Well, whatever, Liv thought as she closed the laptop and thought about the commission that would hit her checking account the next day. And just in time too: She was already a month behind on her mortgage payment, and it wouldn’t look very good for a realtor to get foreclosed on, would it?
She touched her ring finger, rubbing the spot where she’d worn that wedding ring for almost three years. She smiled again when she thought of how the Sheikh had noticed the tan-line immediately, just like she’d hoped. It was a trick she’d come up with early on in her career as a realtor, by mistake at first. She’d started wearing her grandmother’s wedding ring just so creepy old men wouldn’t bother her on the bus. Then, after she got her realtor’s license (and a car), she realized that the ring was a useful prop when she was doing a showing: She’d keep it on when she was showing a house to a couple; and she’d take it off when it was just a man on his own—regardless of whether he was married or not. The tan-line made it clear that she normally wore a ring, and she could tell that a lot of men got excited at the thought of a married woman taking her ring off in their presence! It was sorta twisted, kinda sick, but hey, it worked! It added a bit of a spark to her interactions with men, and it had certainly helped her close on a few deals—at least early on in her career.
She hadn’t been closing as much in the recent past, though, and Liv had wondered whether it was the market or just her. After all, she was getting older, maybe even a bit broader around the beam. Perhaps those short skirts weren’t as mesmerizing as they were when she was in her twenties and there was a bit less cellulite showing when she walked up the stairs to show off the second floor. It didn’t seem right that a realtor’s ass should matter when trying to sell a house, but for some reason it did. The entire marketing industry was based on the principle of “Sex Sells,” and that was the reality she had to deal with, like it or not.
But now she was set for at least six months with the commission from the Sheikh’s sale, and she could rest easy for a while. The past year had been stressful: losing her grandmother, her boyfriend, and her dog all within three months of each other!
Liv snorted, shaking her head as she thought back to that unbelievable trio of events: First Nana O’Reilly, the healthiest eighty-year-old in the Carolinas, gets hit by a bus while crossing the street! Then Steve, who seemed like the sweetest man on Earth, is found dead in the woods outside of Durham, two bullets in the back of his head, execution-style! Mistaken identity? Gang initiation ritual? The case was still open, and now, after almost a year, it seemed unlikely it would ever be closed.
And then, as if the universe wanted to see how much Liv could take without breaking in half, her dog just up and died. A heartworm, the vet announced after a shaking, traumatized Liv drove her darling puppy to the emergency pet hospital in the middle of a sweltering summer night and was told it was too late. What the fuck!
Liv had gone off the rails for a couple of months after that. She could barely drag herself out of bed, couldn’t bear to deal with the smiling, happy people looking for houses, didn’t give a damn about anything or anyone—least of all herself. She spent hours in front of the TV, flipping channels like a zombie. She stopped working out, didn’t give a damn about what she ate, would sometimes go three or four days without showering or even washing her face.
Her wake-up call came when she got an email with a subject line she hadn’t seen since freshman year in college: Your Bank Balance Has Reached Zero Dollars. She’d stared at the email in shock, and it was only then that it hit her she’d spent almost two months without making an effort to sell a single house. Sure, she’d still dragged herself to a few showings, but she hadn’t closed on a single property—not even the ones that were slam dunks. It was like she was cursed, she’d decided as she cracked open her modest IRA just to make her house and car payments and keep the goddamn lights on!
But then, out of nowhere, she got this listing for the ninety-year-old mansion outside Raleigh. It had come to her from an estate closing, and it was an exclusive listing during a time when exclusives were hard to come by. She’d sat on it for a month or so as she slowly got her head back in the game, knowing that the out-of-the-way location and the strange history of eight people dying in the house would make it a tough sell. Then when she’d tried to sell it, there’d been all those strange flake-outs and flame-outs with the buyers.
I really am cursed, she’d told herself after another cancellation of a showing due to events that could only be categorized as “Acts of God.” Maybe it’s time to hang it up. Maybe hang myself.
The thought had come to her so suddenly, so out of the blue, that she’d almost choked on the TV dinner that was still mostly frozen. Liv had never been the type to entertain thoughts like that—hell, when she got depressed, it only made her angry! Where the hell did the thought of hanging herself come from?! It didn’t feel like her! It wasn’t her!
She’d pushed the thought out of her mind, even though it had shaken her in a way nothing had, not even that trio of deaths from a year earlier. Liv was worried it would push her back into that funk, but she knew she couldn’t allow that. Her IRA was cleaned out, her mortgage payment was coming due, and she had nothing but that old mansion on her list. She needed to sell it, and she needed to sell it soon.
“Please,” she'd said that morning, folding her hands and staring up at the ceiling after stepping out of the shower, still wet and naked. “If anyone’s listening, I need your help. I need this sale, and I need it now.”
And then the Sheikh had walked into her life, and she’d somehow pulled off the biggest sale of her career. Coincidence? An answered prayer? A deal with the devil? Who the hell knew. And who the hell cared.
“We’re back, baby,” she whispered to whoever was listening. “We’re back.”
3
“Turn back,” came the thought as the Sheikh walked out the front door, where his black Range Rover was waiting in the driveway of his new house. “Turn back now.”
He frowned as he turned and glanced up at the gargoyle, then back towards the silent house. Was he hearing things? Imagining things? He’d gotten a good night’s sleep at the hotel, so it couldn’t be the lingering effects of jet lag. What else could it be?
Hakeem glanced down at the satchel he was carrying, frowning as he lifted it up and thought for a moment. He’d been taking a slew of new supplements—a combination of vitamins, antioxidants, and amino-acids designed to combat the aging process. Some of what he was taking was experimental, available to him only because he was funding research and development of these chemicals. Most of them were not FDA-approved for sale to the general public, but that was only because human trials hadn’t been conducted at a large enough scale. The Sheikh believed in the science behind every supplement he was taking, and although he’d never completed his PhD, he’d gone far enough in the Biochemistry program at MIT to trust his own judgment. Besides, he was the face of the research he was funding all over the world and especially down here at Duke and UNC. He had to walk the talk, yes? Which meant he had to be his own test subject, prove to the world that longevity, perhaps even immortality, was within mankind’s reach!
The Sheikh took a deep breath as he stood on the front steps of his new home. He could smell the freshness of the woods, taste it in the air. He tried to take a step forward, but felt a strange pull, a curious hesitation, like a force akin to gravity was holding him back. He turned back towards the front door, grasping its brass handle and pulling it open, feeling the warm air from inside reach out to him like invisible fingers.
“Iidha qumt bitarjamat hdha, sa'ursil lak ktabana mjanyana.,” he said, looking over his shoulder at his attendants waiting outside his Range Rover, holding the door open for him. “Bring my things from the hotel. I will be staying here tonight.”
Then, as if those invisible fingers had wrapped themselves around him, the Sheikh stepped back into the house and closed the door
behind him, shutting out the last bit of daylight, feeling the air move around him almost like a sigh.
“Ya Allah,” he whispered, shivering as a strange draft of cool air swirled around him. “What is happening? What is happening here?”
4
Sheikh Hakeem stared at the inside of that big wooden front door, the one with the brass handle on the outside. Someone had been knocking, but for the life of him the Sheikh could not summon the strength to respond. He just stared at the door, the knocking itself fading away as he smiled lazily and looked down at himself.
He was still in the same clothes he’d worn when he took possession of the house, and it puzzled him. Had his men not brought his things from the hotel yet? How long does it take for them to do one simple task, he wondered as the anger rose in him. They were not so far from Raleigh. An hour’s drive, which meant it should not have taken more than three hours in total, even allowing for some incompetence!
Hakeem glanced at his diamond-studded Rolex, tapping on it and frowning. It appeared to have stopped, and this angered him too. He did not pay a king’s ransom for the damned watch to have it stop after less than a year on his wrist! He would have a word with those watchmakers in Geneva, he decided. Buy their damned factory and turn it into an amusement park for underprivileged Swiss children!
But are there any underprivileged Swiss children, he wondered, seriously considering the question as the knocking grew louder. He thought he could make out distant voices, men calling out his name, saying things in Arabic. He knew he could understand Arabic—indeed, it was his mother tongue. But for some reason the words sounded foreign to him, alien, almost unrecognizable.
Finally the knocking stopped, and the Sheikh exhaled. “Peace at last,” he said out loud, his own voice sounding strange to his ears, as if part of it was being absorbed by the old walls of the house and reflected back to him in an altered state.
He breathed deep, smiling at the silence, glancing once more at his useless Rolex and grinning like a fool. Then he heard some whispers outside the front door, and as he stared in wonder, the door burst open, splinters of wood flying everywhere as two of his men stumbled in, their eyes wide with panic.
“Iidha qumt bitarjamat hdha, sa'ursil lak ktabana mjanyana!” one of them shouted, blinking and looking around the room as if he couldn’t see the Sheikh.
“Sheikh Hakeem!” the other one cried, turning around like a dancer before his eyes finally focused on the Sheikh. “Are you all right, my king?”
“Of course I am all right,” Hakeem replied calmly, staring at his men and then the broken door. “What is the meaning of this intrusion? Why did you destroy my beautiful door?”
The two men looked at one another, blinking as if confused. “Sheikh,” one of them said, his voice trembling. “We have been outside that door but you warned us not to enter. So we waited. And we waited. Finally we could not wait any longer. We had to make sure you were all right!”
Hakeem frowned. “Why would I not be all right? And why would I not let you in? I have been waiting patiently for my clothes and things from the hotel. How long does it take to complete a simple task?”
“It only took two hours, Sheikh,” said the first man.
“It feels longer than that,” Hakeem said grumpily, trying to get up but feeling unusually weak.
“Yes, Sheikh,” said the second man, and only now did Hakeem notice that the man had stubble on his neck and cheeks, where usually his men trimmed their beards daily. “It has been longer.”
“How much longer?” Hakeem asked.
“It has been three days, Sheikh,” the first man said, taking a step closer and bending over to help Hakeem to his feet. “Ya Allah, Sheikh. You refused to let us in for three days. For three days we have been outside, waiting for permission to enter. Finally we could not wait, and we broke the door down out of fear for your safety. Three days you have not taken food or water, Sheikh. Three days.”
5
“Three days and you want a . . . refund?! On a house?!” Liv stared at the Sheikh as he nodded matter-of-factly from across her desk. “I’m sorry. It just doesn’t work that way, Mister Hakeem.”
“Sheikh Hakeem,” he said, smiling thinly and shaking his head. He reached out and touched a glass paperweight that she’d gotten from some realtors’ conference in Vegas a few years earlier, and then he looked back up at her. “And yes, it does work that way. I am very familiar with buying and selling real estate, and if the realtor has withheld pertinent information, then the buyer has the right to cancel the transaction and obtain a full refund, including all fees and taxes.”
Liv blinked as she studied the Sheikh’s expression. There was something different about him, she thought. He was as immaculately groomed as ever, his handsome face perfectly contoured with high cheekbones and a jawline that would put the cliffs of Dover to shame. But there was something about his eyes, those piercing green eyes, that bothered her. When she’d looked into those eyes the first time they’d met, she’d seen cool confidence and absolute self-control. Now she saw what she could only interpret as a shiftiness that bordered on paranoia. The eyes of a man on the edge. It didn’t fit. Not with this guy. This guy was a goddamn king, and something had rattled him enough that it still clung to him. What the hell? She could have sworn there was no man or beast on Earth that could rattle this man! So what was it?
“I withheld no pertinent information,” Liv said firmly, pausing for a moment to consider whether she was actually telling the truth, then deciding that yeah, she was. “I told you everything I’m required to by law. You have all the surveyors’ reports. There are no water leaks. There’s no asbestos. No termites. And—”
“Termites!” the Sheikh said, tilting his head back and laughing. “You think I am here because I found a goddamn ant in my new house?!”
“I have no idea why you’re here,” Liv said, her mind racing as she wondered what would happen if she actually did need to reverse the transaction. The seller was a trust fund, so that wouldn’t be a problem. The problem would be returning her commission. She’d already paid her mortgage for six months in advance, paid off her credit cards, and put a down-payment on a spanking new Ford Mustang, bright red and hot as hell. She’d also topped off her IRA and invested several thousand in the stock market. Oh, she thought as she pulled her feet together beneath the desk, tucking them under her chair: There’s also this new pair of Christian Louboutin’s that feel so fucking good around my little piggies.
The Sheikh took a deep breath, leaning back on his chair and exhaling slowly. He glanced over his shoulder, scanning the small office on the ground floor of the Tivoli Building in downtown Raleigh and taking another breath before he focused on Liv again. “Ms. O’Reilly,” he said softly. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Liv frowned, cocking her head and then shrugging. This sounds like a trick, she decided. His ego can’t take the fact that I got the better of him in the negotiation, and now he’s messing with me, trying to show me who’s boss. He wants to see me squirm, let me know that the Sheikh giveth and the Sheikh can taketh. All right, big shot. You wanna play? Let’s fucking play.
“Well,” she said, pushing her swivel chair back from the table and crossing one leg over the other, feeling the cool air-conditioned draft swirl around her bared thigh. She saw his eyes move down and she did her best not to smile in satisfaction. “I’m Irish-Italian with a touch of Native American, so sure, I believe in ghosts. How about you?”
Hakeem shook his head firmly, his eyes darting down to her exposed thigh and then back up to her face. “I believe in science. I believe in logic. I believe in technology.” He took a breath and grinned, that strange, uneasy look returning to his green eyes. “But I also believe there is much we do not understand about life, death, and perhaps whatever lies between. Or beyond.”
Liv blinked as she stared into the Sheikh’s eyes. “Um . . .
OK,” she said cautiously, taken aback by the seriousness on his face. If this was a trick, he was doing a damned fine job of pulling her in. “What’s your point? How does this relate to termites and broken pipes?” she said, trying to smile but feeling a chill go through her as she heard the tremble in her own voice.
The Sheikh ignored her quip, his jaw tightening as he leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “The day after I took possession of the house,” he said softly, “I experienced a phenomenon known in scientific circles as lost time.” He raised his left hand, showing her his watch.
“Nice watch,” she said. “That looks like it cost as much as my car.”
“Significantly more, I assure you. And I say that not knowing what kind of car you drive,” he said with a grin. “But that is beside the point. Look closely, Ms. O’Reilly. My watch has stopped.”
Liv leaned forward and squinted at the diamond-studded watch face. “So it has. I’d get in touch with those Swiss engineers for that. I’m sure there’s some kind of warranty that applies.”
“A Rolex does not just stop,” the Sheikh said quietly.
Liv snorted, switching up her legs as she watched the Sheikh’s eyes move down along her body once more, his gaze giving her goosebumps in a way that felt almost dangerous, like there was something different about this man, different from when she’d first met him. “So your watch stopped. And you think it’s termites. And so you want to, um, return the house for a full refund?” she said, trying her best to figure out where the hell this conversation was heading.
“Lost time,” the Sheikh said, tapping his watch again. “Are you familiar with the concept?”
Liv just shrugged and shook her head. “Enlighten me,” she said.
“It is a phenomenon where the subject experiences a gap in time, lost memory, a period where he or she remembers nothing, does not even experience the flow of time itself.”
Haunted for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 15) Page 2