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He gathered her to his chest; it was the most natural motion he could have made. Jennifer felt right nestled there, tight against his body. If he could protect her from the uncertainty to come, Bahan would. He would offer his money and influence, make sure that Sydney was cared for by only the best doctors and surgeons in the world. But even he couldn’t buy fate. Hopefully the medical intervention would work, but even that was beyond his power and reach. For right now, he could hold her, rock her closely and promise her that he’d be by her side as they navigated this tough time of illness in both of their families.
Bahan only wished the marriage were as real as their pact to take care of each other and their relatives. But at least she’d said yes, and that was a start.
***
The wedding had to be in New York. They were having it in the deluxe hospital suite he’d arranged for Sydney at the best facility in Manhattan. With his machinations, Sydney would be receiving a kidney by the week between Christmas and New Year’s. If any of them had been a blood and tissue match, they’d have done it sooner. But even testing him and Fareed on the off chance there was a match had yielded nothing.
He had noticed that with her first set of procedures, Sydney did seem better. She slept less and her skin had a far less yellow caste. It made him believe, hopefully, that her kidneys were stabilizing, at least as much as they could until she received a brand-new Cadillac model. But despite tradition and everything else, he didn’t want to take his bride away too early from his sister’s side. He wanted her to be able to celebrate everything fully with her family—business arrangement or not—before they went on their quick honeymoon. Because of this, they’d flown in the royal Imam from Yemen to oversee everything by the bedside. His mother had come as well, and he could tell from the brief interactions he’d had with her so far that she was stewing at this technicality he’d found. She’d never been fond of Western girls, or “infidels” as she sometimes called them.
He didn’t care.
Even if he was only going to have Jennifer Wilde by his side for a couple of years, he was going to follow his heart and his instincts, not tradition. To him, she was a strong woman, and a noble one, someone working so hard to keep her family together.
However, as unconventional as the wedding was, he still needed to speak with his father, even if it was only over Skype. Part of all of this was for him, so that the current sheikh would see that the country of Yemen was secured for at least one more generation to come, so that his father might pass on to the afterlife in peace and harmony.
Most of the top floor was sectioned off for them, such was the power of his last name and his position. He used that opportunity to slip into a conference room, to enjoy the final hour before his wedding and to call his father. He patiently waited as the call went through, and then his father’s wizened face appeared on the screen. His beard was long and seemed now to dwarf his haggard face. Even in the few weeks that Bahan had been in NYC attending to the emporium’s completion and his pending nuptials, he could see plainly how the poor condition of his father’s lungs was eating away at the older man.
He bowed low, offering his sheikh and father the respect due to him. “Father, you look well,” Bahan said, wishing that he was a better actor.
“I look like shit, as the Americans would say,” his father replied, chuckling a little but then coughing to himself when caught up in his own joke. “It is hard being here, and now I do not have the delightful visage of your mother to wake me every morning.”
Bahan laughed. Considering how many times he clashed with his mother, Bahan couldn’t quite imagine the reigning sheikha as a calming oasis. “Surely you jest.”
“I’m not joking,” he said. “In the olden days, back when I lived with the dinosaurs…”
“You’re hardly that old, Father,” he replied.
“Then perhaps in the Middle Ages with those damned Crusaders.”
“Perhaps that’s more your age and era,” Bahan said, winking at the image of the older man. How he would miss his father’s sense of humor when he passed on to his reward. “I can see that. Did you joust too?”
“Only for me to know,” he said, just barely refraining from laughing. “But you were saying?”
“Your mother and I were an arranged marriage. It was back when marriages of political alliance were mandatory.”
“They’re still encouraged now,” he said, thinking of his mother’s less than subtle hints that he should have taken up with the sheikha from Lebanon.
“Then it was an order or you were exiled. I didn’t trust it at first. I knew so little about your mother, but she became the most amazing thing in my life. For over thirty years, she’s been by my side, raised my children with me, and truly been the guiding light in my life. I know that this is a marriage you’ve ru
shed into. I know that it’s something you’re doing to make me happy.”
“And to make sure certain idiotic cousins do not take the throne.”
“That, too, but I think you don’t understand how something you’re not even completely sure of, how twists of fate can bring you to the woman you love. Cherish her, and maybe this marriage will mean more to you than even you suspect, my son.”
He nodded, feeling the lump of his Adam’s apple in his throat. “Thank you, Father. Stay well, and we’ll visit you as soon as we can.”
“I expect nothing less,” his father replied as Bahan ended the call.
He took a deep breath and tried not to think about life after his father was gone. Maybe the doctors were wrong. Maybe his prognosis would turn out to be better. Perhaps there was something else that could be done. Wasn’t there always something that could be done? As a child, he’d always imagined being sheikh, the power and prestige it would bring. But now that this was happening, Bahan wasn’t sure he could be as good a sheikh and as wise a ruler as his father.
But that was for another day. This was a celebration, rushed as it was, and he’d treat it that way.
Or at least he would have until his mother entered the room.
She was dress impeccably. Even if this was a wedding she couldn’t sanction, his mother was never one to look less than regal. She gazed back at him from her ceremonial kaftan in its stark white color (an insult in and of itself, but he’d hidden that significance and bad luck omen from Jennifer; it was the last thing she needed right now).
“My son, I think we need to talk.”
