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The nausea swirled through her again, and she tried to keep herself from yakking right there. “Honey, there’s a lot we have to talk about and I don’t even know if I am yet. I’ll have to get some doctor’s tests later today and, I promise. Whatever we find out, we’ll have a long talk about it. Jamsheed will fly you out here. It’s not something—if I am, I mean—to tell you over the computer or the phone.”
“Okay,” Haley said, her tone subdued, as she nodded back. “But keep me looped. I wanna know if I’m going to be a big sister.” With that, she clicked off the Skype window, leaving Brenda to blink back at the white screen.
Sighing, she ran her hand through her hair and tried to ignore the sweating of her palms. “I want to know for sure, too.”
***
Jamsheed rubbed at the bridge of his nose. The figures before him weren’t daunting, but they were tougher than he’d thought. A group of extremist rebels to the southern border of Zomelia had been pressuring his father with demands. Hell, it was completely likely that one of the factors leading to the older man’s stroke had been the constant pressure from these upstarts. It had long been Rahal Family policy to never negotiate, either with rebels or terrorists. There was no brooking to what they demanded, and certainly no way he’d give up one of the oil fields on their border to them, no matter what they threatened. Yet the thought of gearing up for a possible skirmish made his stomach turn. Being firm and drawing a line in the sand might work for now, but he’d have to come to grips with fact that, acting as the current Head of State, he soon might have to make even more dire decisions.
And those rebels, they keep being so adamant. I wonder if they hope I never have an heir, if they think that Abir would be someone they could reason with?
He banished that thought from his mind. So far, it had been six weeks, and no signs had seemed to pop up yet. Jamsheed respected Brenda enough not to demand they do blood tests or make her use the tests. If she felt her body was telling her something was happening—and, frankly, after the amount of sex they’d been having every night something should be happening—then she’d come to him.
It was so odd, he thought as he stretched at his desk. They’d been closer in London just discovering their relationship than with the weeks between them in Zomelia. Oh, she was wonderful in so many ways. Brenda sat beside him every night when he went to visit his father’s bedside. She read stories to the old sheikh, in case he could hear her in his coma. She often quipped she wouldn’t want to be bored if she were ever like that. He wasn’t sure how his father, if he could hear, would take to being read the entire Harry Potter series, but maybe it kept him sane in that limbo state. Maybe it would be a beacon that could draw his father back. Hell, anything read in that lilting alto of Brenda’s would be tempting enough to pass through heaven, Earth, and purgatory for.
And yet, they didn’t talk to each other, not really. There were schedules and attempts to make an heir. There was endless talk between them and the OB/GYN specialist overseeing all of this about times of the month and cycles. But it felt clinical, as if he’d broken something in that tent almost two months ago. He should have told her about the full extent of his needs before they left England. Rationally, he could argue to himself that he hadn’t because his father was sick, arrangements had to be made, and Haley had to be bailed out of trouble.
But that wasn’t true.
Because he did know how it looked. Yes, her fire and her resilience, everything about her he noticed daily had left him starting to fall for her, but then there was this added pressure, this deeper deadline forcing them together faster than he wanted.
Don’t get him wrong. He wanted the sex. His fiery phoenix was too stunning to forego that for long. However, it was all about making an heir and nothing about trying to nurture the spark between them. He tried to show her at dinner and in a million little ways around the palace that he cared for her and that it wasn’t just about what Zomelia needed. If he just needed anyone, he could draw up a harem as his great grandfather had had years before.
Yet, he could see Brenda building her walls up a little more each day, fortifying them a little bit thicker, and he wasn’t sure what he could do to show her that they weren’t needed. He wasn’t running from her. If they couldn’t produce an heir, then he’d go to parliament himself and the oldest judges of the land, and have everything rewritten. Zomelia could not fall into Abir’s hands. At the same time, he couldn’t lose Brenda’s heart. At least not more than he already had.
There was a knock on his door and he expected it to be one of the servants summoning him for lunch. He tried to take a break daily to eat with Brenda, when before even at his flat in London he was a workaholic who only nibbled on a sandwich in the middle of his CFO’s reports. He’d been a cad and a man-whore, but he always kept the family’s oil business a top priority.
Instead, however, his eyes widened and he couldn’t suppress a grin when he saw that Brenda and Jazmina were standing there instead.
The older woman had her eyes respectfully downcast, but Brenda looked at him, something fearful yet undefinable in her gaze. “Jamsheed, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” his fiery phoenix started.
He stood and strode over to her in a record number of steps. What could he say? She inspired him, especially quickness in him when it came to bridging physical gaps between them. His hands snuck out of their own accord and found their way to her shoulders and squeezed. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing I’d rather do than talk to you, believe me. Now, what’s going on? Are you feeling all right?”
She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “I think I need to see Dr. Gupurasad. I vomited this morning and was nauseated yesterday even though I didn’t think much of it. I… I think it might be happening.”
***
She lay back on the hospital bed. The medical wing of the palace would put most hospitals in the States or London to shame. The best medical staff money could buy was on hand, at least in the field of cardiology, to help the fallen sheikh; to do anything they could to rouse him from his coma. Jamsheed had spared little expense flying out experts from all over the world as well to compose an OB/GYN and a fertility team for Brenda
—if she were pregnant.
She felt as she did in those long-ago, fuzzy first weeks with Haley. And, God, had she not missed vomiting and the morning sickness. That was one of the supposed “miracles of pregnancy” that Brenda could live without.
Jamsheed sat on a metal stool beside her, his hand clasped around hers. It amazed her somehow, thrilled her down to her core, that difference between the size of their hands. In fact, he could almost envelope both of hers with one of his. God, his broad, thick fingers. Fingers that pleasured her every night, that somehow made this deal feel less of what it was: a trade.
She was like livestock here. She still had her own bedroom and he never forced her to do anything, but she couldn’t help but worry no matter what he said or how passionate he was in bed that this was all about the heir and securing his throne.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
Everything had been abstract before. They’d been trying for six weeks, and she was too nervous to even pee on a stick. The tests, if she’d been taking them regularly, might have shown something a week ago or more. But maybe she didn’t want that, deep down. Maybe she was terrified to have her final illusions ripped from her. As long as it was just the two of them in bed, she didn’t have to think about her sojourn in Zomelia as anything more than her exotic midlife crisis, her Eat, Pray, Love, but in the Middle East instead of India.
But if she really were pregnant, then it was about everyone. Literally, everyone. It was about the fate of a nation and the promises Jamsheed owed to his father and the rest of the Rahal line. It was about what it would mean for them trying to build a family, because she’d be damned if were expected to just sign over any child of hers like it was a puppy once it had been weaned. Then there was Haley. How was she supposed to explain the circumstances of Haley’s possible little brother or sister?
She took in a deep breath and shook a little, the anxiety overwhelming her. That strong hand over her own, clutched hers even tighter.
“My phoenix, are you all right?”
She nodded “I think so. I just… I wish Dr. Gurpurasad would get here with the results. I need to know what’s real and what’s not.”
