14. Chapter 14 Negotiating the Present
JULIANA
There's no question anymore about the timing of Gabriel meeting my parents if he wants to get married in four weeks.
Because I might be pregnant.
It has to happen as soon as possible, or I will never hear the end of it.
"My mother hosts a charity gala for her birthday every year. It's on the 21st. We have dinner together as a family before we go to the gala." I follow Gabriel down a narrow spiral staircase. "Will you be back in Santa Fe then? I didn't know what your business plans were that were taking you back."
He stops in front of a section of wall with a lever. "I had no business plans. I was returning to see you."
My heart gives a big kathump.
I wasn't a convenience he intended to see when he returned for business. He was planning the trip just to see me and probably having to rearrange his schedule like he did for my visit here.
He says he doesn't love me, but I'm not sure there's an appreciable difference between being loved and being seen as Gabriel sees me and treated like I matter.
"So, can you make the trip to include the 21st?" I ask again.
"Yes. We will return to Santa Fe on the 19th so we have time for me to meet them on a day not so dominated by a yearly social event."
Little does he know, but I'd much rather the meeting happen then. It would be even better if we could skip the family dinner and meet at the gala. Then my mother and father wouldn't be able to focus on me and my fiancé.
But that's not realistic. And maybe it won't be so bad. I mean, this is what mom and dad have wanted for years. For me to get married.
Even according to their values, they could hardly find me a better prospect than a desert prince.
"I think I should call them and break the news ahead of time.
We can set up something for you to meet them after you arrive in Santa Fe.
Tessa will be in town early with her family too.
If I ask Bobby, he might be able to arrange to be there as well.
" My brother travels a lot for his job as VP with our dad's company.
"When I arrive?" Gabriel asks.
"You know I am only going to be here for two weeks." I fly home a week before my mom's birthday.
"Surely, you can stay until such time as we can return together." Gabriel looks through a peephole before pushing the lever down.
The wall swings outward, revealing a library.
Buying time to get my now chaotic thoughts in order, I rush forward to explore the room. It's two stories high, completely open in the center, with a narrow walkway around its circumference giving access to the bookshelves on the second floor.
I spin in a circle, trying to take it all in. "This is amazing."
"I thought you would like it. You will find none of the racy romance novels you prefer to read on the shelves, but perhaps you can fix that lack after our marriage."
I laugh. "Yeah, I can just see my paperbacks shelved beside leather volumes that are probably over a century old."
"There are older folios, but there are many modern books as well. My family are all avid readers, though my father, oldest brother and I read very little fiction."
No surprise there. "And your younger brother?"
"He shares my mother's love of mystery and suspense."
I don't ask about his younger sister. If she's anything like I was at seventeen, she's good at hiding the types of books she likes to read.
My homeroom teacher in middle school introduced me to YA romance, the books actually written for teens and preteens, not the racier ones written for adult women.
Those books probably saved my life. They gave me a place to hide from the reality of being bullied, but they also made me feel good during a time when good feelings were really scarce on the ground.
Gabriel points toward the other side of the room with his hand. "The section of modern fiction is housed in the reading alcove over there."
I want nothing more than to peruse the shelves and check out what a reading alcove in a library as magnificent as this one looks like, but I need to set Gabriel straight about us traveling back to the States together.
"With only a month until I have to quit, I can't leave the ranch in any more of a bind than that will cause them.
" The responsible thing to do would be to fly back to Santa Fe immediately and start the search.
But if I'm going to marry a man I met only three weeks ago, I need this time confirming I will fit into his life.
It's going to take weeks to find someone to take my place in both the training and therapy program.
" The thought of leaving the ranch makes my insides churn.
But there's no way I can marry Gabriel and continue working there.
I will find something to do here. Maybe I can work with the horses in Gabriel's stables. I don't know what the protocols are for a princess-slash-sheikha working. There's so much I don't know about the new life I'm embarking on.
Things I need to learn, things I have to discuss with Gabriel. I'm not my mother. The life of a fulltime socialite and philanthropist is not for me.
But how many royal events will I be expected to attend with Gabriel in a year?
How are we going to mesh such disparate lives?
A yawning pit of obstacles and questions I don't know if I want the answer to forms in front of me. Because what if the answer is that we can't?
So, I do what I always do when faced with something that might cause me emotional pain, I deflect. "If you're worried about sending the jet back to the states only to have it turn around to come back and get you, I can fly home commercial."
Gabriel slashes the air with his hand. "No. You will never fly commercial again."
"That's fine by me." I smile.
But Gabriel's frown says he hasn't forgotten the real issue at hand here. "Your dedication to the ranch is laudable. I will put palace staff at your disposal to help find your replacement so you can return soonest to Zahriya."
The to me goes unsaid, but it's there in his eyes and it cuts off the impending panic attack.
We will figure this out.
"I'm not like Paloma," I hear myself saying. "I'm not cut out for the life of a socialite. I can deal with a few formal events a year, but not a life focused on them."
Wow. My therapist would be so proud.
"I know." He pulls me close, holding me like I’m precious to him.
"You are happier with your horses than around people.
There are a few events of state each year that you must attend as my wife.
There are others I can attend without you.
If you arrange a visit to Santa Fe or Seattle to coincide with them, the scheduling conflict of you visiting your family will be an acceptable excuse for your absence. "
"You've thought about this," I say with wonder.
"Naturally. Your contentment in our life together is of paramount importance to me."
Even if I cannot be his top priority, there's no question I am in the top tier of his priorities.
"If one of our children takes after me, will you be as accepting and accommodating of their needs?" I can't help asking.
"Yes."
"Even if they are your heir?"
"Unless my father chooses to alter our laws, our child will inherit my sheikdom only if my oldest brother does not have a second son once he marries again."
"Oh. How does that work? Doesn't it cause resentment within the family?"
"There is no resentment. As royals, we are raised with an understanding of the right of succession. As for how it works, just as I came here to live with my uncle when I was sixteen to begin training for my role as Sheikh Jabal al-Dhahab, our nephew would come to live with us."
"When did you take over from your uncle and what is he doing now?" None of this was in the information my brother-in-law gathered on the royal family of Zahriya.
"I became sheikh at the age of twenty-five. If my uncle did not have heart problems that required him decreasing the stress in his life, I would not have taken over my role formally until I was thirty."
"Oh, wow. Your younger brother is only twenty-seven, right? But he's already a sheikh too."
"My father held the additional title of Sheikh Sahra al-Harir until my brother turned twenty-five. A distant cousin of my grandfather's generation operated as CEO for the petroleum company until that time."
"But your father had all the responsibilities of governance for the region?" I ask, trying to understand.
"Ultimately, but he used the responsibilities of the role to train my oldest brother in his role as Crown Prince from the age of twenty."
"But wasn't your brother still at university then?" I ask.
The Crown Prince has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Harvard and his MBA from Oxford. How did he have time to govern a region during those years?
"That was part of his training. The ability to manage his studies along with his responsibilities as sheikh."
"Wow…um, that seems kind of extreme to me. I think if you tried to foist that much onto one of our children in the guise of training them for their future role as whatever, I would go ballistic."
"Duly noted."
"I mean it, Gabriel. I won't have children with you if it means raising them like that." There's not even a twinge in my heart at the ultimatum.
I will never set my children up for that kind of stress, heir to a sheikdom, or not.
My sheikh doesn't look worried. "My father has had cause to regret the path he chose for my brother so early on."
"In what way?"
"When we were younger, Zayed smiled often. He made friends easily and charmed foreign dignitaries with his wit, but there is nothing of that warmth and sociability in my brother today."
"He's a diplomat for your country though."
"A cold and taciturn one."
"And your father regrets that?" I ask, needing to know Gabriel would not do the same thing to one of our children.
"He does. Zayed holds himself apart from the rest of the family. He is dedicated to welfare of our country and its people, but he is driven by duty."
"In order to carry the heavy burden your father placed on him so young, he had to close off his emotions." Sometimes, the only way to control debilitating stress is to cut ties with all emotion.
I've seen it in horses that come from uncaring and overly competitive owners on the racing and competition circuits. It can take years for them to trust their new circumstances enough to accept affection without shying and to express it. Some never do.
There are children who come to Solace Ridge in the same closed off condition. It breaks my heart every time thinking of the pressure those little ones were under to make them disconnect from their feelings so completely.
I don't want to give up my work with the horses or the children. But Gabriel came to the ranch the first time because he was interested in what we did there.
Whether, or not, he has concrete plans to bring equine therapy to Zahriya, I will convince him. I may be an introvert, but I'm no shrinking violet. He wants me content in my life and having the work that means so much to me will go a long way toward making that a reality.
Besides, he said my mother should be proud of my work with the horses and the therapy program at Solace Ridge. That implies he would be proud to have his wife involved in such an endeavor. Right?
"You may be right," Gabriel says, acknowledging my comment about his brother's emotions.
Pretty sure I am, I nod. "Parents can make terrible mistakes with their children believing they are training them to deal with the real world."
Or in Prince Zayed's case, the world of a monarch.
"Your own parents taught you this." Gabriel rubs his hand up and down my back.
"My parents' refusal to homeschool me, or at the very least switch schools had long-lasting effects on my ability to trust them and others." That I trusted Gabriel so quickly and so deeply is something of a miracle.
"You paid a heavy emotional price for living up to the Delgado-Caldwell name," Gabriel says with understanding that no longer surprises me.
He gets human nature. I suppose that's part of being a ruler.
"I think your brother paid an even steeper price to live up to the expectations of his royal family."
Half expecting Gabriel to take umbrage at my words, I'm glad when he doesn't.
Instead, there's a flicker of sadness in his dark gaze. "We were all raised with a strong sense of duty, but he was the only one required to relinquish any semblance of a social or personal life from such a young age."
I lay my head against my sheikh's chest and hug him tight, trying to impart comfort.
"Our children will get the emotional support they need from us, whatever that means," I both promise and warn my fiancé.
"Yes, they will."
I take his words as the vow they sound like.
Gabriel finishes showing me the palace and by the time we're done, I’m really grateful Reem has been assigned to show me my way around. And not only because she's really nice.
There are three different courtyards, two stories in some sections of the palace and three in others. With so many rooms and corridors, it's going to take me the whole first year of our marriage to memorize how to find everything.
Our marriage.
I'm going to marry my sheikh and this beautiful, historic and confusing palace is going to be my home. I'm going to have the family that I crave. Children. A loving spouse, even if he doesn't use the word.
And acceptance.