He could be such a gentleman. He could take her to Paris, sweep her off her feet, and kiss her like he’d never let her go. Then he could turn around and tell everyone it was meaningless.

  Not that he’d actually said those words, but when a person rushed to make sure everyone knew that a marriage was only a temporary problem, it seemed meaningless. Was he conflicted at all? The way he touched her made her think that he might be, but then maybe it was only because they were with the tribes. She had understood from the first night that while it was okay to be upfront with his family about the nature of their arrangement, the tribes couldn’t know.

  What was he going to do when Clementine stopped showing up at the oasis? Her throat went tight at the thought of him bringing in another woman to replace her.

  The good things about Samir had gotten past her defenses. The way he was honorable and respectful, and the way he seemed so delighted to bring her flowers from the desert to put on her bedside table and little baked delicacies from the camps to eat throughout the day…

  They were small things that Clementine had never known she wanted.

  Lying in bed mooning over him wasn’t getting her anywhere. She rubbed at her eyes, and with one last huge yawn, pushed herself upright and started getting ready for the day. Clementine bathed in the basin of water that an attendant replaced three times per day, swept her hair back from her face, and put on one of the dresses the tribal women wore. It was long enough that she could kneel down to work and stand up again without having to rearrange the fabric, and the material was lightweight and breathable. At first, she’d thought it would be better to wear pants, but in the heat she preferred dresses with a pair of shorts underneath.

  She had just slipped it over her head when Samir came striding into the tent, his skin glowing.

  “You’re awake.” He came across the tent and kissed her on the temple, his hand sliding affectionately across the back of her neck. “Just in time.”

  “For…” She took one last look at herself in the mirror perched on a low dresser made from dark, gleaming wood. They were so different, she and Samir. Like the sun and moon.

  “Investors,” he prompted. “We have a couple of investors coming to see the saffron crop.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “If you’re too tired—”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I’m up now. Let’s meet them.”

  Twenty minutes later, they strolled past the first greenhouse in the row of ten. Her eyelids still felt heavy, but she kept them open as much as she could. It probably looked weird. She smiled over at the woman, Tala, and tried to blink away the heaviness. Samir was deep in conversation with Tala’s husband, Latif. Clem opened her mouth. None of what Maryum had taught her came to mind, and she was only catching snippets of what Samir was saying. It flew over her head like a cluster of agitated birds.

  This was why Samir was so pleased with a temporary marriage. She couldn’t even hold her own in conversation, and it was awkward.

  Tala said something to her, her face kind, but Clem couldn’t understand a word.

  “I’m sorry,” she answered. It was so hot. Why was it so hot out already? “Pardon me?”

  Tala smiled and repeated herself, slowly, but her voice sounded garbled. Clem’s head was floating above her shoulders. She blinked harder. Her head was floating, yes, and curiously empty, aside from the heat of the day. There was water in the air here, she remembered. A river nearby. A river, out in the desert. And had Samir said something about a waterfall? It would feel so good to swim.

  “The river,” she said, catching a glimpse of Samir’s eyes, and then everything went dark.

  Clem’s eyes fluttered closed and her knees went out from underneath her. Samir’s heart stopped.

  Breathless, he leaped around Tala and caught Clem just before she hit the ground. She was out—her limbs heavy, head lolling, and he had a moment of sheer panic. He fell to his knees, gathering her in his arms, and stroked her cheek.

  “Clementine,” he said, jostling her shoulder with a little more force. “Clementine.” No response. He bent his head to her lips and felt the gentle heat of her breath against his cheek. Still breathing—that was hopeful, at least, but her cheeks were a mottled pink.

  “Clementine,” he said again, heart in his throat. Her eyelids fluttered, and a powerful relief gripped him. He braced her against him and stood up, Latif reaching out a hand to steady him. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I have to get her back inside. I—”

  “Go,” Latif said. “We understand.”

  As far as investor meetings went, this one had been quite the disaster. Samir hoped the couple would be able to separate the adrenaline of Clem collapsing from the general success of the greenhouses, but he couldn’t spare the time or the breath to tell them that. He hurried back toward their tent. What could it have been? The heat? It was true that the tribal tents didn’t have air conditioning, but they were well ventilated, and the desert breezes were comfortable at night.

  Samir kicked aside the flap of the door and went inside. One of the women from the village had been in to tidy, pulling the covers tight on the bed, and Samir put Clem down on top of it all with infinite care.

  He got a cool, damp cloth and laid it across her forehead before pulling a chair close to her side. His heartbeat was loud enough to drown out all the sounds from outside the tent, but after a few minutes—it could have been a few hours—it settled. People’s voices passed by the tent. Samir reached out and took Clem’s hand in his. He’d been so blind, all over again. Just like with Tahlia.

  Tahlia was the younger sister of Aliyah’s husband, a businessman named Fahd. She’d visited the palace several times when Fahd and Aliyah’s marriage was being arranged, and Samir had been instantly taken with her. She was witty and charming and always close, always with a hand on his arm and a whisper in his ear. He thought she was in love with him. Then one of her distant cousins swooped in, a man richer even than Samir, and she’d transferred her affections so quickly, Samir’s head had spun.

  He’d only seen what he wanted to see—Tahlia’s devotion, Clementine’s dedication. He hadn’t let himself notice that life with the desert tribes was harder on her than he’d thought. This wasn’t her world.

  He didn’t know what he’d been thinking, bringing her out here for such a long time. It had seemed like such a good idea, back in the Cosmopolitan, to bring her to Omirabad. Only now it struck him as utterly foolish. She clearly hadn’t been any better off here than she would have been at her own house. In New York, this wouldn’t have happened.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Clementine,” he said, and his voice hitched on her name.

  Clem gave him a little smile. “You were calling me.” Her forehead wrinkled. “We were outside, weren’t we?” She lifted her head and realization dawned on her face. “Oh, crap. The investors—”

  “Are plenty worried about you,” he finished for her. “So am I.”

  “I’m sorry, Samir. The heat has been getting to me for the past few days. I thought it would be fine out by the greenhouses, but obviously it wasn’t.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t realize, and I should have.”

  “I’ll shake it off.” She pushed herself up on one elbow, letting go of his hand in the process. He missed it instantly but swallowed the feeling. “I’m sure it was just an off morning. I’ll drink some extra water today and—”

  Samir shook his head. “It’s time for you to go back to the palace. You’ll be far more comfortable there, and there are doctors who can help you. I insist.”

  The corners of Clementine’s mouth turned down. “All right.” She scanned down the length of her body as if it would offer her some clue as to why she’d fainted. “When do we leave?”

  “We aren’t,” he said. “I’ll have one of my people drive you back. For the moment, I’m needed here, with the crop.” Samir wanted to be the one to take her back to the palace and introduce her to the doctors. But it simply wasn’t in the cards. It was a crucial time for the saffron crop, and he needed to make some headway with the investors. Surely they’d come back into the village and someone would talk with them, but Samir was the one with this responsibility. It wouldn’t be right to shuffle it off onto someone else.

  Clem looked down, a tear gathering at the corner of one eye. Her chin trembled, the beginning of a storm, he was sure.

  Then she pressed her lips into a hard line and flicked away the tear. When she looked at him again, her blue eyes were clear. “I’ll get my things together,” she said.

  “I’ll make the call right away,” he told her. “Don’t worry about your things. You rest, and I’ll take care of everything.”

  Clementine didn’t argue. She put her head back on the pillow, and after a moment she rolled over, putting her back to him.

  There was something more he should say. Samir felt it on the tip of his tongue, but the words eluded him. He reached for her to put a hand on her shoulder, then hesitated. She probably wasn’t thrilled with him right now, and even though he had the strange desire to curl up in bed next to her…

  Things needed to be done. He had a call to make and people to talk to, and even though he could feel Clementine’s disappointment in the air, it would be better this way.

  It would.

  15

  “You didn’t have to come,” Clementine told Nora later that afternoon. “But I’m glad you did.”

  The two women sat together in one of the guest rooms in the palace’s living quarters. It had seemed too weird to be visited by a doctor in Clementine’s own room, so they’d settled on one of the more anonymous guest rooms. Nora had pressed a bottle of water into Clem’s hands the moment she walked in, and she sipped it as they waited.

  “Please,” Nora said, in that same English accent that Clementine found absurdly charming. “Samir sent word ahead that you weren’t well, and I wasn’t about to let you meet with a palace physician in a strange country by yourself. Unless, of course, you wanted to.” Nora raised her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have wanted to. Aliyah offered to come, too, but Matek is fussing and—”

  “That would be a bit of a crowd, don’t you think?” Clementine laughed. It had been a strange visit so far—a doctor coming to the palace seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

  “Yes. The rooms here are a good size, but—”

  There was a knock at the door, and it opened with all the confidence shown by any of the doctors Clem had seen in the United States.

  “Good morning,” said the doctor, in her white coat, and Nora jumped up out of her seat.

  “Dr. Abadi.” Nora’s voice was full of surprise and delight. She crossed the room and gave the older woman, whose dark hair was shot through with silver, a quick hug. “I was expecting the royal physician.”

  “It seems that when Sheikh Samir called your husband with the news, he had a change of heart about the all-male medical staff at the palace.”

  “Smart,” Nora said.

  “I have to agree,” answered Dr. Abadi. “So now I’m an on-call physician for the palace, in addition to my work in the clinic.”

  Nora turned back to Clementine with a wide smile. “Dr. Abadi runs the women’s clinic that I volunteer at,” she said. “You can trust her. I certainly do.”

  It did make things easier. A knot in the center of Clementine’s chest unclenched as Dr. Abadi sat down next to the bed where Clementine reclined, feeling like a character from a gothic novel. Who saw a doctor from a bed in a bedroom? It felt less strange as Nora and Dr. Abadi chatted, and then Dr. Abadi pulled up a chair next to the bed and started to run through Clem’s medical history. She was warm and kind and not at all like some of the doctors Clementine had visited. There had always been a new doctor for every new foster home, and she rarely saw the same person twice. She probably wouldn’t see Dr. Abadi more than once, either, and it gave her a swift pang of disappointment. When was she going to get over that?

  “And when was the first day of your last period?” Dr. Abadi looked up from the tablet she carried, a stylus poised over the screen, ready to enter the date.

  “It was…” Clem automatically counted back three weeks, but that wasn’t right, because she didn’t have her period now. It came every twenty-eight days like clockwork. She was on the pill. “Wait, it was…” She felt around for her phone, which she remembered was in her purse back in her bedroom. “Do you have a calendar?”

  Dr. Abadi pulled one up and handed Clementine the tablet. She flipped back. She’d been in Omirabad more than a month. Her last period had been just before she went to Vegas. Clementine frowned at the screen. She counted again, then gave the tablet back, along with the date.

  “Are your periods fairly regular?” Dr. Abadi asked, eyes on Clem’s.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m late.”

  “The first thing I’d recommend is a pregnancy test.” Dr. Abadi had one in her bag and sent Clementine into the restroom to take it.

  It would be negative, of course. Clementine washed her hands and brought the test back out into the bedroom. “I don’t see any way it could be positive,” she said. “I’ve been on the pill.”

  “Clementine,” Nora said quietly. “I can step out, if you’d rather.”

  “No, please stay.” Clem wasn’t sure exactly why she was asking. Maybe it was because Nora had been so wonderful to her, and Clementine had a finely honed sense of who would make a good friend and who wouldn’t. It was a skill she’d had to develop to survive in foster care. “I’m sure it will be negative.” She sat back down on the bed and frowned. “But then…am I just sensitive to heat now?”

  “That could be it,” said Dr. Abadi. “Dehydration could also have been a factor.”

  The seconds ticked by. “Samir will want me to stay in the palace, then,” Clementine said, her pulse racing. She was sure the test would be negative. She’d never missed a pill. Yes, she was missing details from the first time she and Samir had slept together, but even if he hadn’t used a condom, she’d been on the pill. And she took it every day. Clem flipped through the Vegas trip in her mind. She had taken it every day, hadn’t she? Even though she was in a new place? One morning, she’d had to dig it out of her bag, but that didn’t mean…

  “Three minutes,” said Dr. Abadi, and all three women leaned closer to the table to see the result.

  PREGNANT, read the test. Big, bold letters. No uncertainty.

  Clementine blinked. Once. Twice. The letters on the test didn’t change.

  Her ears were ringing. Pregnant. Baby. An enormous, bright flash of hope—a family.

  “All right?” Dr. Abadi put a hand on Clementine’s shoulder, and she took in one big breath, then another. “Clementine,” the doctor repeated. “Are you all right?”

  Clem glanced up at her, then across at Nora. “I guess I’m pregnant,” she said, and laughed, the other two women laughing with her.

  Nora jumped in right away. “The fainting isn’t normal,” she said. “Dehydration would have a bigger effect in early pregnancy.”

  “From now on, you’ll need to pay attention to your water intake,” Dr. Abadi said. “Plenty of fresh vegetables. A healthy diet. I can give you a sheet of all the pertinent information. If you’re comfortable with it, I’d like to see you at the clinic for an ultrasound…no, no, not the clinic.” Dr. Abadi shook her head. “I can come to you in another six weeks for the first ultrasound.”

  In six weeks, Clementine would be packing up to leave Omirabad. That didn’t matter.

  “Yes. Yes, that would be good.”

  “In the meantime, if you need anything else, this is my personal cell.” Dr. Abadi pulled a pad of paper from her bag and wrote her number on it, then ripped it off and handed it to Clementine. “Nora has my number as well, and she can help you with any immediate concerns. She’s a wonderful midwife.”

  Nora smiled proudly, waving it off. “You’re too kind.”

  “It’s only a matter of accuracy,” said Dr. Abadi. “I’ll send some prenatal vitamins back with Nora tomorrow.” She stepped forward and gave Clementine a quick embrace. “Congratulations.” Her cell phone beeped then, and she took it out of her bag and frowned at the screen. “Back to the clinic. Have a drink of water,” she called over her shoulder as she swept from the room.

  They were left in a silence that seemed to roar, it was so loud.

  “What would you say to a walk in the garden?” Clementine asked Nora.

  Nora pursed her lips. “Are you feeling up to it? I don’t want to get on Samir’s bad side by causing you to faint again.”

  “We’ll stay in the shade,” Clementine promised. “I’ll sit on a bench every five minutes, if that’s what you’d like.” The news lapped up against her mind in an endless series of waves, and she needed to move. It was making her feel seasick. Pregnant. Baby. Family. Samir. Over and over and over. Many of the foster homes she’d lived in had been overfull, with two or three children sharing a bedroom. Sometimes even four. The only way Clementine could get time to think was by walking outside, rain or shine, snow or bitter cold.

  She stood up carefully from the bed, testing her body. No more lightheadedness. No more heaviness behind her eyes. A walk would do her good.

  They went through the palace and out to the garden, walking side by side.

  “I’m not sure what this means,” Clementine said finally. Maybe it was too much to talk to Nora about this, but she’d been in the room—she already knew everything. And Nora was married to Rashid. They had their own son, Taj, who was nearly eight months old now. She of all people would be able to understand, wouldn’t she?

  Nora cut a glance over to her, eyebrows raised. “It means you’re pregnant. Samir will be thrilled to hear the news. In fact, we should call—”

  “No, please don’t.” Nora stopped in the middle of the path. “I need to figure out what I’m going to do. A child would…well, he’d be stuck with me forever if we had a child together. And I’m not even sure if I…if he…”