SHEIKH'S SURPRISE BABY: A Sheikh Romance (87 page)

She felt butterflies rising in her as he said it and returned his kiss with renewed longing.

As they lay together, panting from their exertion, her head resting on his chest, his hand reaching around her to cup her breast, they watched two butterflies flying in haphazard circles around them before descending.

“Watch this,” said Nick as they alighted on her side. The two butterflies, black with bright blue flecks, perched sipping up the salty sheen of her perspiration. He grinned. “They like you. They must think you’re tasty.”

“Apparently they aren’t the only ones.”

Nick chuckled and kissed her again. She couldn’t decide what was more magical, his laugh or the butterflies still tickling the skin of her thigh.

Outside the storm had passed.

“I really like you, Riley,” said Nick.

“I really like you too. Does this mean you want to be…you know…a thing?”

“A thing? I’d like for you to be my girl, yes.”

“And Matt?”

“I guess we’d have to tell him,” said Nick.

“I have six month left of college. Do you think you could wait that long for me to get back?”

“Could you?”

“Hell, yeah. For you.”

Nick smiled. “Then I can do the same. After all, I’m only gonna be around here working with your brother. Do you want me to tell him?”

“No,” said Riley. “I’ll tell him.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s the least I can do.”

10.

Riley woke early the next morning. They had fallen asleep in Nick’s bed after another round of steamy lovemaking. She pulled herself away from Nick’s naked body and pulled on his shirt. It hung so baggy on her that she wondered how a human being could ever quite fill it the way he did.

She made her way down into the kitchen. She had promised him breakfast and she was going to fulfill that promise even if it meant rising at the crack of dawn. She did her best keeping quiet while she rifled through the unfamiliar fridge and cupboards and finally got together the ingredients for a breakfast of pork sausages, eggs, toast and coffee.

Once she was done, she loaded it onto a tray and crept back up the stairs and into his bedroom. He was still fast asleep. She placed the tray onto his bedside table and crept back beneath the toasty covers with him.

His eyelids fluttered as she ran her hands down his body beneath the sheets and he rolled over to kiss her.

“Morning handsome,” she said. “I promised you breakfast, so I made you breakfast in bed.”

He nuzzled her neck with his stubbled chin by way of thanks and goose bumps erupted on her arms. “You keep doing that and the breakfast is going to have to wait until you’ve finished what you’ve started,” she teased.

They ate breakfast together and after they had both showered and dressed, they headed back to the hospital to see Matt. This time, her excitement to see him was added to by the nervousness of what she had to tell him. Would he accept her wanting to be with Nick? Would he reject it outright? Would it be wise to even tell him now? She hoped it wouldn’t affect his relationship with Nick, or worse, affect his relationship with her. She could only pray that he would be able to see it from her perspective.

When they arrived at the door to Matt’s room, Riley turned to Nick.

“I’m so nervous,” she said. “What if he gets upset?”

“Better to tell him now than keep it a secret,” said Nick. “You sure you don’t want me to do it?”

“No, I’m sure.”

They went in together, to find Matt propped up on his pillow looking cheerier than the day before.

“Hey, guys!” he greeted happily. “The doctors say I’m going to be out of here by the end of the week. I’ll still need to wear the neck brace, but otherwise, it’s all good.”

Riley clapped her hands and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s great news!” she said.

Nick slapped Matt on the shoulder. “I guess they’ve had enough of you then.”

“Nah, they love me here,” said Matt grinning mischievously. “That nurse of mine keeps giving me sexy looks. I think she wants me to stick around some more.”

“You mean nursezilla that keeps chasing us away?” said Nick.

“Yeah, that’s her. You know me, I love a strong woman.”

Riley laughed at that and felt some of her nervousness leave her.
Now would be as good a time as any,
she thought and gave Nick a look that said the same. Nick picked up on it immediately.

“I think this calls for a celebratory coffee, what do you say? Man, I can’t get enough of the stuff from this place. Maybe it’s the smell of disinfectant that makes it taste so good.”

“I’ll grab one of those,” said Matt.

“Me too,” said Riley, “thanks.”

They watched Nick leave together before Matt turned to Riley smiling mysteriously.

“What?” said Riley.

“You like him don’t you? You want to have like a million of his babies.”

Riley blushed. “How do you know?”

“Riley, you’re my sister. I haven’t seen you this happy around a guy for a long time. Your eyes practically sparkle when you look at him.”

Riley rubbed her hands together nervously. “Matt, I have to tell you something.”

“It’s already happened hasn’t it? You guys are totally falling for each other.”

Riley’s face burned with embarrassment at how transparent she was to her brother. He’d always known exactly how to read her, but this was uncanny.

Slowly, unable to hide from his question or be simultaneously swallowed by the floor, Riley nodded and braced herself for an outburst of disapproval or reprimand.

“Ha!” said Matt instead, half laughing. “I knew it!”

“You’re not angry?”

“Angry? Why should I be angry? You’re an adult and quite capable of making your own decisions. So far you seem to be pretty good at making the right ones. Besides, if there is any one person in the world good enough for my little sister, it’s Nick. The guy saved my life, what can I say? I know he’ll be good to you.”

Riley embraced her brother. “Thanks for understanding, Matt. That said, if you start dating the angry nurse, I’m disowning you.”

In a perfectly healthy state, Riley knew he would have roared with laughter at that. Instead what came out was a husky, but nonetheless hearty chuckle. “Stop. Stop,” he said between laughter. “You’re killing me here.”

Excitement bubbled in Riley’s belly as she stepped onto the stage in front of the hall full of people. The Chancellor of the University of London smiled pleasantly at her as he handed her her degree, rolled up and tied with a red ribbon. It was one of the proudest moments of her life and the only small mark on the otherwise momentous occasion was that Matt wasn’t there to see it. She owed her degree to him after all.

As she proudly strode to the other end of the stage, clutching her precious achievement, she thought with great anticipation of the future that lay ahead of her. She was due to fly back to Miami in a week’s time in search for work. Her and Nick had maintained their promise to each other, texting almost every night, and she felt closer to him now than ever before, even though they had been a world apart the entire time. She couldn’t wait to meet him at the airport, to wrap her arms around him and smell his oaky cologne, touch his sun-kissed skin and feel the life force behind his lips.

As she turned to face the crowd, she felt as though she were standing at the edge of a dream, at the momentous threshold of the rest of her life: a life of joy and wonder. Without the distraction of her studies, she knew that the next week would feel longer than the sum of the last six months without him.

As she scanned the cheering crowd, her peers lining up beside her, waving to their relatives who had taken time off to attend the ceremony, her eyes landed upon two men dressed in smart business suits. At first they seemed so far out of the context from which she knew them that her mind refused to recognize them for who they were. When the taller of the two men lifted his hand to his lips and blew her a kiss, their identity finally registered and she thought she might faint from sheer emotion. It was Nick and Matt, standing side by side, grinning proudly at her.

She wanted to dive off the stage, dash over to them and squeeze them both as hard as she could. Instead she waved at them wildly, practically hopping on the spot.

The line of her peers wound down off the stage and back to their chairs where they sat anxiously listening to a lengthy address. Riley could barely sit still, she kept glancing backwards into the crowd, wondering if she had imagined seeing them at all.

At the end of the ceremony, she spotted them in the foyer and dashed towards them, throwing her arms around both of them simultaneously.

“You guys!” she said. “What are you doing here? It’s so good to see you!”

“You didn’t think I’d miss my little sister’s graduation did you? Actually it was Nick’s idea.” said Matt, smiling.

She turned her full attention to Nick then and kissed him full on the mouth. “I missed you so much,” she told him.

“I missed you too, sweetheart,” he said. “Congratulations.”

She kissed him again, this time to confirm that he was really standing in front of her.

“Hey, come on,” said Matt. “Take it easy. I’m standing right here. That man needs his lips for smooth talking clients, he doesn’t need you ripping them off his face.”

Riley laughed and did her best to restrain her affection. After six months, it took a lot of will power.

“Matt, you look amazing. You’re all healed up.”

“Yup, neck still gets a little stiff every now and again, but otherwise I’m fit as a fiddle.”

She turned to Nick again and when he smiled at her, she couldn’t help stealing one more kiss.
Sorry, Matt,
she thought,
I’m seizing this day.

THE END

Lacy smiled and sipped from her water as she listened to her friend Wendy talk. The wind blew gently across their table as they ate
al fresco
, easing the warmth of the afternoon sun. The sidewalk was busy enough to let Lacy’s eyes wander occasionally during one of Wendy’s particularly boring anecdotes, but not so busy as to be overly distracting.

It wasn’t that Wendy was boring, actually. Lacy had to fight to keep her thoughts straight on that. If she were being totally honest, it was that she was jealous of her friend. That jealousy fed into depression, regret, and anxiety for the future. All of these, of course, were too much for the thirty-something corporate lawyer to accept or process. Thus the burden of dealing with such emotion was alleviated by her rather diplomatic soul white washing everything in an air of boredom, sparing Lacy the immediate response. Which, at the moment, would be a flood of tears.

“…so I found her in the bathroom, her teddy face down in the toilet, and she’s yelling at the thing for making a mess.” Wendy tore off a piece of bread and after swirling it in the leavings of her salad dressing, took a bite. Laughing around the bite, she added, “You can imagine.”

Lacy smiled and widened her brows in a show of dramatic sympathy. She knew that Wendy wanted to keep talking about the experience, but what were the right questions to ask? Should she ask about the psychological health of her child, comment on the ruined bear?

“So did Teddy clog the toilet?”

Wendy chortled and shook her head. “No, thank goodness. She hadn’t gotten him too far down. Plus she had just poopooed, so the toilet was freshly flushed. We just gave the bear a rinse and tossed him in the dryer.”

Lacy couldn’t stop the grumble in her throat. She tried to cover it up by coughing into her hand. “You gave it back to her?”

“I’m sorry,” Wendy said, as if suddenly realizing that she’d been talking about her kids for the last forty-five minutes. “I’ve been talking about me this whole time.”

Ah, yes, so she did realize it. Good. Lacy readjusted in her seat, hopeful that the conversation would move onto something more interesting.

“So how’re you? We haven’t talked for a bit. Any special men in your life?”

Lacy swirled the water in her glass and sighed before taking a drink. “No, no men. Not all of us have had the chance to be so blessed.”

“Aww, darnit,” Wendy said, frowning. “Work got you busy, huh?”

Lacy kept her face still, but Wendy’s insistence on not swearing, not even a hint, irked her to no end. She was out with adults. How could she respect a grown adult that thought the word “damn” was a swear word? Children gasped and pointed out when a swear word was said, not adults.

“Yep,” Lacy said, “but that’s okay. The bright side is I’m happy, so it’s cool.”

“Well don’t worry, it’ll happen when the time is right.”

“Yes, but as I said, I’m happy, so there’s no rush.”

Wendy smiled patronizingly and put her hand out as though she were reaching for contact, as if to soothe a burn victim without actually touching them. “Oh, you don’t know happiness until your little one pees in the potty for the first time. I swear, I thought little Jonathan was going to be in diapers until high school.”

Lacy sighed softly. “He’s three.”

“I know, but it was just constant. I mean, we were trying everything. The pull-ups were too hard for him to work out with this little thumbs, and the…”

Lacy’s eyes drifted to the sidewalk again. It was insulting the way Wendy assumed Lacy couldn’t be happy unless she had a man and children. In a way, she knew Wendy was just trying to help. She was happy with her life, so she wanted others – her friend included – to be happy too.

The thing is, the thin shell of boredom was a poor protection from Lacy’s own thoughts on the matter. She knew full well how old she was. If she got pregnant
that day
it would still be nine months before she had a child, possibly ten. Ten months! That’s almost a whole other year!

Of course, she didn’t want to have a child with someone she didn’t know. She wanted a family, not to be some workaholic mother who let the nanny raise her child. That meant at least a year or two in a relationship with someone. Of course, that’s assuming she met the right man that day. Tack on a few months for dating, and failed dates…

Lacy watched a woman in a gray suit walk down the sidewalk as she did some quick math in her head. The resulting sum was a number that only read as depressing. She may not only have not advanced to the next stage in life fast enough, but her supreme focus on work and making her life a matter of success may have lost her the game. Wendy was married for eight years now.