Cinderella's Desert Baby Bombshell

by Lynne Graham

  Saif dealt her a bleak appraisal. ‘A huge difference. I would never have chosen to conceive a child in a marriage that is not intended to last. I know what that situation is like from my own childhood. It is unfair to our child and will likely affect his or her emotional well-being and sense of security.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me as though I’m stupid, Saif,’ Tati countered angrily, her eyes flaring with temper. ‘Neither of us planned this. Both of us tried to be careful. Yes, I agree it’s not perfect, but neither of us had perfect when it came to parents and we survived!’

  ‘It’s clear to me that you have still not thought through the ramifications of this development and the effect it will have on your freedom,’ Saif grated, raking lean brown fingers through his black hair in a gesture of unconcealed frustration. ‘My mother didn’t want this sort of life in Alharia and she walked away from it. How will you be any different? The main point I would make is that although you grew up without a father and I grew up without a mother, neither of us was torn between two opposing households and cultures.’

  ‘Parents do successfully work together to raise children after a divorce,’ Tati protested. ‘We’re not enemies. We’re both rational, reasonable people.’

  ‘If you give birth to a boy he will be an heir to the Alharian throne and he will have to spend the majority of his time in this country, which will naturally have an influence on where you choose to live,’ Saif spelt out.

  ‘Why would he have to spend the majority of his time here?’ Tati demanded with a frown.

  ‘How else could he prepare for his future role? He must grow up amongst our people, with the language and the culture. His education and future training would be of the utmost importance and could not be achieved if his main home were to be in another country. And if you have a girl, she may well be the next ruler because I have every intention of changing the constitution when I ascend the throne. It is what our people want and expect in these days of equality,’ Saif completed, his darkly handsome features troubled and taut. ‘I would not want to see my child, girl or boy, only occasionally or for visits. That would bother me.’

  Tati was tense. ‘It would bother me as well. So, you’re saying that to share a child I would have to make a home for myself in Alharia.’

  ‘Yes. Becoming parents will make a clean break impossible,’ Saif delivered heavily. ‘I appreciate how much that would detract from your independence.’

  Tati was almost paralysed by the pain of hearing Saif refer to the option of ‘a clean break.’ In that scenario, after a divorce he would never have had to see her again and obviously that would have been his preference. Yet the same concept devastated her even as she finally grasped the obvious truth that the birth of a child would entangle their lives for a long time and that, self-evidently by his tone, was not what Saif wanted. He didn’t want to share a child with an ex who lived elsewhere. How could she hold such honesty against him? But why did he have to be such a pessimist about the future? Why couldn’t he make the best of things as she was striving to do?

  ‘Your attitude annoys me,’ Tati told him honestly. ‘I tend to believe that the mixing of two cultures and lifestyles is more likely to enrich our child.’

  ‘In an ideal world,’ Saif slotted in grimly. ‘But we don’t live in one. If this were an ideal world, I would be able to openly acknowledge to my father that I have a close relationship with my half-brother, Angelino Diamandis.’

  ‘You have a brother?’ Tati exclaimed in complete surprise, disconcerted by that sudden revelation from a man who could, at the very least, be described as reticent.

  ‘He is two years younger than I, born from my mother’s second marriage. I sought him out years ago, but I think initially I wanted to meet him to see what he had that I didn’t because my mother stuck around to raise him,’ he pointed out curtly, the darkening of his bright eyes the proof of how emotive that topic was for him. ‘Instead I discovered that my half-brother had enjoyed little more mothering than I had and I was surprised at the depth of the bond that developed between us. That relationship, however, had to remain a secret because I did not want to upset my father. He was devastated by my mother’s desertion and the wound never really healed because after her second marriage she was rarely out of the newspapers. She was a great beauty and she revelled in publicity,’ Saif explained ruefully. ‘Children born across the divide of divorce are often placed in difficult positions out of loyalty to their respective parents. Step-families are created and other children follow. The experience may strengthen some, but it injures others.’

  ‘That relative of yours who owns the house in Paris. Is that your brother?’ Tati prompted with sudden comprehension.

  ‘Yes, that house belongs to Angel. He also attended my wedding incognito and I got to spend some time with him before he had to leave again,’ Saif told her. ‘I value my relationship with my younger brother although it shames me to keep it a secret from my father. However, I cannot mention my mother or her second family to him without causing him great distress, which I obviously don’t want to do when his health is poor.’

  ‘He must really have loved her to still be so sensitive... Or is he just bitter?’ Tati questioned with open curiosity.

  ‘No, she was truly the love of my father’s life, but the marriage was always destined to fail,’ Saif opined fatalistically. ‘She was too young and worldly, and he was too old and traditional. When you consider the very public social whirl she embarked on after deserting her husband and son in Alharia and her complete lack of regret for what she had done, you realise that they were ill-suited from the start. Whatever else he may be, my father is a most compassionate man. Had she given him the opportunity he would have given her a divorce and there would not have been a huge scandal. But the Emir was not the only one to suffer her loss... I did as well and spent many years wondering why she couldn’t have stayed for my benefit.’

  ‘That’s very sad,’ Tati acknowledged reflectively. ‘But not really relevant to us. I’m not planning on deserting anyone, least of all my child, nor am I the sort of person attracted to the idea of publicity.’

  ‘Who can tell what you will be enjoying in a few years’ time?’ Saif said with sardonic bite, his sheer cynicism infuriating her.

  ‘You are such a pessimist!’ Tati exclaimed. ‘Do you always expect the very worst of people?’

  ‘I’m a realist, not a pessimist. I would be foolish to ignore the truth that you will be a young and very wealthy divorcee and that inevitably you will remarry, have other children and change from the woman you are now,’ Saif breathed, untouched by her criticism.

  ‘I bet that, right now, you are really, really regretting that you consummated our marriage!’ Tati accused tempestuously.

  ‘My only regret is that I wanted you so much that I went along with that “friends with benefits” idea even though I knew from the outset that it was absolute madness!’ Saif flung back at her in a raw-edged tone of self-loathing.

  Tati froze as though she had been slapped and lost colour. It was clear that Saif could not get onboard with her conviction that they should make the best of her pregnancy. He hadn’t planned the conception; he hadn’t agreed to it and he seemed unlikely to move on from that position. But it was even worse to be confronted with the truth that he now regretted their relationship in its entirety.

  ‘Madness,’ she repeated through taut, dry lips with distaste, feeling totally rejected.

  ‘What else could it be in our circumstances? This relationship of ours is insane and you know it!’ Saif condemned harshly. ‘Once we had both acknowledged that we didn’t want to be married, we should have abstained from sex.’

  Tati reddened. ‘You weren’t a great fan of abstinence either,’ she reminded him accusingly.

  ‘I am not solely blaming you,’ Saif countered grittily. ‘I was also tempted, and I gave way to that temptation, but it is exactly t
hat self-indulgence that has landed us both into this predicament. A divorce is out of the question for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘But why?’ Tati prompted in stark disconcertion at that statement.

  ‘It is far too soon for us to separate and I refuse to seek a divorce from a pregnant wife. I should be with you during your pregnancy, offering whatever support I can. I feel equally strongly that for the first crucial years of our child’s life we should remain together, trying to be the best parents we can be for our child’s benefit,’ Saif explained heavily. ‘It would be selfish to only consider our own wants and needs. I wouldn’t ever want our child to know the pain of not being wanted by a parent.’

  His outlook made Tati feel wretched and like the most selfish woman in the world. She stood up to move towards the door, saying, ‘I have a language lesson in ten minutes, and I don’t want to miss it. We can talk later, and it might help a lot if you could come up with something positive rather than negative.’

  Saif swore under his breath as she left the room. So fierce was his frustration that he was tempted to punch the wall, but bruises and a loss of temper would not change anything, he reflected with grim resignation. His wife was planning to leave him just as his mother had left his father and her son. Saif, however, was determined not to lose either of them. There was also a very real risk of his losing his child because Tatiana was, he surmised, a great deal more maternal than his mother had been.

  In a different scenario he would have been overjoyed at the news that he was to become a father and he was angry at being deprived of that natural response, but it was, sadly, an issue clouded by his own experiences. Being abandoned by his mother soon after birth had hurt and changed his attitude to childbirth and parenthood because he already knew that he could never leave his child as his mother had done.

  Yet how could he celebrate the birth of a child in a marriage that was a fake? A marriage that had been deemed over before it even properly began? Tatiana had never given him a fair chance, not one single chance. She had not budged an iota in her attitude since their first day together. She expected and wanted a divorce as her recompense for agreeing to a marriage that she had been blackmailed into accepting. And during the weeks they had been together she had frequently alluded to the prospect of that divorce and was obviously perfectly content with that outcome. And, even more revealing, she had refused Saif’s support when her own mother was dying. She had in every possible way treated Saif as though he was superfluous, merely a casual sexual partner in a fling without a future. What she had never done, he thought painfully, was treat him like a friend.

  And how much could he blame her for her attitude when he had become her first lover? Tatiana had had a difficult life with little liberty, even less money and few choices, he reminded himself. Furthermore, although she had yet to find it out, she had been ruthlessly used, abused and defrauded by relatives who should have cherished her, most especially after her mother fell ill. Saif frowned, wondering if he should tell her the truth about her grandmother’s will and her uncle’s wicked greed, but he had withheld what he knew on the basis that the police were in charge of the investigation now and the truth would come out soon enough when arrests were made. Saif had no desire to be the person who broke that bad news and hurt her.

  Naturally, that revelation would adversely affect Tatiana because she remained blindly, ridiculously attached to those relatives of hers. From her teenaged years she had depended on them, and they had been all she had once her grandmother died and her mother sank into dementia. She had even excused their greed to Saif by explaining that her uncle had always been hopeless with money and had married an ambitious woman with grand expectations. How would she feel when she appreciated that they had lied and cheated to deprive her of her inheritance and had been busy ever since overspending her money as fast as they could?

  When that grievous knowledge was unveiled, his bride would be even keener to enjoy the freedom she had never had. The freedom he didn’t want her to have, Saif reflected bitterly. Was it any wonder that he was such a cynic?

  * * *

  Tati struggled through the language lesson with tears burning the backs of her eyes while she fought to relocate some seed of concentration. She struggled to dwell on the positives rather than the negatives of her plight. Saif wanted their baby and was already anxiously considering the potential effect of a divorce on their child. Why didn’t he thread her into that problem and realise that if he stayed married to her, he wouldn’t have to worry about their child’s security? Obviously because he didn’t want to stay married to her, Tati reflected miserably. Why was she set on beating her head up against a brick wall?

  And what would it be like to continue living with Saif for another four or five years? Wouldn’t that simply make the whole process of breaking up more agonising? It would drag it out and place her under heavier stress. She would always be waiting for the moment when he decided they had stayed together long enough and were in a position to separate. How could a future like that appeal to her?

  It would freeze her life and prevent her from moving on. How could she truly move on if she were to be forced to live in Alharia for her son or daughter’s sake? The prospect of standing on the sidelines watching Saif with other women, having to share her child with those same women, made her shudder. No, that wouldn’t work for her. He would have to come up with a better, more bearable solution. When her mother was ill, she had accepted that being bullied, being forced into a position she didn’t want, was a situation she could not escape. But life had changed for her and she herself had changed, she reflected ruefully. Ironically, Saif had made her realise that she was much stronger than she had ever appreciated. With regard to future arrangements between them for their child, she was prepared to be reasonable, but she wasn’t a martyr. She would get over him at some stage, but how was she to achieve that if she was still forced to live with him?

  * * *

  Saif spent an hour that afternoon listening to his father wax lyrical about the joys of fatherhood. Thinking of the disappointments the older man had suffered in the wife department convinced Saif that Tatiana had been right to denounce his pessimistic outlook. Somehow, it would all work out, if they both made an effort, if he controlled the urge to lock her up and throw away the key, not because he was a controlling creep, but because, try as he might, he kept on thinking of the way his mother had just abandoned ship and run for greener pastures. Might not Tatiana also choose to bolt if he put too much pressure on her? She was pregnant and she couldn’t be feeling well when she was fainting, he reasoned worriedly.

  A man famed for his cool, logical approach to problems, he wondered how it was that in a moment of crisis he had said and done everything wrong. He had told Tatiana that they would have to stay married for years longer. He had told her that she would have to live in Alharia. How could he have been that clumsy, domineering and stupid? And he hadn’t once mentioned how excited he was about the baby they had conceived.

  It was at that point in his ruminations that Dalil Khouri joined Saif to announce that his wife’s cousin, Ana Hamilton, had arrived at the airport and intended to visit them. It was normal for an alert to be sent to the palace when a prospective guest arrived, but Saif frowned at that news, questioning why the woman had chosen to fly to Alharia when only months earlier she had run away as fast as she could sooner than marry him. Was it possible that Ana’s parents had already been arrested? Could their daughter be here to plead their case? What else could she be doing in Alharia?

  Saif appreciated that it was his task to tell his wife what he had learned several weeks earlier because he could not let her meet with her cousin while still in ignorance of his recent discoveries.

  ‘Have her brought to the palace,’ he told Dalil. ‘But drive her around for a while—take her to see some tourist sight, or something... I don’t want my wife to be taken by surprise or upset and I need some time to prepare
her for her cousin’s arrival.’

  ‘Of course,’ Dalil agreed earnestly. ‘The Princess must be protected at all costs from anyone who might seek to take advantage of her.’

  Tati was enjoying mint tea and a savoury snack in the courtyard when Saif strode down the stairs into the courtyard to join her. He was breathtakingly handsome in an Italian wool-and-silk-mix suit that was exquisitely tailored to his lean, powerful frame. Her wide blue gaze clung to him and then pulled free of him again, her soft mouth tightening as she told herself off for being so susceptible. That kind of nonsense, that mooning over him like a silly sentimental schoolgirl, couldn’t continue.

  ‘First of all, I bought these for you in Paris, but after your mother fell ill there didn’t seem to be a right time to give them to you,’ Saif intoned, setting a jewellery box down on the table. ‘This seems the appropriate moment to express my happiness about the child you are carrying and present you with this small gift to mark a special occasion.’

  ‘You must’ve had to dig deep to find that happiness,’ Tati opined tartly.

  ‘You took me by surprise, but once the news sank in, I was thrilled,’ Saif asserted defiantly in the face of her dubious look. ‘Everything changed for me when you told me that you were pregnant. When my mother walked away from me when I was a baby, it made the whole topic very emotional for me. I tried not to dwell on her abandonment. I suppressed the sadness that that awareness inflicted because I believed that that is what a man must do to be a man...’

  ‘Oh, Saif,’ she whispered, her body stiffening as she fought the pressing need to go to him, to comfort him, to soothe the hurt he had felt that he had to deny as an adult man. But that was no longer her role, she reasoned. Furthermore, it was becoming ever more clear to her as he talked that Saif was not driven by love to wish to remain married to her for their child’s sake but by fear for their child’s hurt in the future. She couldn’t fault him for that, she decided heavily, but that he should only want to be with her to be a father for their baby pierced her deeply.