Sold To The Sheikh: His Indecent Proposal (An Interracial Sheikh Romance Novel) by Holly Rayner Read Free Book Online Page A

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