The Sheikh's Claim (Desert Nights 2)

A kaleidoscope of agony spun inside him at her every slashing word. “So you thought I didn’t care about you one way or another, thought I’d feel the same about the child you bore me. So why didn’t you tell me anyway? Just to make sure? Why were you so anxious to divert me from the truth?”

Sarcasm emptied from her eyes, discomfort replacing it. “Because this way Adam remained mine alone and your reaction to his existence wouldn’t…taint him. I thought if you knew and rejected him, he’d somehow feel it. I didn’t want to make that rejection real, and it would only be real if you knew....”

Her words petered out, her cream complexion blotching with crimson agitation.

“So this was how you rationalized it all. You painted me as exploitative, cheating scum so you could walk out on me with a clear conscience. Then you condemned me as an unfeeling monster so you could justify depriving me of my child.”

Silence crashed after his last butchered growl.

Nothing fractured its suffocation but the sounds of his thundering heartbeats and her labored breathing.

Then she croaked, “You—you’re really upset?”

“Upset?” A mirthless laugh shredded out of him. “Upset?”

His laugh died. He pressed his fist against his chest where it felt it had been ripped open.

She stared up at him, horror settling into her eyes by degrees. “I—I really…really believed it would be the last thing you’d want, to know you had a baby, from me. Y-you did walk out that day saying you’d delete me from your memory.”

“You’d just told me that you hated me, hated yourself when you were with me. You said that after I told you how I couldn’t forget you, after we almost died of pleasure in each other’s arms. What did you expect me to say? If you’d given me any hope, I would have never given up. And if you’d told me when you found out you were pregnant with Adam…” A lump pushed its way up his throat.

“Wh-what would you have done if I’d told you?”

“Ya Ullah, what wouldn’t I have done? Had I been the second one to know that you carried my child, as I should have been, I would have been there with you, for you, for him, every moment of the past twenty-eight months. And you deprived me of all that.”

The silver of her eyes dimmed until it was eclipsed in a wave of reddened realization and blackening contrition.

Suddenly she staggered around and collapsed on the couch.

“I didn’t realize, never believed…” She dropped her face into her palms on a hiccuped gasp.

He looked down at her, witnessing the distress shaking her frame, chopping her breathing for the first time. His own was wildfire that razed through his every nerve.

He walked to her slowly, feeling if he went any faster, he’d keel over. He went down on his knees before her.

She gasped as he took her clammy, trembling hands in his. Tears streaked a pale track down the velvet of her flushed cheeks as she raised her face level with his. Her lips contorted to form words, her voice a thick, tear-clogged tremolo. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Jalal....”

One hand pressed against her lips, silencing the flow of her regret. He couldn’t bear her apologies. He didn’t think he deserved them. Didn’t want them even if he did.

He needed only one thing. “I want to see my son, Lujayn. Take me to him. Now.”

Eight

Lujayn snatched her hand from his, heaved up to her feet and wiped away the tears that had abruptly stopped. “I can’t do that.”

He rose to stand, feeling as unsteady as she seemed. His lips and heart compressed on the anger condensing inside him. “Even now, you still persist in trying to deprive me of my son? Zain, kaif ma tebbi—as you wish. I only asked you as a courtesy. I don’t need your permission or your cooperation to see my son. I’ll go to your uncle’s to see him, right now.”

She lunged at him, caught his arm in a frantic grasp, her face urgent. “You can’t. They have no idea you’re his father.”

A suspicion skewered him in the chest. “You told them he was Patrick’s?”

Her color rose into the danger zone. “N-no, they knew he couldn’t have been Adam’s father. I—I told them it was someone else, but it wasn’t important who he was.”

Would everything she said keep hurting more? “And they just accepted that?”

She winced. “My father’s side of the family did. My mother’s, being conservative Azmaharians, were mortified. They rationalized my ‘lapse’ by my grief, and placated themselves that I’d make it…lawful. When I told them there was no hope of that and I’d decided to keep the baby and would disappear from their lives forever if they couldn’t deal with it, they eventually succumbed.”

“Decided to keep the baby?” He caught her by the shoulders, each heartbeat a wrecking ball inside his chest. “You considered…terminating your pregnancy?”

“No.” Her eyes filled again. “It was a shock to find myself pregnant, under the circumstances, but no matter how difficult I knew it would be, how it would change my life forever, I wanted Adam more than I wanted to live.”

A mixture of overwhelming sweetness and bitterness, of longing and regret, expanded inside his chest. He wanted to crush her into him, assuage the alienation, wanted to push her away feeling her nearness would cause him permanent injury.

He did neither, kept holding her at arm’s length.

Then he rasped, “Do you have photos?”

“O-of Adam?” Her eyes widened, brightened as if he’d handed her a lifeline. She stumbled out of his hold and to her purse, produced her phone, her hands trembling as she accessed her photos. “I should have thought of this.”

She thought he’d be satisfied with seeing his son in photos.

His hand covered the phone’s screen as she extended it to him. This wouldn’t be how he’d first lay eyes on his son.

“Photos of yourself. When you were pregnant.”

The relief on her face drained as hard as her arm fell to her side. “I wasn’t in any condition to think of posing for photos. I’d decided to have Adam, but I wasn’t exactly…”

“Happy?”

She shook her head, her eyes filling with the days of anxiety and anguish she’d lived, a woman becoming a single mother.

Suddenly it was vital for him to find something out. “Did you stay in the Hamptons during your pregnancy?”