The Sheik's Baby Surprise (13 page)

She closed her eyes and pushed the memory out of her brain.  Stuffing the shoes into her tote bag, she bowed her head as she worked through the details.  She didn’t really have a plan.  Just get out of the palace, go to the airport and catch the first flight out of Sarkit.  She knew that it didn’t matter where the flight was going, she just had to leave as quickly as possible. 

She took several steps forward, then stopped and reached back into the closet.  She grabbed the pictures that were stuffed into one of the pockets of the suitcase and jammed them into her big, black leather tote bag. 

She checked to make sure she had her passport and wallet, then took a deep breath, and walked out of the suite.  She didn’t look back, not wanting to think about how wonderful her life had become after Malik’s entry to her world. 

In the end, it was easier to leave than she’d thought it would be.  She told her bodyguards that she was going shopping.  They immediately arranged for a car to take her to the market.  She stepped out, surrounded by guards but the market was busy and she was able to step out of their sight.  From there, it was a simple task to grab a taxi and head to the airport. 

She was standing at the ticket counter when it occurred to her that Malik might think she’d been abducted.  As the ticket agent clicked away at her computer screen, Jina took her own phone out of her purse and typed in a message to Malik.  “
I have to go.  I’m not kidnapped.  Just going home
.” 

She stuffed her phone back into her purse, turning it off so that she wasn’t tempted to say anything more, something that might have him coming after her.  Like the fact that she felt as if she was dying inside now that she knew she’d never see him again!  Or that she needed him more than breathing!  Or that he was the most fascinating, gentle, kind and wonderful man she’d ever met in her life! 

“There’s a flight…” the ticket agent looked up at the woman standing in front of her, her face crumpled into a visage of abject misery.  “Ma’am, are you okay?” she asked urgently.  “Do I need to call the doctor for you?”

Jina shook her head and tried to pull herself together.  “No,” she whispered, wiping her tears with a tissue.  “I’m fine,” she blatantly lied.  “The flight?” she prompted.  “Where was it going?”

The woman nervously looked down at the screen.  “I have a flight to Paris that connects with New York’s JFK, but there is a long layover.  It leaves in forty-five minutes.”

Jina didn’t care.  “I’ll take it,” she said and handed the woman her credit card and passport. 

Two hours later, Jina was still crying as the plane flew over the earth towards a place she didn’t want to be.  The only place that she wanted to be was in Malik’s arms, in his palace but he was safe now.  She could protect him by leaving him. 

So who was going to protect her from this horrible feeling inside of her? 

“Find her!” Malik roared to his bodyguards.

A man spun around from a computer screen, his eyes nervous as he ventured out a comment.  “Your Highness, we have surveillance from the airport,” he said. 

“Show me!” Malik demanded.  The text he’d received from her yesterday just didn’t make sense!  She’d said she hadn’t been kidnapped but why had she left him?  After that night…that just wasn’t like Jina! 

After a few clicks on the man’s keyboard, he saw a grainy image of Jina, his beautiful, defiant Jina, standing at the ticket counter.  He couldn’t see her face from this angle but he could tell that it was her.  He’d know her body anywhere!  “What is she doing?”

The man cleared his throat.  “This was yesterday morning, Your Highness.  She bought a ticket to New York City.”

Another man spun around in his chair.  “She landed at JFK this morning.  I’ve tracked her credit cards and she’s staying at a hotel in Manhattan, Your Highness.”

Malik stared at the screens.  One of them showed her walking down the airport in Sarkit, boarding a plane to Paris.  Another showed her stepping of off the jet way in New York City.  He wasn’t sure if it was due to the quality of the video, but she looked pale.  And her eyes…they weren’t right.

“Why is she in a hotel?”

The man shook his head.  No one knew.  “We’ll continue to track her, Your Highness.”

Turning to his head of security, he glared at the man.  “Find her!  I want answers!  I want to know why she left.”

The man nodded his head and turned around, saying something into a phone.  Their initial assumption was that she’d been kidnapped but, when no ransom or demands were called in, everyone knew that something strange was going on.  Now that the woman had turned up in her old hometown, apparently unharmed, they were more suspicious.  This obviously wasn’t a kidnapping.  So what was it?

Six Weeks Later…

Jina looked around at her sparsely furnished apartment, fighting back the exhaustion as she dumped her black bag by the door.  She would sleep, she told herself.  Really, she should eat something, but her mind was too tired to consider fixing food.  And she couldn’t really face another bowl of cereal or a cup of yogurt which had been her staple meals for the past six weeks since coming back from Sarkit.  She’d lost weight and she knew that she looked pretty horrible right now.  But she’d gotten a prime job as a translator at the United Nations.  So no more clients to manage, no more crazy schedules.  Of course, the pay was less, but it came with better health insurance. 

Lying down on the bed, she sighed as the mattress slowly took her weight.  She’d just rest here for an hour, then get up and have something to eat.  Just one hour, she promised herself. 

Thirteen hours later, her alarm sounded and Jina jerked awake, looking around, confused and concerned. 

Until her stomach started to heave.  Then the confusion banished, replaced by panic as she rushed to her tiny bathroom.  For several minutes, she prayed that she would survive the nausea.  Every morning for the past week, she’d been sick.  And in the afternoon, she couldn’t get enough food.  By the time she arrived back at her tiny apartment, she was exhausted. 

There was no way to deny it any longer.  She was pregnant.

Closing her eyes, she thought back to her time in Sarkit.  They’d been so careful, always using protection.  But obviously, one of those times hadn’t worked. 

Jina pulled herself up and slid the dress from yesterday off, just letting it fall to the floor.  It would have to be dry cleaned anyway since she’d slept in it all night. 

Turning on the shower, she brushed her teeth while she waited for the water to warm up.  Her mind frantically sifted through the realization that she was going to have a baby!  Malik’s baby!  She was going to have his baby! 

Wow!  Stepping into the shower, she went through the motions but wasn’t fully conscious of anything.  She was pregnant!  A part of Malik was growing inside of her!  All of the love she wanted to give to Malik, she could now shower on this tiny human growing inside of her body. 

It must have been that last time together.  She couldn’t remember him donning protection that night, which would mean that she was about six weeks pregnant.  What a thrill, she thought!  A baby!  A precious little boy or girl! 

But no, it couldn’t have been that last night, she thought, her hands frozen with the shampoo seeping through her fingers.  She’d been sick that last morning.  The coffee!  She hadn’t been able to stand the smell of coffee! 

Forgetting that there was shampoo in her hands, she covered her stomach with both palms, her mind racing to try and remember their nights together.  They were so vivid, but she honestly couldn’t remember a time when he’d forgotten protection except for that last night.  But maybe one of the condoms had broken?  It was possible!  When they had made love, she was pretty frantic.  And he was a strong, demanding lover, not relenting with his own release until she’d found her own.  Could they…?

Only a doctor would be able to confirm how long she had been pregnant. 

She shut off the water, not even caring that she hadn’t washed her hair.  She was too stunned by the thoughts flying through her mind. 

Her first instinct was to call Malik and let him know but then she pulled back, realizing that he could never know!  She had a series of bookmarks on her computer that she checked every day, looking for news or pictures of Malik.  But she couldn’t call him, couldn’t let him know that he was going to be a father.  The realization that he would never know broke her heart all over again, taking away a great deal of the excitement she’d been feeling over the discovery that she was pregnant.

But with that understanding came a newfound sense of life.  She had to start eating better.  Since she’d left Sarkit, she’d barely been existing.  She definitely hadn’t been taking care of herself, not eating or sleeping well. 

That would all have to change, she told herself as she turned off the water.  She hurried to dress herself so that she could eat a healthy breakfast.  She wasn’t really hungry and her stomach was still churning, but she was determined to put something in her stomach, something healthy so that she could take care of this little baby.

By lunchtime, she had an appointment with an obstetrician and she trembled as she sat in the examining room, wearing a paper gown.  She felt ridiculous, but still excited and nervous and thrilled and…a thousand different emotions were zinging through her mind right now. 

“Good afternoon,” the smiling obstetrician greeted Jina, shaking her hand.  “Congratulations!” she smiled, then looked down at Jina’s chart.  “I understand that you don’t remember your last menstrual cycle?”

Jina cringed.  “No.  I’m sorry.  It’s been a…” she hesitated, not sure how to explain her life recently.  “It’s been a crazy few months.”

The woman smiled.  “I understand.  So let’s just take a sonogram so we can figure out what’s going on and how far along you are.  Okay?”

Jina nodded, relieved that she’d have some information since she’d been so completely oblivious to what had been happening inside of her all this time.

The doctor pushed a large monitor into place and Jina leaned back against the hard cushions of the examining table.  Warm gel was squeezed out all over her lower tummy which still wasn’t showing any evidence of her pregnancy.  But as soon as the sonogram machine was turned on, Jina’s whole world changed.  The tiny image looked larger than life, but it was a life! 

“There he is!” the doctor smiled. 

Jina’s eyes widened.  “It’s a boy?”

The doctor chuckled.  “Sorry about that.  I can’t tell the gender at this point in your pregnancy.  Using the male pronoun is dangerous though.”

Jina smiled, but she was still too overawed by the image on the screen.  “What is happening?” she asked when the doctor seemed to be taking several measurements. 

“It looks like,” she wrote down some numbers, “I’m making an educated guess here, but it looks like you are much farther along than you expected.”

Jina swallowed past the lump in her throat.  “How far along?”

The doctor did several more measurements then smiled.  “Well, first of all, the baby looks very healthy.  No problems with the development.  The heart and spine look good, the arms and legs are forming beautifully and you have plenty of amniotic fluid.  So the baby is healthy, but I’m going to put you at about fifteen weeks,” she said and wrote down something in Jina’s chart.  “I’m going to give you a prescription for prenatal vitamins.  I want you to start taking them as soon as possible.  These are to protect you as well as your baby.”

Jina nodded, still stunned by this news.  There was still pain and sadness because she couldn’t see Malik, and she had to resist the almost overwhelming urge to call him and tell him the news, but it was still wonderful, amazing, shocking, exciting and terrifying! 

Jina left the doctor’s office with strict instructions to eat more, drink milk several times a day, get the prescription filled, not to mention, get more sleep.  And because she was feeling so marvelous all of a sudden, she almost jumped with joy as soon as she was back out on the street. 

Everything was going to be okay now, she promised herself.  For the first time since seeing those horrible, disturbing pictures, she felt the sunshine on her face, felt as if the world was going to be okay.  That she was going to be okay. 

More than okay!  She was going to have Malik’s baby! 

One Year Later…

“Shhhh…” Jina soothed, bouncing gently.  “Hush little baby don’t you cry…” she sang softly, watching her six-month old daughter’s eyes slowly settle against her chubby cheeks, “Momma’s gonna sing you a lullaby…”

Bouncing and walking, humming softly, bouncing, walking, humming…more bouncing…standing by Lika’s crib…bouncing as she slowly lowered her daughter onto the mattress… “and if that lullaby won’t work…” Lika jerked ever so slightly as her back hit the mattress and Jina held her breath, praying that Lika wouldn’t wake up again.  “Momma’s gonna go just a little nuts….” She whispered, still singing along with the tune but changing the words.  She was desperate now.  It was after eleven o’clock at night and Jina had been up with her teething daughter since about four o’clock that morning. 

Jina was exhausted after having worked all day and trying to soothe her daughter all the other hours.  She just wanted to sleep!  A shower would be nice, but sleep was her top priority at the moment. 

She continued to hum as she slowly backed out of the room, dimly lit by the night-light in the corner. 

When Jina finally had the door closed, she exhaled slowly as she leaned against the door.  Sleep, she almost cried.  She was going to sleep until Lika woke up again.  She might only have a few hours, but she was going to take whatever she could get. 

She stepped into her bedroom and saw the full sized bed, almost crying at how inviting it looked.  Inch by inch, she slid herself onto the still unmade bed, pulling her pillow closer.  The cool sheets against her skin felt wonderful!  She couldn’t remember a bed ever feeling so amazingly good.  Not even….

Jina sighed and banished those thoughts.  He was safe.  That’s what mattered.  Goodness, had this mattress ever felt this soft?  She didn’t think so.

Just no dreams tonight, she prayed just as her eyes drifted closed. 

She was asleep moments later, drifting off to that dreamland. 

The doorbell woke her up and her first thought was that someone was going to die!  She jerked out of the bed and looked around, wondering if she’d just dreamed the sound.  Glancing at the clock, she realized she’d been asleep for about five minutes and her whole body ached at the denial of the essential sleep. 

When the doorbell sounded again, she growled, literally growled as she swung her closet door open.  She fumbled for only a few moments in her tiny toolbox until she found what she was looking for.  With the hammer in her hand, she stormed to the door, determined to stop the possibility of that sound ever happening again. 

If she’d had more sleep, Jina might have realized how irrational her next move was.  But she was so tired that her bones ached.  Right now, Lika was still asleep but that could change at any moment.  Her daughter was exhausted too, which was probably the only reason she wasn’t screaming her head off at the moment. 

Hammer in hand, she swung the front door open and, with one well aimed slam, bashed the doorbell into smithereens!  With a satisfied nod, she breathed a sigh of relief that the doorbell couldn’t go off again.  She then walked back into her apartment, closed the door and was halfway across her living room when she stopped. 

Her mind was losing it, she thought. 

Malik wasn’t outside her door.  That was impossible!  He was thousands of miles away in Sarkit! 

He could not be here! 

“Oh no!” she gasped and ran back to the door.  Opening it again, she found the man in question still staring at the shattered doorbell, half of it hanging from the wall and the other half in pieced on the ground.

Jina couldn’t worry about the doorbell right now.  All her worry was for this man.  “What are you doing!” she gasped and grabbed him by the lapels, pulling him inside.  That wasn’t an easy thing to do since the man towered over her.  He was a huge man after all, muscles protruding in all the right places and, since she was wearing only socks on her feet, he was about nine inches taller than her. 

The only reason she was able to get him into her apartment at all was because of her desperation and his surprise.  When he was finally inside, she slammed the door then pulled the curtains closed. 

She then turned to look at the man, her eyes wide with fear.  “Why are you here?” she demanded.  “I’m dreaming this, aren’t I?”  She pushed her hair out of her eyes and rubbed her face.  “This isn’t happening.  This is all a dream.”  She looked down at her ratty sweatpants and oversized shirt that should have been thrown away two centuries ago.  “No, you are not seeing me dressed like this.”  She shook her head and plopped down on her sofa.  “Nope.  This is not a dream.  This is a nightmare.  Yep,” she nodded her head.  “It is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up from this and everything will be back to normal.”  With those words, she sighed and laid her head down on one of the sofa pillows, curling her legs up and started falling back to sleep.

“Jina!  What the hell is going on?” Malik demanded as he watched his ex-fiancé drift back to sleep.  Had she completely lost her mind?

And what the hell had happened to her?  During their entire relationship, she’d never looked this…worn out.  There were dark circles under her eyes, her long, dark hair was sticking up at odd angles and her features were pale.  He could barely discern her lips because they were the same color as her white skin. 

Good grief, had she been stealing her clothes from the garbage cans lately?  Those sweatpants were atrocious!  Why would she be wearing something…stained and ill-fitting?

If it weren’t for Uncle Charles’ illness and the man’s command to find out why Jina had left him, He still wouldn’t have come.  Now…well, he only had more questions. 

She jerked upright again and looked around, her eyes still not focusing very well.  But when they caught him once again, those beautiful, blue eyes widened, obviously forcing her more awake. 

“What are you doing here?” she demanded and stood up.  “You can’t be here!  You have to get out of here!”

She glanced around her apartment, trying to figure out what to do.  Were they watching even now?  They’d sent her pictures throughout the months, proving that they were still watching, still ready to kill Malik if she even thought about going back to him.  “Oh no!” she gasped and ran over to him.  “Listen Malik, I know this sounds crazy but you have to believe me.  Please, just get back on your plane and go back to Sarkit.  I’m begging you.  That’s the only thing that will…” she stopped, realizing how crazy she sounded.  “Just leave,” she whispered desperately, trying to sound firm but the words came out sounding more like a plea. 

Malik had arrived here determined to get answers.  Had she just stopped loving him?  Had he done something to hurt her?  She’d left so abruptly.  One night they were tangled in each other’s arms and the next day, she was at the airport, buying a ticket with tears in her eyes.  When he’d seen more of the video from the airport, he’d been convinced that she’d just left him for no apparent reason and he’d been furious.  But now, looking at her in such a bedraggled state, he wasn’t so sure that the video had told the whole story. 

Something wasn’t right. 

“What’s going on, Jina?” he demanded.

She pushed a hand through her hair, messing it even further.  “Oh no!  You’re guards are outside aren’t they?  They’re watching out for you!  They’re probably stationed in the parking lot and on the stairways!  They’ll see!”

Malik was becoming concerned.  “What are you talking about?  Of course my guards are outside!”

Her eyes widened and she looked up at him.  “They have to hide! They have to find cover!  I don’t know what will happen to them!”  She stopped talking and covered her mouth with her hand.  “Maybe they won’t hurt the guards,” she said, obviously talking to herself, pacing back and forth in her small apartment. 

She turned back to Malik, more tears forming on her lashes and falling to her pale cheeks.  “Please.  Couldn’t you just…walk away?  Pretend that you never found me?” she begged.

Malik was furious that she would even suggest such a thing.  Especially when he was now suspecting that she was ill.  “Not a chance,” he told her firmly. 

The wail of a baby startled both of them.  His eyes caught her body jerking only moments before she hurried to the back of the apartment.

Malik didn’t understand.  Surely that wasn’t…no, she hadn’t….

“Oh please,” she whimpered, rubbing her eyes.  “Lika, baby, sweet girl.  You need to sleep,” and Jina walked back into the small bedroom, closing the door once more so that the light wouldn’t wake up her daughter even more. 

Malik stared at the closed door, his confusion turning to rage as the sound filtered through his brain and he understood that there was a baby in that room, in his ex-lover’s arms!  The sound didn’t stop but he heard her cooing to the baby and his curiosity wouldn’t allow him to stand there doing nothing.  He had to investigate.  Because the possibility that Jina, his beautiful Jina, had a child was inconceivable!  That would mean that another man…

Impossible!

But as he stood in the doorway, he watched with morbid fascination as the woman who had haunted his dreams, his former fiancée, bent over a crib and lifted a tiny, crying baby into her arms.  Her gentle hands cradled the soft, fuzzy head even as she started bouncing the baby, trying to soothe the infant’s temper. 

“You woke her up!” Jina snapped.  The baby started crying louder and Jina bounced harder. 

“It’s going to be okay, my love,” she soothed.  Jina slipped her finger into the baby’s mouth but Malik had no idea why.  Somehow that seemed to soothe the child even as Jina reached for something on the baby’s dressing table with the hand that was holding the infant.  Apparently she’d grown a couple of limbs in the time it took her to disappear because there was no way two arms could be accomplishing everything.    “Here you go, love.  This will help.  Just let me…” she handed the tube to Malik.  “Can you open this for me?” she asked.

Malik looked down at the item she handed to him and realized that it was teething gel.  That started to make sense and he opened the top.  What he knew about babies could fill a thimble but he had heard that babies teethed and they cried a lot.  Among other actions that they did a lot, he thought with revulsion. 

“You have a baby,” he growled, trying to come to terms with the fact that his Jina was a mother now.  He was furiously jealous, he could barely stand still. 

Jina ignored him, focusing all of her attention on the tiny girl in her arms.  She squeezed a bit of the teething gel out onto her finger, then rubbed the infant’s gums.  Instantly, the baby stopped crying but Jina still lifted the child into her arms again.  “Yes, I have a baby,” she told him finally. 

“How old is this child?” he demanded.  He wanted to know how soon after she’d left him that she’d jumped into another man’s bed. 

“She is six month’s old,” Jina replied and sat down in the rocking chair, holding her daughter close. 

Malik stood in the center of the room, his mind mentally doing the math.  If this child was six months old, that would mean that Jina…she’d been three months pregnant when she’d left him! 

That would mean that…he stared at the baby in Jina’s arms, his mind frantically trying to come to terms with what that meant. 

“Jina…?”  He looked at the little girl with the dark head of fluff.  Not hair yet, but it would soon be hair.  It was just soft fuzz at this point.  “Is that…?”

Jina patted the baby’s back as she rocked back and forth, trying to get the baby back to sleep.  “Is this your daughter?”

Malik could barely nod his head. 

“Yes.  This is Lika,” she finally admitted.  “This is your daughter.”

Jina watched as the emotions flitted across Malik’s handsome face.  She was startled by the final one.  Awe was a powerful emotion, she realized and Malik moved closer, his hand reaching out to touch her baby girl.  His baby girl.  She watched with fascination as his strong fingers touched his daughter for the first time.  He was so tentative, almost nervous. 

“I have a child?” he asked, still not believing it. 

She nodded her head, unaware of the tears that slipped down her cheeks.  The past year had been so hard and so wonderful.  She’d had to leave this man, leave him so that he was protected.  But the realization that she was pregnant with his child had helped her through the devastation of leaving him.  She’d always thought that God had been cruel to have ripped the man she loved out of her arms but then she’d discovered that she was pregnant with his child and she realized that God had given her a piece of Malik to cherish forever. 

But then she realized what was going to happen and fear welled up inside of her.  She looked down at her daughter, falling asleep once again, her dark, brown eyes, so similar to her father’s, were closed now. 

“You have to leave,” she urged as panic threatened to choke her.  “You have to leave and pretend that you don’t know anything about Lika.  Please, Malik.  Get out and never come back!”

Malik couldn’t believe what he was hearing!  Leave his daughter?  Leave her now that he’d just discovered that he was a father? 

“That is out of the question,” he told her without hesitation. He lifted his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number.  “Come quickly,” he said in Arabic, obviously to his guards.