Then they filled with cool disdain as she removed his hands with utmost tranquility. “That’s your latest strategy? Feed my need for validation and heal my fractured self-image? Sorry, but I’ve beaten you to it. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my worth has nothing to do with how others see it, starting with my parents and ending with the queue of men like you. I value me. If others don’t, no matter who they are, screw them.”
“I’ll do anything to solidify your certainty. Ask for the impossible, impose any punishment...”
“It’s me who’ll be punished. When I marry you.”
Was his mind disintegrating at last? He’d thought he heard her say...
“I’ve already told my family that the wedding is on again.”
He could only stare at her.
“I’m pregnant.”
Power drained from his body, coherence from his mind, beats from his heart.
The wall suddenly slammed into his back. He’d staggered under the blow of shock. Of joy. And grief. At the way she’d said it. As if it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.
“Laylah, habibati...”
She warded off his embrace. “I’m not sharing the happy news with my adoring groom, I’m informing my ingenious manipulator that your plan has worked to the last detail.”
“It was not a plan—”
“I don’t care what you call it. But you were not only right in predicting the outcome of me ‘shredding your ironclad control,’ but in anticipating what I’d do, even if I discovered your plot prematurely. You knew me well enough to realize that even if I kept saying I don’t care about my family, I do. Even if I don’t care about tradition, they do. Especially when it comes to legitimacy. I won’t impose illegitimacy on my baby, when there’s a father so eager to put his claim on it, even for all the wrong reasons.”
Could he have destroyed her love so absolutely he’d become so unredeemable in her eyes?
Her cold stare said he had and was. “Go ahead, Rashid, don’t struggle to keep a straight face. Your charade is out in the open and it won’t hurt your agenda anymore to celebrate your success. An Aal Shalaan blood bond, and after the masterful lovelorn, honorable knight act you plied my family with, a sure path to the throne of Azmahar. If the baby turns out to be male—and I bet it will, since you seem to will fate to obey you—you’ll even get the heir you need right away.”
“None of this has any truth to it anymore.”
“The only truth here is that history is repeating itself. I was the result of a toxic marriage of convenience and I swore no child of mine would ever suffer anything like that. And here I am, repeating my parents’ terrible pattern. But I’ll be damned if I’ll live a life filled with hostility and resentment. I’ll play into your hands willingly. I will give you the one thing you wanted from me and suffer through this wedding, only so that it will legitimize the baby in our society’s eyes. This ordeal will assure that our baby gets all its rights from you, no matter what happens, so after we announce my pregnancy and convince people the baby was conceived within wedlock, this travesty of a marriage ends.”
Leaving him suffocating on her rejection again, she turned and walked away. The need to rush after her, catch her back, kiss her and melt her almost had him roaring.
Two things held him back. Knowing that he could swear and beg and produce a thousand proofs, and she’d remain immovably distant and irretrievably injured.
And that in spite of everything, she was going to marry him.
That she would, for any reason, was a miracle. That she carried his child was beyond imagining.
This cold, finite arrangement she’d made was still more than he’d dreamed he would have.
It was another chance.
Fourteen
“Have I told you lately how much I hate you?”
Laylah gazed at Aliyah, her cousin and that third precious Aal Shalaan female. Aliyah was scowling at her after wheeling in a hanger teeming with wedding dresses for Laylah to try on.
Laylah sighed. “In the last hour? No.”
The other women in the room chuckled. The wives of her cousins had all been recruited for the emergency wedding preparations. It was surreal to be home among so many women, with whom she had so much in common, from age to education to temperament.
There was one thing, however, she didn’t share with them. They all had the unequivocal love of their men, and they all ranged from being ecstatically pregnant to delighted mothers many times over.
Johara, whom Laylah had helped prepare for her wedding to her cousin Shaheen almost three years ago, grinned. “Give it up, Aliyah. Every time we say we’re never going to put together a royal wedding on short notice again, we end up with even less time in which to do it. Maybe next time we should say we’ll do it in hours, and we’ll end up with months on our hands?”
The women looked among themselves then snorted a collective, “Nah.”
Roxanne, Haidar’s wife, chuckled. “Those men of ours end up crowding us for time no matter what we do.”
Lujayn, Jalal’s wife and the most recent bride, though she had a two-year-old with Jalal, raised an eyebrow at Laylah. “But for a change it was Laylah who squeezed us for time.”
“Two days is not a squeeze,” Aliyah lamented. “It’s cruel.”
Maram laughed. “Talk about leaving it to the last moment, then wham.” She gave Laylah a shrewd look. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making those impossible and impossibly luscious men sweat it. It can only do their overriding souls good. But you could have given us some advance notice so we could restart preparations discretely while he stewed—as he needed to.”
Laylah sighed, deciding to come clean. “I couldn’t really. Strictly between us please, ladies, but the pink strip only appeared yesterday.”
Gasps of delight echoed around her room, followed by cooing, if uncomfortable, congratulations. They could see she wasn’t happy about the pregnancy, that it made necessary a marriage she didn’t want.
All of the ladies had been in varied positions of reluctance during their weddings, too. But the problems and misunderstandings in their relationships had been resolved. Hers wouldn’t be.
From then on, the women did all they could to reinstate the cheerfulness of the proceedings and lift her spirits.
She cooperated, pretended interest as they talked color coordination, bridal procession dresses and table trimmings. She kept up her pretense until they took her around the royal palace of Azmahar, deciding decorations.