Free The Sheikh's American Baby (The Sheikh's Every Wish Book 5) by Holly Rayner Page B

her study was focused on. Without that, all her theories meant nothing.
     
    She had begun to have nightmares in which she finished her dissertation, and was standing in front of the panel. Everything was going well until the end, when they hit her with one simple question:
     
    “And why didn’t you go and see?”
     
    And the worst part of it all was knowing that she was going to have exactly what she needed, right up until the moment when the sandstorm sauntered through and effectively destroyed her dissertation.
     
    In the end, she had to face one simple fact: she had to return to Al-Brehoni.
     
    Aside from the fact that Lucie would have preferred to stay as far away from there as possible, there was one major problem with this: money. While Harvard had been quite willing to sponsor them to begin with, her and Zach’s initial trip to the Middle East had emptied out the funding set aside for them. And appealing to the Al-Brehoni Research Assistance Fund for another chance was unthinkable, given whose ears that request would inevitably reach.
     
    But as she thought about her time in Al-Brehoni, and all the little annoyances and victories, the answer came to her.
     
    She had to talk to Zach.
     
    His parents had the resources, and would likely be willing to shell out if it meant that their son would finally make some progress towards completing his PhD. And he would be able to convince them, she knew, if he tried. For all she found him distasteful, she knew that he only got that way through always being given what he wanted. And, at the moment, she could use that to her advantage.
     
    But when she went to talk to him, he laughed in her face.
     
    “What I’m proposing helps both of us,” she insisted, trying to get through to him.
     
    But he didn’t seem to care. She knew his ill-formed mess of a dissertation well enough to know that the sandstorm had ruined his work as much as it had her own, but he held her greater zest for completion over her head.
     
    He made her ask again. He made her suffer the indignity of his laughter, again. And then, he made her beg.
     
    It felt like, with every word, Lucie was going further in debt to him. She was very careful never to imply in the slightest that she would be personally indebted to him, although she could tell he was trying his best to spin it that way.
     
    In the end, the only way she would be able to get him to agree to go along with the plan and beg his parents to use part of their funding to send the two of them back for a return visit was if she also put in all she could afford.
     
    He asked her what she had in savings, and, foolishly, she told him.
     
    He insisted that she spend every cent.
     
    By the time all was said and done, Zach he had convinced his parents, and they had made arrangements to go back to Al-Brehoni in a week’s time, Lucie was broke, exhausted, and felt emotionally compromised.
     
    This was how PhD candidates were supposed to feel when they were finishing up their dissertations, she just kept thinking to herself. This was what the horror stories were all about. She was normal, and everything was fine. Everything was going to be fine. She’d solved her problem, and all that was left was to stay the course, keep her head down in Al-Brehoni and soon she would be free.
     
    But even as she tried to calm her nerves for the upcoming trip, she felt that something was different.
     
    She was used to stress, and a life in academia had made her more than capable of managing it. She knew the signs when she was loading herself with too much, and she followed them.
     
    But this time, her normal strategies didn’t work. No matter how much she tried to use her most effective relaxation techniques, and how much time and space she gave herself to recover, it didn’t get better. She still felt off.
     
    It was like her body was rebelling against her. She was constantly tired in a way she never was. She’d always been good for a final push through