He was being so very rational, so damn reasonable. She’d expected a completely different reaction—a lot more fire and brimstone—and she was so grateful to have avoided a nasty scene. Sadie bit her lip, fighting tears. It had all gone so much better than she’d expected. Emotion and exhaustion clashed and she felt herself drifting...
“You okay?” Carrick asked her, but his voice sounded like it was coming from a long way away.
Sadie felt her head rocking and the room darkened. Then the air disappeared and the carpet came up to smack her in the face.
“You fainted?”
Sadie heard the trace of amusement in Hassan’s question and frowned at his image on the screen of her laptop. Hassan, in Abu Dhabi, leaned back in his office chair, looking elegant in a three-piece suit.
Yep, those deep brown eyes were definitely laughing at her. Sadie rubbed her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I face-planted straight into the carpet. When I came around, Carrick gave me a lecture about my health and bundled me off to see a doctor.”
“And what did the doctor say?”
Sadie sipped her peppermint tea before answering. She had work to do, but she needed to talk to her old friend. Technically, he was Prince Hassan Ramid El-Aboud, but she’d known Hassan since they were both new students at Princeton a decade ago. He’d studied engineering and she art history, and while she knew he was from Abu Dhabi, she hadn’t known that he was a royal...
Royal as in the nephew of the reigning king of the United Arab Emirates.
Hassan might look like the Arab prince-hero of a romance novel, but to her, he was just her best friend. The person with whom she could share her and Carrick’s secret. In her defense, Hassan was her closest friend and she knew Hassan was a vault.
“He said that I’m pregnant. That fainting is fairly common in pregnancy and that I’m as healthy as a horse. Carrick didn’t believe him.”
“How do you know?” Hassan asked.
“Because as we left the doctor’s rooms, Carrick called his PA and told her to get me another appointment with another obstetrician.” Sadie rolled her eyes. “He wants a second opinion.”
Hassan laughed. “And are you going for a second opinion?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m pregnant, not ill,” Sadie said, allowing her frustration to seep through.
Hassan tipped his head to the side. “And are you going to sleep with him again?”
Oh, she wished she could say no, but she knew that the chances of her and Carrick ending up in bed together again were astronomically high. “I want to tell you we won’t, but I’d probably be lying.”
Concern flashed in Hassan’s eyes. “Sleeping with him is one thing, Sadie, but falling in love with him is another.”
Sadie balanced her tea on her knee. “Who said anything about love?” she demanded.
Hassan’s brown eyes reflected his concern. “How does Beth feel about you having Carrick’s baby?”
Sadie grimaced. “I haven’t told her.”
Hassan’s eyebrows rose. “You do know you can’t keep it a secret from her forever?”
“Carrick asked me to keep my pregnancy between us until the first trimester has passed. I’ve told you, but I don’t feel comfortable telling Beth, partly because Beth will lecture me about him, saying that he’s not the type of man I need in my life, that he leaves destruction in his wake.”
“She’d also say you already went through hell with Dennis. Why would you want to put yourself through that with Carrick?”
Strangely, Sadie’s first instinct was to defend Carrick. She wanted to tell Hassan that Carrick was nothing like Dennis, but logic and practicality refused to allow her to do that. She wanted to believe Carrick wasn’t anything like her ex, but she’d hardly spent any time with him.
And, let’s be honest here, the time they’d spent together hadn’t required talking.
Hassan leaned forward. “Look, I have no doubt that Tamlyn exaggerated Carrick’s sins. She’s not the type to take rejection lying down. But when you told me you were pregnant with his kid, I went online, did some research. I saw numerous photos of Carrick and his ex together. Sadie, they didn’t look happy. He wasn’t good for her.”
But there was a difference between not being good for her and not being good to her. But no matter what had happened in his previous marriage, Carrick was going to be in Sadie’s life for a long, long time. He was her child’s father and they’d always have a bond.
But that didn’t mean she had to be emotionally tied to him. They could be friends, be mutually respectful, but they didn’t have to love each other to be effective coparents.
But it would be helpful if they could, at the very least, like each other, as she informed Hassan.