She asked her mom about it when she arrived for a visit and her mom said the baby's birth hadn't been announced.
She gave Ginny a weak smile. "If anyone knew he'd already been born, he would be a target. The king told Sally he believes it's for the best that this news not yet hit the press."
She swallowed, but her fears mounted. "So things are bad?"
"Actually, things aren't bad at all. The way I understand it, the whole mess involves one port and some hostages. Which is why Sally thinks the king believes it's so important that we protect the baby. He would be the kind of leverage the sheikh needs to get himself out of this mess."
"So it's a standoff?"
"According to Sally, it's hours of drinking coffee and waiting."
Incredulous, Ginny gaped at her mom. "They're waiting, but Dom hasn't been able to get away to see me...to see his son?"
"Honey, I wasn't supposed to tell you any of this, but I could tell you were worried and it's not right for you to worry."
She fell back on her bed. "No. It's better for me to feel like a complete idiot."
Her mom fluffed her pillow. "You're not an idiot. Anybody would have worried."
"That's not the part that makes me feel like an idiot. I've been sitting here for three days, waiting for my husband, who apparently doesn't care to show up."
"He's dedicated."
"So is the king, but he's talked to Sally, who's gotten messages to you."
"Have you checked your cell phone? Maybe he's tried to call?"
She gasped. "I never thought to take it. I was in so much pain I just left the apartment."
Her mom pulled out her phone. "I'll call security and have someone bring it over."
That brightened her spirits for about an hour. But when the cell phone arrived and there were no calls, they sank like a rock.
"How could he not care?"
Rose busily, nervously, tucked the covers around her. "I'm sure he cares."
"No, Mom. He doesn't." And it took something this extreme to finally, finally get that through Ginny's head. Her husband did not love her. He probably didn't really love their child. He most certainly wasn't curious about their child, who had been born early and who could have had complications.
But a war came first-
Didn't it?
Not when the war wasn't really a war. When there were stretches of time and waiting. When her husband wasn't even king yet. When there was a king who should be doing the decision making but he had time to call one of his staff-not even a family member.
She got out of bed. "Help me pack my bag."
"Ginny, you can't go home yet! You just had a baby."
"My friend, Ellen, had a difficult birth and was home in forty-eight hours."
"But the baby-"
"Is fine. You heard the pediatrician this morning. He's gained the two ounces he needed to put him over five pounds." She grabbed her suitcase and tossed it to the bed. "If he'd been full-term he probably would have weighed eight pounds."
Her mom put her hand over Ginny's to stop her from opening her suitcase. "You cannot leave."
"The hell I can't. And let them try to stop me from taking my own child." She motioned around the room. "As long as I take the thirty bodyguards, I'm fine."
Rose grabbed her cell phone and hit a speed-dial number.
Ginny snatched her phone out of her mother's hands and disconnected it. "What are you doing? Tattling on me to Sally?"
"Ginny, you can't just leave."
"Mom, this isn't about Xaviera or my baby someday being a king. This is about me knowing that if I don't get out of this country with my baby, I'm going to be stuck here forever with a guy who doesn't love me and a king who thinks he's God." She tossed her mom's cell phone to the bed and took her hands. "I have a baby to protect. I'll be damned if my child will grow up to be a man so stuck to his duties that he can't even see his own babies born or love his wife."
She took a long breath and stared at her suitcase. "To hell with this junk! I didn't want these clothes in the first place."
She poked her head out the door and motioned for the two bodyguards to come inside. "I want a helicopter on the roof of this hospital in five minutes. Then I want flown to the nearest safe airport and one of the royal jets waiting for me there." She sucked in a breath. "I'm going home."
* * *
The buzz of the king's cell phone had all heads in the war room turning in his direction. Cell phones had been banned. Too many opportunities for picture taking, voice recordings and just plain dissemination of their plans. In fact, no one but the king had left these quarters.
They slept on cots in a barracks-like room, ate food that was made in the attached kitchen and hadn't had contact with the outside world except through the video feed they stared at.
He missed Ginny. More to the point, he worried about Ginny. Something had been wrong the night they came here and he just wanted to fix it. But he knew he couldn't, so maybe it was better that he spend three days cut off from her so he didn't make promises he couldn't keep.
His father walked over to where Dom sat in front of a computer, staring at the feed of the port, feed that hadn't changed in twenty-four hours.
His father sat. "What do you think they're doing?"
"Undoubtedly, trying to figure out how to distance themselves from the sheikh since he seems to have deserted them."
"Should we give them a chance to surrender?"
He caught his father's gaze. There was a look in his eye that told Dom this was a test. A real-life hostage crisis for sure, but a chance for his father to test him.
"I'd say we offer them generously reduced prison terms for surrender and testimony against the sheikh, and go after the sheikh with both barrels."
"You want to kill him?"
"I'd rather arrest him and try him for this. I think making him look like a common criminal rather than a leader who'd started a war he couldn't finish sends a stronger message to the world."
His dad laughed unexpectedly. "I agree." He bowed, shocking Dominic. "Now what are you going to use to negotiate terms?"
He pointed at his father's cell phone. "This might be appropriate. Except I think we should get hostage negotiators from our police to do that. Once again making it look more like a criminal act that a military one."
"Agree again."
Dom called Xaviera's police commissioner and within the hour the rebels had surrendered, all hostages safe. The sheikh was in hiding, but he was too accustomed to luxury to stay underground for long. Dominic had every confidence they would find him, and when they did, he would stand trial.
The fifty military and security personnel in the war room cheered for joy when they received the call that all rebels were safely in jail.
But Dominic didn't want to stay around for the party. He might not be able to love Ginny, but she was pregnant with his child and not feeling well. He needed to get back to her.
He tapped his dad's shoulder. "I'm going to get going."
"Tired?"
"And I need a shower but I need to see Ginny."
As Dom turned to walk away, his dad stopped him. "Dom, there are a few things you need to know."
Expecting more details or facts about their problem, he faced his dad again.
"Ginny has gone home."
"What? Of course, she's home. She's in the apartment."
"No. She's gone back to Texas." He shrugged. "Some women can't handle war. She got a helicopter to take her to a safe airport this morning and took a jet back to her old hometown."
He gaped at his dad. "She's never mentioned wanting to leave before. She was committed-"
"Like I said, some women can't handle war. We've never been at war when she was with us."
"This is absurd. This was hardly a war. It was an ill-conceived attempt to take over our country by a guy who we clearly gave too much credit to."
"She didn't know that."
"How could she not know that! It's been all over the papers!"
"We weren't letting her see the papers."
"What! Why?"
"Because she had the baby the first day we were in here."
This time, Dom fell to a chair in disbelief. Absolutely positive he had not heard right, he looked up at his dad. "She had the baby?"
"Yes."
His kept his voice deceptively calm as he said, "And you didn't think to tell me."
"Duty comes before family."
Anger coursed through him. "But I notice you had your phone."
"I did."
"You talked to staff."
"Quite often. I had to keep track of the baby. Because he was born too soon, he was small. They monitored him. I made decisions."