Another Shot at Forever, page 13
Ara yanked the phone away from his ear at Anisa’s sudden shriek, the sound more excited than terrified, but hearing it still ratcheted his heart rate through the roof.
“Happy birthday to you!” she sang loudly and out of tune.
Zaynab must have heard his sister’s off-key singing because her curiosity flashed into surprise.
After her singing, Anisa chattered away and asked him about how he was spending his birthday.
Considering he’d completely forgotten what day it was, he grumbled, “I’m working.”
Anisa sighed as loudly in his ears as she’d sung, then lectured him about needing to lighten his workload before finally revealing the reason she had called.
“Nasser and I are coming for a visit.” She went on to explain that it was to do some shopping for her wedding later on that year—shopping she could have easily done where she was now in Canada. Which was why he sensed that the visit was also a good excuse for her to check in on him. Anisa had been texting him regularly since he’d come to London. She knew that he was living with Zaynab and that she was pregnant, and as excited as she was to be an aunt soon, he felt an undercurrent of worry from her. Though he didn’t know if it was worry for him or Zaynab, or heck, even the baby, whatever Anisa’s real reason for the sudden visit, he would always still welcome her.
So, instead of interrogating her, he asked, “When?”
“Four days from today. I know it’s short notice, but we’ve already booked our flight.”
Ara let her know that was fine, and after exchanging a few more pleasantries, they ended their call. He placed his phone down and acknowledged Zaynab’s inquisitive look.
“My sister and Nasser are coming for a visit. She was also calling because... Well, I’m sure you heard her.”
“I think half the café and street did,” she remarked dryly on Anisa’s screeching over his birthday, earning a small, amused smile from him.
“Anisa’s always been expressive.”
Zaynab laughed breezily. “Well, it will be nice to finally meet her. And, even better, they’ll be here for the baby shower next week.” Then after a noticeable pause, and looking far more solemn, she said, “I didn’t know it was your birthday.”
He stopped smiling and shrugged, knowing that her intrigue was warranted.
“It might sound like a lie, but I forgot what day it was.” In the same way he hadn’t celebrated Eid for years before this recent one with Zaynab, his birthday had become a nonevent since his parents’ passing. Another reminder of a personal life event that was stolen from him with their deaths. “Anisa might be the only one who remembers what day it is,” he said. And even then, for the four years he and his sister hadn’t spoken, he’d gone without any birthday wishes.
Zaynab sat in contemplative silence, but then she smiled and said, “Happy birthday. I guess lunch is on me then.”
Though he tried to argue, when the bill came and the server held out a payment terminal, Zaynab tapped her card faster than he could. Ara couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed, not with the way her triumphant grin made him smile. And she continued to smile even after his phone interrupted them again, the screen lighting up with Daniel’s name this time.
“We’re on our way,” he said after seeing that nearly two hours had elapsed since he and Zaynab had left the house for their lunch. He rang up the driver next. Even though they had walked the fifteen minutes to the café, it was time he didn’t want to lose walking back now.
“Actually, I’m going to stay behind and meet up with Salma soon anyway. She wants to do a little shopping.”
Hearing the first of this, Ara frowned but nodded. He didn’t like leaving her, but her friend would be keeping her company soon. “All right, but you have the driver’s number. Call him when you’re done shopping. I’ll even let him know to give Salma a ride if she wishes it.”
Zaynab thanked him, and in a few minutes, he was in the back of the car and pulling away from where she sat alone at their table, watching and waving to him.
* * *
Despite having a criminal for a father, deception and guile didn’t come as naturally to Zaynab.
So lying to Ara about Salma meeting with her and sending him off back to the work that lately consumed his attention was hard on her. But the moment the car ferrying him away turned the corner, she sprang up and strode away from the café, determination setting her shoulders straight and holding her head up high.
She was on a secret mission to make this birthday as special for him as possible.
But as she walked into the cute, colorful little shops lined along Notting Hill’s famous Portobello Road, Zaynab found this was a far easier task imagined than accomplished.
She had gotten to know more about Ara since living with him here in London then when she’d first married him and moved into his beautiful big home in Berbera. And yet shopping for the man was still a challenge. He seemed to have everything at his fingertips already, what with his tremendous fortune. What could he possibly want that she alone could give him?
Still, Zaynab managed to cobble together what she thought might work, and after shopping for a couple hours, she took up his offer and rang for the driver.
She swore the driver to secrecy as he helped haul her shopping bags into the car, and then from the car and inside the house. Giving him a tip and thanking him, Zaynab sneaked upstairs, praying that none of Ara’s security cameras caught and ruined her surprise for him. She’d tried her best to disguise the presents with innocuous brown paper bags. He would only think she’d been shopping a lot, and that would keep him from guessing what she had in store.
Once alone in her room, Zaynab set to work wrapping his birthday gifts.
Her back ached by the time she sat back and admired her hard but loving effort to surprise him.
Now she wasn’t deluding herself into thinking that her presents would, like magic, fix whatever had frayed between them. But she did hope that it would be a start to a conversation toward healing and that this hurdle before them would be only that, an obstacle they could surmount together.
With that positive mindset buoying her spirit, Zaynab went about her day as normally as possible and counted out the hours until dinner when she would see him next.
In spite of his workload, Ara still ate meals with her regularly enough. Yet the mood between them was decidedly different than what it used to be. Rather than the easy flowing conversation, he now spoke less frequently and getting him to talk more than a few words was like squeezing blood from a stone. She might as well be chatting with herself sometimes...
Or better yet, a wall.
Zaynab sighed, shaking off the sourness crowding in with her despairing thoughts and smiling until she felt hopeful again.
Because there was no way Ara wouldn’t be knocked off his feet with this surprise. When the familiar decadent smells of a warm freshly cooked meal perfumed the entire house, Zaynab crept out of her room with the gift bag behind her back and hurried faster downstairs than she usually did.
Though he’d been working more, he still found time to cook for her. And just as every evening before, Ara had the table set and ready when she entered the dining room, and all she had to do was grab the seat beside him at the far end of the table.
He was already seated and waiting on her.
Normally they would eat, but Zaynab didn’t sit immediately, instead standing by her chair and attempting to not squirm or fidget when Ara looked up at her raptly.
Blushing plenty though, she cleared her throat and pulled around the gift bag she hid behind her back. “For you,” she said quickly and almost breathlessly.
She had a whole pretty speech prepared, but she forgot all of it the instant his eyes clapped on her.
He didn’t keep her waiting, taking the silver straps of the gift bag and pushing away his table setting to open his present.
One by one, he silently pulled out the gifts. A self-heating mug for all the tea he drank, a silly book full of dad jokes that he could use when their baby was older and a photo album he opened to the first page and where she’d tucked into the photo sleeve the first and more recently second ultrasound of Button, side by side.
Zaynab sucked in her lips, the gifts self-explanatory, but still wanting to explain what each gift meant to her and, hopefully, what it could mean to him.
Eventually Ara stood and walked up to her.
She held perfectly still, waiting to see what he would do and finally hoping to understand how he felt.
“Thank you,” he said simply, his voice deeper and gruffer with indiscernible emotion. Even now his eyes were guarded and his expression closed off to her.
But when he took hold of her shoulders, Zaynab’s rising concern eased off. He kissed her forehead, the imprint of when he’d done it first at Eid still emblazoned in her mind and heart. She expected it to feel the same but it didn’t. Desperate to recreate that feeling from before, she closed her eyes and leaned in, her nose tickled by his beard and her rounder, tauter baby bump pressed up against the hard, flat planes of his abs beneath his soft dress shirt.
She only opened her eyes when he lifted his mouth away and held her back at arm’s length.
Looking at him was torture afterward, seeing the emptiness staring back at her when her lungs were constricted so tightly it hurt to breathe. Hurt to speak up as he sat back down, returned her gifts into the larger gift bag and placed it aside at the foot of the dining table like all of it was an afterthought now to whatever came next. In this case, their dinner. And then later, she knew, it would be his work that took precedence over everything else. Including being with her.
And although Ara had shown his gratitude, it had felt empty. Forced, she observed sadly.
Not knowing what to say, and disappointed by his lackluster reaction, Zaynab compelled herself to take her seat when all she wanted to do was run upstairs to the refuge of her bedroom, where she could cry the heartbroken tears she was holding back right then.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ONCE AGAIN ARA was destroying a good thing he had going with Zaynab.
He’d already ruined his marriage, and now he was demolishing the good impression that he had worked hard to achieve in the short time they had lived together once more. And even though he knew his actions were hurting her, and he wanted to stop, apologize and grovel his way back into her good graces, Ara just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Like a train careening fast toward a break in the tracks, all he had to look forward to was the promise of a steep plunge and the fiery wreck awaiting him in the end.
And the end appeared to be the baby shower Salma offered to host on his and Zaynab’s behalf.
“Here are the parents-to-be!” Salma announced their arrival to the guests now all gathered in the spacious and well-tended back garden and patio of her parents’ home.
Having arrived for their visit a couple days ago, Anisa and Nasser were the only guests on his side. And aside from her mother, who Ara had flown in for the party, everyone else who came up to congratulate them were friends of Zaynab’s.
He recognized her friend Neelima from the restaurant, and then there was her octogenarian client, Opaline. With Opaline was the man who’d been in Zaynab’s resort suite in Mauritius, and whom Ara now knew after researching was Opaline’s grandnephew, Remi. Though he had no right to it, certainly not after how he’d been acting toward Zaynab as of late, Ara still tensed up when Remi’s friendly smile shined down over her and his hand touched her arm, lingering there as he passed his well wishes on her soon-to-be motherhood.
Zaynab smiled back at Remi, looking far more relaxed in that one moment than she had with Ara in a long while. Not since he’d been slowly retreating from her and the warmth and happiness she made him desire so very badly. Happiness that he frankly felt no right to, not when he was so confident that he’d end up hurting her.
I’ve hurt her before, haven’t I?
He had pushed her to the point of divorcing him. It had to have been a last resort for her. Knowing Zaynab, she wouldn’t have married him at all if she’d thought it would end in the dissolution of their marriage a year later.
No, Ara thought. He’d forced her hand with his cold attitude, and he was doing it again now.
“Are you all right?” Zaynab quietly asked him at one point as they were taking pictures beneath a white trellis wrapped by pretty, vibrantly bright flowering vines. She was alternating between looking at him and the phone cameras guests were holding up at them, smiling for everybody else, but the light of the gesture didn’t truly reach her dark eyes as she peered up at him. “Because if you’re not, you can tell me.”
“I’m fine,” he gritted out the lie.
Zaynab’s glare could have frosted the blooming flowers above their heads. “Really?” she said, her voice low, her words only for his ears. “You could’ve fooled me. It looks like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
“Zaynab...”
She narrowed her eyes at him as though quietly warning him off telling her any more falsehoods.
With possibly the worst timing, the professional photographer Salma had hired for the baby shower instructed, “That’s a good pose! Get in a little closer and just hold it there for a few seconds, please.”
Ara froze as Zaynab turned into him, smoothed her hands over the lapels of his suit jacket and gazed up at him, heeding the photographer’s instructions to the letter. To everyone else they must have appeared like an adoring couple eternally in love. She might have even fooled him if he wasn’t chilled by the emptiness looking up at him now. Like she’d utterly given up on trying to reach him, and somehow, that thought withered his already low opinion of himself.
“Perfect,” the photographer called out, aiming their lens at the other guests in attendance and giving them a break.
Zaynab quickly removed her hands from him and turned to walk away. He took a step after her instinctively but faltered in the follow-through and let her go in the end.
She didn’t look back at him once as she mingled with the guests, smiling warmly at everyone but him. Zaynab strolled through the garden in her beautiful pink dress and warmly welcomed the people who had taken precious time out of their day to celebrate with them. He should have been by her side doing the exact same thing, but instead, he stood apart from the party and general merriment, and merely spectated the festive mood all around him.
He could have been admiring the lengths that Salma had gone to in making this party a beautiful affair.
Gold and white balloons and streamers festooned the wooden fence cordoning off the backyard and the sliding glass doors into Salma’s parents’ home. Upbeat pop music played from someone’s portable Bluetooth speaker, and a catered buffet spread was ready to be enjoyed on two long folding tables. It was all very thoughtful of Salma to prepare for him and Zaynab, and given all the tireless effort that went to making this party happen, Ara only felt more villainous for not enjoying it as fully as he ought to have.
As he watched Zaynab from the sidelines, Ara was transported back to when he’d met her for the very first time.
He had walked up behind her as she looked out over the Indian Ocean from the bow of his yacht, the golden ribbons of sunset mirroring off the blackening waters holding his ship afloat. Sensing him before he announced his presence, Zaynab had turned slowly and, with a shy smile, she’d immediately captivated him.
She was weaving that same magic now on the party guests, her smile just as entrancing today as it was that day on his yacht.
Ara could envision her hosting his business dinners, welcoming potential new investors and helping him seal many lucrative deals for his company. Beyond that, he had selfishly wanted that smile of hers in his life forever. It was why he’d desired her from the start. Why he had chosen to make her his wife.
And why I’m in love with her.
At least to himself, Ara had never denied his strong affection for her, but it was becoming clearer to him more every day that his attraction now felt more like infatuation. He loved Zaynab, always had, and it was why he was working so hard now to keep her from getting any closer. Discourage her from loving him back. Protect her from the pain he knew he’d cause her.
Because love did that.
He’d loved his parents, and they had been killed and taken away from him. He had even deeply cared for her father before Sharmarke had been revealed to be a monster. No matter how alluring it was, loving her could only lead to his suffering. Maybe not today... But someday.
A muscle in his cheek hardened when Zaynab was by his side again to open the presents their guests gifted them.
She tried to avoid his eyes, but he could see that the enthusiasm she presented to her friends and mother was not as wholehearted as it might have been, and that was wholly his fault. She deserved to be happy, on this day especially. The only thing that comforted Ara right then was the knowledge that he was doing this for the good of his family. For Zaynab and their baby.
If that was the closest he could do to loving her outright then so be it.
* * *
Like any first-time expectant mother at her baby shower, Zaynab would’ve thought the occasion would have been a happy one. Instead, she had spent the few hours impatiently and guiltily waiting for the party to end.
And it was all because of Ara.
For over a month now she had been aware that he was acting more like the colder version of himself that she’d gotten after they first married. She’d made excuses for him quietly. He’s busy working. He just wants to help people. He’ll go back to giving our relationship priority soon enough.
But those excuses were slowly unveiling themselves to be threadbare reasons for her to overlook his off-putting and distancing attitude. And that was her mistake for not nipping it in the bud as soon as it became apparent to her. If she had, Zaynab wouldn’t have had to sit through his embarrassing glacial impression in front of all the family and friends who had showed up with gifts and well wishes for their baby shower.
