10. Chapter 10 Abandoned on Arrival
JULIANA
Iswear if there had been a privacy panel between the front of the SUV and the back, I would have ended up naked and in Gabriel's lap before we reached Ayn al-Hayat.
Those kisses? So hot!
Not to mention the way Gabriel looks in his traditional robes.
He's always panty-meltingly gorgeous, but his bespoke suits have nothing on his regal bearing wearing a collarless white thawb with tan embroidery around the neck and down to the middle of his chest as well as the end of the long sleeves.
His gorgeous dark hair is covered by a tan and indigo checked ghutra.
Who knew the headdress framing his face would give him even more consequence? Maybe it's the agal made of copper and gold entwined cord rather than the traditional black.
Maybe it's just that it's been five days and my eyes were starving for the sight of him despite our daily video calls.
But this version of Gabriel is too delicious to look away from.
"If you keep watching me as you are, I will not be able to keep my hands off of your delectable body," he warns me gutturally. "I have already broken protocol kissing you, I am not sure even my consequence will survive claiming you in the backseat of an SUV."
"I don't believe it," I try to tease, but my voice comes out breathy and strained.
"Look away from me, jawharat qalbi."
Warmth suffuses my entire being. He just called me jewel of my heart. Little jewel touches my emotions on a fundamental level where they went to hide after my father stopped calling me that. Jawharat qalbi draws that little girl out of her hiding place and turns her face toward the sun.
Gabriel is not a man who leads with his heart. If he has allowed me a place in it, I am very special to him.
Like he is to me.
I want him to know all of me. I need to know he can accept the girl I was as well as the woman I am.
Needing to share the pain in my past that shaped me, but unable to look at him while I do it, I finally turn my head to stare out the dark window like he wants me to. "My dad used to call me little jewel, but he stopped when I was eight. He said I wasn't really little so it didn't fit."
"Surely at eight, you were still a little girl though."
I shake my head, blinking at tears I refuse to shed. I've cried over the way my parents treated me too many times. "It wasn't about my age, but that I hadn't lost what my mom called my baby fat."
"I do not understand."
"From the moment I was born, I became Paloma Delgado Caldwell's project. Her ultimate charitable endeavor."
"You are her daughter, not an endeavor." His words are so certain.
And I wish more than almost anything that they were true. "I was born with a port wine stain birthmark. It wasn't all that dark at first. More light pink than burgundy."
It was light enough my mom didn't try to cover it with makeup for my baby pictures.
"You have no such mark now."
Why he knows that makes my heart smile if not my lips. "My father is the CEO for Caldwell Biomedical Holdings. Before my birth, their focus was on anti-aging treatments and they'd had a breakthrough discovery for repairing photodamage and other skin repair."
"I know."
Of course he does. "I researched you too." Well, Mark did, but I read what he found.
Gabriel makes another strange sound, but I ignore it. I need to get this out now, to make him understand.
"When I was born with the birthmark on my face, he refocused all the energy of his top research teams onto treatment for port wine stain birthmarks.
He refused to allow me to be treated with other protocols.
I was eighteen months old when his researchers developed a superior laser treatment protocol using existing technologies so they didn't have to get FDA approval before using it. "
Gabriel's hand takes mine and he laces our fingers together. "It worked."
"Eventually." But not until the pain of living with the birthmark was bigger than my fear of the treatment.
"When I was three, I developed an aversion to the more aggressive therapy protocols.
They hurt. I remember screaming and begging.
I remember pain though my father claims it is a painless procedure to this day. "
It's not. Some people experience nothing more than mild discomfort. I don't know if my nerve endings were too activated, or what, but even when I was older, the treatment hurt.
I didn't give into the pain then though. I'd learned to hide from the pain inside my mind and hide it from others too.
"You had the treatment at some point. You have no birthmark."
"I did, but not until I was fourteen. When I was little, it didn't bother me. I got teased for being fat." And that was as much about attitude as my physical body. My mom and dad told me I was fat. I saw myself as fat. I dressed to hide my body even then. "But no one teased me about my birthmark."
"That changed."
"It began to darken when I was eleven and the fat shaming turned into aggressive bullying. I begged my parents to homeschool me, but they refused. A Caldwell doesn't hide." Only hiding was how I survived.
"Look at me, my little jewel. I cannot stand to hear these words without seeing your precious face."
The only light in the car is the reflected glow from the dashboard in front. He's not going to see much, which is how I convince myself to turn back to him.
The shadows hide his expression from me too, but the warmth of his hand holding mine is all the anchor I need to continue. "I started thinking about ending it all. No one could hurt me if I wasn't there to be hurt."
"What are you saying?"
"My therapist called them suicidal ideations. I wasn't thinking of killing myself, just disappearing." But the only way to make that happen was not to be alive anymore.
His quick intake of breath is the only reaction Gabriel makes to my words.
"Once I started therapy at Solace Ridge, things started to get better. Not at school, but inside me. Things never got better at school."
His hand tightens on mine. "Is that why you did not want to get a degree beyond your associates?"
"I was able to take several classes online and spend minimal time at school.
Going to a community college meant not living in a dorm around other students.
My parents were…" I sigh. "They didn't understand me and they still don't, but I understood them.
I knew what to expect from them. Opening myself up to another group of peers who might be even more cruel than the ones in my high school wasn't something I was willing to do. "
"Your parents, were they disappointed?"
"Yes. They thought that since the treatment had been a success, I should be normal.
Mom couldn't understand why I wouldn't go to the weight loss camp she found for me.
Dad said I'd never find a husband if I didn't go to university.
" I laugh, but it's a hollow sound filled with old grief.
"I didn't want to find a husband. I didn't want to let anyone in at all. "
"Yet DeeDee became your friend. You opened yourself to Juan." The way he says Juan's name makes it clear that's not a friendship Gabriel's happy about.
Surprise. Surprise.
Not.
"And Aisha. None of them judged me. About anything. Ever. They were safe."
"I will never judge you, juwayhira."
"I believe you, but you aren't safe either."
"In what way am I not safe?" His tone is gentle, not offended.
"You could break my heart. I've kept it locked behind an iron door forged in pain for so long, but you had the key. Now…" Now, it's vulnerable like a newborn foal.
"Your heart is safe with me." He presses our joined hands over my heart. "I will protect it with a will of iron forged by generations of rulers."
Dawn has not yet broken through the darkness of night when we pull onto the long, palm tree lined drive leading to the palace and I get my first glimpse of Gabriel's home.
Surrounded by more palm trees lit with spotlights shooting up from their bases, the structure that looks big enough to be its own town, rises up from the desert floor.
With a large central dome surrounded by smaller ones topped with spires, and covered in fine stucco, the historical palace glows golden from the outdoor lighting.
Arched windows cast more shimmering light in welcome.
"It's beautiful," I breathe.
When I'm standing outside the SUV looking up at the magnificent building that holds centuries of Gabriel's family's history in its walls, my appreciation turns to awe.
"I can feel you here. You and your family and its history." I blush, realizing how fanciful I sound. But there's a weight to Gabriel's presence here that I didn't sense in Santa Fe, no matter how intimidating he was at first. "That probably sounds sill—"
Gabriel's finger presses against my lips, hushing me. "It pleases me to hear you say so. You please me in every way, Juliana."
How does he turn my name into an endearment even more intimate than juwayhira?
"I'm glad. You please me too."
"I plan to please you in every way as well," he promises with heated innuendo. "Later. Now, I must introduce you to the palace staff you will encounter most while you are here. They await us in the foyer."
When we enter the grand entry hall that is at least twice as big as my entire apartment, I'm relieved to learn that several of the people waiting are security staff that will remain in the background whenever I am outside my suite of rooms.
Two are women and they are the only ones allowed to speak to me directly.
I greet them in Arabic and thank them for watching over me.
I had some very long phone calls with Aisha in preparation for the trip and asked her a ton of questions about protocols and things not to do that might offend.
For me, the hardest thing is going to be to remember not to use my left hand for any sort of social interaction or eating.
We do so many things with our hands without even thinking about it.
I practiced using only my right hand for certain tasks and interaction every day since Gabriel left and I'm still not great at it. But I'm trying.
Gabriel introduces me to the mas'ool (which is apparently something like a butler, not that I have any practical experience with one of those personages either) as Hamdan, but then proceeds to tell me, "Any requests you may have for him can be passed through Reem, or your female haris."
Wearing a pristine white traditional thawb and ghutra with the standard black agal and a charcoal grey vest over the thawb, the mas'ool touches his forehead but does not say anything.
"As you wish," I tell Gabriel, wondering just how far back in time I've travelled.
"This is Moza. She is my valued and highly efficient mushrifa."
An older woman wearing a tunic-and-trousers set in the same dark charcoal as Hamdan's vest with a navy blue hijab bows her head toward me. "Welcome to Dar al-Hayat. It is my pleasure to see to your comfort while you stay."
She motions for a young woman to step forward. "This is Reem. She will be your al-murafidha, your…" She searches for the right word. "Companion while you are here."
Aisha had warned me I might be assigned a murafidha during my stay in the palace.
According to my friend, Reem will help me navigate the centuries-old royal residence, make sure I know where I'm supposed to be and when I'm supposed to be there for meals and the like.
Considering how different all of this is to my life at home, I'm thrilled to have someone I can ask questions I would probably be too embarrassed to otherwise. Like, "Where's the bathroom?"
Her dark hair pulled back into a French twist, Reem is wearing sage green high-waisted palazzo pants and a long-sleeved top in the same color. Instead of a hijab, she has a forest green silk scarf arranged artfully around her neck.
She offers me her right hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Caldwell."
"Please call me Juliana," I request, shaking her hand.
Reem looks to Gabriel, not quite meeting his eyes, but making it obvious she is seeking his guidance.
"All staff will address my intended as my lady."
I gasp, but the mas'ool, mushrifa and Reem touch their foreheads without a single subtle tell that they are surprised by the instruction, or his claim I am his intended.
I'm not so sanguine and open my mouth to refute it, but the look in his eyes borders on the forbidding and I realize how much of a faux pas it would be to correct the prince in front of others.
Giving him my own version of forbidding, and you-just-wait-until-I-get-you-alone look, I press my lips together without uttering a word.
"Reem will show you to your room. Take a nap. It will be my pleasure to see you later."
He's dismissing me? I just got here. And he wants me to go to my room? To take a nap? After what I shared with him in the SUV, I don't know…I thought we'd talk some more or something.
Come on, Juliana. He probably has work to do and he said he would see you later.
My inner pep talk does nothing to dispel my feeling of abandonment as Reem leads me away from the man I reorganized my life for and spent sixteen hours on a plane to see.