20
SIX WEEKS LATER
“You did what?”
“I did what you wouldn’t. What you couldn’t,” said Carmen, looking at her nails and frowning. “I got Mark’s payout from the Sheikh and handed it over to Luther the lawyer. It took almost a month to work out the details, but it’s done. And in return I got a signed and witnessed document from Mark saying he’s granting the divorce and giving up all custody rights to Damascus. You’re free from that piece of shit ex-husband.” She looked up, her face tight. “And so is your son. He’s now yours and yours only.”
Lora blinked about four hundred times before she was able to stand up off her old blue couch and walk to the window. She still couldn’t speak. She’d been back in New Orleans six weeks, and it had been the worst stretch of her life. She couldn’t stop thinking about Amir, about the evening they’d spent together, about what a fool she was for leaving. The attraction was real, she knew. It had always been real—from the very first kiss. She’d denied it three years ago, and she’d denied it a week ago. Even when she came from his touch, again and again, she’d denied it. She had to deny it. A princess doesn’t spread her legs and moan as she orgasms in an Arabian hotel room, does she?
So she’d flown back alone with her son, angry at herself, almost out of her mind with worry about how she’d find the money to fight Mark for custody. A part of her hated herself for not taking the Sheikh’s offer—after all, didn’t she owe it to Damascus to not subject him to a father who didn’t give a damn, who was using their son as a bargaining chip? But there was another part of her that was pleased with herself . . . stubbornly pleased. You’ve done the right thing, she’d told herself. You can’t let a man pay another man twenty-one million dollars on your behalf! That’s like selling yourself to him! How can you ever pay back that kind of debt . . . a debt that goes way beyond money!
But now Carmen had gone and put her foot in it, made a decision on Lora’s behalf. How dare she?! What gave her the right?! Was Carmen her pimp now? Her madam? What the hell!
The anger rose so quick in Lora that she almost choked as she turned and faced her best friend. She glanced into Carmen’s eyes, trying to hold back what was coming. She managed to hesitate for a moment when she saw something in Carmen’s eyes that told her there was more to this; but the anger was too much and the words finally came:
“Get out,” Lora said quietly, her voice almost a hiss. “Get out of my house. Get out of my life.”
Carmen’s face went white, but there was still that strange look in her eyes. “Lora, listen,” she started to say, but Lora cut her off again.
“You had no right to make that decision. Just get out, OK? I can’t do this right now. I’ve got a hundred other things on my mind, and I just can’t deal with this right now. I can’t even . . .”
Carmen nodded and stood to leave, smiling at Damascus who was staring up at her from his crib. “OK,” she said. “But one of those hundred other things on your mind wouldn’t happen to be the fact that you’re late this month, is it?”
Lora felt all the color drain from her face, and she stumbled to the couch and sat down hard, feeling the air go out of the cheap cushions as she brought her weight down on it. She frowned as she cycled through the dates of her cycle . . . shit, yes, she was late. But how . . .
“How . . .” Lora started to say, but she shut up when she finally understood that look in her best friend’s eye.
“Honey, our cycles have been pretty close for years now. You know that,” Carmen said. “And the day after you left Johaar in a self-righteous huff, I realized that we were both about two weeks in—which means you were at the point of peak fertility when you and the Sheikh . . . made love.” She said the last two words firmly, and Lora wondered if Carmen was mocking her. “And usually in the months after delivering a child, a woman’s fertility is actually enhanced by her elevated hormone levels. So you were pretty close to the most fertile woman on Earth in that moment.”
Lora closed her eyes and took a breath. She’d missed that period two weeks after the encounter with the Sheikh, and she was still late. She’d had a missed period a couple of times back in grad school just from not eating right and not sleeping enough and stressing herself close to the point of insanity, and she knew it was a thing. Some women athletes missed their periods when they were training intensely, so yes, it was definitely a thing. And so she’d ignored it, pushing it to the back of her mind as she spent the days breastfeeding and browsing aimlessly on the Internet, wondering who was hiring librarians these days.
But now Carmen was here with that strange look in her eyes, talking about million-dollar payoffs and the chance she might be pregnant with a Sheikh’s baby.
“Did you say anything to Amir?” Lora asked quietly, her heart pumping so hard she could barely hear her own voice.
“Of course not. I had no way of knowing for sure if it would happen. I just thought it might. I mean, you are late, aren’t you?”
Lora closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes,” she said in that same quiet voice as the tears began to gather at the corners of her eyes. “But it could just be the stress. I don’t think you can get pregnant from just one time.” It took a moment for Lora to realize the silliness of what she’d just said, but for some reason it was comforting.
Carmen laughed so hard that Damascus squealed in delight from his crib. “Honey, I know you studied Library Science and not biology, but you do understand that by definition it takes just one time to get knocked up. It’s just one spermy-thing that needs to get in there and boom, you’re done.”
“Damn right I’m done,” Lora muttered, shaking her head slowly as she felt her hands move to her belly almost on their own. Could it be? Of course it could. “And you’ve done me in, Carmen.”
“Excuse me? I freed you, Lora! You needed to take that offer. Hell, the Sheikh started all of this, and it’s part of his tradition to fulfill his promise.”
“Privilege,” Lora said, still shaking her head slowly as she wondered how the hell she was going to raise two kids on her own.
“What?”
“Privilege, not promise. That tradition sounds all righteous and honorable on its face, but in the end it’s just another form of ownership. A powerful man claiming a woman.”
Carmen cocked her head and raised her left eyebrow. “Don’t tell the college-educated feminists I said this,” she whispered with a wink, “but that doesn’t sound so bad to me when the powerful man is a king with green eyes, a movie-star jawline, and abs you can count through his shirt.” She laughed and shook her head. “And anyway, I don’t think you need to be worried about being ‘claimed’ or whatever. Amir has no intention of tracking you down and taking you back to his kingdom in golden handcuffs. At least not until he finds out about his baby.”
Lora closed her eyes as a shudder passed through her. “Carmen,” she whispered. “You wouldn’t dare tell him. I swear to God I will—”
“You will what? Tell him yourself? Of course you will.”
“I will kill you, is what I was going to say,” Lora muttered. “You’ve already made a decision on my behalf—a decision you had no damned right to make. You’re not making another one. Not about this. Assuming I’m even pregnant. Which I’m not. I can’t be. It couldn’t have happened just from . . .”
But Lora trailed off when she realized she was rambling, her thoughts feeling as slurred as her speech. She felt drunk, high, stoned, insane, all at once. She wanted to throw up and lie down, punch the wall and kick the doors, smash the windows and burn the house down. She was pregnant, wasn’t she. With Amir’s child. All that talk about walking away from him with her self-respect because she was so scared of her own motives for being with him . . . well, now she was knocked up with a second child. Two kids from two different men! Was this what she thought she’d become when she grew up? Princess? Hah! Whore. Whore. Whore!
“Get out, Carmen,” she said again. “Please. I can’t look at you right now. I just can’t. Please go.”