The Sheikh's Twin Baby Surprise (9 page)

TWELVE

Four Months Later

I groaned as Omar’s strong hands rubbed my tired, aching back muscles as we lay together in bed. The plush penthouse had once been only his, but now it was ours, all my belongings moved in and mingled with his, along with the belongings of our son, who was due to arrive any day.

And I couldn’t have been more grateful for it. Most of my anxiety about giving birth had been replaced by eager desperation to have my beautiful but active son out of my body. Over the last few months, my belly had grown so enormous that feeling attractive was a laughable pipe dream, and now even getting to the pool with Zaynab had become a task of the highest difficulty. I could barely walk under all the weight, but the swimming did wonders for relieving my joint pain, so it was a catch-22 that I was still determined to solve.

“How are you feeling, my love?” asked Omar softly. “Can I get you the heating pad?”

“That would be glorious,” I responded with another moan. “I feel like my back hasn’t stopped hurting in six months.”

“Indeed, my son is making you work for his arrival.” Omar gave a soft little laugh and leaned over to kiss my cheek.

He left bed just long enough to grab the heating pad before returning to place it on my lower back muscles. The soothing heat helped instantly, and I could feel myself relaxing just a little bit more.

“I hate to see you in such pain,” Omar said. “Will you be able to get to sleep?”

“I’m sure I will,” I said. “Eventually. As long as I don’t break the bed when I roll over.”

Omar laughed, leaning over to plant a kiss on my nose. “You are a beautiful treasure, Carrie. I know you don’t feel like yourself right now, but I assure you, you’ve never been more attractive to me.”

“Well, no offense, but I hope we get back to the less-attractive version of me very, very soon,” I replied with a laugh, rubbing my belly. “This son of yours has wanted to get out from the earliest days of this pregnancy and I think we will both be much happier when he does.”

The pregnancy hadn’t been complicated, and I knew I was lucky to have had such a comparatively easy time. After all, Alima had been put on bed rest only a few short weeks after she fainted at the family dinner. Her doctors were concerned about her low blood pressure and demanded she stay as restful and quiet as possible. I couldn’t imagine having spent the last four months cooped up in bed; it was bad enough that I barely got out of the palace anymore.

From the looks of my belly, I was going to give birth to an enormous baby, and even though it was going to be the most beautiful day of my life, I was also more afraid than I had ever been of anything.

Omar listened patiently to all my fears. He wasn’t afraid, not even a little. He was overjoyed with every day that got closer to the day his son arrived. He kissed my tummy gently and leaned his head against it to listen to the sleepy movement of the baby in my womb.

I ran my fingers through his hair and let out a deep sigh, momentarily content.

I couldn’t believe how happy it made me just to lay here in bed with the man I loved while he worshiped me for carrying his child. It was its own kind of adventure—a much more blissful kind than those I had been on before.

But like all adventures, it had to come to an end, or at least a fork in the road.

As he worked to massage the pain out of my muscles, I could sense Omar growing nervous, clearing his throat. When I saw him put his hand in his curly hair, I knew he had something on his mind.

“What’s bothering you?” I asked him. “Is something going on at the office?”

Omar looked surprised for just a moment, and then he gave me a small smile. “Your intuition is only getting stronger every day; you know that? Being a mother is good for you.”

“And I think you try and use that silver tongue of yours to change the subject when you don’t want to talk,” I retorted playfully. “Tell me, love, please?”

Omar sighed. “I just worry this is not the best time to bring up my concerns, that’s all. The last thing I want to do is cause you or the baby undue stress.”

“When would be the best time, then? After the baby is born and I’m exhausted from being up all night breastfeeding and crazy with hormones?” I laughed. “Now is the only time.”

Omar hesitated a few moments, his gaze running over my face as I turned to look at him. Finally, he relented. “There is something I want to ask you… about our future, Carrie. And we are running out of time to discuss it.”

Carefully, and with great ache, I rolled over to face him properly. I had known deep down that this conversation was coming eventually, but some foolish part of me had been hoping we could somehow bypass it. I was never great at planning my future, and just as bad at talking about my emotions. Of course, the future had been on my mind every single day since Omar had asked me to carry his child. With every step we had taken beyond that, the questions had only become more and more urgent.

I had always liked my life with an escape hatch so that I never felt trapped. I didn’t want to grow old and regret tying myself right back into the Leave-It-to-Beaver family I had grown up in. Sure, I wanted that at some point, perhaps, but wasn’t that what older age was for? What good was my youth if I spent it simply re-creating the life I had already experienced as a child? I wanted to see the world. I wanted to feel the warmth of the sun on every ocean’s shore, to experience how different it felt on my skin.

But Omar was right. Time was running out for me to face that fork in the road. My son—our son—would be arriving any day, and there would be no turning back after that.

“My love,” whispered Omar as he nuzzled against my face. “I need to know what you intend to do after the baby has arrived. I know his creation began as a much more practical arrangement, but I think he—and we—have grown beyond that.” He curled his fingers in mine and pulled my body against him.

“Yes, we have,” I agreed, squeezing his hand.

“Our son was born of love, not through a procedure in a medical lab,” said Omar. “And I am truly grateful that, whatever happens next, I can tell him that with utmost honesty. He will know he was the product of love.”

“Yes, he is,” I said, smiling. I ran a hand down the side of Omar’s smooth, handsome face. “I do love you, Omar.”

“And I love you.” He kissed my hand. “I think you know what I would ask of you. I want to know if you intend on following through with our original arrangement, or if you could be persuaded to stay here in Al-Thakri with me, and our son.”

Hearing the decision laid out so starkly only made my anxiety and fear loom bigger. I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to suppress the groan that came with it. I didn’t want to hurt Omar’s feelings. He was only doing what was right, confirming with me how I felt so that we could think about the future together, like mature adults. But in that moment, I didn’t want to face reality.

I didn’t want to face it because I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Shameful or not, I was still torn between the old, adventuring me, and the new Carrie who was emerging just as surely as her son was: one day at a time. Neither of them had pulled ahead of the other in this internal civil war, and I didn’t want to break Omar’s heart by telling him that. Not when he was in such joyous spirits about our son.

Omar waited, searching my face for any hint of what was in my head. Before I could form any sort of reasonable answer to give him, a sharp pain erupted in my belly, and I cried out. My hands flew to my stomach.

“Oh my God,” I whispered breathlessly.

Omar’s expression twisted in worry as he sat bolt upright. “What is it? Are you all right?”

I grasped my belly and waited, trying to breathe, when the pain came again, stronger and deeper this time. “Oh God. Omar… the baby is coming. He’s coming right now!”

He blinked twice at me, as if I’d spoken in a foreign language.

“Omar, I said the baby is coming!” I repeated with a stressed laugh. “Now’s not the time to gape at me like a fish!”

Reality hit him all at once. His eyes lit up and his face flushed with the rush of adrenaline. “The baby! My son is coming!”

He leaped from the bed and ran for the hallway to call in Rafiq, who was posted outside in his usual position. Omar ordered his faithful bodyguard to gather up the overnight bags we had packed weeks ago.

“Get them down to the garage and load them in the Rolls Royce,” he said to Rafiq, who seemed more than a little disoriented at the sudden interruption. “We have no time to arrange the royal transport. We’ll take her ourselves.”

Rafiq turned a little pale. “Sir?”

“Go, go!” Omar waved his hands toward the door. “We’ll be right behind you!”

Rafiq didn’t argue. He gave me a tight-lipped, nervous smile before turning on his heel and disappearing out the door with my leather bag full of necessities. The heels of his dress shoes echoed in the hallway, pounding on the marble floor as he ran for the garage.

The contractions were still at an early stage, but already the pain was beginning to be too much to bear. Suddenly, all the toughness I used to feel when dragging patients around in desert dust, protecting them from nearby artillery shells, seemed to evaporate.

“Omar, we have to hurry. Do you have the wheelchair? I don’t think I can—” Another agonizing wave of pain came over me and stole my words as I moaned out.

“Yes, my love, hold on!” Omar fetched the wheelchair we had procured from the medical ward and helped me move delicately into it from the bed. He kissed my forehead and kneeled down in front of me. “Do you need anything else before we go?”

“Everything should be in the bag,” I replied in a tense voice, bending over as much as I could to try and absorb another contraction. “Make sure to grab my phone from the nightstand. My mother will murder me if she’s not the first to get a picture.”

“Yes, of course. Pull the brakes up, let’s get you to the hospital.”

THIRTEEN

We had arranged for a private ward at the local hospital for the baby’s birth, too concerned about complications to have the labor at the palace. Even though we trusted our doctors implicitly, the palace simply didn’t have the equipment on-hand to take care of any eventuality. All the scans and tests of our son had been positive, but we weren’t going to take a single chance. We wanted to be where all the help was if anything happened to go wrong.

Omar wheeled me swiftly but carefully down the palace halls. The guards who were on duty stared in wonder as the Sheikh and future king of Al-Thakri rushed by them, pushing his pregnant lover who was clearly in dire pain. I sensed that they wanted to try and help, but had no idea what to do besides open doors and make sure the hallways were clear. It was help enough.

Rafiq had the car waiting, engine running, in the garage by the time we got out of the elevator. Together, he and Omar lifted me into the backseat like I weighed nothing—a welcome sensation. Omar climbed in the back with me, leaving the wheelchair for one of the guards to attend to.

“Step on it, Rafiq, but by God, make sure you drive safely,” said Omar. “The very future of your country is counting on it.”

The bodyguard nodded, stone-faced, and obeyed. He weaved expertly through the bustling streets of the city, almost as if he had taken some sort of stunt driving course in another job before this. At one point we hit traffic just as the contractions began again, and I thought for sure I was going to end up giving birth in the back of a leather-clad Rolls Royce. My mother in Ohio would never believe it even if I did send her pictures.

We finally arrived at the memorial hospital Omar’s grandfather had built and named after Omar’s grandmother—Adilah Memorial Hospital. It was a beautiful building, and when Omar had told me its origins, I’d known there was no way we could pick anywhere else to have our son. Maybe it was the hormones, but the thought of giving birth to Omar’s heir in the hospital his grandfather built brought me to tears.

Rafiq pulled around to the emergency doors to allow us to exit before he parked the car. As the hospital staff helped Omar load me into another wheelchair, Rafiq suddenly pointed and asked, “Your Highness, that car there has royal plates. Is it your brother’s?”

Omar and I leaned to look around to where Rafiq was pointing. Indeed, a Jaguar bearing the plates of the royal family was parked haphazardly near the emergency exit. Recognition fell over Omar’s face.

“It is,” he confirmed. “That’s Sajid’s car.”

I looked up at him from the wheelchair. “I bet Alima’s in labor, too. That has to be it.”

Omar laughed breathlessly and shook his head. “I’m starting to think this is the work of my father from the afterlife, teasing us one last time. He always did love to point out to my brother and I how powerless we were to fate.”

“Well, let’s hope you were his favorite,” I joked, even as I winced in pain. “Because this race to the throne is about to go down to the wire.”

Quickly, I was whisked away to the private ward that Omar had arranged for the birth of his son. Somewhere, we suspected, Sajid had set up exactly the same facilities for Alima, but we had no time to go search him out and hospital staff was strictly forbidden from sharing their patients’ details without permission.

In my suite, my doctors from the palace were all there, waiting to help me through the birthing process, assisted by the best staff the hospital had to offer. The room was filled with all manner of medical equipment, and even though I recognized most of it, it still made me nervous to see it all—as if they were anticipating a problem.

As soon as I was laid back and comfortable in the hospital bed, Dr. Issa put a gentle hand on my shoulder, as if sensing my worry. “Don’t worry, Dr. Green. This is all just precaution—and part of the perks of having a private ward.”

“Perks?” I said through my heavy breathing.

“Whatever might go wrong, we have something in this room that can deal with it. There are only a handful of hospitals in the world that can say that tonight,” she assured me. “Nothing is going to go wrong. You are about to have a beautiful, perfect son.”

Things calmed down for a little bit once I was set up in bed, hooked up to IVs and monitoring equipment, and surrounded by a room full of medical experts. The doctors got Omar outfitted in sterile scrubs and made him wash his hands like a surgeon, and I tried to memorize the moment, because I knew it would be a long time before the King of Al-Thakri obeyed someone as intently as he did the doctors. He wasn’t a king then—he was just a man about to become a father, overwhelmed with the emotion and worry of it all. His whole world was in this room.

Once he was cleaned up, Omar came back by my side and stood, holding my hand and caressing my hair to comfort me. When contractions hit, he bent his head down against mine as if he could absorb my pain, holding me tight. After a few sets had passed, one of the nurses exposed my enormous belly to the air and slathered on some cool, lubricating gel in order to perform an ultrasound.

“Let’s do a quick check on this little guy and make sure everything looks okay before your contractions get closer together,” she said with a bright smile.

All three of us watched the screen intently, listening to the mechanical waves and the loud, beautiful sound of a fetal heartbeat.

“Huh? But that’s…” Omar was first to notice the unusual sound.

But the nurse didn’t seem to hear him. “Everything looks good, Your Highness! Your boys are ready to come into the world.”

Omar and I looked at each other with loving smiles, but as the nurse’s words dawned on us, those smiles faded into shocked, open mouths.

“Excuse me—my
boys
?” I demanded. “Plural?!”

The nurse turned pale. “Boys, yes… Your twin boys.” She pointed to the image on the ultrasound and raised an eyebrow as if we were playing some kind of joke on her.

“Twins?!” I screeched. “I’m having
twins
?”

Dr. Issa rushed over to the bedside at the sound of the commotion, and immediately her jaw dropped at the sight of the ultrasound. “Heavens, how did our scans miss this?” she gasped.

“Twins…” muttered Omar.

“Well that explains why I feel like a beached whale,” I said, somewhat relieved. “I’ve got two little guys hanging out in there.”

“I can’t believe this,” whispered Omar. “Carrie, we’re having twins?”

“Well, we were having trouble deciding between the first two names on the list. I guess now we can use them both.”

Omar laughed. “What a beautiful twist of fate.”

“Beautiful? I’m the one who has to give birth twice today!” I tried to laugh about it, but inside, I was terrified.

“And I’ll be here with you the whole way through,” he promised, kissing the top of my head. “Look at how amazing you are. I ask you to give me an heir, and you bring me two. You truly are a goddess. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Omar,” I replied.

My smile quickly faded as another wave of contractions overcame my body—much, much worse than the last had been. The sensation was unlike anything I could imagine, crushing my insides and blinding me to almost everything in the room. I felt every inch of my enormous body and nothing else.

For hours, with Omar staying diligently by my side the whole time, I worked to deliver his heirs into the world. The doctors and nurses kept me as pain-free as possible, but there was nothing that was going to dull the pain of this most purely human act. Each set of contractions became closer together and more painful until finally, the babies were rotated and positioned and ready to be born.

Dr. Issa was positioned between my knees, her dark hair done up in a powder blue hair net, her face covered by a mask. Her eyes still smiled above it, assuring me everything was fine, using her calming voice to guide me through the contractions.

Omar told me to squeeze his hands as hard as I could as I pushed. He didn’t complain a single time, only kept his head pressed against mine, whispering in my ear how much he loved me and how grateful he was for what I was giving him.

When our first son came crying into the world, we looked at each other and called him Roni. It was the name of Mirah’s father, and his entrance meant that he first would be destined to rule in his father’s stead someday.

Roni’s brother, Zamir, came along a few minutes later. This name, I had chosen from a book I’d found in Omar’s library, an old book of children’s tales from Al-Thakri. The story was about a little boy who could talk to birds.

As soon as they emerged, my sons were whisked over to sterile bassinettes to be cleaned off and examined for any possible problem. My breathing heavy, sweat still pouring off my skin, I clung desperately to Omar’s hand as we waited. It was the longest wait of my life.

Moments later, two nurses with wet eyes and happy smiles brought our sons over to us, swaddled in pure white blankets. They handed one baby to each of us—Roni to Omar, and Zamir to me.

“They’re perfect,” one of the nurses said. “Perfectly healthy, happy boys.”

I looked down into Zamir’s beautiful, sleepy face, puffed up and red from his birth and from crying, and I started crying too. His skin was so soft underneath my fingertips, and already he was grasping to hold them in his tiny little hands. I looked up at Omar and saw that he was staring down at Roni in complete, total awe, as if he were seeing the face of God.

“My beautiful sons…” he whispered. He turned to me, his big brown eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Carrie. Truly, I can never repay you for what you’ve done for me.”

“For
us
,” I said immediately. “Omar, aren’t they gorgeous?”

“They are the most beautiful children ever to be born in this country,” he said. “My mother is going to be overjoyed.”

I gave a chuckle. “Especially when she finds out she got three new grandchildren today.”

Omar’s face lit up, remembering that we had seen Sajid’s car out front when we arrived. As I moved to begin nursing Zamir, who was already clamoring for his first meal, Omar went to the door and invited Rafiq to meet his older son. Even from the bed, I could hear the pride in Omar’s voice as he introduced his lifelong bodyguard to Roni. Rafiq stared down at the baby with a soft look on his face, and I swear I even caught a smile as Roni reached to grasp at his finger.

“Go and contact Sajid’s security staff,” Omar asked quietly. “Find out where he and Alima are in the hospital and let him know we’re here and would love to see them if they’re ready for visitors.”

A few minutes later, there was a soft knock at the door, and Sajid was standing there looking happier than I ever thought would have thought possible for the moody prince. In his arms, Sajid held a wriggling bundle of baby boy who seemed less than pleased at being so far from his mother already.

From the doorway Sajid gave me a kind smile that surprised me. I watched happily as the two brothers introduced their newborn sons to each other, speaking quietly and happily as they congratulated one another.

“His name is Jarah,” Sajid said. “My first son.”

“He is perfect, Sajid,” replied Omar. “Simply perfect.”

For a moment, it felt like all the succession bickering had never happened. They were just two brothers sharing a beautiful day together, the stresses of ruling Al-Thakri relegated to mere background noise.