Sheiks IX—Family Reunion
By CJ
Rating: (F-18))
Email: Ardethsgal100@yahoo.com
Author’s Note: I own all characters in this story/series. Please do not copy the story or borrow any characters without author’s permission.
Chapter 1
The baby cried in the middle of the night. He’d been doing that a lot lately, ever since they’d left the lake and ever since Rafee had returned. Granted, it had only been a few days since Rafee had been back in their lives and since they’d returned to Villa Serena as a family to recoup and reconnect, but obviously, Alexi was not yet adjusting.
Shawna stirred from the chair she’d fallen asleep in and walked toward Alexi’s crib. At the same time, a light in the connecting bathroom came on and Rafee, rubbing at his tousled hair, entered from their bedroom.
It may be “their bedroom” but they hardly shared it. Usually, Shawna slept in her overstuffed chair in the nursery or paced endlessly between the two rooms, ensuring Rafee was still there, making certain the kids slept well. It meant she slept little, but so far, Rafee hadn’t complained.
Part of the problem was that he didn’t complain. He allowed her too much leeway, he allowed the children too much leeway and because of that, getting back to normal was difficult.
Of course, she knew he was having his own issues with getting back to normal. His life in the desert during the war had been difficult. The conditions horrendous. She could see it in the ribs that showed on his torso and the gaunt look of his cheeks. He slept restless, often awaking, often walking through the house himself at night, and neither seemed to be able to find a way to comfort the other.
Granted, Shawna would never deny that she was relieved he was alive. Still, the demons of anger held on. She remembered the pain of grief when he’d “died” and she just couldn’t let it go that easily.
Another thing troubling her mind was Marcus. She had her husband back yet a man she adored, a man she had decided to marry, was suddenly gone from her life and the adjustment was just strange to her. He’d left without saying good-bye that day Rafee showed up and all that she had left from him was a letter stating how he could never make her choose and his ring. She wanted him to have the ring back, but she knew now was not the time to try and contact him. Maybe in a few months. Perhaps in a few years.
Alexi continued to cry and Shawna reached in the crib and gathered the fussy infant. Rafee moved to her side and smoothed the baby’s black hair.
“Want me to take him?” Rafee inquired.
“No, I’ve got him,” Shawna declared.
“Don’t you think you should try and sleep some in the bed? You’ve hardly rested all week,” Rafee said.
Shawna jostled the baby, trying to quiet his sobs. She was tired, she was frustrated, and when Rafee took the baby from her and he quieted instantly, she mumbled, “Traitor.”
Rafee laughed. He adored his new baby, he fawned over him. He tried to fawn over Kess as well but she still feared Rafee. She didn’t understand where he had gone; she didn’t remember the foreign language he spoke to her for she had forgotten all of the Arabic in his absence. And Shawna knew Kess’s hesitancy crushed Rafee, but he persisted and he remained completely patient.
“He just knows his daddy,” Rafee replied. “And I have a feeling he’s just like me.”
“Oh, so you were a whiny baby too?” Shawna teased and when Rafee smiled, she remembered how she had missed him while he’d been gone.
Her eyes welled with tears and she wiped hastily at her face, feeling like a fool for crying again about all that had happened.
“Shawna, get some rest, darling,” Rafee told her, reaching out with one hand and caressing her face.
“I don’t sleep well even if I try. I keep thinking…I’m afraid that if I go to sleep, I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone again. I wonder if this is just some odd dream I’m having,” she confessed.
Rafee looked pained. The reality of what he had done, what he had allowed everyone to believe, still hung between them and still weighted heavily on him.
“It’s not a dream, Shawna,” he said firmly. Then he reached down and took her hand. He led her into the bedroom, laid the baby in the middle of the bed and lifted the covers so Shawna would crawl in. Then he sat on the edge and wiped the tears from her eyes with his fingers.
“I’m here and I’m not going anywhere,” he added.
“You should go to Kumar to see your family. Your mother hasn’t seen you, your sisters…” she began to argue.
“I have talked to them all on the phone. They’ll come here soon enough or we’ll fly to Kumar in a few weeks. But not until we’re settled. Not until we’re us again.”
Shawna appreciated the fact that Rafee understood they were still struggling to get back to being a true couple. They didn’t fight, they didn’t argue…they just had to get used to each other again and it would take some time and dedication on both their parts. For now, they had Villa Serena to themselves to try and accomplish that. But the peace and quiet wouldn’t last for long, family members were going to arrive soon.
“I want to be us again too,” Shawna declared. “I missed you so terribly. I prayed every night for just another moment with you. And now that I have it all back…I just can’t accept it.”
“I know. Too much happened. You went through a lot. And then there was Marcus…”
The name hung between them like a ghost. Much like Rafee’s name had always hung between Marcus and Shawna.
“I never would have considered being with him had I known you were alive,” Shawna insisted. She’d insisted as much several times, always making it sound like an apology. And always, Rafee just waved off her words like it was nothing.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
Shawna groaned in frustration and pulled the sheet over her head. Rafee was either impossible to live with—like before the war—or too accommodating—like now. And such extremes drove Shawna crazy.
He pulled the sheet down to see her face and asked lightly, “Would you rather I rant and rave like I did when I thought you were having an affair with Samad?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know!” Shawna sat up and Rafee remained silent. “You know…you haven’t even asked me yet if I slept with him.”
She heard Rafee curse in his own tongue and he looked away. That was proof positive that he didn’t want to be reminded of her and Marcus together; that he did care she had moved on without him. And it made her smile because he was finally showing some true Rafee emotion. He was finally starting to crack a bit.
“I don’t want to know such details, Shawna!” he shot out as he stood. “I don’t want to know anything about you and another man. After all, I did plan to have you remain inside the Armanjani circle if I died and you didn’t.”
“Ah, finally, the truth! Finally, I see you’re pissed.”
Rafee scrubbed his face with his hands and when he turned to look at her, the light that had blazed briefly in his eyes was gone and he looked completely at ease again. Damn the man for being so understanding and patient!
“It pains me,” he finally admitted.
“Yeah, well a lot of stuff pains me. And for the record…no, I never slept with Marcus. I wasn’t ready…we had the baby…etcetera, etcetera.”
The light flared in Rafee’s eyes again and he moved forward. Placing both hands on the pillow next to Shawna’s head and corralling her in, he bent down and kissed her. They too had yet to make love since being reunited and that was only because things had been so…strange between them. Because both had been trying to return to normalcy and trying to make the transition easy for the children. Their love-life had been placed on a far back burner, but as soon as Rafee kissed Shawna, she felt her desires rage full-force.
She looped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. His hand flared on her breast and she arched against him, whispering his name. He kissed his way down her neck, nipped at her ear, and as his hand began to creep under her nightshirt a whale from the nursery broke them apart.
“Mommy! Mar..us,” Kess’s cry came. Her pronunciation of Marcus’s name was still handicapped, just as it had been at the lake cabin. And upon hearing it, Rafee cursed and stood. Shawna immediately missed his warmth.
“I’d volunteer to go, but seeing how I scare her to death…” Rafee gestured toward the nursery and Shawna stood.
“I’m sorry, Raf,” she said.
“It’s not your fault, darling,” he insisted. “I’ll stay here with the boy, you take care of Kess.”
Shawna began trudging off mumbling, “We need a nanny.”
She found her daughter sitting up in her bed, Disney Princess sheets tangled around her little legs. She was pushing her curly light brown hair out of her eyes and crying.
“Kess,” Shawna cooed as she sat down next to her daughter. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Where’s Ma-cus?” she demanded rather than asked.
“Not here, darling. I told you…he had to leave us.”
How did she explain this bizarre mess to a little girl? How?
Kess shook her head adamantly. “No. I want him. My dada.”
“No, Kess, he isn’t your daddy. Your daddy is back now. He’s with your brother in the other bedroom. Why don’t we go in there and see him?” Shawna attempted to persuade.
Kess screamed and jumped to the far corner of her bed, cowering and reaching for her sheets to cover her face. Shawna moved next to her and laid down on the small bed, pulling her daughter next to her.
“Shhhh, baby,” she told Kess. “I don’t want you upset. I just want you to understand all that happened. And please, know that your daddy loves you. He just had to go away for a while and now he’s back. Back to stay.”
“No. Not dada,” Kess insisted and it broke Shawna’s heart. Kess and Rafee had been so close, so enamored of one another until the war. Until Rafee’s “death.” And now…now, how did they fix all that was broke?
**
“Marcus,” Doc Miller’s voice broke into the good time Marcus had been having. “Come on, son, let’s get you home.”
“I don’t want to,” he slurred, his words sounding far away in his inebriated state. “The cabin reminds me of…them.”
“Then come home with me,” the doctor insisted and with surprising strength for an old man, dragged Marcus from the bar stool.
Lenny, the good-for-nothing bar tender who had called Doc Miller on him again, assisted the doctor in getting Marcus to the car and said, “I’ll have someone bring his Jeep over to his place later, Doc.”
“Sure thing, Lenny. Thanks for calling me again,” Doc Miller said and Marcus crawled into the back seat of the doctor’s Subaru Forester and laid prone, closing his eyes.
The doctor got into his car, revved the engine and admonished, “This has got to stop, Marcus. You’ll kill yourself with all this drinking.”
“Maybe that’s my goal,” Marcus answered. The car was not only moving forward, it was also spinning sideways. Marcus groaned in agony.
“Lousy goal if you ask me,” the doctor stated. “Why don’t you call your family and go for a visit in D.C.? See your uncle. He’ll be glad to have you.”
“Can’t. The Armanjanis might still be there.”
“The who?”
“The people who ruined my life because one of their princes knows how to come back to life.” Marcus pushed himself up so his back was resting against the door. “Tell me, Doc, you ever heard of someone besides Jesus Christ coming back from the dead?”
“There are stories of amazing survival out there, Marcus,” the doctor answered.
“Well, shit, you should add Prince Rafee Armanjani to that list of stories. ‘Cause he never died when he was supposed to.”
Apparently over the past few days Marcus had blurted out enough to Doc Miller that the old man knew the gist of the story. He never asked about Shawna or Kess or little Alexi, but obviously he had learned enough through Marcus’s rantings to know the score.
And the score was ten points to the Armanjanis, zero to Marcus.
Marcus covered his face with his hands and recalled that fateful afternoon that he found Rafee alive. That was the day Marcus’s world had collapsed. That was the day he had lost the only woman he had ever loved and the children he had wanted to call his own.
He’d watched from a distance as Shawna and the kids had driven away with Rafee. He had never tried to catch them for a last-minute good-bye, he had simply allowed them to leave. After all, what other recourse was there? Shawna had always loved Rafee heart and soul and once the man had returned, Marcus knew the only logical thing to do was to hand them back over. He would never beg for Shawna to come back to him because she never would. And what really hit him hard, what really made him sick, was that part of him was overjoyed that she had her husband back.
“Ain’t that a pisser?” Marcus blurted out and Doc Miller glanced at him in the rearview mirror and inquired, “Pardon?”
“I said, ain’t that a pisser that I’m happy she has her husband back. Makes me one sick puppy.”
“No, it makes you a real man. A real human to be happy for another while you’re wallowing in pain. You did right, Marcus, by letting Shawna go so easily.”
So, the doctor had it all figured out, did he? Go figure. The man always had it all figured out.
“I loved her,” Marcus insisted.
“I know.”
“I loved those kids.”
“You and me both,” the doctor replied. “Kess was one darling I hated to see go. But…she’s with her parents. Best place for her.”
“Yep. She has her mommy and daddy and servants and palaces all back. Better than my damned lake house.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, son, it isn’t flattering.”
“You’re right. I think I’ll stop drinking now and get back to work. I’m sure there’s another mean-ass third world dictator that needs to be assassinated. I’m the man to do it, too. No remorse. No remorse what-so-ever now.”
**
They had spent a few days in Kumar and then Paris to reunite with the family before they jetted across the Atlantic to Washington D.C. There, Jenny and Nik reunited with Tara and Nico and as far as Jenny was concerned, that was the best part.
It had been almost a year since she’d seen her sister. And little Nico….well, he had grown quite a bit and was talking non-stop. He didn’t even balk when he saw her and his father and for a long while, it was hugs and kisses for everyone.
And then there was John Banes. Uncle John, as Jenny had called him for most of her life. He gave her the most crushing bear hug and commented several times on how she’d grown and looked like a beautiful woman now instead of a gangly teen. And as Jenny considered his words, she realized she was very close to becoming an adult. Her eighteenth birthday was but a month away and according to
The reunion was heartwarming, and soon, the excitement of it all settled down and they all sat in John’s plush living room. His Virginia estate was gorgeous and Jenny knew he also owned an estate in California near Calistoga. John Banes had come from some money and made the rest on his own. Then he’d ventured into politics where he’d been ever since. Jenny didn’t know an awful lot about him besides the kindness he’d always shown her on his visits. She had never followed his politics, never pried into his sometimes rocky relationship with her father. But she had always adored him.
Now, as they sat on the beige couches and John’s elegant second wife served them all drinks, John remained seated next to her, his arm around her shoulders and squeezing her, telling her over and over again how worried he’d been.
“Yes, Jenny,” Tara chimed in, “we were worried sick about you for months. Never knowing if you were dead or alive. And now Nik tells us you were actually at the Johar Palace with King Jabbar. How?”
“It’s a long story. But aside from my stay at the palace, I was never in any real danger. In fact, as much as I didn’t like Jabbar, he left me alone and his wife, Nida…she was so caring. She took care of me despite the fact that she was sick. She died, you know. I heard she got to see Razi one more time, though. I’m grateful for that because that was all she had ever wanted.”
“She and Razi knew one another?” Tara inquired.
Jenny nodded. “They’d been childhood friends. And I think at one time they had wanted to marry. But Nida was forced into a marriage to Jabbar and then Razi ran away. It’s kind of tragic, really.”
“Horribly tragic,” Tara said. Then her sister sighed and grasped Nik’s hand. “And you and I could have ended up tragic if anything had happened to you, Nik.”
Nik, ever the romantic when Tara was around, touched her face and replied, “Tara, my love, nothing was going to happen to me.”
“Really? Because that’s what we always thought about Rafee and look…he died for a time.”
“Thank goodness he returned to us,” Nik replied.
“Yes, what happened with that? I know my nephew was taking care of Rafee’s wife and child. Then I heard Rafee died,” John wanted to know.
Nik smiled with irony and shook his head. “Only my brother could pull off what he pulled off. Their camp was shelled early in the war and everyone who saw it, everyone who felt for his pulse, was positive he was dead. They were under attack and couldn’t stay and didn’t have time to take Rafee’s body with them. When they could finally return to the spot much later in the war, there was no body. Apparently a rebel desert group found him, he was still alive, and the rest is history.”
“Miraculous story,” John commented.
“If you have ever met my brother, sir, you’d know it was no miracle,” Nik drawled. “He has this way about him…”
“Rafee’s a legend,” Jenny added. “There are all sorts of rumors about him in Johar that I learned while staying there. And now, I’m sure there will only be more.”
“And remember, Jenny, they are simply that…rumors,” Tara reminded her.
“I know, but still, you have to admit that Rafee is…different.”
Nik chuckled. “Different? That’s putting it mildly.”
As Jenny remembered the night she’d discovered Rafee was alive and not dead, she also recalled Emir. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been separated from him, but she longed for him. The pain was intense and had been throughout the war. In actuality, they had spent very little time together. Most of their time had been spent pinning away for one another and imagining a future. And now that they were separated, now that there was no easy cell phone call or email message to Johar because their communications were shot, Jenny was pinning away for him again.
When she fell silent, her sister must have noticed for Tara intentionally caught her eye and requested, “Tell us about Emir, Jenny.”
Not wanting to broach such a private topic, not wanting to gush about their romance like she was a child, Jenny clasped the charm he’d given her as it hung around her neck and replied, “There’s nothing to tell, Tara. He’s in Johar, I’m here. End of story.”
“You ran away with him,” she pointed out.
“I ran nowhere. I left with him for a reason. And you wouldn’t understand…you just wouldn’t.”
Tara smiled with surprise at her sister and Jenny felt John pull his arm away. All eyes were now on her and she felt her face heating from their curiosity.
“I wouldn’t understand, huh?” Tara retorted. “You forget, sister dear, I have years of experience on you.”
“Yes, years,” Jenny teased.
Tara rolled her eyes and things were beginning to feel normal again now that the two sisters were arguing and taunting like they always had.
“Tara,” Nik interjected, “why don’t we just drop the subject of Emir for now. I for one would rather not discuss it.”
“Yes, let’s listen to Nik. He and I already said all there was so say in Johar. Didn’t we, Nik?” Jenny challenged.
Nik looked at her with narrowed eyes and returned coolly, “Yes, Jenny, we did. And you have school to start soon, don’t you?”
“I do.” Jenny pushed to her feet, excused herself and found the downstairs bathroom. There, she shed a few tears over missing Emir, washed her face and tucked the charm back under her shirt. When she emerged, John called to her from his study and she walked through the open double doors and found him seated behind his stately desk.
He smiled warmly at her and gestured for her to sit. She obeyed and then with a very kind, deep voice he requested, “Jenny, could you tell me about this boy you met in Johar?”
“He’s not a boy, John. He’s a man. He was a military officer and he saved my life…several times.”
“And his name?” John queried.
“Emir Sabet. He’s going to work with Razi, uh…King Abdul-Razzaq, now. They’re distant cousins.”
“Ah, I see. Well, it’s good to know the man will be employed in that changing country,” John commented. “And I’m glad he saved you, my dear. I would be heartbroken should anything ever happen to you.”
“Thanks, John,” Jenny said, rising. “You are always so kind to me.”
“It’s only because I adore you, Jenny. And I adored your parents. You and I…well, we’ll always be something like family to one another, won’t we?”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Sheiks of Kumar IX: Family Reunion – Chapter 2