A Secret Birthright

chapter Five

Gwen stared at the overwhelming force that was Fareed Aal Zaafer, and was certain of one of two things.

Either she’d finally lost her mind, or he was out of his.

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would stop the disintegration of this situation, set it back in the land of the acceptable. She opened her eyes again hoping she’d see on his face what should have been there from the start, polite forbearance with a patient’s hysterical mother.

But he was looking at her with that indulgent intensity that singed her. Worse, a new excitement was entering his gaze, as if he was realizing more benefits to his decision by the second.

“As soon as Rose and Emad return, we’ll go to your hotel and collect your luggage on our way to the airport. We’ll be in Jizaan in under twenty-four hours.”

He’d said it again. This Jizaan thing. She hadn’t imagined it the first time. This was real. He meant it.

But he couldn’t mean it. He had to be joking. He did have a wicked sense of humor.…

No. His humor, while unpredictable and lightning-fast, was not in any way mean, at least, not in any of the lectures and interviews she’d seen. It would be beyond cruel to joke now and he was the very opposite of that: magnanimous, compassionate, protective.

But he was also single-minded and autocratic and she had to stop him before this crazy idea became a solid intention.

He detailed said intention. “We’ll go to dinner first, or we can have it on board the jet.” He got out his cell phone, cocked his head at her. “What would you like to have? Real food this time, I promise. I can either reserve seats in a restaurant, or have your choice ready on the jet.”

“I can’t go to your kingdom!”

The shaky statement managed to do the job. It stopped him short.

For about a second. Then he smiled. “Of course, you can.”

She raised her hands. “Please, let’s not start another ‘I can’t’ ‘No, you can’ match. We just finished one about payment.”

“Yes, let’s not. You do remember how you fared in that last match? No point in repeating the same method and expecting different results, hmm?”

The definition of insanity, which also described this situation. She did feel her sanity slipping another notch. “You know what you’re proposing is impossible.”

“I know no such thing.”

She shook her head, disbelief deepening, dread taking root. “You’re asking me to just haul everyone halfway across the world.…”

“I’ll do the ‘hauling,’ so cross that out on your no-doubt alphabetized list of worries. I’m sure you have your affairs sorted out for as long as you thought would see Ryan’s medical situation resolved. But in case you’re not fully covered, and fear repercussions for prolonged or unexcused absence from work, one phone call from me should get you an open-ended leave, with pay.”

Her breathing had gone awry by the time he finished. “It’s not just my work, it’s…everything.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, someone who would not be denied, who had an answer to everything. “Like what?”

She groped for something, anything, latched on the first logical thing that occurred to her. “Like passports. We didn’t bring them on a trip we couldn’t have dreamed would take us outside the States.”

His daunting shoulder rose and fell. “You won’t need them to enter my kingdom.”

“But we’d need visas.…”

He intercepted that, too. “Not when you’re entering the kingdom with me, you don’t. And I’ll bring you back with me, so you won’t need more than your American IDs to re-enter the States.”

Her eyes darted around, as if looking for a way out. There was none. He kept neutralizing possible objections in advance. “And anyway, to make you feel better, once in Jizaan, I’ll have the American embassy there issue new passports for you and I’ll have visas stamped on them.”

She knew he could do that with a flick of a finger. Any country would bend over backward to accommodate him.

“And if you’re worried about your family, I’ll call them right now, give them all my contact info, so they’d be in touch with you at all times. I can even take any of them who wish to come along, too.”

Her heart emptied at his mention of her family. A subject she had to close before he probed it open. “Rose is my closest relative.”

And probe he did. “You said she was a maternal relative. So what happened to your mother?”

She could feel the familiar pain and loss expanding all over inside her. She had to get this over with, dissuade him from broaching the subject ever again. “She died from surgical complications just after I entered college. I have no one else.”

He looked thoughtful. “And that must have factored in your decision to have Ryan after your engagement fell through, so you’d form your own family.”

She let her silence convince him his deduction was right, when it was anything but.

“I’m very sorry to hear you were all alone in the world for so long. Coming from such an extensive family, I can’t imagine how it must have been for you.”

“I’m no longer alone.”

“Yes.” After a long moment when sympathy seemed to radiate off him, he smiled. “So we checked off passports, visas, fees and responsibility to family as reasons to resist my plans.”

“But these are not the only…” She stopped, panting now as if she’d been trying to outrun an out-of-control car. She was trying to escape his inexorable intentions. “What am I saying? I’m not debating the feasibility of something that’s not even an option. And the only thing that will make me feel better is that you drop this and…and…” She stopped again, feeling herself being backed into a trap her own capitulation would close shut. And he was standing there, waiting for her to succumb, knowing that she would. She groaned with helplessness, “Why even suggest this? Why not perform the surgery here? If it’s because you’re worried I’d be saddled with hospital expenses…”

He waved that majestic hand of his. “I could have had the hospital waive them by adding Ryan to the cases I was here for.”

“Then why?” That came out a desperate moan.

He gave her such a look, that of someone willing to spend days cajoling and happy to do it. “You want reasons in descending or ascending order of importance?”

“Oh, please!” She tried to rise, failed to inject any coordination in her jellified legs. “Just…just…”

He sat down, put a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Breathe, Gwen. Everything will be fine, I promise. As for why, one main reason is that I can’t stay away from my medical center any longer. And I certainly won’t operate on Ryan, then leave him to someone else’s follow-up. The other major reason is that I can only guarantee my results in a case as delicate when I’m in my medium, among the medical team I put together and the system I constructed.”

Those were major reasons. “But still…”

“No ‘but stills.’ You’re coming with me and…”

She interrupted him this time. “Even if we have to come, we don’t have to right away. We can go back home, prepare ourselves, and when you have a surgery date arranged, we’d fly over.”

He was the epitome of accommodation, yet of determination. “Why go to the trouble and expense when you have a free and convenient ride now? At absolutely no extra cost or effort on my part? And there’s nothing to arrange. Once in Jizaan, I’ll take Ryan for the mandatory pre-op tests, then do the surgery at once.”

Her heart punched her ribs. “Th-that fast?”

“There’s every reason to do it as soon as possible. But don’t worry about a thing, I’ll take care of everything.”

“But I can’t just let you do everything, pay for everything. If we have to go to Jizaan, then I’ll at least pay our way.”

He leaned back, folded his arms across his expansive chest. “So what do you propose to do? Give my pilot and cabin crew your credit card? Or will you want to stop by an ATM to get cash?”

“Please, don’t joke! The most I can consent to not paying is your own fee. If you really waive it on a regular basis.”

His face lost any lightness. “After all the things you implied I was, are you now calling me a liar?”

“Oh, God, no!” she blurted out. “I meant…”

His serious expression dissolved on a smile that could have powered a small city. She must be in even worse condition than she’d thought if she hadn’t realized he had been joking.

“I know what you meant.” His fingers gently probed her pulse. “Your heart is in hyperdrive. It’s physically distressing thinking you’d be in someone’s debt, isn’t it?” It’s more your nearness, your touch, she almost confessed. “But rest easy, Gwen, there’s no debt. I will always owe many surgical successes to your expertise. Let me try to repay it with mine. As for me, on a professional level, adding the success of Ryan’s surgery to my achievements will be more than payment enough for me.” Suddenly the eyes that had become serious for real, crinkled on bedeviling. “But if you have money you can’t bear having, I’ll give you a list of causes in Jizaan and you can donate it in lieu of payment.”

She had no answer now but more tears.

They welled up, filling her whole being. It was beyond incredible. To have his incomparable skills and support. It was also beyond terrible. To have to go with him, be near him, for weeks, be exposed to his influence and subjected to her weakness.

Beyond the tragedies that had sheared through her life and heart, that was the worst thing that could have happened to her. She would have gone to hell and wouldn’t have bothered coming back to see Ryan healthy and happy. Now she would go to the one place she considered worse than hell. And she could never explain her feelings to Fareed.

She finally whispered, “I—I don’t know what to say.”

He sat back, his imposing frame sprawling in the contentment of someone who’d fulfilled his purpose. “You do. A three-letter word. Beginning with a Y and ending with an S.”

A thousand fears screeched in the darkness of her mind. And she closed her eyes and prayed. That when she said it, it would only mean Ryan’s salvation, and not her damnation.

She opened her eyes, stepped off the bleak, yet familiar, cliff of resignation into the abyss of the unknown.

And whispered the dreaded, “Yes.”

The trip to Jizaan passed in a blur of distress.

Fareed, with Emad and the flight crew, orchestrated a symphony of such lavish luxury that it almost snapped her frayed nerves. She was so unused to being waited on, so uncomfortable at being on the receiving end of such indulgence, when she was unable to repay it, too, that it exhausted her.

After the first three hours, she’d escaped by sleeping the remaining eight hours to their refueling layover in London. She’d taken refuge in sleep again in the second leg of the journey, leaving Rose and Ryan to plumb the jet’s inhabitants’ ceaseless desire to spoil them.

She was floating somewhere gray and oppressive when she felt a caress on her hand.

She jerked out of the coma-like sleep knowing it was Fareed. Only his touch had ever felt like a thousand volts of disruption.

“I apologize for disturbing your slumber, but we’re about to land.” His eyes glowed like embers even in the jet’s atrocious lighting, his magnificent voice soaked in gentle teasing. “I hope fourteen hours of sleep managed to provide a measure of rest.”

She would have told him they sure hadn’t if her throat didn’t feel lined with sandpaper. She rose from the comfort of the plane bed, returning it to its upright position, feeling as if she’d been in a knock-down drag-out fight.

Apart from everything that disturbed her past, present and future, she knew why she felt wrecked. She might have been hiding in unawareness, but she’d felt him as she’d slept, and his thoughts, the demand, the promise in them and her struggle against them, had worn her out.

Rose waited until he left to approach her with Ryan, eyeing her in sarcastic censure. “That was sure record-breaking.”

“You mean you and Ryan staying awake for that long?”

Rose huffed. “Oh, we slept, around an hour on each leg. We were savvy enough to take advantage of that once-in-a-lifetime experience. While you are either stupid, or stupid not to grab at all that…God offers.”

From the proof of undeniable experience, Gwen knew that Rose, the only “aunt” she’d ever had, had only her best interest at heart. She’d always counted on her outspokenness to make her face the truth when she shied away from it. But now that smack of reality only made her sink deeper into despair.

Rose had no idea how…impossible everything was.

She was almost thankful when Fareed returned, bringing with him another dose of disturbance. She wasn’t up to more evasive maneuvers with the other unstoppable force in her life.

She was unequivocally thankful when Rose engaged Fareed in conversation during landing. It left her able to pretend to look outside her window when she saw nothing but her internal turmoil.

They were really in Jizaan.

After touchdown, Fareed got up and took Ryan from Rose.

Gwen jumped up, tried to take him. Fareed looked down at Ryan. “Which ride do you want, ya sugheeri?”

Thorns sprouted in her stomach at the loving way Fareed called Ryan his little one.

Ryan, who seemingly understood anything Fareed said in either English or Arabic, looked back at her with dimples at full blast. Then he bobbed in his arms, spurring him to move.

There. She’d gotten her answer.

As Rose preceded them out of the plane with Emad, Fareed kept a step behind her.

His bass purr hit her back. “I’m not competing with you for his favor.”

She slanted him a glance over her shoulder, almost winced at the incredible sight of him, as immaculate and fresh as if he hadn’t been up for the past twenty-four hours, after a month of grueling surgeries, too. He towered over her, his shoulders broad enough to blot out the whole world, virility and gorgeousness radiating off him in shock waves.

Looking ahead before she stumbled, she murmured, “It never occurred to me that you were.”

“And he’s not choosing me over you.”

A mocking huff broke from her. “Could have fooled me.”

His deep chuckle resonated in her bones. “He’s not. I’m just the new toy.”

She would have chuckled, too, if she’d been able to draw more air than that which kept her on her feet and conscious.

And that was before he took her elbow, offered the support he must have felt she needed, smiled down at her. “You really should be happy we’re enjoying each other’s company so much.” Her knees almost lost their solidity as seriousness tinged his gaze. “But I can’t be more relieved that he likes and seeks me. The coming time isn’t going to be easy, and trusting me is going to make everything so much better for him.”

He was that thoughtful? She’d only ever known one other person with that kindness.…

Memories lodged into her heart like an ax. She clamped down on the pain. She couldn’t afford to let those overwhelm her now. She needed to be at her strongest, her most resolute. For Ryan. And for her own struggle.

She passed by a time zones clock, blinked at its verdict. Four-thirty in the afternoon in L.A., 5:30 a.m. in Jizaan. Exactly twenty-four hours from the moment she’d staggered into his orbit.

She felt as if her life before those hours had been someone else’s, someone whose memories were sloughing off to be replaced by this new reality that had no rhyme or reason.

Then she stepped out of the jet and into another realm.

Her career had taken her all over the world, other desert kingdoms included, but Jizaan felt…alien, unprecedented.

The least of it was the airport itself, what she’d caught glimpses of from the air, what had the design, ambition and otherworldliness of a horizon-dominating space colony.

Everything else was painted with a brush of hyperreality. The star-sprinkled sky midway between the blue of eternity and the indigo of dawn had the vibrancy of another dimension, the stars the sharpness and abundance of another galaxy. The desert winter breeze that kissed her face and ran insistent fingers through her hair, even when jets’ exhaust should have tainted it, felt cleansing, resuscitating. The whole atmosphere was permeated by echoes of a history rife with towering passions, unquenchable feuds and undying honor. She felt it all tug at her through her awareness of Fareed, whose blood ran thick with this land’s legacy.

She stole a look at him, found him looking down at Ryan, his expression laced with fondness. Ryan, secure in Fareed’s powerful grasp, was looking around, his face rapt as he inhaled deep, as if to breathe in the new place, make it a part of him.

Her heart constricted. If only…

“Ahlann wa sahlann bekom fi daari-wa daarakom.”

Fareed’s deep tones caressed every one of her nerves—until she translated what he’d said.

He was welcoming them to his home. And theirs.

She knew this was simply the ultragenerosity the region was known for, where they offered guests their homes as theirs. She still felt as if a wrecking ball had swung into her. She swayed with the force of the phantom sensation.

Fareed grabbed her tight against his side.

He’d probably saved her, this time from a plunge down a flight of steel stairs. But being ensconced in his heat and hardness, his concern was unendurable.

She groped for the railing, quickened her descent, pretending steadiness. The moment she touched ground, her legs wobbled again.

He caught her, exhaled. “I should have woken you earlier. You’re still drowsy. Or you’re hypoglycemic again. You barely ate anything since we started this journey.”

She didn’t refute his explanations. Better to let him think it was all physical. She wouldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t. Not the general truth. Or the one behind her latest bout of chaos. That as soon as her feet touched the ground, she could almost swear the land pulled at her. And yelled at her.

Leave, the moment you can. Before you sustain an injury you won’t survive this time.

They’d reached the limo awaiting them a dozen feet from the jet’s stairs, where Emad had taken the driver’s seat with Rose beside him, when she heard Fareed say, “We’re going to my place, Ryan.”

The words meant for Ryan skimmed her mind, leaving no impression. Then they slowly sank. And detonated.

She swung to him as he held the door open for her. “What?”

He frowned his confusion. “What do you mean ‘what’?”

“What do you mean your place?”

He smiled, a smile drenched in that overriding sensuality that was as integral to him as his DNA. “My place is the place where I live. And where you’ll stay.”

“We’re going to stay in your center!”

He gave an adamant headshake as he prodded her to enter the limo, making her slide across the backseat by entering after her. “Only during the immediate pre- and postoperative period. And don’t contest this again.”

“I never contested it a first time.…”

“Which was much appreciated, so don’t suddenly change—”

She cut him off in return, feeling her brain overheating. “Because this is the first time I’ve heard of this.”

“Not true. I told you during the flight.”

“Was I awake when you told me?”

He gave her a thoughtful glance, then his smile scalded her with its amusement. “Come to think of it, that you didn’t contest it should have clued me in that you were sleep talking.”

“And now that I’m awake…”

“You’ll be my esteemed guest.”

Before she could utter another protest, Ryan, who’d been getting louder demanding his attention, grabbed his face and tugged. Fareed turned to him and at once they got engaged in another game of fetch-and-explain.

Even though he had been paying Ryan every attention, she knew he relished that timely excuse to end their conversation. She knew there was no use trying to continue it. He had this infallible way of getting his way, of making his unilateral decisions the only ones that made sense. But his place?

She felt she was sinking in quicksand and any move was making her sink faster.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

She exhaled, sought distraction, looked outside the window, her eyes finally registering the splendor of Jizaan’s sparkling capital rushing by.

In the first slivers of dawn, the magnificence of Al Zaaferah, or The Victorious, named after the centuries-old ruling house, seeped into her awareness. It felt as if it had been erected today to the most lavish standards. It also looked constantly evolving with extreme-concept projects rising among the soaring mirrored buildings—everything felt futuristic yet with pervasive cultural influences making it feel steeped in history.

She was lost in recording every detail when she noticed they’d gotten off the main roads and were now driving through automatic, thirty-feet-high, wrought-iron gates. Fareed’s “place,” no doubt.

The limo winded through ingeniously landscaped grounds, approaching a sprawling stone mansion crouching in the distance. Painted in sweeps of shadow and mysticism, it had the feel of a fortress from a Middle Eastern fable, the abode of someone who craved solitude, yet in having to house those his rank dictated, expanded his domain to give them space, and himself distance.

She hadn’t thought what his place would be like. If she had, she would have imagined he lived in either the royal palace, or as imposing an edifice. But even though this place spoke of affluence, it didn’t reek of excess. It was amazing how everything was permeated with the privileges of the prince, yet possessed the austerity of the surgeon.

All through their journey to the main door, she felt invisible eyes monitoring their progress, relaying it to forward stations. Even though she’d experienced many aspects of Fareed’s status, that seamlessly orchestrated surveillance solidified everything in her mind. Who Fareed was. Where she was now.

He handed her out of the limo feet from stone steps leading to the patio. Footmen appeared as if from nowhere and rushed to open the massive brass-work doors.

She entered beside him with trepidation expanding in her heart into a columned hall that spread under a thirty-foot mosaic dome. The doors closed with a soft click. To Gwen, it felt as if iron prison doors were slammed shut behind her.

Her gaze darted around the indirectly lit space, got impressions of a sweeping floor plan extending on both sides, understated colors, a male influence in decor—his virile influence permeating the place. Her inspection ended where thirty-foot-wide stairs climbed to a spacious platform before winding away to each side of the upper floor.

Fareed led them up one side to a guest apartment triple the size of her condo, faithfully displaying the amalgam of modernity and Arabian Nights feel of the rest of the mansion. If she were in a condition to appreciate anything, she would have found it amazing to walk through doors that looked like they’d been transported through millennia intact only to swing open soundlessly with a proximity sensor. She was sure even Scheherazade’s imagination couldn’t have created anything like this place.

“Let me take him.”

Gwen stirred from her reverie at Rose’s words. She found her taking a now sound-asleep Ryan from Fareed.

“We’re both done for.” Rose stifled a yawn as she gave Gwen a kiss on the cheek. She grinned at Emad as she took Ryan’s bag from him. “I’ll find us the nearest beds and it might be night when you see either of us again.”

In a minute everyone had left her alone with Fareed.

She turned blindly, pretending to inspect the sitting area. She ran a hand along the perfect smoothness of a hand-carved chair before turning to a spherical, fenestrated brass lantern hanging from the ceiling with spectacular chains. She made the mistake of transferring her gaze to him and the hypnotic play of light and shadows over his face and figure only deepened his influence.

He stared back at her for long, long moments, winding up the coil of tension inside her tighter until she felt she’d shatter.

Before she begged him to just stop, he finally exhaled. “I apologize for not staying to show you around, but I have to go to work, catch up on everything I hadn’t been able to attend to long-distance. Use the place as you would your own—and don’t argue. Just explore, relax, rest. Then tomorrow we go the center.”

Her heart almost knocked her off her feet. “You—you’ll operate tomorrow?”

He simply said, “Yes.”

After losing all of her family, one after the other, Gwen had thought she’d known all kinds of anguish and desperation. All forms of loss.

But now she knew there was more. There was worse. And there was one injury, one loss, she wouldn’t survive.

If anything happened to Ryan…

“Everything will be fine.”

She chafed at Rose’s reassurance. What she’d reiterated over and over since Fareed had taken Ryan and disappeared into the depths of his staggeringly advanced medical center.

It didn’t work now as it hadn’t worked before. Fareed had come out once, fourteen hours ago, telling them Ryan had been prepared and was already in the O.R. He’d said he’d come out to reassure them as soon as he was done with the surgery.

That had lasted eight hours. Two hours longer than his longest estimate. Every second of the extra time, she’d known a worse hell than any she’d known before.

Guilt had consumed her. She’d sought inferior help initially, hoping it would suffice, save her from making contact with Fareed. What if she’d left it too late? What if she’d be punished for considering anything, no matter how momentous, ahead of Ryan’s health?

Rose hugged her, sensing her thoughts. “Stop it, Gwen. Everything is fine. Fareed’s assistant assured us it is.”

“But he didn’t.”

Fareed hadn’t come out to reassure her as he’d promised! What if that meant he couldn’t face her with what had happened yet?

Rose tsked. “You did see the mass casualty situation that hit the center like a tornado, didn’t you? With his being the chief around here and with God knows how many lives to save, I’m sure putting your mind to rest personally plunged to the bottom of his priorities.”

Logic droned that Rose was right. But hysteria was drowning it out. They wouldn’t let her see Ryan in Recovery or ICU. Fareed’s orders. That was six mutilating hours ago.

Suddenly, Fareed appeared at the other end of the expansive waiting area.

She rose, could barely stand erect as his long strides ate the maddening distance between them. Then out of the blue, he was swamped by people. Other patients’ frantic families.

He stopped his advance, turned to them with calm, patient and what must have been very detailed reassurance because it defused their tension. By the time he at last excused himself with utmost courteousness and resumed his path to her, she was at screaming pitch.

As he stopped before her, those fiery eyes piercing her, she felt he’d trodden on the heart that had crashed at his feet.

“It all went wrong.”