CHAPTER NINE
A MERE TWO weeks later, in which she saw her fiancé one single time for the space of one measly hour, Lauren Hamby married Zafir ibn Rashid Al Masood, the High Sheikh of Behraat in an outrageously extravagant but traditional ceremony in the great hall of the Behraati palace with guests ranging from distinguished state members from all over the world to stone-faced, bearded High Council members who wore their disapproval like a shield to any number of Behraatis, all of whom viewed her with a tangible curiosity.
The flowing, turquoise creation made of satiny silk that had been picked for her fell to her ankles in a traditional, not-hugging fit and hid her bump quite well. For which she would be forever grateful.
“The Sheikh of Behraat, Lauren? What about your scorn for a life that’s only about ambition and power? In the face of that lifestyle, you’ve forgotten your petty complaints?” her mother had said over the phone, throwing Lauren’s old words back in her face.
“It’s not like that, Mom,” she had said, for her own benefit as much as her mother’s.
Then she heard the muted whisper of her father’s voice and then her mother was saying, “Wait, he’s marrying you because you got pregnant? Did you get the nikah contract checked out by a lawyer, Lauren? If he marries another woman later, because, believe me, these fantastic cross-cultural marriages burn out in a blaze as soon as the lust dies down...and their council, whatever it’s called in Behraat, will want a Behraati sheikha, what does your child get? If he’s a boy, is he going to be named heir?” She had continued in that vein while Lauren had felt nauseous.
Nothing about what her feelings for Zafir were or his for her, if he treated her well or if Lauren wanted her mom by her side for the first time in years.
Of course, they were too busy on diplomatic assignment to attend the wedding even though she told them of Zafir’s offer to fly them back and forth within days in his private jet. And even after years of hardening herself against their disinterest, it still hurt that when the wedding organizer inquired about her family and friends attending, Lauren had nothing to say.
It had been the same evening that she had seen him in the ensuing two weeks. And he had brought the very contract that her mother had gone on and on about, for her to sign.
Too stunned to string two words together, she had stared at him. And he had replied that it was a tradition.
Once the lawyer had begun explaining what it entailed—allowance money, enough for Lauren and three generations after her to live quite comfortably—and she had gotten over her shock, she had abruptly stopped him and requested that he leave.
Zafir, who’d been sitting in a corner of the room, his attention on the tablet in his hand, had jerked his head up, his gaze pinning her to the spot.
“You’re not well?”
At her silence, he had walked to her. Tension had tightened the skin over his cheekbones. “Lauren?”
She had no idea why she’d mentioned it at all. Only that it had been eating away at her since her conversation with her mother.
Only that there was this infinitesimal, gnawing ache in the pit of her stomach every time she found herself alone. Nerves, she had told herself. The very landscape of her life was changing, on top of the usual pregnancy hormones, Farrah had said when she had betrayed her worries.
“My mother asked if we were including anything about custody and such stuff...in the contract,” she had said, her heart in her throat.
Sunlight filtered in through the high, vaulted ceilings, the stained glass puncturing it into a myriad of colors. And yet, Zafir was like the cold frost in the middle of it. “What other such stuff?”
Perfectly courteous his question might have been but there had been such a dangerous, almost forbidding quality to his gaze then. A hardness that had forcefully reminded her of how ruthless he could be when he set his mind to it. As if the seductive, easy charm he had worn that day in the desert had been a mask.
As if she had suddenly morphed into that stranger who was only good for one thing again in his life.
“I don’t know,” she had mumbled, her own words leaving a bad taste in her mouth. “Stuff like what would happen to my...” A muscle tightened in his cheek, she splayed a hand on her belly, seeking reassurance from the tiny life inside her, “—our child if you married again and had children by another woman. About where we would live and...”
“Are you saying you need these...” his mouth curled with disgust, “clauses included in the contract? That you wish to discuss such...things?”
Distant and distrustful, this version of Zafir made her feel as if she didn’t know him at all, as if she was, once again, risking everything for this man. There was nothing of the man who had asked her so tenderly to marry him.