Page 25 of Sheikh's Virgin Love-Slave

Chapter Ten

Two Months Later…

“We need to talk,” Cindi said, her frown clear on her face.

Bridget looked back over the trash can she’d just ruined by vomiting into it. Damn, and I usually make it. In the two months since she fled Dubai, her life had gone to hell. She was able to get a job working as a receptionist for a psychologist associate of Cindi’s. However, she wasn’t sleeping—at least not well. When she dreamed, she was always back in the Middle East and at the mansion. In her good dreams, which were few and far between, she was back in Ravi’s arms. In her nightmares, she always seemed to stumble on Ravi and Sabella locked in an embrace or something even worse. Her physical health was even worse. She vomited every morning at about ten a.m., no matter what she ate the night before, but she was ravenous by six p.m. She developed the weirdest taste for putting sweet pickle chips on pizza, and she might have gained about ten pounds. Soon she’d have to take her paltry life savings and buy a new wardrobe.

With all of this, she hadn’t been able to deal with her feelings for Ravi. For the first few weeks, she half-expected him to re-abduct her or to come here and beg for her to return home. He had texted and send letters and emails. He even sent flowers every day for six weeks, but he never came in person and she had to wonder if he was secretly glad by now that she was gone. After all, he had Sabella to keep him busy.

Bridget was just the American. Just the klutzy giraffe. Albeit one who was starting to feel like she swallowed a bowling ball. The best she could figure was not only had Ravi shattered her heart, but a trip to his country had also left her with some horrible parasite.

“God, I know what this is,” she said, shoving a pillow over her head. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

Cindi snorted and then yanked the pillow back off Bridget’s face. “No, but I made an appointment with an OB/GYN friend of mine for you. It’s a favor to me because I think I know exactly what this is, but I need to be sure.”

The words sounded with a deep thud to her ears. No, that couldn’t be possible. It was absolutely not reality. She was on the pill, and they used a condom every time. “No way.”

“Well, you two did it like monkeys while you were there.”

“Hey!”

Cindi rolled her eyes. “You ‘made love,’ fine, or at least what you felt was real and that rat was leading you on. All I need is five minutes alone with him and access to an aluminum baseball bat.”

Bridget sat up and ignored her usual morning dizzy spells. “It’s sweet that you want to help me by doing bodily harm, but it hurts, too. Ravi… I thought we had something good, but we always used protection.” Then she paused, her memory landing on the first night she and the sheikh had spent together. The condom had broken, and she had skipped a few days until the staff had been able to get her pills. But surely missing a few days wouldn’t have caused this? “Oh, no,” she said, shoving her head into her hands.

“What?” Cindi asked, sliding down next to her on the mattress and patting her shoulders. “You thought of something.”

“I… the first time, there was an accident.”

“Huh?”

“Broken condom, but it was just the one time.”

Cindi sighed and smiled at her sympathetically. “The nuns at catechism always used to say that it only takes that one time. I hated those penguins, but they weren’t wrong. Look, we’ll get you to see Janey, and we’ll figure everything out from there.”

“I can’t be pregnant. What will I tell Ravi?”

“Look on the bright side, maybe it is just a parasite!”

***

Dr. Murfee shut the door behind her as she entered into the small examining room. Of all the rotten luck, the doctor’s office was undergoing maintenance and the techs managed to knock out the air conditioning. During this unseasonably warm March day, both she and Cindi felt like they were dying of heat stroke. At least Dr. Murfee was quick and efficient. The whole blood draw had been painless and the test analysis took no more than twenty minutes.

Yeah, the longest twenty minutes of my life. Of course, if I am pregnant, it’ll be a long eighteen years too...

Cindi slid her hand over Bridget’s shoulder and offered a comforting presence. “What have you got for us, chick?”

Dr. Murfee shook her head and pushed her thickly rimmed glasses up her nose. “Ms. Callahan.”

“Oh, ‘Bridget’ is fine. We’re all acquainted now,” she said, pointing to her polka-dotted examination robe.

“Then, Bridget, the tests were positive. You’re definitely pregnant.”

Her heart lurched. It couldn’t be. Would she have to tell Ravi? Wait, could she deny him a family, especially knowing how much he missed his mother? Then again, he didn’t care about her. He had bought her jewelry and told her what she wanted to hear while sucking up to Sabella and making a fool of her.

But she still loved him.

Cindi considered the situation, and then turned to Dr. Murfee. “Janey, can you give us a second?”

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