She worked the rest of the afternoon on holding her composure as she thought about each possibility. If she lost the Sheikh, she would need to keep her calm in the moment. She would need to find a way to be okay with it, even it if might take years to truly accept.
It was hard work, trying to numb her mind to the possibilities. From time to time, tears sprung from her eyes, mingling with the dust and sweat on her body. She paid them no mind. Now that her business had been announced to the whole country, now she had shouted at Zach for blabbing, it wouldn’t be long before the whole camp knew the truth.
No one approached her, however. They only left her alone to work.
She skipped lunch. It seemed unimportant to her, now, and she didn’t want to risk the chance that someone would ask her about what was going on, let alone the chance that she would run into Zach again. She just worked straight on through, and straight through the afternoon.
And then, when the sky began to darken, she went to Calista and asked to borrow the jeep.
The other woman raised her eyebrows. “It’s Professor Hasseb’s. You should probably ask him.”
Lucie shook her head. “He wouldn’t understand. But I thought you might.”
She was desperate, and it must have shown in her face.
“You might be surprised what he would understand,” Calista said. “But it doesn’t matter. I won’t let you use the Jeep.”
Lucie’s eyebrows furrowed. She hadn’t expected this. She began to formulate a response, but Calista raised her hand.
“I will, however, drive you to the palace. These roads can be dangerous and confusing at night, if you don’t know where you’re going.”
Lucie sighed in relief. She wanted to leave immediately, but Calista insisted she take a shower first, and make herself presentable, which she reluctantly agreed was probably a good idea.
***
When Lucie was clean again, and as prepared as she would ever be for the confrontation, the two women got on the road. The stars were just starting to peek out of the sky, and the day was cooling swiftly into a cold desert night.
So far, all of her trips to the palace had been in the back of an expensive car—relatively smooth, and shielded from the elements. Not so in the jeep.
But it felt good. The feeling of being jostled around by every bump in the road kept her from getting too lost in the thoughts she’d already exhausted during the day.
If everything did go wrong, she knew she would have to find another desert country to work in. She couldn’t give up on a night like this. It was too magical.
To Lucie’s relief, Calista didn’t try to make conversation on the way over. She drove in silence, her dark eyes fixed on the road ahead. She slowed slightly as the palace came into view.
Lucie’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t seen it from the approach before; a single shape, so alone and stark against the desert landscape. The way it went from a speck in the distance to a towering presence up close made it seem all the more intimidating.
It certainly didn’t help Lucie’s nerves.
Calista turned off the engine, and Lucie realized that they hadn’t been stopped by anyone their whole way here. She hadn’t seen any security in the palace grounds, but there was no doubt in her mind that they were there. The Sheikh must know she was here, and he had let her through.
“Bonne chance,” Calista said, smiling slightly.
Though she wasn’t usually much of one for hugs, Lucie gave her one. She’d needed the reassurance, and she couldn’t have been more grateful to Calista for providing it.
Then she took a deep breath and got out of the jeep. It was time.
SEVENTEEN
She walked up the stairs into the palace slowly, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. She’d spent the whole day collecting her thoughts, and yet they still felt scattered.
When she reached it, the front door slid open. For the life of her, she couldn’t see anyone there, until a man emerged from the shadows.
“Go to the roof,” the man said, in heavily accented English. “He’s waiting for you there.”
She did as she was told, taking the main staircase up. Now was not the time to bother with secret passageways.
As she stepped out again into the evening breeze, she found herself on the opposite side of the palace to where she and the Sheikh had stargazed from his sitting room.
On this side, the ramparts weren’t damaged, and it looked and felt very much like the kind of castle that she’d read about in story books when she was a child. It seemed a fitting place to have a final conversation, if it was to be that.
The Sheikh was standing there, his back to her.
Her heart pounded. It was now or never. But she couldn’t remember the opening phrase she had planned to say. The magic of the night air pulled her so swiftly back to the time when they had drunk honey liquor and gone walking together through tunnels and gardens. And, so lost in her memory, she could not find her tongue.
Before she could figure out how to speak, he turned. He’d been looking out across the desert in what she’d deemed to be anger, but when she saw his face she realized she’d been wrong.
She’d been wrong about everything.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping towards her and reaching out his arms. “I’m so sorry, Lucie. I should never have suspected you.”
She stumbled forward, everything in her wanting to find her way into his arms, in spite of how confused she was.
“It wasn’t me,” she said weakly, still trying to follow the script she’d worked out over the course of the day.
Another few steps forward. A few steps closer.
“I know. The paper listed a source. Once I read it fully, I realized it wasn’t you. Of course it wasn’t you!”
Another step. She was so close to him now that she could see the worry written all over his face.
It nearly made her laugh. She’d been waiting the whole day for him to settle down enough for her to make her case. And yet, here he had obviously been, doing the same. Hoping for her to return.
She suddenly felt exhausted. The work she had done, and the lack of food caught up with her. With the adrenaline in her system beginning to die down, she felt herself falling forward.
And then she felt him catching her, his arms wrapping around her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s no excuse, but I was still so shaken. The whole thing, everything between us…”
Lucie nodded, sensing where he was going.
“It should have been simple,” she completed for him.
“It shouldn’t have been secret in the first place. I should have just reached out to you, without a care for what anyone might have thought. I shouldn’t have given Zach that ammunition in the first place.”
Slowly, as one, the entwined lovers found their way to a sitting position on the ramparts. It was a little colder here, without the fireplace and glass dome that encased the other side of the roof. But they had each other for warmth.
At Zach’s name, Lucie came down to earth slightly.
“I gave him quite the lecture, earlier,” she said, in Arabic. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but it felt more intimate, somehow, to talk to him this way. She was a little afraid he would answer her in English.
But he didn’t. A string of his soft, rich Arabic answered her.
“I did the same—and so did my head of security. Tomorrow he will be filming an apology, to be broadcast on national TV, for spreading lies about the nature of my relationship with you.”
Lucie’s heart began beating more quickly again. She could feel her adrenaline kicking back in.
“Right,” she said. “Only I thought…”
The Sheikh shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean that he should deny that we are together. Let him say that he got that part right. But let him say that he misrepresented it, and that it certainly wasn’t his place to announce it to the entire country.”
Even the crescent moo
n gave enough light to glint in Abdul’s eyes.
“I don’t want any more secrets. Not between us, and not in front of my people.”
Relief and guilt flooded through Lucie in equal measure.
“In the spirit of not keeping secrets,” she began, her voice wavering slightly, “I have something I need to tell you.”
With all that had happened between them, the Sheikh could be forgiven for being a bit nervous at this. But if he was, he didn’t show it.
“What is it?”
There was no way to say it but to say it.
“I’m pregnant.”
There was a long pause. All Lucie could hear was the sound of the breeze.
“Really?”
She couldn’t read his face. It was either complete joy, or complete shock. She was in agony, trying to tell between them.
And then she felt his arms around her again.
“My sweet Lucie,” he said, “you have made me the happiest man.”
She wanted to say that he had made her the happiest woman, but her heart was too full of joy to speak. She only sat there, wrapped in his warm embrace, with a huge smile on her lips.
Then, suddenly, he pulled back.
“But you must marry me!”
She laughed.
“That wasn’t very romantic, was it?” he said to the bright chorus of her laughter.
“Any way of saying that you want to spend your life with me would be romantic. I’m just surprised. I’ve been dreading this moment… wondering and fretting over what you might say. And now that it’s here, it’s better than I ever dared hope it would be.”
He cupped her cheek in his hand, and she let the weight of her head sink gently into it, loving the way it felt to be held by him.
“We do a lot of thinking,” he said. “You and I. Perhaps we should think a bit less. Maybe we’d be happier.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “I love you for your mind, just as much as