The Sheikh's ASAP Baby Read online

  "I'm going to the airport."

  She stood up, interrupting Tessa in the middle of a rant about her ob-gyn. Tessa stared at her in surprise.

  "What?"

  Kathy was already heading towards her room.

  "I'm going to Abu Sadah," she said. "Today."

  "First of all—what?" Tessa replied. "Secondly, why and with what money?"

  "I've got some savings," Kathy said, confidence wavering a little as she dragged her suitcase out from under her bed. It wasn't a lie, but she didn't exactly have surprise vacation money. "I can't tell him this over the phone, Tess. I just can't."

  "Are you sure he wants to see you?"

  That made her stop for a second, fistfuls of clothes in her hands. He probably didn't.

  "I don't care," she said and put another handful of clothes into her suitcase. "I need to see him."

  Tessa watched her for a moment longer, obviously concerned.

  "Okay," she said at last. "If that's what you need. I'll even help with the ticket."

  Kathy dropped the clothes she was holding to throw her arms around Tessa in gratitude. Tessa hugged back her tightly.

  "What a mess," she said. "Just be safe, okay?"

  "I will," Kathy promised. "I just need to do this."

  "You're going to miss Wynwood." Tess pouted in disappointment.

  "Richard will keep you company," Kathy said with a small laugh. "You know I'm worthless with beer. Plus, it’s not like I can drink now, anyway!"

  Chapter Ten

  They got Kathy’s ticket online, and Tessa drove her to the airport. She'd only packed one bag, small enough for a carry-on. Her first flight was a nine-hour overnight from Miami Airport to Charles De Gaulle in Paris. After a nearly three-hour layover, she'd fly six and a half hours to King Khalid International in Riyadh where she'd have to stay overnight. Then, at six the next morning, she'd take a two-hour flight into Abu Sadah.

  She was thankful she'd kept her passport up-to-date from her days as a travel writer. Still, this was going to be one of the worst flights she'd ever been on.

  That's what you get for buying last minute. Still, it will be worth it, she told herself as she hugged Tessa goodbye and headed through the gate, on to her first flight. To see him again, to figure this out together, would be worth it. It had to be.

  The overnight flight was surprisingly comfortable. There was an in-flight movie and plenty of leg room. She slept through most of it. The six-hour flight after it was less pleasant. She was already stiff and sore from flying all night. At least, thanks to the long layover, she had a chance to walk around the airport, stroll through the shops, and stretch her legs.

  She was still avoiding thinking about her situation. It was harder than it seemed. But then it was back onto the plane for six hours and it was just her and her thoughts in a cramped uncomfortable economy seat.

  Would he want to keep the baby? she wondered. Maybe he'd ask her to abort. It was her decision ultimately, but she didn't really know what she wanted and she wondered if he did. She put her hand on her stomach, imagining that life, as turbulence rattled the plane around her. No, whatever Tehar said, she was going to keep this baby. There was nothing wrong with choosing to end a pregnancy, but she just couldn't do it. It would haunt her.

  The plane finally landed in Riyadh after what felt like a lifetime. She'd booked the closest hotel to the airport. She'd never have been able to afford it alone, but Tessa had refused to entertain the notion of Kathy sleeping in the airport terminal. Kathy made her way up to her small single room and collapsed for eight hours. She woke at five with just enough time to rush back to the airport for her last flight, skipping breakfast in the process.

  It was a small plane, not big enough for separate classes, and the only one flying into Abu Sadah that day. Tehar's country was wealthy but tiny, and not a draw for tourists. As she settled into her seat, she sent him a text.

  I'm landing at the Abu Sadah airport in two hours, she wrote. I'd appreciate it if you picked me up.

  Then, at the insistence of the stewardess, she turned off her phone.

  As the plane taxied for liftoff, the worries she'd been avoiding thinking about came creeping back. The closer she was to Abu Sadah, the stronger they seemed to get. Two hours later, as the plane began to land, she could practically feel them breathing down her neck.

  Would he be there when she landed? Would he be angry? She should have talked to him before she left. She should have explained everything. She'd been too scared to do it over the phone. Why did she think it would be any easier in person? To be perfectly honest, maybe she was just running away, thinking that if she left Miami she could also leave behind the worries that had been plaguing her. But they'd followed her. There was no getting away.

  The plane rolled to a stop. Abu Sadah was too small for a proper airport, just a commercial landing strip outside of its largest city. Kathy disembarked directly onto the tarmac, carrying her single bag. She'd been worrying about where to go after, but there was a sleek white car parked on the asphalt, and Tehar was standing outside it.

  He was wearing traditional clothing, which she'd never seen him in before. The crisp white thobe and red keffiyeh looked good on him; Kathy couldn't deny it. But at the same time, it made him seem like a stranger. She felt even more certain that she'd made the wrong decision. He was frowning, and she couldn't tell if it was concern or anger.

  For a moment, standing in front of him, she wanted to just blurt it out. The words "I'm pregnant" were on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spoken.

  "Are you all right?" Tehar asked. She nodded and said nothing. Looking unconvinced, he opened the car door for her.

  He sat in the back next to her. Someone else was driving, presumably another hired driver. The car smelled of its new leather seats and Tehar's cologne. Silence hung between them, tangible as a heavy velvet curtain. Tehar tried again to reach past it.

  "We'll have to get you some new clothes," he said. "Western clothes aren't appropriate for a woman in Abu Sadah."

  Kathy looked down at the T-shirt and jeans she'd put on in the hotel in Riyadh, wondering what was so inappropriate about them and what she would be expected to wear instead.

  "How long will you be staying?" Tehar asked.

  "I don't really know," Kathy confessed, finally answering him. "It's complicated."

  "Is it about Mitchell?" Tehar asked, his voice slightly strained. "Did he do something? If he hurt you I—"

  "No." Kathy stopped him, shaking her head. "No, it wasn't Mitchell."

  Despite everything, his concern and his obvious relief when she told him he was wrong was reassuring. It was still Tehar and, though he had distanced himself for the same reason she had, it was clear that he still cared.

  "Then why are you here?" he asked. "Why would you fly all this way just to talk to me?"

  "I'm pregnant," she said. The words spilled out of her all at once before she even realized she was saying them. She just blurted it out. Tehar stared at her.

  She said it again. "I'm pregnant. It's yours. From Valentine's Day."

  Tehar just stared at her. Slowly, he put his head down in his hands. She saw his shoulders shake, and for a moment she was afraid he was crying. Then he sat up and she realized he was laughing.

  "My God." He laughed. "It's exactly what we wanted, at precisely the wrong time."

  Kathy snorted as she realized he was right, and soon she was laughing too. Both of them, giggling hysterically in the back seat of his beautiful town car.

  "I'm so sorry for just showing up this way," Kathy said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes when she could speak again. "I just couldn't say it over the phone."

  "It's fine," Tehar said, taking a deep breath. She waited, hoping the laughter was a sign that he was happy about this, that things would be okay.

  But he said nothing more. He stared out his window, expression as closed off as she'd ever seen it. He said nothing more until the car pulled up in front of a store.
He told her to wait as he got out. Several minutes later, he returned with a bag.

  "Put that on," he said. "You'll be meeting my family. You should be properly dressed. You can wear it over your clothes for now."

  Kathy took the black cotton garment from the bag with a frown. It was an abaya, a kind of loose black dress that covered from the neck to the ankle. There was a hood as well. She'd known all Saudi women wore them, but she hadn't been aware they were expected in Abu Sadah as well, and she hadn't really considered that she might be expected to wear one.

  She looked at Tehar, staring impassively out his window again, and sighed. It seemed like this trip would be more stressful than she'd bargained for. With a little difficulty in the confines of the car, she pulled the dress on over her clothes and tucked her hair haphazardly into the hood. At least there wasn't a veil. The fabric was very light, so at least it wasn't too hot, but it was still strange and a little uncomfortable.

  "I'm sorry about that," Tehar said, seeing her frowning down at herself. "I know you're not used to it. It will just be temporary, so try to bear with it."

  "It's fine," Kathy reassured him. "Kind of reminds me of the time I played a nun back in high school drama club."

  But Tehar was already looking out the window again, remaining as distant from her as he could. Even now that she was pregnant, was he still going to try to act like this was just business?

  "How's it been going with your lawyers?" she asked instead. "Do you think we'll be able to stop Mitchell?'

  "It's a long and tedious process," Tehar replied. "We really don't know anything yet. The laws in my country do not exactly look kindly on sleeping with unmarried women, so that has complicated things a bit."

  "I'm so sorry it turned out this way," Kathy said, giving up watching him and looking out her own window. "This should have been simple."

  "It isn't your fault," Tehar said. "There's no one to blame for this but Mitchell."

  Things fell silent again and remained that way for the rest of the drive. The downtown of Abu Sadah's capital seemed much like any other city she'd ever seen, though all the people were dressed the same, with men in white thobes and women in black abayas.

  But soon they were outside the city, driving along the Gulf coast. The ocean stretched out on one side of them, the desert on the other. Mountains defined the horizon in the farthest distance, hazy in the bright sunlight. Temperatures here weren't so different from Miami, in the eighties this time of year, but far dryer than the humid Florida air.

  Soon, the car pulled up to a gate and, after a brief conversation between the driver and the man in the gatehouse, it opened and they pulled into an estate Kathy wouldn't have hesitated to call palatial. If anything, the word was an understatement. She stared out her window in undisguised awe as they followed a winding drive through acres of elaborate gardens, blooming brilliant green in the midst of the desert.

  How much work must they go to, she wondered, how many gardeners, how many gallons of water, to keep all this so green? The main building was massive, at least four stories high. The shape was broad and square like an English palace, but the corners rounded into towers topped with shining domes, the largest of which covered the center of the massive structure. The facade was a glory of Arabian architecture, full of beautiful scalloped arches and glittering golden embellishments. In front of the main house, a gigantic fountain sat in the center of an elaborate mosaic. The car pulled to a stop in front of the fountain, and Tehar offered Kathy a hand out of the car.

  A line of black-robed women stood at the top of the stairs leading to the palace doors. Tehar approached them, with Kathy trailing behind a little uncertainly.

  "Salam Alaikum," Tehar greeted the women, then turned to Kathy. "This is my mother, Sheikha Basira Al-Kindi, my sister Fairuz, my sister-in-law Ihab, and my cousin Khalila. This is the palace of my aunt, Sheikha Nouha."

  Kathy murmured an uncomfortable, “Salam.” The tallest of the women, Sheikha Basira, was looking at Kathy with cold hostility in her eyes.

  "Mother, sisters," Tehar said, nodding to his family. "This is Kathy Burgess."

  "The woman from the video," Sheikha Basira said sharply.

  "Yes," Tehar confirmed.

  "You have brought her for the lawyers?" Basira asked. Tehar took a deep breath, steeling himself.

  "No," he said. "She is pregnant with my child."

  There was an immediate flurry of emotion from Tehar's sisters and cousin, somewhere between excitement and scandal. They spoke over one another in a rush of Arabic, either congratulating or scolding Tehar. It was difficult to tell. Basira was perfectly still and silent. It wasn't hard to tell how she felt about the situation.

  "I will prepare her a room," Basira said in chilly, perfect English. She turned away and vanished into the house. After a moment of uncertainty, Fairuz and Ihab followed her, but cousin Khalila lingered.

  "Perhaps, while she is getting a room ready, you would like her to meet Shadaf?" Khalila offered. She had a sweet, gentle voice, and seemed young, probably in her twenties.

  Tehar glanced at Kathy, considering it.

  "I'd like that," Kathy said. "I've heard a lot about him."

  "That will be fine," Tehar decided.

  Khalila turned, her skirts sweeping the stair, and led them inside.

  The palace was even more beautiful inside than out. Every room was enormous and every inch gilded to capacity. They passed through countless golden silk draped arches and white marble staircases curving up into infinity. Beautiful sculptures and fountains, inner courtyards teeming with greenery, golden screens in hypnotic patterns. And every bit of it empty. Wherever Tehar's mother and sisters had gone, they seemed to be the only ones here. She didn't even see servants.

  At last, they reached a large courtyard near the edge of the main house. It was even more elaborately gardened than the rest of the palace, and the smell of flowers was sweet and strong. There was a chaise lounge set up among the flowers, draped in soft embroidered pillows and blankets.

  A young man was lying across it, his eyes closed and a book open on his chest. He was beautiful, shockingly so, in a way that both resembled Tehar and might have been his mirror opposite. Where the lines of Tehar's face were angular and resolute as a cliffside sculpted by the sea, Shadaf's were delicate and fragile as a shell. He seemed made of wire and glass, golden brown skin so thin it was nearly translucent, or an ancient masterpiece of marble soon to crumble.

  His dark hair curled over his brow and mirrored perfect crescents of the dark circles under his eyes. When he opened them, they were green as sea glass. He sat up, stirred by the sound of their approach, and the book slipped off his chest and nearly fell. Tehar darted forward to catch it, chuckling as he pressed it back into his cousin's hands.

  There was affection in his eyes so deep it was almost painful. Even on his normally guarded features, Kathy could never have missed it. Shadaf thanked Tehar in Arabic, then turned his eyes to Kathy curiously.

  "Who is this, Tehar?" he asked. "Don't tell me you've finally found a girlfriend?"

  "This is Kathy Burgess," Tehar answered, then cleared his throat. "The…one I told you about."

  "Oh, the one having your baby?" Shadaf asked, putting his book aside. "Are you still doing that?"

  "It's actually happening a little ahead of schedule," Kathy said, touching her stomach. Shadaf looked briefly confused, then his eyes widened in understanding.

  "Oh," he said. "I didn't know you were doing it the traditional way. Congratulations."

  Kathy laughed a little. Tehar looked incredibly embarrassed.

  "You're Shadaf, right?" Kathy said, offering a hand to shake. "Tehar talks about you a lot."

  "Only good things, I hope?" Shadaf winked, kissing the back of Kathy's fingers.

  "Shadaf! Behave yourself!" Khalila slapped Shadaf playfully on the shoulder.

  "I see you've met my wife, the beautiful Khalila?" Shadaf said with a small laugh. "It's very nice to meet you Kathy,
and welcome to the family."

  "I don't know if I'm really part of the family," Kathy said with an awkward smile. "But thank you."

  "Nonsense," Shadaf said kindly. "You're having Tehar's baby. The circumstances may be a little strange, but that makes you one of us."

  Kathy glanced at Tehar, wondering if he would agree, but Tehar wasn't even looking in their direction. He stared off, watching the birds cling to the wrought iron struts of the conservatory's glass walls, his frown remote and unreadable.

  "I don't think Basira will see it that way," Khalila put in instead. "You know she was against this plan in the first place."

  Shadaf grimaced.

  "True, she did have her heart set on convincing him to marry Fatima Al-Enzi, didn't she?"

  "Not Fatima," Khalila corrected. "The other one. The younger one."

  "Farah," Tehar replied offhandedly, distracted.

  "That's the one," Shadaf confirmed. "Pretty Farah. She wanted to improve the family's standing or something. The Al-Enzi's rule some strategically important island out in the gulf."

  "Dar Saila," Khalila provided. "It would have been a good match."

  "But Tehar's always been stubborn," Shadaf continued with a laugh. "He wouldn't have it."

  "Which is lucky for you!" Khalila smiled at Kathy kindly. Or at least, Kathy thought she was smiling. It was hard to tell behind the veil.

  "That remains to be seen," Tehar said. He had pulled out his phone and was frowning down at it seriously. "I need to go. I have to meet with the lawyers today. Please look after her for me."

  He said nothing else to Kathy, just hurried out, leaving her behind. Kathy was too surprised by his sudden chilly exit to even call after him.

  "Or perhaps not so lucky," Khalila murmured, watching Tehar go. "What's gotten into him?"

  "This was never supposed to happen," Kathy answered, feeling the weight of guilt settle in her stomach as she stared at the door he'd just left by, almost willing him to return. "It was supposed to just be business. We got too close and made a mistake. It's ruined my career, it might ruin his too, and now there's this…"