The Sheik's Secret Twins (10 page)

Siri leaned against the counter, staring into the darkness outside her window.  How should she start off the conversation?  She couldn’t just come out and say it.  This was something that probably needed a bit of an explanation. 

But if she explained, then he might explain why he’d left her that weekend to marry the other woman.  She really didn’t want to hear his explanations.  She couldn’t imagine any reason she’d like that would excuse that kind of a betrayal. 

Now that she thought about it, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal.  He’d gone off and married a woman that was more appropriate to his station in life.  A woman that was probably politically connected and therefore more suitable.  The man had an image to uphold and she had no illusions about her appearance.  She was just an ordinary working woman and at
,
the time, she hadn’t even finished school. 
The woman he’d married had been beautiful and confident, poised and sophisticated.  She had probably been a much bigger help to his rule than she could ever be. 

Four years ago, s
he had been emotionally invested in the relationship, but obviously Malik had thought she was just a weekend fling, the kind of woman who was available whenever he was
with no strings attached
. 
Siri had been the only part of the relationship that hadn’t understood the rules. 

That thought hurt and she turned around, her mind spinning with the possibilities
of how to tell him her news
and none of them were a good start to how she was to explain that Malik had two
wonderful, intelligent
sons. 

With a sigh, she shook her head and bit her lip in frustration. 
She was procrastinating and she needed to get back there
to her bedroom
, tell him to get dressed and bring him back out to the living room where she could have a conversation with him without the distraction of
her
bed. 

Siri opened the fridge and….screamed at the top of her lungs! 

In the darkness, all she saw were little things jumping out.  Everywhere! 
Blobs were jumping from the top shelf of the fridge, the bottom shelf, seemed to be crawling out of the drawers and on the condiment jars. One of the blobs jumped towards her and she screamed again, unsure of what was going on and trying to figure it out in her sex and nighttime muddled brai
n.  When one of the blobs
came closer, she jumped
up onto the kitchen table
and
pulled her feet up, screeching as the jumping things, which now looked like large
r and faster
blobs, were
bouncing and crawling
all over her kitchen floor.

She was just about to scream again when the overhead light flipped on and her body was picked up and slammed between Malik’s hard, muscular back and the wall of her kitchen. 

Adding to the chaos, Jacob in his red fleece pajamas and Sam in his blue ones, came rushing out to the kitchen, their
curly
hair messed up and their tiny little eyes blinking in the bright light of the kitchen. 

“Don’t hurt them!” Sam screamed and immediately bent down to protect his treasures, which Siri now realized were
dozens of
little frogs
, all of whom, she suspected, had been stored in her fridge in the shoe box that was laying open on the top shelf
. 
Her only two clues were the fact that she never, ever kept shoe boxes in her fridge and she couldn’t fathom any reason to poke holes in a shoe box, except if one, or two little boys, wanted to keep something alive in said shoe box. 

She relaxed for all of two seconds before the adrenaline that had been coursing through her body reacted to the release of the fear.  “Samuel Martin!  Are you telling me that you stored your frogs in my refrigerator?” 

She pushed Malik out of the way and came to stand in front of him, hands on her hips as she glared down at her son who was carefully scooping up his frogs and gently putting them back into the shoe box he’d had them in previously.

Jacob came to his brother’s defense, but he was also delighted by the middle of the night spectacle. 
“They like the cold, momma.  They were too warm outside so I had to do something.”

“Please explain to me why you thought my fridge was the something that you came up with.”

Unfortunately,
Jacob was
no longer looking at all the frogs jumping around.  He was entranced by the sight behind her
and,
adorable,
brave
little guy
that he was, he knew there was a
n imminent
threat to his
precious
mother
and he was determined to rise to her rescue
.  “Don’t hurt my momma!” he yelled out, adding a
whole
new dimension to the chaos. 

His chubby little hands were fisted at his side
s
and he was in obvious fighting mode with a clear line of sight to Malik. 

“Jacob,” she started to say, only to turn around and glance at Malik.  All she saw was a completely naked man with a knife in his hand, staring at two little boys with a stunned expression on his face. 

“Don’t just stand there, Malik, go put some clothes on!”

He looked down at her, then back at the boys, then down at himself.  Something must have gotten through because he looked back at the boys and nodded curtly before moving off to the bedroom. 

While bending down to try and catch the disgusting, jumping blobs, she glanced up at her son, trying to figure out why he wasn’t bending down to help.  Instead, he was glaring at the door where
the strange man had disappeared, obviously trying to figure out why the stranger had gone into his mother’s room. 
“Jacob, stop it!  You’re not going to fight
that man
so stop
acting belligerent
and help me catch these horrible creatures,” she commanded
in as gentle a voice as possible under the circumstances
. 

Jacob didn’t obey, but instead followed Malik with his eyes, glaring daggers at the naked man who, in his mind, was a threat to his mother, the only security he knew in his little world. 

When Malik was gone, Jacob put his arm around Siri’s shoulders and patted her back.  “It’s okay, momma.  He’s gone now.” 

Siri would have laughed at how cute her little man was, how proud he was to have protected his mother, but she was still frantically trying to get the frogs
back
into the box.  They really hadn’t enjoyed being in the box which had been in the
cold
fridge
a
nd
now they
were not cooperating when she and Sam tried to get them back in
to their ‘jail’
.  Nor would she, Siri thought.  She wouldn’t like being put back into the fridge, so she’d be trying to pop out
of any box that might go back into cold storage
too. 

“Jacob, please help me,” she groaned as she picked up yet another one and dumped it into the box. 

“Not like that momma.  You have to be gentle,” Sam explained as he carefully caught one and put it in the box.  Unfortunately, the spry little devil just shot back up again. 

Malik reappeared, dressed in his slacks and shirt once again.  With efficient hands, he picked up several that were escaping into her living room, and captured three more in his path to the box.  He then dumped them all inside and covered it while he found the others. “Is that all there is?” he asked, looking sternly at Sam.

Sam looked up at the big man and nodded, his mouth hanging open as he realized that someone was in his kitchen that might not be as nice as his mother. 

With a sigh of relief, Siri picked up the box, careful not to drop it even though the disgusting things were still popping around.  “Sam, these are going outside and I don’t ever want to see any kind of creature in my fridge, ever again.  Do you understand?”

“But momma, they needed…”

She immediately sliced the air with her hand, cutting off any explanation he might have.  This was a non-negotiable issue in her mind. 
“No!  The fridge is not to keep anything cool other than food.  No excuses and no getting around that rule.”

He sighed, realizing the no-getting-around-Mom tone of voice.  “Yes, momma.” 

“And Jacob, stop glaring.  It’s almost midnight.  Both of you need to get back into bed.”

“Is he leaving?” Jacob asked, still glaring at Malik despite Siri’s admonition for him to stop. 

“Yes.  But he and I have some things to talk about.  The sooner both of you are in bed and asleep, the sooner he will leave.”  She shuffled both of them off to their room, tucked them in and gave each of them a soft kiss.  “Go to sleep,” she ordered
gently
.  Since they’d never been up this late, she wasn’t sure if they were too wound up to fall back to sleep, or if they would fall to sleep immediately now that things were quiet once again. 

She turned and found Malik standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at the boys in their identical toddler beds.

Without a word, she followed him out to her living room.  “Would you give me just a moment to pull on some clothes?” she asked softly.

Chapter
5

Malik could only nod and he watched with rising fury as she walked down the hallway, closing the door behind her.  As if that would stop him, he thought.

He couldn’t believe that she’d kept something like this
from him
.  She had children?  She’d loved another man?  He wasn’t sure about the age of those little boys, but t
hey had to be about three or four
years old.  So she’d met someone almost immediately after he’d left.  She hadn’t waited around very long, had she? 
Had he been wrong about their relationship?  He would have sworn that she’d loved him all those years ago but maybe he’d only been hoping that were the case.  She’d obviously
moved
on after he’d left. 

And to think, for four years, he’d felt guilty about the way things had ended, had tried hard to contact her again in order to explain things and try to make her understand why he’d married his ex-wife. 

When she came back out, he was pacing the tiny expanse of her living room,
so beside
himself
with rage that he was actually
ready to kick the furniture out of his way
to make more room
. 

She watched him carefully for a moment, realizing he was angrier than she’d ever seen him. 
“So now you know,” she said and sat down on the chair, her hands on her knees as she braced for the questions. 

“How long?” he demanded.

Siri wasn’t sure what he was asking.  “How long before they were born?”

“Yes, fine!
  That’s as good a start as anything else.
”

“They were born March twelfth, just over three years ago.”

He quickly did the math and almost exploded.  “So were you with someone while you were with me?” he asked, bending down and leaning over her so she had to push back against the cushions. 

She looked up at him, confused.  “Excuse me?”

“Yes!  You should excuse yourself!  How dare you be with some other man while you and I were…”

“Some other man?” she interrupted
, her temper starting to increase as she absorbed the accusation he was tossing at her
.  “Malik, are you saying that I cheated on you with someone else?”

She pushed him back by his shoulders, standing up and glaring right back at him. 

“Are you going to say that you waited until after I left?
  How long? 
Maybe a week?
 
If that?
  Those boys are too young for you to have had much time in between me and the next guy you slept with.
”

She gasped.  “How dare you!” she poked him in the stomach, wanting to hit him but trying to be nice despite the
disgusting accusations he was making
. “I’ve never been with any other man but you, but now I’m wondering why I even bothered.  How could you even think something like that about me?”

“Because…” he gestured behind him to where the boys were sleeping.  And then he hesitated.

She was spitting mad and waited for the information to sink in.  “Exactly!” she snapped when the realization dawned on him that those were his sons asleep in the other room. 

She noticed the tension in his shoulders fall off and his whole body almost drooped
into the chair behind him
with the
understanding
that
he was their father. 

She tried to bank her temper now that he was getting a better understanding of the situation, but it was hard.  This was just another slap in the face after all she’d gone through previously with, and without, this man. 
“Those are your sons in that room, the same ones who were about to fight you in my kitchen.”