by Sophia Lynn
Giving the Sheikh a Love Child
An Enemies to Lovers Arranged Baby Romance
Sophia Lynn
Copyright © 2020 by Sophia Lynn
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This story is a work of fiction and any portrayal of any person living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
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Prologue
Allatf
The chamber was large and spacious, the tall windows arching high up to the second floor mezzanine and the space open and dignified, as any place where important policy was decided should be. It was, Kashif had always been told, one of the great places of power in the small country of Allatf; a place where his ancestors had made some of the most important decisions in their country's history.
Right now, as he gazed around the table at his ministers, he couldn't help but see it as ever so slightly like a trap where the spring had been tripped.
“This is uncalled for,” he said, trying not to let the irritation show in his voice. “We are living in the twenty-first century.”
“So you keep saying,” said one of his ministers acidly. “So you keep saying as you push through one measure after another in pursuit of your dream for Allatf.”
“I think it's a pretty good dream,” Kashif said mildly. “Food for anyone within our borders, electricity and Internet in every house over the next four years… These are good dreams.”
“No one is saying they are not, Sheikh Kashif,” said another minister wearily. “You know you have our support. You know that we also have the best interests of this country at heart.”
“You do,” Kashif said, and his voice grew sharper. “But I have yet to see how what happens in my bedroom has anything to do with the country.”
The ministers stirred uneasily among themselves. Kashif thought he had gotten out of the argument again, as he had so often in the past, but apparently today, his luck had run out. The Minister of Finance spoke up, her voice sharp.
“I beg your pardon, Sheikh Kashif, but it does,” she said. “You may be a hero to your people in another decade or so, but right now, you are alienating the very people whose favor you should be seeking.”
“I am the sheikh,” he said, growing sharper in turn. “I do not ask for favors.”
“No, but you need help,” she shot back. “You are looking at moving an entire country forward, and right now, thanks to your past and your former ways, you are doing it alone. Think of how slow your progress has been. Think about how much faster it could go with the right help. Think about all the people who could benefit if you weren't so stubborn.”
A silence took the council chamber after she was done speaking, and Kashif looked around at the other faces at the table. Some of them could look at him, some couldn't, but none looked like they disagreed with the words spoken.
“So you are all in agreement,” he said neutrally. “You all think I need a sheikha.”
“It would be wise,” said another minister hesitantly. “To secure the succession, to placate the more conservative nobles who feel that you are too Western and too immature to lead.”
“And dragging some poor woman in my wake will be what it takes to change their mind? What foolishness. But all right. Someone get me Lady Amira Tahan's number, I'll—”
“Begging your pardon, Sheikh Kashif,” coughed the minister who had just spoken, “but she's gotten married. Last year. You were there.”
Kashif frowned. There had been rather a lot of weddings last year.
“All right then. Let's say... Lady Kala Haddad.”
“Also married,” supplied another minister reluctantly.
“Ah. Well. Esma Seif—”
“Is not going to have anything to do with you,” said the finance minister, who had called him out so harshly. He wondered if there was a slight tone of censure in her voice. “You left her in the middle of a party because you found the bartender more exciting.”
“That bartender was in law school, just so you know,” Kashif said, vaguely thinking that he should try to defend himself somehow. “How many suitable candidates have I managed to avoid alienating?”
Kashif had supposed that when the time came, he would have his pick of the women of his class. Now though, as most of his ministers looked away or simply looked chagrined, he realized that was likely not going to be the case.
All right, perhaps I haven't been the most popular man in my social set, he thought, but then the Minister of Finance spoke up.
“I'm afraid there really is only one likely choice,” she said. “As far as we can tell, she's not married, and you haven't managed to do or say anything that would irritate her in the last ten years.”
“That... sounds very specific,” Kashif said, and the minister slid a file across the table towards him.
“You've come prepared,” he said, and she gave him an impatient look.
“One must, when one's quarry is so stubborn,” she said.
“I'm going to keep my eye on you,” Kashif said, his voice dire. “You're going to go far, and yes, that is a threat.”
She only grinned at that, and with a sigh, Kashif opened the folder.
It took him a moment to recognize the woman whose picture was paper-clipped to the file. It must have been a passport photo or something similar. There was no smile on her heart-shaped face, and under the too-bright lighting, her skin looked slightly gray. However, there was no mistaking her enormous pale brown eyes, the determined set of her lips or the slightly otherworldly beauty of her features.
There was a strange moment where he knew he recognized her, before being able to pinpoint exactly who she was. It was an instant moment of familiarity, a brief breath where his heart sang in the pleasure of something longed for and finally found.
Then Kashif read her name, realized where he knew her from, and he looked up at his cabinet.
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “If I owe all of you nothing else, I suppose I owe you the pleasure of watching me get dumped by a woman who hasn't seen me in more than a decade.
Chapter One
Honey
One Week Later - United States
The house was mostly packed up. It had been a fairly enormous task, and Honey Asfour Langston knew she should feel proud, but right now, she felt nothing at all.
All her mother's things, barring the few personal mementos Honey couldn't bear to give away or sell, had been dealt with. Some of the furniture had been antique, netting almost a thousand dollars that had looked enormous at the time and now looked like pitifully little. The clothes and home goods had been worth so little that Honey had finally called a charity to get rid of them; one less thing to worry about.
She had told herself over and over again that it was
good to get rid of her mother's things. So much of it was old and cheap and broken. It wouldn't have been worth it to haul it to where she was going next, wherever that ended up being.
Almost over, Honey told herself. Almost done. Another month, maybe two, and I'll be out of this house, and on to whatever comes next.
She looked around at the small house, empty except for two chairs, a shelf of her books, and her bed in the bedroom upstairs. There were some lamps, some things to use in the kitchen so she wouldn't have to order takeout every night, but otherwise it was cavernously empty.
I should feel something, she thought. I grew up here. I lived here. This was where me and Mom came after Daddy died. This is my home.
Even as she thought it, Honey realized it was a lie. A home was the people, not the things or the place. It had stopped being home when her mother died, and now it was nothing more than a place where she slept while she tried to figure out what to do next. When the bank foreclosed on the house, the mortgage unpaid for almost four months, it would be over.
Honey felt nothing.
A knock at the door made her look up in surprise, and she went to go answer it, not really thinking about who it might be. No one came by anymore, but perhaps it was one of her mother's old church friends or someone from the charity who needed her to sign something.
Honey opened the door and stared at the man on her doorstep; tall, handsome, dressed in a finely cut suit and with a bouquet of roses in the crook of his arm. He grinned at her, as good looking as any movie star, and for some silly reason, her heart beat faster, her eyes grew wide.
“Honey Asfour,” he said. “I can't believe I'm seeing you again.”
Honey had thought that it might be some time before she could feel anything again. Now, however, she realized that she was wrong, as a bolt of pure rage shot down and struck her square in the head. As Kashif Riaz stepped forward, clearly ready to come in, she stepped back in perfect time and slammed the door in his face, the bang so loud that that it sent a plastic cup close to the edge of the kitchen table bouncing to the ground.
“Honey!”
“No!” she responded, her own voice loud enough that it startled her. When was the last time she had spoken that loudly? It felt as if it had been months, if not years. It was oddly cathartic to raise her voice, and so she did it again.
“No,” she repeated. “Absolutely not. Get out of here. I don't want to see you.”
“I think you might,” he said, and Honey fumed, because wasn't that just like Riaz? Of course the son of the sheikh, the richest boy in the school, knew what she wanted better than she did.
“You're wrong,” she snapped, staring at the door as if she could glare straight through it. “You're wrong, and I don't want to see you. I want you to go away.”
There was a pause long enough that she thought he might have done just that, but then she heard him sigh.
“I will if that is what you truly want. But Honey. I have a deal for you. And an apology.”
“A deal and an apology,” Honey echoed scornfully. “That sounds like a scam.”
“It's not,” he insisted. “I promise, it's not. And well, even if you won't open the door, I'd like to make an apology if I can. With your permission.”
She blinked, because that was new. The Kashif she knew didn't really bother with things like that, apologies or permission. She hesitated.
“Say what you have to say,” she said finally. Curiosity had always been one of her greatest flaws. It would probably be the end of her someday if she didn't keep an eye on it.
“Will you open the door?”
“No.”
“All right. Honey, first, I'm sorry for what I did to you when were children. I'd like to make the excuse that I was an arrogant little boy who was far from home and I had no idea how to behave, but the truth is there's really no excuse for that kind of behavior. You deserved better, and I will always be sorry that I treated you like that.”
Honey waited, but there was no sound of steps moving away. Kashif didn't continue. He was waiting, and finally she gave in to curiosity.
“Is that all?” she asked suspiciously.
“It is if you want it to be,” came the prompt reply. “Of course I would like it if you accepted my apology, but you don't have to do that unless you actually want to. And no matter what comes next, if anything, I really am sorry. If nothing else, I am grateful I got even the chance to tell you.”
“The chance to yell at me through the door,” Honey pointed out, biting her lip, and to her surprise, Kashif laughed.
“Just that. I'm willing to have this conversation through the door if you want. I will say though that the door could be a little more secure, given your neighborhood. It doesn’t look too sturdy.”
“You do not get to stand there and insult my door,” Honey snapped, freshly irritated.
“I wouldn't if you let me in.”
Honey hesitated. If someone had asked her an hour ago whether she would ever have opened the door for Kashif Riaz, Sheikh of Allatf, and her personal middle school bully, she would have laughed in their face. No, not even that. She would have had no idea what it meant at all.
She still might have said no, curiosity or not, but she realized with a creeping sense of certainty that this was the first time in who knew how long that she had thought of something besides her grief, besides the trouble of what was going to happen next and what she was going to do with herself.
“All right.”
She opened the door, and there he was, larger than life and more handsome than she could have believed. The years had been very kind to him, and Honey thought with some irritation that she couldn't say the same for herself. Some days, she felt just like that nine-year-old girl Kashif had picked on so very mercilessly, only she was taller and a little curvier now.
Now Kashif was on her doorstep looking unfairly handsome with a bouquet of roses in his arms. She nodded at the flowers.
“What's the bouquet for?” she asked.
“Well,” Kashif said with a frown. “It was for romance, but now I'm beginning to think that it's just a very bad idea.”
“Did you seriously come here on your way to a date?” Honey asked, beginning to get angry again. “You decided to fit in an apology before dinner and a movie or something?”
Kashif looked irritated.
“I’m the Sheikh of Allatf. I like to think that I’d do a lot better than dinner and a movie if I was going to be on a— Okay. You know what? No. This isn't working. Honey. May I come in? I have a proposition to make.”
There was a moment when Honey wanted to tell him no. Whatever was happening right now was the beginning of something new and strange, she could tell. She wasn't a woman who did new and strange, but it occurred to her now her mother had died, she had no idea what kind of woman she might be.
“All right,” she said. “Come on in.”
She refused to flinch at the barrenness of the house even as Kashif looked around.
“I heard about your mother's passing,” he said. “I was sorry to hear of it.”
“Yeah, well. Look. I'm really not acting like it, but I do appreciate the apology. This doesn't have to be – some kind of big thing, all right? It can just be an apology, and we can go on living our lives and—”
“I would like you to marry me and to have my child,” Kashif said, holding out the flowers.
The world tilted, and Honey felt as if everything was sliding vaguely to the right, off-axis, off its center.
“Oh.”
Automatically, she took the flowers, aware in a way she hadn't been before that she was in the same old blue dress and leggings that she had slapped on that morning to take care of the last few boxes in the basement. She was holding roses that likely cost as much as a good steak dinner, Kashif looked like he had walked out of a television interview, and he had just proposed to her.
Kashif waited for her to speak, and then he cleared his throat.
“You know, th
at oh wasn't a response...”
“I know it wasn't,” Honey blurted out. “I'm processing! You have to let me do that! I mean… what? Why? Why me?”
“Okay, good, I can help you process. Let's sit down.”
He took his place on one of the chairs in the living room, and she took the other. The vases were gone so she self-consciously laid the roses on the ground by her seat. They were a deep blood red, too dramatic by far, and she kept her eyes off of them.
“All right. To take your questions one at a time. What. A marriage. You to me. Legally, we would marry in Allatf, you would be the sheikha for no less than three years, you give me a son, and we will behave in public like a loving and dignified couple. You would be required to attend a certain number of social functions, to take up at least one charity cause and to behave yourself in that you should have no public affairs.”
“But private ones are all right?” she blurted out, and something fast and dark stole across Kashif's face.
“Of course, for you as well as me,” he said with a kind of deadly courtesy. “However, I might like to suggest that we simply satisfy ourselves the old-fashioned way. Less possibility of scandal.”
“The old-fashioned way...” she echoed, and he gave her a smile that she could feel straight down to her toes.
“You and I, as husband and wife,” he said. “The ideal has its appeal, don't you think?”
Heaven help her, but yes, yes it did. Honey could feel something stirring in her that she had been ignoring for a very long time. Curiosity for how it might feel if she ran her hands through Kashif's hair, combined with horror at how easy she had gotten without noticing, warred inside her.