The Sheikh's Pregnancy Proposal

by Fiona Brand

  * * *

  Sarah woke to sun streaming through a gap in the curtains. Yawning, she turned over, reaching for Gabe only to find cool rumpled sheets and a pillow with an indentation. She glanced around the room. The certainty that he had gone was there in the absence of any of his clothing.

  A knock at the front door had her jackknifing out of bed. Shrugging into her robe, she tightened the belt around her waist and dragged fingers through her tangled hair. Her first thought was that Gabe must have gone out for a walk, or maybe to buy some breakfast.

  When she opened the door, a uniformed courier was standing on her porch with a huge bunch of dark red, perfectly formed roses.

  Her mood plunging, Sarah took the flowers and set them on a side table just inside the hall while she signed an electronic pad to confirm she had received them. Closing the door, she leaned against it and stared at the beautiful, expensive bouquet. A quick check revealed there was no card.

  Stomach tightening, she picked up the heavy bunch and carried them to her small kitchen. She had received roses only twice before in her life. Roger had given her a modest bunch on her birthday, once, but they had been pink and wrapped in yellow paper with the unmistakable tag of a local supermarket. Mark had sent her one lone rose on a Valentine’s Day. Neither man had thought to send her two-dozen roses that hinted at the passionate, sensual bond she now knew could exist between a man and a woman.

  But then, she hadn’t slept with either of them.

  She found a vase large enough to hold the flowers, although a part of her didn’t want to either keep them or display them just in case they did represent “goodbye.”

  It occurred to her then that she didn’t know Gabe’s full name, and she had somehow forgotten to give him her phone number. Although he knew her name and address, so it should be easy enough for him to find her.

  She bent forward and inhaled the fragrance. She would stay positive, hang on to hope. All of her instincts told her that Gabe was special, that despite that touch of remoteness—a caution she well knew—he had valued their passionate hours together as much as she.

  He would call; it was just a matter of time.

  * * *

  Gabe could not afford to contact Sarah, ever.

  The thought made his mood even grimmer as he boarded his chartered flight, late.

  Xavier, who had been waiting in the departure lounge, strode alongside him, his expression taut. “I thought I was going to have to come and get you.”

  Gabe took his seat in the small jet’s luxury cabin, resignation settling in at his friend’s implication. “Don’t tell me, there was a GPS tracker on the Jeep.”

  Xavier dropped into the seat beside him. “There’s always a GPS. You’re the son of the sheikh, the heir apparent. If I hired vehicles that didn’t have that facility, I’d be fired.”

  Gabe fastened his seat belt for take-off and concentrated on resisting the insane urge to disembark and drive back to the small seaside suburb where Sarah lived.

  “Please tell me you won’t be seeing her again.”

  Gabe didn’t bother answering. Xavier was justifiably upset because he had been tasked with Gabe’s security. He had slipped the leash and given Xavier a difficult night. But the whole point had been that Gabe had one last night to himself.

  Only it had been a little more complicated than that.

  He had hoped that when he made love with Sarah the attraction would lose its potency. He had been wrong. Despite the short length of time they had spent together, he still felt the force of their connection, the emotional pull, which was even more reason to leave.

  As the jet leveled out, a pretty Zahiri air hostess dressed in an elegant blue uniform, her hair caught up in a glossy knot, served coffee.

  Gabe set his briefcase down on the fold-down tray, flipped it open and extracted the marriage contract. Xavier pretended to be immersed in a newspaper while Gabe once again read through the list of marriage candidates. His jaw tightened as he came back to the young woman his parents had rated number one.

  Dispassionately, he studied her face, which was beautiful but, to Gabe, lacking in personality. There was no hint of stormy emotions or engaging boldness. There was absolutely no evidence of the sharp, take-no-prisoners intellect that would make life interesting. It was a face he would be seeing on a daily basis once they were married.

  Xavier put down his paper. “If you really are going ahead with a marriage of convenience you shouldn’t have had a one-night stand with a twenty-eight year old history teacher.”

  “Twenty-eight?”

  “Almost twenty-nine.”

  Controlling his irritation that Xavier had referred to the hours Gabe had spent with Sarah as a one-night stand, Gabe flipped to the legalese of the agreement. “I suppose you had to do the security check.”

  “I was worried. You don’t normally go off the grid like that.”

  “Normally I’m too busy.” Trying to finesse the traditional approach to finances his father clung to into a system that would bring his country out of its financial nosedive. Now their lack of solvency had reached a critical state, stopping a resort development vital for Zahir’s continued prosperity in its tracks.

  And yet, despite his country’s problems, his mind returned to Sarah. She was almost twenty-nine. The small snippet of information was intriguing, and made sense. She had been far too interesting to be younger and yet, with her moonlight-pale skin and silky hair, her passionate intensity when they had made love, she had seemed much younger. No wonder they had clicked so instantly. Besides the college education, the fact that they were close in age was one more thing they had in common.

  As the jet gathered speed, Gabe closed out an image of Sarah lying in a tumble of sheets, her hair spread out over the pillow and applied himself to reading through the fine print. He hit the clause that stipulated his bride had to be pure, which was why each of the candidates was so young. With every year that passed, logic dictated that it was more difficult to find a suitable candidate for marriage who was still a virgin. A twenty-eight-year-old virgin was an impossibility.

  Or, maybe not.

  Gabe’s heart slammed once, hard, against the wall of his chest as the engines reached a crescendo and the jet leaped into the air. Pressed back into his seat for the ascent, he felt electrified, every nerve ending in his body on fire as the missing piece of the puzzle that was Sarah fell into place.

  She had been a virgin.

  Nothing else explained her unusual behavior. She had been at once bold and shy, and she hadn’t employed any exotic techniques. She had simply made love to him. In all the years he had been involved in relationships, no woman he had ever been with had ever made love to him like they meant it, including his wife.

  He could kick himself. He had felt the initial constriction, noted the moment of discomfort on her face but, stunned by the knowledge that he had been so caught up in her passionate response that he had failed to protect them both, the significance of those sensations had bypassed him. Given that the first time had been over almost before it had begun, maybe he could be forgiven for the oversight.

  “What’s wrong?” Xavier must have picked up something in his expression. “Please tell me you protected yourself.”

  Eventually. Although he hadn’t wanted to, and that had been a first. But from the moment he had seen Sarah at the reception he had been thrown off balance. Grimly he noted that if the jet wasn’t in the air, he would have done something precipitate and obsessive, like walk off the flight and refuse a marriage arrangement that, long-term, would provide the stability and the heir both his family and Zahir needed. He would have behaved emotionally—in a way that he knew from bitter experience destroyed happiness and lives.

  Letting out a breath, he forced himself to once more study Nadia’s profile. He knew her family, of course. H
er father was a French billionaire who had made his money in shipping. No doubt those two details had appealed to Gabe’s father who, with the onset of his illness, had become a little obsessed with the legend of Sheikh Kadin. No doubt he thought there was a satisfying symmetry to the idea of Gabe marrying a shipping magnate’s daughter. After all, that was how Zahir had made its money in the first place.

  Gabe replied to the email, accepting the preferred candidate, Nadia Fortier.

  His father had decreed a short engagement to give them time to get to know one another. A few months’ grace in which to get to know and accept the woman he would marry.

  And to forget Sarah Duval.

  Five

  Four months later Sarah double-checked the results her doctor handed her.

  “You’re absolutely sure I’m pregnant?”

  Evelyn lifted a brow. “You’re not just pregnant, you’re very pregnant and I think you knew that. You should have come to see me sooner.”

  Caught between resignation, dismay and the dizzying sense of wonder that had gripped her over the past few weeks as she’d logged the undeniable symptoms of a pregnancy, Sarah tucked the sheet of paper in her handbag.

  Of course she had noticed that she had missed her first period. But, caught stubbornly in denial, she had waited another month. When her cycle missed for the second time and she had begun to feel faintly nauseous, she had begun to accept that what she had thought would never happen had happened.

  She sent Evelyn an apologetic look. “Sorry. I needed some adjustment time.”

  To her credit, Evelyn, who was an old friend, didn’t comment on the fact that Sarah was pregnant and didn’t have a husband or even a boyfriend. “I presume you want to keep the baby?”

  The words were discreetly put while Evelyn pretended to be busy shuffling papers and checking something on her computer screen.

  “Yes.” The answer was unequivocal.

  “Can you supply me with any history of the father?”

  Despite bracing herself for this question, Sarah’s cheeks warmed. This was the part she’d been dreading. She had done some research on the whole business of having a baby and knew that sometimes details about the father, such as blood type and genetic conditions, were important. “No.”

  There was a small, vibrating silence. Evelyn ducked her head, her own cheeks flushed, but not before Sarah caught the flash of compassion in her friend’s eyes. Evelyn knew Sarah’s past, vividly. Evelyn was supposed to be Sarah’s bridesmaid at the first wedding, her maid of honor at the second. Instead, Sarah had cried on Evelyn’s shoulder over men, twice.

  She wouldn’t be crying on Evelyn’s shoulder a third time because this mistake was in a whole new league.

  Sarah hadn’t been sedately courted by a man she and her family and friends knew well. She’d had a wildly romantic night of passion with an exotic stranger, a one-night stand, and then he had disappeared, leaving her flat.

  She had committed every mistake in the book within the space of a few hours, literally picking up a guy, having unprotected sex with him and getting pregnant, and she didn’t even know Gabe’s full name. All she knew was that he lived thousands of miles away on an island in the Mediterranean and that he worked for the Sheikh of Zahir. Since Gabe had been careful not to supply her with any contact details, or even his full name, it was clear that he did not want further interaction with her.

  Her behavior had not just been uncharacteristic, it had been dumb, and all because she’d been seduced by a romantic dream and frightened by the thought that she would end up thirty and alone.

  She should have been a lot smarter than she had turned out to be. Becoming a mother was going to have a huge effect on her life. For a start, she would have to quit her full-time teaching job, because she wanted to stay home with her child. That meant she would have to find alternative employment, something she could do from home. Although she had already come up with an idea which was, crazily enough, based on Camille’s journal.

  Sarah forced herself to relax. There was no need to panic. She would work it all out one step at a time. “Okay, what do I do now?”

  Evelyn scribbled her signature on a form and handed it to Sarah. “You’ll need to have a blood test and make an appointment to come and see me in a week’s time, but you’ve always been in great health so I don’t anticipate any problems.”

  She opened a drawer and took out a bunch of pamphlets, selected several and slipped them across the surface of her desk. “Do some reading, don’t drink alcohol and don’t take any medication unless you run it by me, not even a painkiller. If you’ve been feeling sick, that’s normal, but if it gets too bad come and see me right away.”

  Evelyn pulled up a file on her laptop and tapped briskly before hitting the print button. When the copy printed out, she handed it to Sarah. “It’s an application for a scan. Since it looks like you’re at least four months pregnant, you should have one of those. The clinic will contact you with a date and time.”

  Sarah took the form. A tentative, dawning delight began to spread through her. If anything could make the baby real, this was it. “Thanks.”

  Slipping the paperwork inside her handbag, she pushed to her feet.

  Evelyn walked Sarah to the door. “If you need to stay longer and talk, I can stall the next appointment for a few minutes. And if you just want to talk, call me at home. Anytime.”

  Sarah pinned a smile on her face. She had been coming to Evelyn for years. Aside from the friendship that had developed between them at university, they had the perfect doctor/patient relationship. But if Sarah had to admit to Evelyn how naive she’d been, the relationship would be permanently dented. “I’ll be fine, thanks. Don’t forget I have a mother.”

  “Of course.”

  The relief on Evelyn’s face confirmed Sarah’s thoughts. Evelyn was smart, successful and married to another doctor. They had three children, a nanny and what looked like a perfectly organized life. As compassionate as Evelyn would try to be, there was no way she could understand why Sarah had slept with Gabe.

  As Sarah walked out of the medical center into the warmth of a summer’s day, she felt a tiny flutter, like butterfly wings, in her stomach. She froze, her hand going to her abdomen. The flutter came again and a sense of wonder spread through her. In just a few months she would be a mother.

  Joy, heady and a little incredulous, hit her. For long moments she simply stood on the sidewalk, foot traffic flowing around her. She didn’t have everything she wanted out of life. She didn’t have a husband to love and who would love her, but she was going to have a baby, something she’d thought she would miss out on altogether.

  Feeling disoriented and shaky, she took dark glasses from her bag, slid them onto the bridge of her nose and strolled to where she’d parked the car. She unlocked the driver’s-side door, opened it and waited a few seconds for the heat that had built up inside to dissipate before climbing in. Instead of driving home, she drove by the Zahiri consulate.

  On impulse, she pulled into the parking lot and found a space just outside the main entrance. Heart pounding at the idea that had blossomed, that she should at least think about contacting Gabe, she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror before exiting the car. Her hair was coiled in the messy knot she had perfected and her skin was positively glowing. Rummaging in her bag, she found her makeup kit, retouched around her eyes and applied fresh gloss to her mouth.

  Stepping out of the car, she smoothed the loose white shirt she had teamed with a pair of camel pants, both items classic and stylish, but loose enough to fit comfortably, given that her waist had started to thicken.

  A dark-haired receptionist, different from the one she had collected her car keys from the morning after she had slept with Gabe, listened to her enquiry. “We don’t have anyone named Gabe working here. Do you have a surname?”r />
  Sarah explained that Gabe had only been in the country for a short time, with the sheikh’s entourage.

  The woman’s gaze grew oddly evasive. Sarah was almost certain she knew exactly to whom Sarah was referring.

  She pushed to her feet. “Just one moment.”

  Frowning, Sarah watched her disappear into a side office. Moments later she reappeared with a small, plump man—Tarik. Sarah’s stomach dropped.

  After an unsatisfactory interview in which Tarik had first pretended not to recognize Sarah, and had then feigned confusion over which Gabe she was referring to, Sarah lost her temper. “The Gabe who picked up the sword after I dropped it at the reception. The man you appeared to know very well.”

  There was a small silence. “Do you have a photograph of him?”

  Sarah’s brows jerked together at the odd question. “No.”

  Tarik seemed to relax at that point, his voice turning as smooth as butter. “He doesn’t work for the sheikh. He was just on...assignment.”

  Her fingers tightened on the strap of her bag. “What does that mean?”

  Tarik fixed her with a bland stare. “It means he is not in the sheikh’s employ.”

  “So you won’t help me contact him?”

  “No.”

  Annoyed at being treated like some kind of groupie, or worse, a stalker, Sarah turned on her heel and left the consulate, aware of two sets of eyes boring into her back. She was convinced they knew exactly who Gabe was, and where he was, and that for some unfathomable reason they were protecting him.

  Grimly she decided that reason was probably that Gabe was married, even though he’d said he wasn’t. Maybe her judgment in sleeping with him had been more skewed than she’d thought.

  Her temper, held on a tight leash for most of the interview, boiled over again as she unlocked her car door. Lately, with the pregnancy, she had noticed a tendency toward mood swings. It no doubt had something to do with the hormones rioting through her body. Whatever the cause, her personality had definitely found another gear.