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“It’s been too long,” I purred as his strength infused me with a feeling of rebirth. “God, I’ve missed this.”
Chapter Nineteen
A month later, we were able to move back to Omar’s cloud palace with our new baby. The luxury of being a wife to a sheikh was that I had fulltime help with the baby. So besides his nanny, he also had a fulltime nurse to monitor his still fragile health. He now weighed a whopping five pounds, and he’d sprouted a little halo of blond hair on his shiny domed head. Amir called it is angel crown.
Amir Jr. also appeared to have the perfect combination of our eye colors, although at his age, it was still hard to tell. It looked like he was going to end up with fire-spitting hazel green eyes with a rim of luminous amber. Like I said, the perfect combination of Amir’s golden hued brown and my light blue. Amsi’s skin was already a darker hue than my pale—easily burned and freckly skin.
For all appearances, it seemed as if my first visions of a tawny, skinny, light-haired, light-eyed boy were proving as more prophetic than fantasy. He was a hungry child and cried regularly for a bottle. I was sad that my milk had dried up and I was unable to nurse him. Aside from that woe, I was now fully involved in his care and just as tired as the nanny and nurse. I don’t know how one tiny baby could consume so much of our time and energy, but he did, and I was fine with it.
We were told we should act as if the entire household were under quarantine so as to provide Amsi’s fragile—almost non-existent—immune system time to develop. This only meant I wasn’t to leave and if any of u
s did, they were supposed to change clothes and shower before entering the nursery. We also all wore little surgical masks whenever we were around him.
Amir had flown home for a couple of days, and I was alone with Anna and the array of caregivers at our disposal.
She had her son in her arms, and he was gripping his tiny fists in the air as I sat and watched the koi fish.
“You know, Amir said his first words to me in this exact room.”
“Really?” she asked. “I wasn’t aware you guys had spoken before that night at the reception.”
“Nope—I found this place and fell asleep right there. When I woke up, he was sitting here. He said I intrigued him. Something like that.”
“You fell asleep?” Anna mocked.
“Yup—shoulda known right then and there.”
The baby shrieked when a particularly large fish caught his eye.
“Bob, sweetheart, too loud for mommy’s ears.”
“Doesn’t Omar hate you calling him that?”
“He does, but it suits him—at least right now it does while he still looks like the Michelin man. Look at these fat rolls!”
She sarcastically asked no-one in particular, “Should we put you on a diet, Bob?” Then she giggled and looked at me, “I caught Omar calling him that yesterday.”
“I can’t wait till I can actually move about the cabin with Amsi. I hate him being locked in the nursery all the time. Stupid germs, leave it to me to have birthed the boy in the bubble.”
“Not long now,” Anna said. “You’d just now be giving birth to him.” Then she looked up at me, and her eyes sparkled.
“Isn’t it amazing our kids are going to grow up together?”
I nodded in agreement. It was an incredible thing indeed.
Chapter Twenty
Time flew by, and before we knew it our baby boy was six months old. He was still smaller than children delivered at term, but in all other respects, he was healthy and robust. He was putting on weight, too, and whenever we measured him, he’d gained in length. He was a happy child and loved to laugh.
His golden skin was a beautiful shade of perfectly tanned, and I was jealous of it. He would no doubt have no trouble tanning or being out in the sun—like his daddy. Amir was madly in love with his son and held him more than I did. He’d not left our sides except for a brief trip home to disperse most of his responsibilities to his next oldest brother. Someday he would regain the throne, but for now, as he’d declared in the hospital all those months previous, his intent was to make me and our son the two most important things in his life.
I felt his love, too, and he was opening up more and more about the nitty gritty of his emotional life. He no longer felt it was a weakness if he let a powerful emotion show or if he verbalized it with me. He was also playing the dominant dance better with me and often gave me the power over decisions. He was also now fully walking on his own without the use of a cane. Together we’d worked on our mutual recovery and used Omar’s big pool for daily exercise. I was pretty much back in fighting shape, too.
I craved a change of scenery, and now that Amsi was cleared from his quarantine, we began to venture out more often. In another few months, we were going to return to the States and get a place to live for a few months. I think we were even going to visit my small family in Kansas. I was, however, hesitant about bringing my Arab husband to Middle America.
Before our return to the States, we were packing and preparing to go to Amir’s home in Abu Dhabi. I’d met two of his siblings and his father when they’d traveled to Dubai. After some initial awkwardness, they seemed to warm to the idea of having a blonde daughter/sister-in-law. Amsi’s infectious charm didn’t hurt in swaying their approval, either, and the simple fact I was fairly fluent in Arabic, further cemented their acceptance.
Next was his mother and his people, and of course some official ceremony and marriage rituals. I wasn’t that excited about the whole thing. Unlike Anna who’d dreamt of her fairy tale wedding her entire life, I’d not once looked at a bridal magazine. Amir assured me I need only appear and be my beautiful self—the rest would be planned and executed by his people.
