The Sheikh's Secret

by Knight, Kylie

  “Eating for two?”

  “Pregnant. I’m pregnant, you idiot. Or did you really think I just got fat?”

  “Pregnant. I see. And why is that any of my concern?”

  “Well because you’re going to be a father, that’s why. I thought you would be thrilled. If I remember correctly you did always want to be a father. Or has that changed as well?”

  The room was dead silent. It was like they had all momentarily turned into statues. What was supposed to be said after news like that? Where were they supposed to go from there, any of them? One thing was for sure, only one of them looked happy at the moment and it was Nicole. Alison would like to think that it was because of her joy over having a baby but she had a feeling that wasn’t it. Or at least not all of it. What she looked was triumphant. It was like being pregnant gave her an unbeatable hand and she knew everyone else at the table was going to have to fold. And she just stood there with that smile on her face that never reached her eyes, apparently perfectly content to let her and Aasir take as much time as they needed to comprehend the bombshell she had just dropped on them. She could probably have done this all day and not been bored for a moment. Finally Aasir started to reanimate and he turned to look at Alison, a look that almost broke her heart, and squeezed her hand before speaking again.

  “Well then I suppose congratulations are in order.”

  “Really? Is that all you have to say? Typical. You always were a little bit of a moron, weren’t you?”

  “What else should I say? What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t really know. I’ve never told a man I was expecting his child before. I guess I always thought he would take more interest in the whole affair than offering me congratulations.”

  “Ah, I see. You’re claiming that the child is mine. I guess that makes things slightly different, doesn’t it?”

  “I would hope so. And what exactly are you trying to imply, saying that I’m ‘claiming’ that the child is yours?”

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m stating very plainly that I am not at all convinced that that child in your belly belongs to me.”

  “Aasir, I would have thought you would be better than that. And you” here she looked directly at Alison, who had to resist the urge to just turn and leave the room, “how can you stand being with a man who asks a question like that? Where’s your sense of loyalty to females? I thought that was a thing; sisterhood and all of that.”

  Crap. Alison was starting to feel slightly ill, like she might actually get physically sick. The last thing she wanted was to be caught in the middle of this mess. She didn’t want either one of them asking her questions or drawing her into the mix. Whether this new piece of information was true or not, it was between Aasir and Nicole. She didn’t have the right to weigh in with her opinion, even if she wanted to.

  “Nicole, be reasonable. You come here after months of us being split up, and you claim to be pregnant. I haven’t seen you in some time, haven’t been with you, either. I’m honestly not trying to offend you, but please, Nicole. You’ve got to be reasonable. How could I possibly know what you’ve done since we separated? I don’t know if you’ve been seeing someone. I don’t know if that baby is mine or not. If it is, if it actually belongs to me, of course I will take my responsibility. But I want to be certain first.”

  “You want to be ‘certain’? So what exactly do you mean by that?”

  “A paternity test. How else would I be sure? Don’t make that face at me, Nicole. It isn’t an unreasonable request. Any man in my position would ask the same thing of you. And come on now, you just got through telling me to watch out for people trying to take me for my money. If you believe that to be a possibility, if you believe that to be a real threat, surely you can’t be surprised that I would ask for this test. It’s something that you should have expected.”

  Well that had to be the one bright spot in the conversation. He had her pretty much trapped with that observation. Alison could tell by the furious look on her face. There was no reasonable way for her to be pissed off about a paternity test, especially after she made it so clear that everyone was just after him for his money. Still, that didn’t mean she had to like it, and Alison cringed as Nicole let out a whole string of profanity that would have made a more sheltered girl faint.

  “Fine, you know what? I don’t care. Order your test. I’m not worried about it because I already know it belongs to you. If you want to prolong this thing that’s fine. I don’t care. In the end, you’re going to pay up. Big time. You’re going to make sure this baby shits in diamond diapers if I have anything to say about it.”

  She gave them both one last withering look of hatred and contempt and then stormed out of the house, doing her best to slam the massive doors on her way out. It gave her the most intense sense of deja vu, seeing her do that again. It was just like when Aasir had told her to leave for good, banished her from his home forever. Except it hadn’t been forever, not really. It hadn’t been forever because she had come back again to set off a bomb in their lives and then left again, leaving them both shocked and battered by the battle. Aasir stared at the door, almost like he was trying to figure out whether or not that scene had really happened or it had been some kind of collective hallucination. After a moment he turned to look at Alison, his face pale and concerned.

  “Alison, I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s ok, Aasir. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “No, but I do. That whole thing, I brought that on us. I can’t believe I ever allowed myself to feel for that woman.”

  Alison could feel hot tears burning in the back of her throat and she swallowed hard, determined not to let her true devastation show. Still, it seemed that Aasir could see it because he took her in his arms, kissed the top of her head, her forehead, her closed eyelids. He held her like that for a long time before finally pulling back and lifting her chin so that she could not keep from looking him in the eye.

  “Alison, this is going to be ok. One way or the other, this is going to be ok. I promise. I will not allow this to come between what we’ve only just begun. I will make this thing ok.”

  Alison nodded quickly, wanting him not to feel so bad. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe him so badly it hurt. She just wasn’t sure that it was possible for him to do what he was promising to.

  Chapter Six

  “But father, please! If you would only listen to me, stop shouting long enough to listen to me.”

  “No. No, Aasir. You do not make the demands in this conversation. I believe you lost that right, don’t you? I believe your actions have proven that you don’t have the right to make demands,”

  “Right. Because I’m just a massive disappointment, right? I mean that’s it, right? That’s what you want to say. Why don’t you just say what you mean to say, father. Let’s get it all out in the open.”

  “Oh, I apologize. I thought it was in the open. Yes, I’m disappointed. How could I not be? What else would you expect? I can’t even imagine what your mother will think when she hears what has happened with you off in America, what she’ll say. She thought it was a mistake to send you to the States right from the beginning and I wouldn’t listen. Now look, it seems that she was right about everything, after all.”

  “I thought I was going to marry her, ok? It wasn’t just some random dalliance.”

  “You thought you were going to marry her. Alright, then why don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t,” Aasir’s father snapped, clearly losing his patience, “I am in no mood for you to play dumb with me. You tell me what reason you have for not marrying the woman carrying your child. It’s the natural order of things. This is just what we do. What men do.”

  “It’s just not that simple with me. You can’t tell me that things were this complicated for you and mother when you met.”

  “Why is that, because we weren’t humping every time we could get our hands on each other?
That’s true, we weren’t. We didn’t even meet until the day of our wedding. I did not look upon her face until the vows were said and yet we are still together, aren’t we? And believe me, it’s not because she’s my favorite person on the planet. She is not what I would have chosen had I been given the chance. It’s because I did my duty. Because that’s what people do. They take on their responsibilities and they carry them and when they get too heavy they carry them still.”

  “But I’m not you! Would you have done it if you were in love with someone else?”

  His father hadn’t had an answer for that question, or if he did he didn’t choose to give it. In fact, he didn’t choose to give any response at all. Almost as soon as the words were out of Aasif’s mouth the other line went dead. Aasir pulled the phone away from his face with a look of mild astonishment. He had hung up on him. His father, no matter how angry he got, had never hung up on him before. It seemed like an ominous sign, to be sure. Because there was no way that silence was the end of the matter. His father was a man who liked to get the last word and he would do so, one way or another. Aasir only needed to wait and see when it would come.

  And it did. It came in the form of an email he received almost a week after the ill fated phone call. The email said only two things, two short sentences that were not to be ignored. The first was “Come home.” The second, the one he felt sick to his stomach upon reading, said “bring the girl.”

  There was no room for argument. No matter what he wanted to do, he was going and he was going to have to bring Nicole with him. He only had to explain it to Alison before he did so. Not a conversation he was looking forward to. Not at all.

  ***

  “Alison, please, please listen to me. It isn’t the way it must sound. None of this is. Really, none of this is what I want.”

  “Then why do you have to go at all?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s a cultural thing. In my family a man doesn’t say no to his father, especially not a man in my position.”

  “Your position? I guess I don’t really understand what that means.”

  Did she really not know? Even living in his house, amongst all of his exorbitantly expensive things, did she not know?

  “Because, I am a sheikh. I am the son of a sheikh and am destined to be a sheikh myself and that carries a certain kind of weight with it. What I did, getting Nicole pregnant the way I did, it’s much, much worse here than it is here. It’s a gross act of misconduct and my family will not be able to stomach it without meeting her. And I’m sure they will want to see the evidence.”

  “seriously? They want you to bring the paternity test? That’s rough. They don’t believe you?”

  “They don’t want to believe me, that much is certain.”

  “And when they see the paperwork? What will happen then? How long will you be there? At your home, I mean?”

  “It’s difficult to say. Time means different things for my father. He uses it as a means of control, and once he sees that Nicole really is going to have my baby, I don’t know what he’ll do. It may get dicey for a little while. Actually, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t. The only thing predictable about my father’s responses is that he will have them, and they will likely be unpleasant.”

  Having this conversation was killing him. The look on Alison’s face made him want to renounce his family and stay here with her, responsibility be damned. The worst part was that she didn’t even look mad. She had every right to be. Given some kind of a role reversal, he would have been. Shit, if she had told him she was travelling to some foreign country with a man she had been involved with so that her parents could meet him, he would have been half out of his mind with anger and jealousy. But he didn’t see any of that on her face. All he saw was resignation and a deep, deep sadness. He was disgusted to have to admit it to himself, but he envied her. He envied her calm and her grace. He had a feeling that if he had been able to demonstrate even a portion of what came naturally to her, he would be in a much different situation that he found himself in at the moment.

  “Well then I’m sure you have a lot you need to do. Packing, sorting out your affairs here. If you don’t mind, if you could just give me an idea of when you’re leaving, I’ll know how much time I have to move my things out and find a different job.”

  So that was it then. She was leaving him. Of course she was. It was no less than he deserved. Only he had gotten this glimpse of this beautiful life he would have with her and he couldn’t quite bring himself to give it up. Not yet, not without a fight. What if something like this never came along again? He wouldn’t be able to live with himself for the rest of his life knowing that he had found someone he really, truly wanted to be with and he had done nothing to keep her when things got rough. He was well aware that he was not in the position to make requests, but he had to. He just couldn’t not do it.

  “Of course, if that’s what you want. But is there anything? Is there anything at all I can do to change your mind?”

  “I-I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “I know it must seem disgusting to you for me to even ask, but is there anything I can do to convince you not to give up on me just yet?”

  “You don’t have to do anything to convince me. If you want me here, if you want me to be here for you when you get back, I will be. No questions asked.”

  “But why?”

  He wasn’t sure asking the question was the right thing to do or if he should have just shut his mouth and thanked whatever gods might be up there watching over him, but he spoke anyway. He just wasn’t the sort of man to keep his mouth shut. For better or worse, he had to know what she was thinking, especially if he was going to have to travel across the world with his pregnant ex-girlfriend.

  “Why? Why would I wait for you?”

  “Well, because I love you, Aasir. And that’s what you do or someone you love. Isn’t it?”

  “Oh god, how did I get so lucky?”

  He took her face between his hands and kissed her long and slow, the way a man might kiss a girl before he headed off to war. Then he pulled back, wanting to memorize every beautiful detail of her face.

  “Oh, and for the record, I love you, too. So much more than I could ever love myself. More than I’ve ever loved anything. I just need you to know that before this all plays out.”

  ***

  “So what’ve you told them about me? All good things, I hope. I wouldn’t want to make a bad first impression on my in laws.”

  After what felt like the longest trip he had ever taken in his entire life, Aasir had finally gotten Nicole to his family home. He was pretty sure she had not stopped talking for a single solitary moment, not even to take a breath, and so he savored the short moment when she had already gotten out of the car and he hadn’t opened his door. It might be the only minute of silence he got for the entire trip and he still didn’t have a clear idea of how long the trip was going to be. How he had ever been with this woman, ever thought he loved her, was now totally beyond him. She was just so vapid! Everything that came out of her mouth was hateful, or judgmental, or hopelessly uninformed. It was embarrassing. He was ashamed of himself for allowing his head to be turned by her looks and flashy personality. Why had he not thought to look at what was underneath? Hadn’t he cared at all about her depth? Or maybe her lack thereof?

  “It’s hot here! How do you people stand it? I mean, home is hot, but this is totally insane! Is it like this, like, all of the time? I hope not or this is going to be unbearable. In case you forgot, I’m kind of pregnant here.”

  “Nicole, please.”

  She turned to look at him with a bitchy expression on her face and a hand on one hip. It seemed like ever since she came back into his life her hand had been permanently fixed to that hip. Had she done that when they were together? And how in the world was he supposed to explain this woman to his father? Or, even worse, to his mother?”

  “What? What’s the problem?”

  “It’s j
ust that you shouldn’t talk that way. It isn’t respectful. And it might be best not to refer to me or anyone you encounter here as ‘you people.’ You may not realize it, but it sounds awfully racist.”

  “Ugh. Whatever. I don’t know why you have to be so sensitive. Anyway, is this your house?”

  “It’s my family’s house, yes.”

  “It’s so big! It’s like, way big. Like so much bigger than your house.”

  “Well I’m glad you like it, I suppose. Now, before we go in. Let’s go over a few things.”

  “What now?”

  “Could you at least try to be cooperative?”

  “I’m just getting pretty tired of hearing all of the things you think I’m doing wrong. Why were you ever with me, anyway? All you do is complain about me.”

  “Honestly? I don’t really know, Nicole. I don’t know why we were together for so long. And in case you forgot, we aren’t together any longer, which means there wasn’t anything left between us.”

  “Oh really? I have a feeling your parents aren’t going to agree with you on that one.”

  Aasir just stared at her, astounded at how easily these threatening comments came out of her mouth. At this point, he was finding himself struggling not to feel outright hatred for the woman. One of the only things working in her favor was the child she was carrying inside of her and he had to remind himself over and over again that that child was enough of a reason to go through this. She was, of course, the little girl that would be his first child, but it would have been a lot easier to remember that if the child been there for him to hold in his arms. As it was, he had to conjure up an image in his mind, hold it there no matter what awful thing came out of Nicole’s mouth next.