Free The Desert Lord's Baby by Olivia Gates

fail, no matter how rosily everything starts.”
    “Your parents’ marriage fell apart, too?”
    “Yeah.” She leaned on the wall, let out a ragged breath.
    “Theirs lasted a whopping five years. Half of them in escalating misery. I was only four and I still remember their rows.”
    “So you have a couple of bad examples and you think the marriage institution is set up for failure?”
    Her full lips twisted, making his tingle. But it was the assessing glance she gave him that made him see himself taking her against the wall. “Don’t you? You’re—what? Mid-thirties? And you’re a sheikh from a culture that views marriage as the basis for life, urges youths to marry as early as possible and a prince who must have constant pressure to produce heirs. You must have a worse opinion of marriage than mine to have evaded it this long, to be proposing a marriage as a necessary evil to solve a problem. Uh…make that a potential catastrophe.”
    He gritted his teeth. “Marriage, like every other undertaking, is what you make of it. It’s all about your expectations going in, your actions and reactions while undertaking it. But it’s mainly hinged on the reasons you enter it.”
    “Oh, my reasons were classic. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. I was wrong.”
    “Then you were responsible for that failure, since you didn’t know him or yourself well enough to make an informed decision. And then, love is the worst reason there is to enter a marriage.”
    “I can’t agree more now. But I know us well enough to know that what you’re proposing is even crazier, and your reasons are even worse. At least I married with the best of intentions.”
    “Those famous for leading to hell? Figures. But my reasons are the best possible reasons for me to marry at all. They don’t focus on impossible ideals and fantasies of happily-ever-afters and are, therefore, solid. Our marriage won’t be anything like the failure you set yourself up for when you made a wrong choice.”
    “And you think this isn’t another one?”
    Another argument surged to his lips, fizzled out.
    What was he doing, trying to change her mind? This wasn’t about her, neither was it about him. This was about Mennah. And Judar. What they wanted didn’t feature into the equation.
    “This isn’t a choice. There isn’t one,” he said.
    “There has to be!” she cried, her eyes that of a cornered cat. “And—and you’re a prince. You can’t marry a divorcee!”
    “I can marry whomever I see fit. And you are my daughter’s mother. This is the only reason I’m marrying you. What’s more, I will declare that we are already married, have been from the beginning. Now we’ll exchange vows.”
    “Ex-exchange vows? But—but we can’t do that!”
    “Yes, we can. It’s called az-zawaj al orfi, a secret marriage that’s still binding. All it requires are two consenting adults and private vows, recited then written in two papers, a copy for each of us, declaring our intention to be married. We’ll date the papers on the day I first took you to my bed. Once in Judar, we’ll present these papers to the ma’zoon, the cleric entrusted with the chore of marrying couples and we’ll make ours a public marriage.”
    She stared at him openmouthed. At last she huffed in incredulity. “Wow, just like that and voilà, you’ll make me your wife in retrospect. Must be so cool to have that loophole with which to rewrite history. Wonder how many times you’ve invoked that law to make your affairs legitimate.”
    “Never. And I couldn’t have cared less if everyone knew I’d taken you out of wedlock. Everyone knows I accept offers from the women who mill around me, and that I make sure there are never repercussions. I didn’t with you. Now it’s fortunate I have this method of damage control to fall back on, to reconstruct your virtue and protect Mennah from speculation on the circumstances of her conception.”
    Her breathing quickened as he