Kate had no idea how she got through the rest of the afternoon. She was hot, sweaty, and exhausted. After a sleepless night and a rushed, busy day, all she wanted to do was take a cool shower and play with Jaffri.
When she stepped into the hotel suite that evening, the first thing she saw was her little guy. His face lit up with a smile and his dark eyes dancing with mischief.
“Hi there!” she sing-songed as she walked over to him. “Were you a good boy while Mommy was out doing silly stuff?” she asked, kissing his fingers as he playfully patted her nose and cheeks.
“Let me go shower and then we’ll play, okay?”
Jaffri made a few baby sounds that she interpreted to be “momma” and “hurry”, so she handed him back to Joan and jumped into the shower. Fifteen minutes later, she was dressed in stretch pants and a long shirt, feeling enormously better. No makeup, her hair still wet and twisted up on top of her head. Just a night at home, she thought. A night with her son and maybe a salad for dinner. Or nothing at all. She was too tired to contemplate what to eat for dinner.
“Call room service and order whatever you want for dinner, Joan. I’m probably just going to feed Jaffri and relax.”
Joan hesitated. “Um…Kate…did you forget that you promised His Highness that you’d dine with him tonight at the palace?”
Kate stared at her nanny as if the woman had suddenly turned purple. Then her conversation with Talal this morning came back and she groaned. “Right. I had forgotten. Good grief, what a night to have to deal with that.” She sighed and stood up, carrying Jaffri as she headed for the phone. “I’ll just call and explain things to him. I’ll talk to him tomorrow night.”
That would also give her time to figure out what she was going to tell him about his son. She really needed to think things through. “Why don’t you go take the night off and relax? Have some private time?”
Joan smiled gratefully. “That would be fabulous! I love Jaffri to pieces, but a night out with adult company would be nice.”
Joan slipped into the second bedroom and grabbed her purse. A moment later, she waved to Jaffri and Kate before heading out the door. Kate had no idea where her nanny would go tonight. Probably out with the other cast members. At least, she hoped so. Being in a foreign country alone wasn’t a smart idea. But Joan was a grown woman and knew how to take care of herself.
Her next dilemma hit her aching head. “How does one call the palace?” she asked Jaffri. The little guy only clapped his hands, excited to be with his mom. He mumbled something, but his words weren’t intelligible this time. So Kate made something up.
“Oh, you want pizza for dinner tonight?” She laughed and clapped his little hands together. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she told him with mock seriousness. He only giggled and made a goofy face, then patted her cheeks again. “So how about some strained squash instead? And a bit of banana? Yum! That sounds like just what the doctor ordered, right?”
More unintelligible sounds, made more confusing since he stuffed one of his chubby hands in his mouth while trying to talk.
“Oh, you like strawberries? I didn’t know that!”
Jaffri wiggled as he laughed right along with her. Goodness, a child’s laughter was amazing! No matter what happened during the day, Jaffri alleviated her stress at once.
He didn’t eliminate it entirely though. Cuddling him close, she dialed room service and put in her order. She ordered a salad simply because she knew that she needed to eat something. She had skipped lunch because she’d been too wound up, trying to figure out what to do regarding Jaffri and Talal.
She had to tell Talal, she decided as she sat down on Jaffri’s blanket to play with him. It was the right thing to do. Kate had to trust him, had to figure out a plan so that both of them were able to see Jaffri.
What that plan might be, she had no idea.
And she needed to call the palace to tell them that she wouldn’t be dining with Talal tonight. Otherwise, he’d simply show up here, which would be bad.
Lifting her cell phone, she searched the Internet for information. When she came to the Altair palace information, she dialed that number. There were a bunch of options, directions, historical information, etc. She was listening impatiently to the listed options when the doorbell rang.
“Dinner!” she announced to Jaffri who only slammed his toy pig down onto the blanket several times with eagerness. The boy was always ready to eat.
“Coming!” she called out, telling Jaffri to stay on the blanket then laughing because her little guy was just learning to crawl. It wasn’t like he could run off and get into trouble.
She hurried to the door, glancing back at her son as she did so. But when she opened the door, it wasn’t a uniformed hotel waiter standing there. It was Talal. Tall, broad shouldered, and terrifying!
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, blocking his path when he tried to enter the room.
Her efforts seemed to amuse him. Looking down at her, he rested his hands on her hips and pulled her closer. “I’m coming in, Kate.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because my man said that you seemed tired earlier today. And distracted. I suspected that it was because of…” his eyes moved behind her and he froze. His only motion was slowly tightening fingers around her waist.
Kate looked behind her and saw Jaffri on his tummy, his little legs kicking as he tried to push himself forward, grinning a slobbery baby’s grin from ear to ear.
Ripping out of Talal’s arms, she snatched up her son. “You need to leave,” she ordered.
Of course, he didn’t leave. He moved further into the room, his eyes not leaving Jaffri. “This explains a great deal,” he whispered, his voice raw. Ragged.
“Explains what?” she asked, praying that he hadn’t made the connection.
“The disgusting meal that you ordered,” he replied, still looking at Jaffri as the hotel waiter pushed the heavy cart into the room. It was beautifully draped in crisp, white linen with silver dome covered dishes. Any other time, Kate would have laughed at the elegant covers for baby food, but she wasn’t sure she could speak, much less laugh.
The waiter didn’t even pause to have her sign for the room service. He recognized the tension and simply left the cart, walking out as fast as possible.
“Who is this?” Talal demanded.
Kate knew it was now or never. She could lie. She could tell him that Jaffri was the son of a cast mate that she was babysitting. A number of lies to explain Jaffri’s presence flashed through her mind.
But she couldn’t lie. She’d always hated people who lied to make life easier. She couldn’t resort to that path now.
“This is Jaffri,” she began, shifting him ever so slightly. “And he’s hungry. If you don’t mind, he knows that the cart contains his dinner. I need to feed him.”
She belted Jaffri into the highchair the hotel had provided. It was a bit of a challenge because Jaffri knew that food was on the way and couldn’t contain his excitement.
“Soon, honey,” she cooed and began peeking under the silver covers, hunting for the squash.
Jaffri smacked the table emphatically in his enthusiasm. She normally would have laughed, but panic caught in her throat.
“Squash first,” she insisted firmly. She knew her son too well. If he spotted the bananas first, he wouldn’t eat his vegetables.
Kate was painfully conscious of Talal standing beside her, watching the whole scene. But she dished out the steamed, mashed squash to Jaffri who tried to grab the spoon to get it to his mouth faster. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t coordinated enough to grab the spoon, so he pounded the table until he got another spoonful.
“All the squash, my man,” she told him.
“Who is he?” Talal demanded.
Kate couldn’t look at him. She scraped a large clump of squash from Jaffri’s face and fed it to him.
She took a deep breath, focusing as much as possible on Jaffri. “He�
�s our son,” she told him. There had been silence before that moment, but as soon as she’d said the words, the silence grew heavier, darker. More dangerous.
Kate could feel herself trembling as she waited for his response. Finishing the squash, she moved on to the steamed, mashed chicken.
“Slow down, big guy,” she soothed. Jaffri stared up at the stranger, gumming his chicken meditatively. Talal stared back, father and son silently absorbing each other’s presence.
“How old is he?”
“Nine months old.”
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked harshly.
Kate sighed, her shoulders drooping with the weight of his question. “Until yesterday, I hadn’t even known who you were or how to get in touch with you to tell you about Jaffri. So no, as of yesterday, I’d accepted that I was going to be a single mother.”
More silence while Kate’s shoulders tensed, waiting for his anger to explode. Instead, he asked, “His name is Jaffri?”
She nodded.
“And he’s my son?”
Kate visibly cringed at the anger in his voice. She felt horrible for a long moment and started to turn, to defend herself, but then anger took over.
“No,” she said sternly. “You have no right to be angry with me, Talal!”
“You kept all knowledge of my son from me!” he growled right back.
She shook her head, exasperated.
“No, I haven’t. A year and a half ago, I went back home, hurt, rejected, heart broken, and devastated with your last disappearance. It wasn’t until the third time you disappeared that I realized that you couldn’t love me. I was just a convenient booty call when you had time.” She snapped a hand up when he tried to speak. “No! I’m talking now, Talal. You accused me of denying you your parental rights, but we both know that isn’t what happened. You left me. I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left. I got on the plane and cried the whole way home because I’d given my heart to a callous, rude, inconsiderate man who had no problem vanishing without any explanation, and then reappearing days later, still without a single word about it. That last time, again, you’d left no word that you were coming back. So yes, I left. And you would never have put up with me disappearing like that even once. I left, yes. But only because you provoked me into leaving.”
“Fair enough…but you should have told me that you were pregnant!”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “How?” she demanded when she was sure she could be coherent. “How in the world could I have told you that I was pregnant? I didn’t even know your last name. A fact I didn’t realized until I was halfway home. And last night, seeing you again after almost eighteen months, I realized why you never told me your last name and I understand, but at the time, I was hurt and humiliated.”
“So when you figured it out, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know you were a sheik until yesterday! I was too busy coping with that!” she hissed, trying to simmer down because she didn’t want to upset Jaffri.
“My role has nothing to do with this issue!”
She laughed, a hollow sound. “Are you kidding me?” She picked up her cell phone and pressed the recent call menu. “I just got off the phone with a phone tree for the palace,” she snapped. “Believe it or not, Talal, the palace doesn’t publicize your personal phone number.” The sarcasm was dripping from her words now. “I can’t imagine why!”
Kate heard Jaffri hiccough and turned around, realizing that his whole face was smeared with banana now. “No honey, you can’t have any more banana.” She grabbed a warm wash cloth the hotel conveniently provided and wiped his face. More fist pounding and another adorable grin, but Kate didn’t relent.
Talal inched a step closer, a smile pulling at his lips, “What does he want?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “He wants more banana. It’s his favorite.”
“Why can’t he have more?”
She chuckled. “Because too much of one thing is bad for him. He needs to eat something other than bananas all the time.”
He looked down at Jaffri, who was staring solemnly up at him as if Talal was a potential advocate, then back to Kate. “Okay, so explain.”
“About the bananas?” she asked, her cheeks turning pink at the idea of explaining what happened to a tiny body when too much banana was allowed. It wasn’t pretty, she’d learned from experience.
“No, explain why you didn’t tell me as soon as you realized who I was.”
She sighed and sat back down in front of Jaffri, feeding him more of the chicken. He needed more protein, given the rate of his growth. He was a big baby!
“I suppose you think I should have told you the moment we saw each other at the palace last night.”
“That would have been better,” he agreed, crossing his arms over his chest.
She chuckled. “Right. As if I didn’t have enough to figure out with just trying to reconcile you standing in front of me after eighteen months. And realizing that you’d lied to me.”
He frowned, confusedly by that statement. “How did I lie to you?”
She tilted her head, thinking about it for a moment. “You didn’t tell me who you were. In fact, you made a point of it, which is a lie of omission.”
“Not a lie though.”
She rolled her eyes. “Look at this situation from my perspective. I come out of hiding two months after the man I thought I loved vanished, again.” She held up a hand when he tried to speak. “Then I discovered I was pregnant. No way to tell you. No idea who you really are or where you might be since the father of my baby was the kind of man who had suddenly appeared in my life, then disappeared, then appeared, then disappeared.” She lifted an eyebrow, daring him to deny what had happened. When he pressed his lips together, she continued, moving her attention back to Jaffri. “When I finally take a new acting role, I had no idea that you would even be here in Altair. I knew you only as a government consultant. I didn’t know that you were the government! Our first night here, the entire cast is invited to the palace, an honor to anyone in the industry. I show up at the palace and am confronted by my past lover. At that moment, blindsided by your sudden appearance, I was supposed to tell you about your son?”
“Yes!” he asserted vehemently.
She tilted her head. “Or was I supposed to deal with the realization that my former lover was really the ruler of a powerful country?”
He glared at her for a moment, but she took his silence as agreement that her realization was a bit more profound than he’d previously accepted.
“Last night, after you kissed me, I was overwhelmed. So no, I hadn’t thought to tell you about Jaffri. All of your threats last night, your assertion that we were going to be back together, well, after our last fling…”
“It was more than a fling.”
She didn’t comment, but continued on. “After our fling almost eighteen months ago, I was a bit preoccupied with my anger over your sudden reappearance. I’m a mother, granted. But I’m also a woman and a human being. I can only deal with one shock at a time.” She scooped another spoonful of mashed chicken, feeding it to Jaffri. “You being in front of me last night was my shock for the day.”
“And today?”
She turned to face him. “That was the revelation I’d had when your men saw me. I’d just realized that Jaffri was the son of the sheik.” She fought back sudden tears. “And your heir if you’re willing to acknowledge him. That was enough of a shock for today. No more, please.”
With that announcement, the tension in his shoulders seemed to leave him. It took another few moments and bites of mashed chicken before his facial features relaxed as well.
Their problems weren’t resolved, but at least she sensed he wasn’t as angry as he had been upon first discovery.
“Fair enough,” he finally replied.
She looked up at him and her stomach tightened with the triumphant look in those dark eyes. “What?” she asked,
a gaping hole opening up in the pit of her stomach. That look didn’t bode well for her.
“You will marry me now.”
She dropped the bowl of chicken, startling Jaffri. Jaffri stared at the mess for a moment, then greedily rubbed his hand through it and shoved it into his mouth. Well, as much as a nine month old could shove.
Kate cleaned up the mess and fed him another spoonful, focusing on her son until she was back in control of herself. “I’m sorry, but how do you figure that we need to be married?”
He moved closer, triumph and determination in his eyes. “You’re right. I need to acknowledge my son. We will be married in secret and I’ll announce to my people that I have an heir. We’ll figure out the details later with my staff. But until then, we must get both of you back to the palace.”
“Palace? Why would we…?”
She wasn’t given a chance to finish that statement. Talal was already at the door and murmured something to the guards outside, both of whom looked startled, glanced at Jaffri, then at Kate, then nodded to their sovereign, bowing even as they started muttering rapidly into their hidden microphones.
Talal shut the door, and returned to Kate’s side.
“What did you just tell them? What are they doing?” she demanded, standing up but then remembered that Jaffri was still eating and pulled the chicken out of reach. She didn’t like him eating when she wasn’t giving him her full attention. He stuffed food into his mouth so quickly that she worried he would choke.
“I told them that we need to get both of you back to the palace,” he explained even as he moved over to Jaffri.
Kate watched, not sure what he meant. “I’m sorry but…why would we get back to the palace? We’re all settled here.”
“It’s not safe,” he replied, examining Jaffri and the high chair, trying to figure out how to extract the baby, and the expression in his eyes told her that he wasn’t sure how to touch his newly discovered son without getting mashed chicken all over himself. “We need to get back to the palace quickly.”
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