The Sheikh's Priceless Baby

by Holly Rayner

  “Until you did, you didn’t want to see me. Because it would mean lying to me again,” I said, understanding suddenly flooding through my brain.

  Of course. And I was positive that it had all sounded like a great plan. So easy. Except that something had obviously gone wrong. Something that had made it okay for her to see me that first time, when we had dinner, but then refuse to take my calls after that.

  “So what happened?” I asked gently.

  She shrugged miserably. “I can’t sell the article. No one will buy it. And then I went back to the shop and they’d already sold the watch, and then I went to the grocery store to get tampons and realized that I was late, and got pregnancy tests instead. And it turns out I’m pregnant and it has to be yours.”

  And just like that, the calm she’d fought so hard for disappeared and she started sobbing again, and I pulled her back into my arms and started murmuring absolute nonsense to her about how everything was going to be okay.

  And in the meantime, my mind was buzzing with this new information and a whole lot of questions. Because I’d found out what had happened to my watch—and that there was nothing too nefarious behind it.

  It turned out that I’d lost the watch… but also, it seemed, gained a baby in the process.

  Chapter 21

  Aziz

  When Faye finally stopped crying—and it took a while—I pulled back a bit and looked into her big, teary eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she croaked, wiping at her eyes, and the mascara that had run over her cheeks. “I’m not usually a crier. This is so embarrassing. But I just found out about the baby yesterday and then with the watch and not being able to talk to you, it just all started to seem like way too much. Like I was staring over the biggest, steepest cliff I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and it was nothing but darkness down below.”

  I took her hand and brought it to my lips, torn between feeling hurt that she hadn’t contacted me when she needed me and sympathetic about her plight. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked. “About your parents and the debts and all that. I could have helped, you know.”

  She made a face at me. “Oh, sure. ‘Hello, Aziz, I know we don’t know each other all that well, but would you mind loaning me five grand or so? If you can make it ten, that would be even better.’ That’s a sure way to win a guy’s heart.”

  I jerked at that, the movement running from my chest through my whole body and into her hand, and when I met her eyes again there was a question there.

  A question that I knew I had to answer. Even if I’d been avoiding thinking about that answer up to this point, just for fear of what it might bring with it.

  “Is that what you were after?” I asked quietly. “My heart?”

  I very carefully didn’t go any further down that path than just that. I didn’t consider how I would feel if she answered in the positive. I most certainly didn’t consider how I would feel if she answered in the negative.

  And I absolutely, positively didn’t touch whether I wanted either answer—or whether I had been after hers, as well.

  She sucked on her bottom lip and seemed to think about it for a little while. Or maybe she was just thinking about how to say what she wanted to say. Maybe she didn’t even know if she wanted to say what was running through her mind.

  When she spoke, her voice was as soft as mine had been. Gone was the flirtatious tone, the constant joking. Gone was the feeling that everything in life was light gossamer rather than solid need.

  “I wasn’t after anything, in the beginning,” she said. “Well, I was definitely after that interview, and much good it did me. But from you? Anything further than that? No. I just didn’t think about it. You’re a million miles away from me in every possible manner. You’re so much richer than me that you’re practically in another world. A demigod who doesn’t even realize he’s a demigod, who speaks to mortals sometimes and doesn’t realize how lowly they are, compared to him. Plus, you live on the other side of the world. Or, rather…”

  “I live everywhere in the world,” I replied quickly, remembering what I’d thought myself about my living situation. “I haven’t lived in Kayyem in years. Not full-time, at least. There are times when I live right down the road from you.”

  “Yeah, for like six months at a time,” she said wryly. “And what then? On to another site, and one that’s probably half a world away from me. That’s no way to build a relationship. If we even wanted to—which, I swear, I didn’t even think about. Not until you asked me to dinner.”

  I moved closer to her on the couch again, until our legs were touching, the heat jumping between us once more.

  “But what if…” I stopped, trying to put what I was feeling into words, and trying to do it quickly. Because I knew enough to know that I was only going to get one shot at it. This wasn’t the sort of girl who practiced much patience, and she wasn’t someone who would wait for me while I bumbled through the possibilities in my head.

  I needed to be careful and say it exactly how I wanted to say it.

  And given that I wasn’t positive I had a hold on what I wanted to say, that was going to be tricky.

  “What if I didn’t live all over the place?” I finally asked. “And even if I did… What if you were going all over the place with me?”

  She frowned as she tried to process what that could possibly mean—and good luck to her, because I still wasn’t sure myself—and then, just as she opened her mouth to hopefully explain it to me, my phone rang.

  I cursed at it, and then at myself for having forgotten to turn it off, and yanked it out of my pocket. The problem with being the head of a construction company, where there were always things going sideways and people were trained to ask me before they made any big decisions, was that I basically always had to be available, even in the middle of what might be the most important conversation of my entire life.

  To my surprise, though, it wasn’t anyone from Hawaii or the work site calling. It was my mother.

  Which was weird. It was the middle of the day and I should have been at work. She should know not to call me at this time of day. It was also—I checked my watch—the middle of the night in Kayyem. Not exactly the time for social calls or checking up on how well I was eating or whether I was getting enough sleep.

  “Mom?” I asked by way of answering. “What’s wrong?”

  I heard a deep, heaving breath indicative of someone who had been crying, and my heart started to pound.

  “It’s your father,” she said, her tone wobbly but trying awfully hard to be strong. “He’s had a heart attack. He’s stable now, but they’re not sure whether there will be another. They don’t know if he’s safe or not. Aziz, I know you’re on a project, but I need you to come home.”

  I didn’t even have to think about it.

  “I’ll be on the next flight,” I told her firmly. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have a timeline. I love you, Mom. And give my love to Dad if you can get in to see him.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, evidently no longer able to get her voice to work. “I love you, too.”

  “Breathe,” I told her firmly. “And Mom, try not to tell the doctors how to do their jobs. They’re going to save him, but you have to get out of their way. Okay?”

  I heard her huff out a slight laugh, which warmed me all the way down to the base of my soul, and then she was gone.

  The moment I hung up, I looked at Faye. Because I didn’t even have to think about this part, either. “My dad’s had a heart attack and I have to go home, but I know we’re right in the middle of this. Come home with me. Come to Kayyem. I know you love the place and I… I want to see it with you. We can talk more about the baby while we’re there.”

  I didn’t tell her the other part: that I didn’t want to face my dad being in the hospital without someone there to keep me standing. I’d never been the strongest one in the family—I wasn’t the doctor, able to face any situation with stoic bravery—and I’d known right awa
y that I wasn’t going to do this without her.

  I wanted her there, holding my hand.

  She jerked and looked at me like I was insane. “Come all the way to Kayyem with you? Aziz, I barely know you. I’ve spent like… a grand total of two nights with you. And you want me to travel across the world with you just to have a conversation?”

  Well, there was the girl I’d fallen for. The sarcastic one. The one with just an ounce of too much sass for her own good.

  I grinned, though. “I don’t know you, either. But what better way to get to know each other than to spend a solid block of time that includes more than one night and a couple of flights? Besides, Kayyem. I know you can’t resist that.”

  She made a face at me, but I could see the smile trying to break through. I could already see that her answer was going to be yes.

  So I wasn’t surprised when she finally nodded and grinned back, excitement starting to shine in her eyes.

  I moved forward and gave her a kiss, keeping it soft and gentle… but letting my whole heart show in it. Letting her see exactly how much I wanted her. How glad I was that she was coming with me. And not only because I wanted to talk to her.

  This was going to be an incredibly challenging trip. I usually dealt with those sorts of things on my own, and I hated every second of that. The thought of having someone there to hold my hand through it…

  Well, it was new and different and completely wonderful, in ways I’d never even considered before.

  “Get packed,” I said. “I didn’t bring anything but my bag with me from Hawaii, so I don’t need anything else. I’ll get to work on finding us a flight.”

  Chapter 22

  Faye

  Aziz and I got started on that whole getting-to-know-you thing the moment we got on the plane, and it was glorious.

  I mean, it wasn’t glorious that we were going to Kayyem because his dad had had a heart attack. That part was deeply upsetting and stressful, and I didn’t even know the guy.

  I could see how much it was weighing on Aziz, too, his eyes constantly going to either his watch or the window, and I imagined that it had to be driving him very nearly insane to be in a situation where he couldn’t get constant updates.

  I would have been tearing my hair out if it had been my dad.

  But once we got up into the air and Aziz settled in, sipping at the champagne the stewardess had brought us and stretching out in his generously sized first-class seat, he started to relax.

  And at that point, we got to start taking advantage of an extremely long flight together. Because the part about being on a plane for a solid ten hours—the time it took to get to London—and then another five—the time it took to get to Kayyem? Yeah, that part was most certainly glorious.

  We’d had one magical night together in Dubai, and another fairy-tale date in LA. But we’d never actually talked when we didn’t have a hard deadline facing us down. And we’d certainly never bothered really getting to know each other—or rather, we’d never actually had the chance. We’d jumped right into first-date infatuation and then moved into second-date still-infatuated, and hadn’t gone any deeper.

  So although I didn’t like the reason we were going to Kayyem—and I hated what I could see it doing to Aziz—I wasn’t going to complain about finally getting to have a conversation that lasted more than a couple of hours.

  He started talking the moment we were allowed to unbuckle our seatbelts again, going immediately to the topic of his mother and father. He told me about his parents, who had several kids, and then his larger family, which sounded like it included at least a hundred people, and then what he called the ‘family estate.’

  In short, the more he talked, the more I sort of wished I was recording the whole thing. I was a freaking reporter. I knew how important it was to record conversations like this, so you could listen back to them later.

  I knew as well that I would absolutely want to look back on this conversation. And not only because of all the names I was trying to remember, but because of Aziz himself. I loved how animated his face became when he talked about his family. How he smiled with sudden affection at some names and grew more serious about others. How he laughed when he told me that he couldn’t actually remember how many kids some of his cousins already had.

  Yes, it was something I would have listened to again and again. If I’d been smart enough to record it.

  “I’m never going to remember everyone’s names,” I told him bluntly. “There are way too many of them.”

  The Al-Sharims had built an empire for themselves, and were evidently intent on filling it. Aziz’s grandfather had been the one to discover oil under Kayyem and sink a well into it, and he and his sons—many of them—had developed further wells and eventually started building out the city itself. Then they’d gotten into real estate, and a number of social programs. They’d built up the tourism of the city and given people incentives to move there, and before long Kayyem had become a thriving metropolis.

  At which point they’d expanded into international real estate and property development. These days, they had an entire business that basically ran the city, and did it well.

  And most of them also seemed to have had babies. Lots of them. Aziz was the second generation since his grandfather, and many of his cousins—and brothers and sisters—already had kids of their own.

  They must make a veritable city unto themselves.

  “Most of them won’t be that important to you,” he clarified. “I know that sounds horrible. But even I think there are too many of them to really keep track of. Some of them I rarely see, especially if they’re a lot older than me or they live somewhere else. You’ll only need to know the ones I talk to often. My own brothers and sisters and their families, plus a couple of the cousins.”

  I blanched at that, because it already sounded like more people than I’d ever dealt with before. I was an only child, and both of my parents were only children. So our family was very contained. The idea of having so many people to keep track of was overwhelming, to say the very least.

  But I also felt…warm inside over it.

  Warm inside about the idea of meeting his family. Being included in that huge gaggle of relatives. And for the first time, being surrounded by the sort of security that something like that—someone like Aziz—brought.

  Not that I thought I was going to be staying. But a girl can dream, right?

  The guy in the customs booth slid my passport smoothly back to me and I smiled politely at him and took it. The passport had so many stamps in it at this point that I was going to need to get an extension soon—or a new book altogether—but man was I glad I’d had it handy when Aziz said he needed me.

  I walked through the final gate and into Kayyem’s airport, already knowing by heart how this went—this wasn’t my first time in Oz, after all—and found Aziz waiting for me just on the other side of the door, his eyes anxious. He’d grown progressively more stressed the closer we got, and I already knew he was going to want to go right to the hospital from here.

  I didn’t mind. In fact, I expected it. His dad was sick, and our first priority was to make sure he was okay, and that he knew Aziz was home.

  “Hospital?” I asked.

  “Hospital,” he said with a nod. “I’ve got a car waiting for us at the front of the building.”

  “Of course you do,” I said with a laugh. I already knew him well enough to know that he always had a car waiting. He was always prepared for everything.

  Well, except for his dad to have a heart attack.

  The moment we walked through the doors into the cardiac wing of the hospital, someone who looked exactly like Aziz appeared in front of us. Same shape of the eyes, same exact nose, same set of the lips. It was so weird that I actually had to do a double take just to make sure Aziz himself was still behind me.

  When his eyes saw what I was seeing, they grew large and round. “Khalid?” he gasped.

  Not-Aziz emitted a big, booming
laugh. “Aziz!” he shouted.

  And the two—cousins, if I was remembering correctly—bounded toward each other and hugged, both of them laughing. When they drew back, though, they wore identical expressions of concern.

  “One, what are you doing here? And two, how’s Dad?” Aziz asked.

  Khalid kept his hand on Aziz’s arm. “I was here visiting, with Amber,” he said. “Happened to be in the same room as your father when he had the attack, and your mom insisted I be the one to do the surgery. We did a double bypass, but I think he’s going to be just fine. Now, who did you bring with you?”

  Aziz stared at Khalid for a moment, probably trying to follow this rapid chain of events. “Dad’s going to be okay?” he clarified.

  And honestly, I couldn’t blame him. Khalid had gone through the steps of the story so quickly that I’d barely had time to register one idea before he moved on to the next. And I wasn’t seeing the entire thing through the filter of a son who had just flown fifteen hours to get to his dad.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Khalid said firmly. “I saw the signs immediately, so the moment he went down, I was already on the phone with one of my close friends—the best heart surgeon in the US—by the time we got to the hospital. I would have been able to do the surgery without him, of course”—he looked at me here with his eyebrows lifted, as if he thought I might have been questioning his ability to do double bypass surgery on the fly—“but he’s my favorite uncle. I wanted to make sure I had the best possible advice going in.”

  When no one answered and he kept staring at me, I finally decided I’d better answer him. “Obviously,” I said quickly. “And I’m sure you did a wonderful job. The best double bypass in history. Probably.”