by Sophia Lynn
Despite the pain inside her, however, Erin knew that she was doing the right thing. She had been his mistress, no matter what words they had put on it or how kind he had been. They were engaging in something that had left women beheaded and flogged, something that would have almost surely gotten her children taken away from her. Before, she hadn't understood what that meant, but now she did. She knew that she had to act, and that meant leaving immediately.
The announcement came on in Arabic, and then she saw the corresponding English announcement on the marquee. Her flight was ready to board, and she had to leave Askari and the Middle East forever.
Erin took a deep breath, took a tighter grip on her bag, and turned towards the gate. This part of her life was over now.
***
Six Weeks Later
"No, Miss O'Reilly. There is absolutely no doubt about it. You are pregnant."
Erin stared at the doctor sitting across from her, her mouth open.
"That can't be..." she said weakly.
"I am very much afraid it can be,' the doctor said gently. "We will do more tests, but at the moment, I am confident in telling you that you are pregnant. Do you know at this time what you wish to do about it?"
Erin's mind was still reeling from the announcement that the doctor had made, but the question broke through her haze.
"I... I guess I need an OBGYN," she said tentatively. "I... I don't know, I've never been pregnant before."
She laughed, and she knew that it came out high and shaky. However, if she didn't laugh, she thought she might cry.
To her relief, the doctor didn't look at her as if she was cracking up. Instead, she leaned over to pat Erin's shoulder comfortingly.
"Don't worry," she said, "Every mother in the world has faced what you are facing right now at some point. Now, I just need to ask you a few questions. Do you have a partner, the father of the child?"
It was on the tip of her tongue to say yes. She had been having trouble over the past weeks. Most of the time, she thought that she was doing just fine. She was looking for a good roommate situation, staying on a few acquaintances' couches, getting her feet back under her and generally trying not to think about Askari at all. However, in odd moments, it was like her brain didn't even understand that they had broken up. She wanted to tell him about an article she had read or something interesting that she had seen. At night, it was even worse because sometimes, she would catch herself waiting for him so that she could make him some tea.
Now she wanted to be the one to tell him that he was going to be a father, but of course, that couldn't happen. She shivered a little.
"No," she said, unable to prevent it from feeling like a grotesque lie. "I'm alone. The father is not in the picture."
The doctor nodded and continued. Erin answered them mechanically, but her mind was buzzing. The longer she thought about it, the more consideration she gave it, the more she realized that she was right. There was no way she could tell Askari about their child. She still remembered what she had read about in that museum room, what he had told her himself would happen. She remembered the days of neglect and what it was like having only a portion of a man, only the parts that he allowed her.
No, she would not call him, even if the decision broke her heart.
And his.
Chapter Nine
The mountain lion appeared out of nowhere, and with a queasy feeling, Erin realized that if she hadn't been looking straight ahead on the path, there was a chance she would have walked right on top of it. However funny it might have been to step on mountain lion's tail the way she might step on a cat's tail, Erin knew that it would not have gone well.
The rocky mountain path was shaded with scrub brush from the overhanging cliff, and in the dappling of shadows, the sandy mountain lion was almost invisible. Once she saw its vivid green eyes, however, there was no mistaking the fact that it had seen her. Its round ears were pricked towards her, and she saw its long tail swaying back and forth, almost hypnotic.
For a moment, Erin was completely frozen with fear. She couldn't make herself move one way or the other, but she knew that she had to. She remembered what the guides had said, and taking a deep breath, never breaking eye contact with the cat, she started to back away slowly.
The mountain lion was a powerful animal. It could kill a person easily, though most of the time, it wouldn't do so. Erin tried to remember that as she got another step farther down the path. It wouldn't bother her because she looked like she was in control. She knew what to do, and because of that, she was safe.
She allowed herself to feel a small amount of confidence as she moved. This was going to be fine. She was going to get out of here, and when she did, she was never, ever going to leave home again, and in a few years, she might even be happy about it to the point where she could tell...
Her train of thought was interrupted when suddenly, almost as if by magic, a small family appeared at her side. They had been hiking up the trail behind her, and she had been so occupied with the mountain lion that she hadn't even heard them coming.
Suddenly, there they were, in the corner of her eye, brightly colored, chattering happily. The parents came to a halt when she did, and Erin could almost feel them see the lion.
“Kids,” the mother said urgently. “Kids, I need you to listen to me...”
That was all she got out before the smallest child shrieked with fear and went pelting back the way they came. She was small, she turned her back, she presented a running target, and apparently it was just too much for the mountain lion to pass up.
With a fluid motion, the cat had bounded forward, and in just another three or four bounds, it would have caught up with the little child.
Erin had always thought of herself as a coward, but in that moment, there was absolutely nothing she could do besides what she did. In a single motion, she swung her shoulder bag up and slammed the mountain lion in the face. At the same time, she stepped directly into its path, making herself as large as she possibly could. The lion skipped back a step or two, looking up with her in surprise.
In that fevered moment, she felt as if she could read its mind. It was trying to figure out whether she was food or foe, whether it could kill her or not. All Erin could do was raise her hands over her head, making herself as large as she could. She shouted nonsense words, and then, when that didn't work, she gulped and took a heavy step towards the lion.
That was it. The mountain lion abruptly realized that she was far more trouble than she was worth, turned tail, and disappeared into the brush. It was hardly comforting that it had disappeared so quickly and so completely, but that wasn't her problem at the moment.
The adrenaline left her in rush, and Erin nearly crashed to her knees. The mother who had been standing beside her grabbed her so she wouldn't fall, crying and thanking her all at once, and then there were two children hugging her. Then the father came back with the little runaway and they were hugging her, and they were all crying, and finally for the first time in a long time, Erin felt as if she could be a little proud of herself.
When she went home that night to the small duplex that she rented, she didn't say anything about the mountain lion to Mrs. Bathke. The old woman would have just worried herself sick and tried to keep Erin at home more often, and after the last year and a half, that was the last thing that Erin wanted. Instead, she only smiled as Mrs. Bathke climbed to her feet and got ready to leave.
“I put them down just an hour ago for their naps, dear,” she said. “They should be down for another twenty minutes at least.”
“Perfect time for me to get a shower in, then,” Erin said. “Thank you so much.”
After Mrs. Bathke left, however, Erin didn't go in immediately to get a shower. Instead, she tiptoed into the small bedroom attached to hers and walked softly to the enormous crib that dominated the room. She hadn't even known that they made cribs that size until she had needed one.
“Hey girls,” she said softly, reaching down
to brush a dark ringlet out of one baby's face. “Have I got a story to tell you when you're a bit older.
When you looked closely, it was clear that her three daughters were similar while being far from identical. Tabitha had black hair and green eyes, Tonya was the shy girl with black hair and black eyes, and Talia had Erin's own red hair and black eyes. Each day that passed, she loved her triplets even more, and each day, she got to know them a little better.
She knew that it would be best to get a shower in while they were sleeping, but at the moment, she was too enchanted with their soft faces, their tiny hands. Her body had bounced back from a pregnancy her OBGYN had announced as 'challenging,' and today's hike was just one more reminder of how beautiful life was, especially when she had her three little girls to love.
In moments like this, she couldn't stop herself from thinking of Askari. Sometimes it felt like it had been just a few days since she had left him, and that of course she would see him again. Anyone who said that time dulled all wounds had apparently never been in love, because she wasn't sure that there was ever a moment where she had not wistfully thought of him and his smile, him and his hands, him and lips kissing her so gently.
Somehow, he had refused to take the money back. She kept trying to give it to him, only to find herself thwarted at every turn. The bank could not make heads nor tails of it, and finally, shortly before she entered her second trimester, they had said there was nothing they could do, the money was hers.
Some stubborn part of her had refused to leave it at that. She created a trust for her girls, appointing herself the trustee, and the rest was put away for them to grow up. She couldn't deny that the money was useful, but she would be damned if she took the payment that she had never properly earned.
Erin knew that someday, she would have to tell him about his daughters, but that could come when they were older, able to think for themselves and to make the decisions that would affect them. Right now, there was nothing wrong with keeping them as they were.
Two days later, however, when a television crew ended up on doorstep wanting to know how she had defeated a mountain lion and protected a helpless family, Erin could feel that there was a change that was happening. She had Talia on her back carrier, Tabitha cradled on her front, and Mrs. Bathke had Tonya cradled lovingly in her arms. There were suddenly cameras and a smiling man who wanted to know all the details, and Erin felt a sinking sensation in her stomach.
***
The interesting thing about being sheikh was that after a while, if you allowed it to do so, everything faded into your peripheral vision. Of course Askari, sheikh of Hazn, had his goals. He made them, and then he attained them. He made his country prosperous beyond all belief, leveraging oil money into millions more, and his subjects were ecstatic with him.
Of course it would have all been perfect for his subjects if he had had an heir, but that was a subject that none of them dared bring up any longer. Over the past year and some change, the sheikh had become distant and even vicious about the topic, to the point where even his loyal assistant Basaam had to tread very lightly.
In some ways, Askari was pleased with the situation. No one ever bothered him, and once his duties were complete, no one stopped him from doing exactly as he pleased.
He was wondering whether he should head home after a day of negotiations when Basaam appeared in the doorway. Basaam's professional looks were rumpled, and Askari frowned, wondering what had rumpled his friend so.
“What is it?”
“You asked me to keep a watch out for Erin O'Reilly in the American news,” he said, and there was something curiously reluctant in his voice. Despite his carefully cultivated nonchalant exterior, Askari couldn't help but stand up. There had been no news of Erin since she had left, and he refused to send a private investigator after her. He considered it beneath his dignity. However, having a media watch posted on her was another thing... or at least that was how he felt.
“She has emerged in Nevada,” Basaam said with that same reluctant tone.
“Strange, she was happy in New York.”
Or perhaps she hadn't been, and that was one more mistake he had made with regards to the situation. He looked back on it far more often than was healthy, and more than once he had been tempted to break the silence between them, to find her and to finally learn what had happened. However, he had always pulled back, but this was different. He looked at Basaam expectantly, wondering all over again why the other man was so nervous.
“Well, perhaps she liked the schools in Nevada a little better.”
Askari was close to telling his assistant to simply speak common sense, but then Basaam showed him a tablet with an article pulled up.
The first thing that he thought was that she had not changed at all. Same wide green eyes, same curvy body, same red hair. The two children were new, however, and after that penetrated, it was followed by how dark one little girl was, with eyes as green as Erin's own, while the other child had red hair and the black eyes he saw every time he looked in the mirror.
For a moment, it was as if time had stopped. Then it started again with a jerk, and he could feel a deep well of rage open up inside him. If Basaam hadn't been there, he might have bellowed like an injured animal. Instead, he forced himself to read the article. He read about her rescue of a little family in the mountains, and his brain shouted to know where these little ones had been at the time. Then he realized that there was a third baby, another little girl on top of the first two, who was not pictured.
The article offered some platitudes about the toughness of single mothers, and Askari felt as if the world had opened up. He realized then that he had been sleepwalking through the past year. Nothing had made him feel alive, not the people he spoke with, not the money he had made, not the goals he had achieved.
Now, with an enormous tidal wave of rage, Askari knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was alive again, and that nothing on the planet was going to get in the way of his journey to Erin.
He stood abruptly and looked at Basaam.
“Get me on a plane to wherever she is. I don't care who you have to bribe or what you have to do, I want her found.”
“Yes, Sheikh Askari. Right away.”
Basaam hurried away, and coldly and brutally, Askari started making the arrangements he had to make to ensure he could be gone for at least a little while. With the right arrangements, he could be gone for a few weeks, even with such short notice.
However, Askari knew what he was going to do, and with any luck, he'd be back in less than forty-eight hours.
Chapter Ten
It started out as a perfectly normal day. The triplets woke up a little fussy, but after a little bit of juggling, a little bit of singing, and their bottles, they quieted enough that Erin could put them down on their play mat with some soft toys.
It was enough time for her to get herself a cup of tea and a quick cereal bar, and then she was back watching her daughters. She supposed that every mother was prejudiced, but she genuinely thought that there was something wonderfully special, amazingly lovely, about her daughters.
She didn't want to label them, but as she watched them play, she could see that Talia already seemed like the most determined, while Tonya tended to hang back more. Tabitha seemed invested in getting into every little thing, wanting to see how it all worked.
I am so glad that I gave in and hired a housekeeper, she thought. It allowed her to keep her house in some semblance of order while she chased after three little girls who all seemed bound and determined to want to crawl at the same time. She had mostly gotten over the idea of feeling guilty over the money that Askari had refused to take back, but as always, her thoughts couldn't stay away from the man himself.
She resolutely kept herself ignorant of what he was doing. She supposed that it would have been easy to track him in the gossip papers or even in the daily news from Hazn, but she couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear to see if he had found a woman who could more eas
ily give him the arrangement they had had or if, perhaps even more hurtful, he had found a woman that he was capable of loving the way that he couldn't love her.
Deep in her heart, Erin had always known that if she found out he had gotten married, something inside her would have been broken in an irrevocable fashion. She couldn't take that, and so she simply did not look.
I wonder if my hormones are still out of whack after giving birth, she thought. I feel so broody today.
Instead, she focused on her daughters, sitting on the ground to play with them, to help them navigate their world with tiny hands, to keep them from hurting each other.
This is what I need, Erin told herself. This is all I need.
Perhaps something inside her denied that, but she ignored it. She thought she had gotten rather good at ignoring it over the last year or so.
There was a brisk tapping on the door, and she looked up expectantly. One of the nice things about living in the age of Internet was the fact that she could get essentials like diapers delivered. The post was a little early, but she had been wondering if she had been running low anyway.
Checking to make sure that the girls were playing quietly, she climbed to her feet.
"Hi, Peter, right in the nick of time, I..."
The words she had been about to use died on her lips, and she stared at the man who stood on her doorstep, as dark and threatening as a thundercloud.
"Who," he asked ominously, "is Peter?"
***
He should have been sleeping on the plane, but instead, he had gone over the abysmally thin file that Basaam had been able to put together for him. There was not much, not that there would have been on a young mother living a quiet life.