The Sheikh's First Christmas - A Warm and Cozy Christmas Romance (16 page)

“It was so nice to run into you at the grocery store,” Rami said, and Mia nodded politely, struggling to think of something to say. She realized it had been so long since she had been on a date that she wasn’t used to making small talk.

“I hope it wasn’t too much trouble to get your car fixed,” she finally replied, taking another sip and setting the mug down carefully. “With a car like that, there must only be so many people you can take it to.”

Rami shrugged. “It’s still in the shop, on the waiting list,” he said, before taking a sip of his water. “I have another car I’ve been using—not quite as nice as the Tesla, but it serves my purposes.” Mia nodded.

“It must be really nice to have a backup,” she said, thinking just how screwed she would have been had another car been waiting in front of her at the stop sign. Her car would’ve been totaled, and she was in no position to buy a new one, even with the scanty payout that the insurance company would have offered her. “I don’t know what I would have done if I had to wait weeks to get my car fixed.”

“Oh—if you’d had to wait, I would have just loaned you one of my other cars,” Rami said, dismissing the concern. “I’d have insisted on it. The accident was my fault, after all.” Mia frowned slightly in confusion, then took another sip of her latte to cover her expression.

“One of your others?” she asked. She had known—it was obvious—that Rami was wealthy. But he was so young; how wealthy could he be?

“Yeah, I have a dozen or so cars,” Rami said, shrugging as if the actual number didn’t much matter. “In fact, if yours had been too badly damaged to fix, I could’ve just given you one. I don’t drive half of them.” Mia wanted to ask:
Then why do you have them in the first place?
But she knew the answer already; he had them because he could.

“That would have been too generous,” she said instead, before changing the subject. “Have you been here before?” Rami shook his head.

“It reminds me a little of this American-owned café I used to go to in Paris,” he said, glancing around the little room. “Most of the cafés are French-owned, obviously, but this one was a little off the beaten track.” Rami met her gaze once more. “I studied there for a year; I didn’t get too much studying done, to be honest, but I learned to speak some French.” Mia nodded, wondering to herself if agreeing to the date with Rami had been a complete and utter mistake.

“It must have been wonderful to live in Paris,” Mia said. “I always wanted to visit, but just never really had the money to put a trip together.”

“Oh, it was great,” Rami said, beaming. “I went out almost every night. All the best clubs—really exclusive places, full of models.” Mia kept her smile on by sheer force of will, wondering why Rami felt the need to mention models to her. “I had this little flat in the middle of the city, threw parties every week and ate some of the best food of my life.” Mia simply smiled and nodded—she had no idea what to say.

“What did you study in college?” she asked, trying desperately to change the subject.

“This and that,” Rami said, shrugging indolently. “I went for Finance, with a minor in Art History. You?” Mia smiled.

“English Literature and Composition, with a minor in Sociology,” she replied.

“So basically, you knew you wanted to be a teacher from the beginning?” Rami asked. Mia shrugged.

“More or less.” Mia considered. “My dad always used to—well, he encouraged me to write, and to read, and told me that no matter what, if I knew how to communicate effectively, I could accomplish anything. So I thought it would be good to give other kids that message.”

“My parents wanted me to go into finance because they wanted me to be an asset to the family business,” Rami told her. Something came over his face, an expression that Mia couldn’t quite read, but it was gone so quickly she didn’t have time to try and interpret it. “Mostly I just partied and hung out with friends.” Mia tried again not to frown.

It finally occurred to her who Rami reminded her of, and why her feelings towards him were so conflicted: he was exactly like the guys who had belonged to the most exclusive frats at college; boys who were heirs to family fortunes, living on trust funds; guys who never seemed to have a care in the world. Rami started into stories of his college years and Mia forced herself to listen, not wanting to be rude to the man who had paid to fix her car and asked her out on a date—even if she hadn’t exactly wanted to accept the invitation. “Oh man, you should have seem my mom’s face when I crashed the Lexus. She wanted me to go without a car for a month!” Rami shook his head, laughing to himself. “But my dad told her that it wasn’t right for me to be seen walking around or taking the bus, it would bring the family’s reputation down and people would think we were poor.”

Mia drained her latte as quickly as she could without appearing to gulp at it, feeling like she needed an excuse to leave as soon as possible.
Why in the world does he think all this is going to impress me? Is he even trying to impress me, or does he just do this with everyone?
Mia smiled and nodded at stories about the thousand-dollar bar bill that Rami had managed to accrue on his twenty-first birthday, the apartment his parents had bought and furnished for him when he graduated, the details of a life so opulent she couldn’t begin to imagine living it.

But as their conversation went on, Mia was surprised to find Rami’s stories included some details she wouldn’t have expected—not from the man who’d called her a stupid car-wrecking bitch, nor from the bragging man-child she’d sat down for coffee with. “Spring break of final year, I went on a trip with Habitat for Humanity,” he said, when she had tried to open the topic of vacations, hoping that he would tell her something about his family rather than what he spent his money on. “I flew a bunch of the members of my frat down with me, and we spent a week seeing which of us could work on the most houses.”

“That’s a good kind of competition to have,” Mia said with a grin.

“Well, we pretty much competed over everything—you know how guys can be, when they’re in a group together.” Mia nodded; she knew all too well.

“How many did you rack up?” She asked, raising one eyebrow slightly.

“Eight! More than one a day. I came in second to my friend Lachlan, but I got the second-place prize we agreed on.”

“And what was the prize?” Mia asked.

Rami grinned wryly. “It was a pair of those water wings—you know, like they give to kids when they’re learning to swim?” Mia laughed out loud.

“OK… What was first prize?”

“A spice rack.” Mia shook her head at the silliness of the prizes.

“The idea was that we were competing for the sake of it. The prizes were just a formality.” Mia thought that with the kind of money the boys in Rami’s frat had at their disposal, it was all well and good for them to compete just for the sake of it; they needed something to keep things interesting.

“That’s great,” she said, laughing again. She had finished her latte, but in spite of her earlier misgivings, she suddenly didn’t want to leave. “That’s really…” she chuckled.

“God I just realized I’ve been telling you all about me,” Rami said, bringing a hand to his forehead. “I haven’t asked a thing about you, sorry. Please tell me about yourself, Mia.” Mia shrugged, startled by the change in tactics.

“There’s not all that much to tell,” she began, fumbling in her mind for something that might be even a little relatable to the wealthy, somewhat spoiled man sitting across from her. “I’ve been a teacher for three years, working at the public school. Honestly, I don’t really have a life!” Mia laughed nervously. “I don’t know if you’re aware how much time teachers end up working outside of school hours…”

“Oh, it’s a ton, I know,” Rami said, nodding. “I had to get tutoring from one of my teachers when I was in high school, in order to get the grades I needed. The guy was just constantly busy.” Rami reached across the table and gave Mia’s hand a little squeeze. “I’m grateful that you took some time to sit and talk with me.”

“Well, between that and my mother…” Mia started to say, and then paused.

“Demanding mother? Mine is, too.”

Mia shook her head. “No, she’s very ill,” she said quietly. “My father passed away when I was a teenager, and we’ve no other family around who can help her out. One of the neighbors helps her get to doctors’ appointments during the week, but she’s got a chronic illness which is really taking its toll on her.” Rami frowned, looking sympathetic.

“That must be really difficult for you, being torn in two different directions by your career and your mother?”

“It is and it isn’t,” Mia said, taking a breath to push down the stress that just remembering her mother’s condition stirred inside of her. “She—I feel like I really owe her. My dad, too. I was adopted when I was little, and I kind of—I almost feel like I owe them more than I could ever owe my biological parents, because they chose to take me in.”

“You’re a good daughter,” Rami said with a comforting smile. “I’m not such a good son.” A troubled look flicked over his face, before disappearing in an instant. “My mom is fond of telling me what a disappointment I am.”

“She has high expectations for you, then. That’s not—I mean, it could be worse.”

Rami nodded quickly. “She has high expectations of me. And my father… his idea of showing love is to buy me a car.” Rami shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve heard either of them say ‘I love you’ more than a handful of times in my life. Not to me, at least; maybe they tell each other all the time....” For a moment, Mia felt almost pity for the wealthy man; even if she had been struggling ever since her father had died, she had at least known that both of her parents loved her dearly.

“Do you think you’ll ever have kids?” Mia wasn’t sure why the question occurred to her.

“I’ve thought about it,” Rami said. “I would want to give a child everything I never had—the love, the attention, you know?” Mia nodded.

“It’s sort of funny,” she said, glancing around the room. “We sort of grew up with opposite problems. You grew up with more money than anyone could ever use, but not a lot of actual love, and I grew up with all the love I could stand, but almost no money.”

Rami grinned. “So you’d want to make sure your child could have all the things they ever wanted—the toys, the private school, all that.”

Mia shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to have done you that much harm,” she admitted.

“It makes it harder to know how to feel about people,” Rami said slowly. “I want to find someone to spend the rest of my life with—but I don’t really know how to read people. So many of my friends are just interested in money, but I want someone who would stay with me even if something happened and I was broke next week, you know?” Mia considered the idea before nodding.

“Yeah, I guess it could be kind of hard to live in that world,” she agreed. Her gaze fell on an antique clock mounted on the wall and she realized that they had been talking for far longer than she’d expected. “Oh—oh God, I’m so sorry, but if I don’t go now, all of my frozen stuff is going to go bad,” she smiled apologetically. “I wish I could stay a little while longer, but that’d be half my money down the drain.”

“No, I understand,” Rami said, getting to his feet. “I hope you’ll have an hour or two to spare sometime soon, so we can talk again.” Mia took the hand he offered; but instead of shaking it, he pulled her closer to him and she smelled the expensive cologne clinging to his skin as he kissed her first on one cheek, then the other.

“I hope so too,” Mia said, though she wasn’t sure of how she felt about him, or when she would ever have any free time to spend on a date again. She made sure both her phone and wallet were in her purse before hurrying out of the café and to her car. She barely even thought about their conversation as her mind filled with all of the things she still had to do that evening.

FOUR

Mia managed to get her groceries home before the frozen goods had melted. While the much-anticipated carton of ice cream was a little soft on the sides, she thought it would be okay after a few hours in the freezer.

She went about her chores, loading the washer with the clothes she would need for the work week and cleaning up the dishes from her breakfast that morning. She wasn’t in the mood to face more chores, but getting them finished would give her at least a little peace of mind. As she wandered around her house, going from task to task, she began, almost involuntarily, to think about Rami.

It was bizarre that someone like him, with all the money anyone could ever dream of, would ask someone like her—a broke, struggling English teacher—out for coffee; more so that he wanted to see her again sometime.
Rami could ask out literally any woman he wanted and probably get a ‘yes’,
Mia thought, as she finally sat down to look over the pile of papers she had still to grade. “He was just being nice. He probably felt guilty for going off on me, or whatever.” That made more sense. Figuring that she would probably never hear from Rami again, Mia went about the rest of her afternoon focused on her regular routine.

She was beginning to consider what to make for dinner when she heard her phone ringing. Assuming that it must be her mother, Mia dashed through the living room and into her bedroom where her phone was charging. “Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered as it rang a fifth time before she got to it. “Please don’t let it be a heart thing. Or a lung thing.” When she picked up the phone, however, the screen lit up with Rami’s phone number. What could he want to call her about so soon after their semi-date? Mia considered letting it roll over to voice mail, then decided against it; maybe she had left something behind at the café—her ID for school, maybe. “Hello?” Mia sank down onto her bed, attempting to cover the breathlessness in her voice.

“Mia! I’m glad you picked up.”

“Sorry,” she said, with a flash of guilt. “I was on the other side of the house, my phone was charging in my room.”

“It’s all good,” Rami said. For some reason she couldn’t quite understand, Mia pictured the well-dressed man leaning back in a chair somewhere, lounging, completely at ease. She shook her head, clearing the mental image away. “I actually wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“A favor?” Mia felt irritated. Of course, the only reason Rami had asked her out for coffee, or paid any attention to her at all, was because he had a favor in mind.

“Yeah, I know—I probably should have mentioned it back at the café, but it didn’t really cross my mind until about an hour ago. Listen, promise me you won’t just hang up when you hear what I have to say.” Mia pressed her lips together, glancing at her phone in instinctive distrust.

“I’m listening,” she said finally, sinking back onto her bed.

“It’s kind of a weird favor, so please—just hear me out, okay?”

“I will hear you out,” Mia replied. She felt a low stirring of dread at what Rami might be about to ask her. She did owe him, in a certain respect; he had paid for her car repairs—and for more than the damage he had actually done—out of his own pocket.
But the accident was his fault. If he hadn’t paid out of pocket he would have had to go through insurance. That wasn’t a favor—it was for his convenience.

“Okay,” Rami said, and for the first time since she’d met him, he actually sounded a little uncertain. “I want you to be the mother of my child.”

“What?” The word left Mia’s mouth in a near-shriek. “I barely know you!”

“Not—it’s okay, Mia. I don’t mean like, a baby-mama or anything like that.” Mia’s mouth opened and closed without any words leaving it. She stared up at her ceiling in shock.

“Maybe you should explain to me what exactly it is that you mean,” she said.

“I want to pay you to carry a child for me,” Rami told her, speaking slowly. “I’ll pay for the doctors, the treatments, everything.”

“And why, exactly, do you need a child?” Mia couldn’t get over the initial shock of what he had proposed.

“I want to raise a child the right way, and there’s no better time than now.” Mia reflected in silence for a long moment, remembering their conversation about children during their “date.” She would never have imagined that the outcome of that conversation would be Rami asking her to carry his child. “In addition to paying for all of the medical costs, I would of course pay you.”

“Wait—wait, you mean…” Mia felt her indignation rising again.

“No, not that—no. I would want you to conceive through IVF. But I would be paying you a monthly allowance, so that you wouldn’t have to work. I want you to be completely healthy and stress-free right from the start. I was thinking maybe a hundred thousand a month, plus the medical bills and maybe extra for your groceries?” Mia’s eyes widened and she stared at her phone in amazement at the figure he mentioned.

“One hundred thousand a month?” A voice in the back of her mind suggested that with that kind of money, she could close out all of her mother’s bills and pay for years of medication.

“Of course, I’d pay you a larger sum once the baby is delivered,” Rami continued, as if he hadn’t quite heard her question. “I was thinking an even million, but if you think that you’d need more to give up a child you’d borne…” Mia could barely even think, much less speak. A million dollars, after earning a hundred thousand a month for nine months or more.

“This is crazy,” Mia said, shaking her head. “Why do you want to pay me to carry a baby for you?”

“It seemed like a pretty good deal,” Rami replied. “You get money that you need, I get the kid that I want. If it’s not enough money I can talk to my accountant…”

“No, no it’s not—it’s not the amount,” Mia said quickly. “It’s more that it just seems so bizarre to be paid to do something like that.”

“People do it every day,” Rami said. Mia could just picture him shrugging at the other end of the line, as if offering someone two million dollars—maybe even more—was the most casual thing in the world. “Plenty of wealthy women don’t want to carry their children, or can’t, so they hire a surrogate and pay them. I’d want you to keep quiet about it, of course.”

“It’s just that…it seems so weird,” Mia finished, bringing her hand up to her forehead. “I really need to think about something like that, Rami. It’s a kind of a big favor you’re asking.”

“Like I said, if you think you need more money to be able to do it, I can work something out.”

Mia shook her head. “I just—it would mean changing everything in my life, and—and I’m not sure if I’m even ready to be pregnant. Or to give up a kid that I’m carrying. Just…let me have some time to think about it, okay?”

“Take all the time you need,” Rami told her. “It is kind of a big favor, I know. But I hope you’ll agree to it.” Mia barely remembered what she said to end the call; she was fairly certain she agreed to get back to him when she had made up her mind, but her brain seemed so thoroughly frozen by the magnitude of what Rami was asking—and the staggering amount of money he was offering her in exchange—that she couldn’t be sure of the words that came out of her mouth.

The rest of her chores, everything she intended to do that evening, fell by the wayside. Mia simply lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to digest the incredible phone call. Part of her cringed at the idea of carrying a child that she would give up once it was born. Even if she wasn’t being paid to have sex with someone—and Rami had managed to make it clear that he wanted her to undergo IVF—the notion of being pregnant, giving birth and then never seeing her child again, was unthinkable to Mia.
I would be no better than my birth parents,
she thought, bitterly.

But then—she wouldn’t just be giving the child up. The child’s life wouldn’t be like hers at all. Mia thought back to the bleak, institutional orphanage—the group home—the location of her earliest memories. If she did agree to carry Rami’s child, that baby wouldn’t be housed in a sterile, featureless crib, wouldn’t eat the same bland, if nutritional, meals three times a day, wouldn’t play with an ever-changing bunch of kids she barely knew—some of whom were badly beaten, still bearing scars of abusive parents, both mental and physical. Any child that Mia carried for Rami would be guaranteed all of the luxuries that wealth had to offer. Hadn’t she told Rami that she wanted that for her own children, or at least as many of the finer things as she was capable of providing for them?

Mia couldn’t deny that the money Rami was offering for carrying his child was almost absurd in its generosity. A hundred thousand dollars a month, with her medical bills taken care of, would allow her to clear her mother’s debts in record time. She could take a sabbatical and get away from the school that had become more like a prison to her. “With the million at the end, I could go back to college, get another degree in something else.” Even more than that—she could pay off her own debts. She could buy a house, something modest, but something that was hers outright. With a better job, no debt to hold her down, and her mother’s care covered for at least for a few years, Mia could actually consider finding her own partner, having her own child.

But then, her mind countered, she didn’t know how pregnancy would treat her. She had no idea what kinds of genetic diseases her birth parents had bequeathed her, no clue of how her birth mother had weathered her pregnancy. There were countless ways that a pregnancy could go wrong. She knew she was lingering on the worst-case scenario, but there was a small chance she could die if there were severe complications
.
Mia thought grimly that if Rami came up with some kind of contract, she would insist that on a clause stating that if Mia were to die in the process of carrying the child or giving birth to it, the remainder of the money would be paid to her mother.

It was full dark outside, and Mia realized she must have been deliberating Rami’s offer for at least a couple of hours. She told herself to keep thinking it over, even though she was already halfway convinced that it was the best option open to her. To appease her growling stomach, she went into the kitchen and began to make up a plain but healthy meal of garbanzo beans, curry, and rice. She considered the benefits, risks and negatives of Rami’s offer. “If I was getting a hundred thousand a month, I could certainly afford to eat half decently,” Mia said, thinking out loud as she stirred the little pot of curry. “I wouldn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn every day, and I could spend more time with mom.” Rami had said he wouldn’t want her telling anyone about their arrangement, but she would have to tell her mother
something
. She couldn’t just start paying off hospital bills without giving any hint of where she had gotten the money.

As she ate, Mia began to lean more and more towards accepting Rami’s offer. It answered every last thing that she needed in her life at the moment, and while the idea of being pregnant was more than a little frightening, Mia couldn’t deny that she would be in the best possible situation to deal with anything that came up in a pregnancy. She knew Rami wouldn’t skimp on medical care for his unborn child—and by extension, the mother of said child—when he was paying so dearly for the baby he wanted. She was realistic enough to know there were some complications even modern medicine couldn’t prevent, but she liked her odds much more than if she had somehow managed to get pregnant in her current situation, with no outside support.

After she had eaten and washed her dishes, Mia picked up her phone and took a deep breath before dialing Rami’s number. The call connected on the second ring. “Mia! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you for a day or two. Is everything okay?” Mia smiled as she heard the genuine worry in his voice.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve just been giving a lot of thought about what you asked me.”

“If you’ve come to a decision this fast… Mia, if you need time to really consider it, please, by all means, don’t rush.”

“I want to do it.” The words were out of Mia’s mouth before she could stop or change them in any way. “I mean—I have some…concerns, and there are some things that I want to make sure of, but…it’s the best offer I’ve ever had and probably the best I’ll ever get.”

“You could always find a rich man to marry you,” Rami suggested playfully.

“When am I likely to do that?” Mia laughed. “I only ever leave my house to work or run errands. You’re the first rich guy I’ve ever run into at the supermarket.” Rami laughed with her.