Duty, Desire and the Desert King

Zayed wasn’t her concern. Not anymore. They didn’t speak—but when had they?—and they’d had no other communication other than in the beginning, just after she’d left. He opened an account for her in San Francisco and wired in the funds he’d promised—millions. And every month he sent more.

She never touched the account. Never even opened the bank statements that came to her house. She didn’t want his money. She didn’t want him to fund her research center. She didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d done enough. He’d broken her heart.

Four hours later, Rou stood at the podium in the downtown Chicago hotel’s conference center giving her speech on the biological and chemical effects of falling in love to one thousand members of the American Association of Marriage and Family Counselors. She was talking to the professional therapists about the powerful chemical cocktail that early love was, and how laboratory research had shown that dopamine’s effect on the brain was powerful, and addictive, resulting in cravings, behavior changes, sleep disruption and erratic thought.

She talked about how painful the end of relationships were, especially relationships still in that heady, newly in-love stage when dopamine still flooded the system, resulting in physical and emotional pain.

In her cool, clear, scientific voice, a voice that betrayed none of the anguish she’d gone through in the weeks following her departure from Sarq, she lectured on the painful effects of dopamine withdrawal, a withdrawal process that could last months, but would eventually diminish with time. Exercise and activity could help a client cope a little better, but nothing would completely take away the suffering as the suffering was real.

She theorized that one day scientists would develop a broken-heart pill much like the pills one took for depression, but that was years away.

With her speech concluded, she took questions for twenty minutes and then she was done.

Rou stepped off the stage, away from the bright lights into the darker wings, where she grabbed the first thing she found—a plastic rubbish bin—and threw up.

And again.

My God. How was she going to do this? How was she going to get through? She’d never wanted to marry, never wanted to have kids, and now she was heartbroken, eight weeks pregnant and terrifyingly alone.

She could handle being alone. She couldn’t handle being pregnant and alone. God only knew what kind of mother she’d be.

King Zayed Fehr stood in the wings of the stage and watched Rou speak. She’d always been slender but was now downright thin, and unusually pale in her simple black suit, a suit he’d hoped she would have replaced with something more flattering, never mind fashionable. She spoke well, though, he thought. Her voice was strong and clear. She made good eye contact with the audience. She answered every question with perfect confidence.

She was doing fine. He’d been right to let her go. She was a cat. She’d always land on her feet.

He was glad that he’d come to see her speak, glad to witness her continued success. The conference room held a thousand and tonight it was packed. He hadn’t been able to buy a last-minute ticket and ended up paying a janitor off to let him in, which was why he stood in the wings in the shadows next to the janitor’s trolley of cleaning supplies.

But now she was finished and walking off the stage, walking straight toward him. He stepped farther back into the shadows, not wanting to be seen. The moment she left the stage’s bright lights, the moment the dark velvet curtains on the sides concealed her, she lurched at the trolley, grabbed the janitor’s plastic waste bin and threw up.

She threw up again, and, falling to her knees, sat hunched over the bin, shoulders shaking, body heaving as tears ran down her face.

Rou was sick. The shock of it propelled him forward.

They were in the back of his chauffeured limo heading to the hospital, and Rou was livid. He wasn’t listening to her. He wasn’t paying her any attention. But then, when did he? “I’m not sick,” she repeated, putting down her window a crack to get some of the night’s cold fresh air. Cold air always helped her nausea. Ice did, too.

“You’re in denial then—”

“I’m not in denial,” she interrupted hoarsely, fingers curling into her palms as she willed her stomach to settle. She couldn’t get sick again, and not here in the back of his car. “And I don’t need a hospital. There’s nothing they can do for me—”

“You don’t know that,” he practically roared.

And Rou, who’d never heard him use anything but a quiet voice, blinked, stunned by his display of temper, and then because it was all so impossible, laughed.

She didn’t laugh hard. It was soft, mirthless, because life was so brutally unfair.

“What’s so funny?” He was still angry and his voice had a definite edge to it.

“You. Us. All of this.” She leaned gingerly against the car door, trying to stay as still as possible. “The fact that you had to marry the one woman in the world that didn’t want you. The one woman who never wanted to marry, or have kids.” Her eyes shone, and she swallowed convulsively because the nausea was getting worse, not better and it was just a matter of time before she threw up again. “I’m not sick, Zayed. I’m pregnant.”

They ended up at the hospital anyway. Zayed either didn’t believe her or needed proof, and the doctor, on hearing Zayed’s name, immediately ushered them into a room with an ultrasound.

In the small, curtained examination room, the young doctor moved the wand this way and that, staring at the screen intently. Then he nodded, expression intently focused. “Mmm-hmm,” he said, moving the wand again and getting a clearer picture. “Okay. So that’s what we’re dealing with.”

Zayed leaned across the bed, trying to see the dark screen. “What?” he barked, strain written in the hard set of his beautiful features.

The doctor turned the screen toward them so they could see, and he pointed to the image. “Two heartbeats.” His finger pointed to one, and then another, and then he looked up at them and smiled. “Twins.”

For a moment Rou thought she’d faint, and then she fought for air even as her head spun. Twins? “Not possible,” she choked, “not possible.”

“They run in my family,” Zayed answered flatly, no emotion in his voice. “Jamila and Aman.”

“But not possible,” Rou repeated hoarsely. One baby was bad enough, but two? Hot tears gathered, stinging her eyes.

The doctor turned off the machine and rolled back on his stool. “Congratulations, you are definitely expecting.”

Twenty minutes later, they were back in his car, and Zayed’s driver was heading toward Rou’s hotel to get her things. Rou wasn’t speaking, and although Zayed kept a watchful eye on her, he didn’t try to fill the silence, either.

She’d been pregnant for eight weeks, probably had known for a month, and she’d never told him.

Probably never intended to tell him, he realized with a heavy sigh. Not that he blamed her. He hadn’t been very supportive of late.

He felt a twinge of conscience. Or ever.

But it’d be different now. She was having his children. His children. Babies. Two.

A boy and a girl…or…?

He pictured Jamila and Aman as little girls and how they’d run through the palace playing hide-and-seek, and he felt another twinge, this time of sorrow. His si

sters had been such beautiful girls.

Rou stirred in her corner of the car. She clutched a paper bag in her hand just in case she needed to throw up again—which was likely—since she’d thrown up in the hospital’s parking lot.

Zayed watched her profile as the driver ferried them back to her hotel. She stared blindly out the window, her expression completely blank. He saw no emotion in her face and that troubled him most. “Are you all right?” he asked as kindly as possible.

“No.”

“What can I do?”

She just shook her head, and then shook it again. “I can’t have a baby,” she said roughly. “I can’t have one, much less two.”

“I will help you.”

“No.”

“Laeela, darling—”

“Not your darling. Not your laeela. I am nothing.”

“Just my wife.”

“We are not married.”

“We are married, and we will always be married. I will never divorce you. I have taken vows—”

“You and your stupid vows!” she cried, finally turning on him. Tears glimmered in her eyes, and her cheeks were dark with color. “You live in a world of vows and curses, superstition and ghosts, and it’s a world I don’t fit in, nor do I want to be in. I believe in science. I believe in an objective reality. I believe in cold, hard facts. And the facts say you will never, ever love me, and I will not give my life to a man that can’t love me.”

She was beyond control, beyond reason, and she jammed her thumb to her chest. “I deserve more, Zayed. I deserve so much more.”

And then she was crying, hunched over, face covered with her hands, crying as though her heart would break.

In her plain black suit, with her pale hair in a simple ponytail. Zayed stared at her as if he’d never seen her before.

She loved him.

She didn’t say the words. She didn’t have to. He saw it in her eyes when she looked at him. Heard it in the anguished tone of her voice. Felt it in the wrenching sobs of her body.