Chapter Twelve
Four Months Later
It was getting harder to hide her bump.
She’d realized six weeks home from Jordan that she wasn’t getting her period. All of a sudden the nausea she kept blaming on Middle Eastern bacteria finally made sense. Juliana had never suffered from food poisoning. Of course not. She’d become pregnant. That one perfect night with Cemal, the one that she still dreamed about regularly, had done the job. It couldn’t be Phillip. She wasn’t sure what had happened those two weeks they’d been apart, but apparently Phillip had seen a glimpse of his life without her and freaked out. Hell, for all she knew, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future came to him and threatened him within an inch of his life. Still, in their new place, Phillip was sticking to his word. He sometimes cuddled with her on the couch, although she’d been standoffish ever since she’d realized she was pregnant after a doctor’s visit two months ago. But, as a show of good faith, he still slept in the guest bedroom.
The father had to be Cemal.
She had no idea what to do.
Part of her felt like she owed Cemal. He’d love to know this, wouldn’t he? He’d practically proposed to her back in Tunisia. It had pained her to screen him, to stop speaking to him at all and beg him not to visit. He’d called a few times until she drove him away. It was ironic. No sooner had she begged him off than she’d realized she was growing heavy with his child. What would he say?
God, what would her family say?
She couldn’t hide this for long. No. Juliana was trapped in a spider’s web of lies and deceit of her own making, and she knew that no one would be happy when all the truths came to light.
Groaning, she tried to get comfortable in her bed. At only four months, she hadn’t gained more than fifteen pounds. So far, Phillip hadn’t noticed because she’d been wearing her baggiest clothes around him, always in layers even if it made little sense. At work, she wore jackets a size too big to hide her middle, and with her mother, thank God, she only had to check in over Skype or the phone. So being a bit heavier wasn’t throwing off her center of gravity yet. The baby wasn’t big enough to be squashing her kidneys when she laid flat. It was her own worries that kept her away, those stray thoughts whirring through her mind as she tried to figure out what the hell she was going to do and how she was going to do it.
Blinking back at her clock, Juliana refrained from throwing her pillow at it. Red digital letters shone back at her, decreeing that it was still only 3 a.m.
But in Jordan it’s almost noon.
That thought shot as readily into her heart as any arrow.
After four months, Juliana couldn’t resist temptation. Sitting up, she dug into her purse and pulled out her phone. It rang through five times until she figured that Cemal had deleted her number or was no longer interested in dealing with her. After her coldness and strange one eighty, Juliana couldn’t blame him.
Finally, his voice rang out on the other line.
“Kitten? Is that you? Please, it’s okay. I just want to see you again.”
Her breathing came in ragged gasps, and she wanted to do so much. Juliana wanted to tell him that she was pregnant. Fuck, she wanted to video call him and show him her bump, let him know that their love had produced a child who was growing stronger by the day. But words failed her. After all, across the hall was the man she was supposed to marry, the one her family wanted her with. The person who wouldn’t cause her permanent exile from the Caine homestead.
I can’t be cut off. I just can’t.
“Kitten, please, just come back to me. I—”
She wouldn’t know what he was about to say after that. Instead, she clicked her phone off and tried to curl up into a fitful sleep.
***
“Caine, we have to talk,” Karen Grant said as she gestured for Juliana to leave her desk and step into the executive office. “Now.”
Juliana hopped up as fast as she could without dislodging her much needed jacket. Then she made her way to her boss’s office. Things were actually going better for her at Simco Systems. Of course Cemal had given her a glowing review, and her reputation for being the systems whisperer for the smart-house technology was spreading throughout the company. She was doing so well as the emergency person to call with that setup that Ms. Grant was considering letting her pitch her own projects for the company to pursue next. She was setting up a portfolio on apps and ideas for two weeks from now.
Has she changed her mind?
Her throat was dry and her tongue seemed to be too big for her mouth as she shut the door behind her. Slumping down into one of the low chairs in front of Ms. Grant’s desk, Juliana tried to smile as politely and surely as she could.
“Ms. Grant, is something wrong?”
The other woman shook her head. “Juliana, do you think I’m stupid?”
Her heart thudded so hard in her chest now that she thought her sternum might snap. “What?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“I just…usually you don’t call me by my first name.”
“Usually, I don’t have to take the pulse of my employees.”
“I don’t understand,” Juliana said.
“You’re pregnant. You weren’t when you went off to Jordan, and I had the sheikh request for you to stay longer and talk you up in glowing reviews. Don’t get me wrong, Juliana. I know I’m damn lucky to have a higher-up with as much skill and smarts as you have. But I also can put pieces together and that jacket isn’t fooling most of the girls in the office.”
“It’s not?”
Ms. Grant laughed.
“I have two kids and my baby sister is about six months along. I know all the signs well.”
“Are you going to fire me?”
“No. I should lecture you about inappropriate behavior but our asses were on the line with the smart-house system needing as many recommenders as it could get based on the beta testing. You might have saved our roll out.”
“Oh.”
“That said, I actually like you.”
Well that’s been hard to tell.
“You do?”
“I do. You remind me of a young me,” Ms. Grant said, tenting her fingers together in front of her. “You’re talented, driven, and you’re the type of geek who can get her point across to investors, who can actually translate tech speak. There aren’t a lot of us out here in Silicon Valley, and we should stick together.”
“So you’re sad to be firing me?”
“I’m not firing you, but I’m curious to see what you’re going to do. I need to know if my best employee is retiring to the Middle East to literally live like a queen.”
Juliana looked down at her hands. “He doesn’t know. We broke up when I got back here, and I don’t know how to tell him.”
“You can’t just keep it from Sheikh Samara. That’s illogical and wrong.”
“I know but my fiancé and I got back together. We haven’t…it’s been a long recovery for us.”
“I don’t need the As the World Turns dish on your life, Caine. You’re good, but no one’s that good,” Ms. Grant barked.
Now that sounds more like the boss I know and am nervous around.
She had been close to thinking she’d slipped through a wardrobe into an alternate reality.
“I don’t know how to tell him.”
“I think dialing his number on the phone is a good start.”
“I just…what would you do?”
“I’ve done what’s been smart and expedient. I’ve built an empire by forty that even Gates and Zuckerberg would want.”
“Oh, so the smart thing would be tell him but focus on my life in America, right?”
Ms. Grant paused for a long while and stared out the window, seeming to focus on something only she could see. “It’s a good life, so don’t you play any tiny violins for me, but it’s lonely. Sometimes, you have to do what’s smart for yourself too, not just what’s practical. Pardon me for going all Walt Disney on you, but sometimes you have to follow your heart before you wake up and realize it’s not quite working right anymore.”
“I’m sure you still have time and…” Juliana fumbled.
“Maybe, but you better call him, and God, I don’t envy you unsnarling all of this.”
I don’t either.
***
“We have to talk,” she said, her voice ringing out loudly across the dinner table.
Phillip had tried hard to make things better since he’d come back. He still seemed to drink more than he had before she’d found out about Candy and the affair. Today, it was the cooking sherry that he’d seemed to enjoy just a little too much as he prepared the beef tips. She wasn’t sure why, but it was one of the many things bothering her about the mess her life had become since coming back from Jordan.
She and Phillip just weren’t made for each other, and trying to force it was wreaking havoc on both of them.
“Why?” he asked, biting into his rice. “What’s wrong?”
Juliana figured that after four months of hiding that there was no longer a point to beating around the bush. Keeping her head held high, she stood and took off her baggy sweater. Then she pulled up the hem of her T-shirt so that Phillip could see the bump for himself.
“I’m pregnant, and it’s not yours.”
Phillip went deadly still. When he spoke, his voice was low and controlled but cold as ice. “Whose is it?”
“You know whose. Cemal’s.”
“Were you ever going to tell me? It would be incredibly hard to cuckold me when you’re nine months. We’re not even in the same bed.”
“Cemal and I were together before you came back.”
“I had a right to know, damn it!” he said, slamming his fists down hard on the table.
Juliana jumped back and frowned at him. “I didn’t know what to say, and I’m telling you now.”
“Are you going back to him?” he said, standing, and it didn’t escape her notice the way he wobbled a bit on his feet.
“I am. I’m going to call him tomorrow. He deserves to know, and I love him. I don’t care anymore what my family thinks. I’m sick of being miserable just because it ‘looks right’ or it’s ‘what my parents want.’ I want to do what makes me happy.”
“And some guy riding camels in the middle of nowhere does that?” Phillip demanded, the level of his voice rising so that she scooted back even farther.
“I know he loves me. That he’d never cheat on me.”
“Holding that against me forever?” he demanded, sweeping out his hands and sending the plates clattering to the floor.
Juliana’s heart was pounding even as she eyed the front door. She needed to get out of there. Turning to run, she hurried to the door but Phillip was far taller than she was. He was there right behind her. He slammed his palm flat against the door.
“No, you’re not going anywhere.”