Rebecca found herself surrounded by her new family, a close-knit group that looked after each other and took care of one another unlike anything she’d ever seen before. It was a big family, and she’d always wanted a big family. Maybe not wanted, but she’d dreamed about it.
Rebecca had grown up with her little sister, Amy, and her parents, who had always been so absorbed with their work that it was as if they were never around. She hadn’t even reached out to them to tell them about the marriage. She didn’t want them to know that she was marrying into a wealthy, powerful family. If they had known that she was the wife of a Sheikh, they would have immediately peppered her with requests for this cause or that one.
Instead, she spent the evening with her new husband and family.
“You looked so beautiful up there,” Casey shouted over the music as the girls were dancing after the wedding.
“It’s like having a new sister,” Melanie told her.
“Two new sisters,” Casey corrected her, throwing an arm around Amy’s neck.
There weren’t many other people at the wedding who Rebecca knew, so as her husband celebrated with his brothers and other male members of the family, she stuck by her new sisters.
There were still so many things to do now that she was married. There was a whole new life ahead of her, and she had to finish sloughing off her old life so that she could move forward, but she knew that her new family would help her where she needed them to.
In the meantime, she danced and celebrated the best new beginning she could have imagined. She celebrated finding true love and an opportunity to fight the good fight all rolled into one.
In a place like Sharjah, a place experiencing so much rapid growth, she knew she would be able to do a lot of good as wife to one of the Sheikhs. She knew that just as she had shown the royal family what was going on in the streets of the Emirate, she would be able to show the citizens of the Emirate how hard the royal family tried to work for them. She looked forward to all the good they were going to do together, all the love they would share, and to watching their son grow into a man under the watchful, caring eyes of their wonderful family.
It was her dream job, her dream wedding, her dream family, and a dream come true for Rebecca to have married Sheikh Zaid Al-Qasimi.
As the night ended, they found themselves back on the rooftop terrace again. So many nights had found them under the stars already, and that seemed to be the theme for them. Zaid stood with Rebecca in his arms, just as he had so many years ago on the balcony behind her hotel room.
“Do you remember this from the first time?” he asked her.
“I do, but I like it this time so much better,” she answered him. “Do you know why?”
Zaid grinned in the dark. “No. Why?”
She nestled herself up against him. “Because now it doesn’t have to end,” she told him and rested her head on his chest.
She was right. It didn’t have to stop this time. Nothing was going to pull them away from each other this time. There were no other responsibilities that would come between them ever again. There were no strange career attachments that would pull them apart.
They were together now, and it was legitimate this time. They weren’t sneaking off in between meetings for quick trysts in public places. They weren’t sneaking into each other’s rooms at night when no one else was looking. None of that had to happen anymore.
And there would be no more mornings that would find one of them waking up alone because the other had to flee what they’d done the night before.
“It doesn’t have to stop ever,” Zaid repeated. “I have you now, and I will always have you.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for us, the opportunity to be together for real instead of finding ways to live out snippets of a fantasy that could have gotten both of us in trouble.”
Zaid laughed. “That’s ironic, don’t you think? When this started, it was a major conflict of interest. Neither one of our jobs would have worked out if people found out at the wrong time that we had been sleeping together.”
“But now that we’re married,” she added, “none of that even matters anymore. It’s like we retroactively legitimized everything we ever did together.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, holding her tight.
After a few minutes of silence under the vast starry sky, he asked her, “Are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready since the first time I saw you,” she answered.
“I have been, too,” he agreed. “I have been, too.”
She looked up at him, and
the starlight sparkled in her eyes. “Then, that settles it,” she said.
She put a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down to kiss her. Their lips touched as softly as they had that night on the balcony so many years ago, when they had known that no matter what they promised each other, that last kiss was the last kiss.