitted, staring down at Talal. “I never knew.”

  Talal nodded. “In a way, I can understand. Our Adams grandparents seem to have been as frightened as our Zohir grandparents. Before she died our mother must have convinced them you and Jaida might be kidnapped and taken to Kholi. I’ve done some research in California and I discovered they had your last name changed to Adams on your birth c
ertificates.”

  So that explained the move to Nevada, Zed thought. To make it more difficult for anyone from Kholi to find them. He’d wondered why his grandfather had started his Carson City drilling business at a relatively advanced age.

  “You understand that, as Zohirs,” Talal continued, “you and Jaida are entitled to recognition as part of the kholi royal family.” Talal grinned at him. “Prince Zeid.”

  Dazed by all he’d heard, stunned to find Talal was his twin, Zed shook his head. He had no desire to be a Kholi prince.

  “You and Jaida also have a legitimate claim to our father’s properties in Kholi,” Talal went on. “As you may have deduced, the Zohirs are a wealthy family. Money will never be a problem for Danny.”

  “You can’t take him!” Karen cried suddenly. “If you try, it will be over my dead body!”

  Jade glared at Talal. “What kind of a brother are you? A rotten one, that’s what. How dare you walk in here and break everyone’s heart? You’re not only trying to snatch Danny from those who love him but you’ve disrupted Zed and Karen’s wedding plans.”

  Talal, after shifting his gaze from Karen to Jade, settled on Zed. “I had no intention to cause trouble.”

  “I wish I’d never found you,” Karen said to Talal, her voice high and tight with what Zed knew was anguish. “Zed’s more of a father to Danny than you could ever be!”

  “Karen’s raised Danny from the beginning,” Jade put in, practically shouting at Talal. “How can you take him away from the only mother he’s ever known? Who wants a brother like you!”

  Danny began to wail, obviously upset by all the raised voices. His crying roused Zed from his bemusement. Crossing to Karen, now standing, he put an arm around her shoulders and spoke to Danny.

  “Hey, Tiger, it’s okay,” he said softly. “Nothing’s going to happen. You’re safe with us.”

  When Danny’s sobbing eased, Zed turned to face Talal. Unlike Karen and Jade, Zed felt his anger toward his twin abating. He might fight him to the last to prevent him from gaining custody of Danny, but at the same time he understood exactly where Talal was coming from. He knew what motivated him.