“I’m pregnant,” she shouted, eyes sparking with his. “You need to stop thinking of this as your problem, or your ‘anything’. I am very, very conscious of yoursituation,” she said, reusing his word. “You couldn’t date me before, when you were second in line to the throne. You couldn’t even be seen with me.”
“You had just as much reason to want to keep our relationship secret.”
“That wasn’t a relationship,” she corrected emphatically. “It was convenient sex.”
His expression didn’t change and that hurt more than anything. She’d desperately wanted him to contradict her.
“In any event, you’re Sheikh now. There’s no way you can marry me, and even if there were, there’s no way I’d agree to marry you. So let’s focus our conversation on what kind of role you want to have in our child’s life.”
“This child is the heir to the throne of Al Medina.”
“I’m pretty sure that without us marrying, that’s not true.”
“And now you see why we must marry, and soon.”
Her heart dropped to her toes. “No.” The word reverberated around the cabin. “Noway.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” She repeated incredulously. “You cannot be serious?”
“We’re going to be parents. Why not get married?”
“Because lots of people have babies without being married.”
“In Al Medina?”
“I’m not Al Medinan.”
“But I am, and our child is. Besides which, I know you. Iknowyou, perhaps, in some ways, better than you know yourself. For instance, I understand that you want to raise your child how you were raised—in a loving, protective family.”
Her heart stammered. “And I will. My child is a Xenakis,” she said, and later, she wondered if she was deliberately trying to bait him and his arrogant pride.
“But an Al Qadi, first and foremost. My child will be born in my country, will bear my name, and will be raised with me as his father. Do you understand?”
She glared at him. “And what about me, Samir? What say do I have in any of this?”
“As you pointed out, our child is the priority now. What you or I want doesn’t matter.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “But there are many ways in which we can care for him or her.”
“And your suggestion is that you raise our child in Greece, and I visit when I can?”
She bit down on her lip. “I know it’s not perfect—,”
“Not only is it not perfect, it would be disastrous. You say you care for this child? That you care for how they perceive themselves and their place in my life? How will he or she feel when their identity is discovered and the media inevitably draws the conclusion that I refused to marry you? That I refused to bring the child to Al Medina and acknowledge them as my heir? What other conclusion couldanyonereach if we do things your way?”
“Then we’ll make an announcement,” she said. “You’re the father, you’re pleased, but we are not raising the baby together and the child remains a citizen of Greece.”
He rolled his eyes—a gesture she’d never imagined she might see from someone like Samir. “Nowyouare delusional. What kind of message does that send to my child?”
“The message that you value female autonomy?”
“Do not make this a gender issue. This is about you and me and what’s right for our baby, nothing more.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her heart racing hard and fast. “Youcan’tmarry me. And I won’t marry you. We need another solution.”
He stared at her long and hard and the silence throbbed with expectation so Cora darted her tongue out and licked her lower lip. “You told me a thousand times, a thousand reasons, why you could never be seen with me. Myreputation,” she gestured air quotes with her fingers, “would never be acceptable to your people.”