by Lynn, Sophia
"But I don't do anything special," Penny insisted. "I listen to them. I try to be fair. I try to remember that at their age, they're mostly rubber bands that can be primed to go off at any moment and I give them an outlet for that energy..."
Ziyad grinned. "And it works!"
His grin faded, and he turned to face her fully. She realized with a small degree of shock that she had almost forgotten his beauty until this moment. Until this point, they had been talking seriously, giving and taking in turns, and his good looks almost startled her again.
"Penny, I did you a great disservice. I know that now. There were likely better ways to meet you again, or perhaps when you were so dismissive of me here, I should have taken a hint and chosen to spend my evening doing something else. However, I did what I did, and I am deeply sorry for it. If you give me another chance, I can only promise you that I will not behave in such an abominable way again, and I will never betray you like that.
"But though I would have still wanted to make it up to you, I would not have contacted Resad and had him flown here on my expense account to see you. I would have come up with something else. It was only when I thought of our meeting here that I knew Resad had to see you in action, and I thought that if I chose how it happened, I could fix things for you. Have I?"
Penny nodded.
"You have," she murmured. "Immediately after our initial meeting, things were difficult. People were talking about me and laughing about me..."
He flinched, and Penny hurried on. She found that though she still had every right to be angry with him, she somehow wasn't any longer, and she had no urge to cause him pain.
"But that seems changed. People are welcoming in a way that they never were even before the...the incident. Now they want to talk with me, to share ideas, and it truly does make a real difference."
A slow smile appeared on his face, and it was like the sun breaking through a cloud bank. The beauty of his smile captivated her for a moment.
"Do you know, I think that is the first time you have said my name like that?"
"Like what?"
"As if you were not furious or uncomfortable with me."
She stopped to think about it for a moment, and then she nodded.
"I'm really not furious or uncomfortable with you," she said solemnly.
He took a step closer to her, close enough that she could smell the barest touch of his cologne, and underneath it, the clean smell of his skin.
"So what do you feel for me right this moment, if you are not uncomfortable or furious?"
She took a deep breath, inadvertently filling her nose with his scent. God, he could make a woman drunk on that scent if only he bottled it....
"I don't know," she admitted. "I feel as if I am standing in a hall of rather spooky marble statues with a man I barely know...but perhaps I would not mind getting to know him better?"
She could barely believe her own courage at saying those words. For a moment, all those shades of her old school bullies rang in her ears. The punishment for saying much of anything at all was sure to be taunts at best. But then those old ghosts were banished by the force of Ziyad's smile.
"Thank you," he murmured. "I promise I will not make you regret that."
Later, much later, those words would probably ring in her ears. They were not true, not at all, but for a little while, she wasn’t sure.
Right then, gazing up at him and simply breathing in his glorious male scent, she could only offer him a smile of her own, soft and shy.
"Would you like to see the rest of the museum?" she asked. "We don't have much longer, it'll be closing for the day in the next few hours."
He considered for a moment, taking her hand in his. She noticed with a kind of dreamy pleasure how warm his hand was, how she could feel just the barest ghost of his strength in it.
"How about we save the museum for another day?" he asked. "I'm hungry, and I would very much like to take you to dinner."
For a moment, it struck her as strangely mundane. A man who could call in the minister of education of an emirate did not seem like the type who would take her to dinner. But perhaps she was wrong. There was something almost surprisingly wholesome and sweet about it, and she smiled.
"I would love that," she said.
***
ZIYAD WATCHED WITH fascination as Penny's cheeks turned pink with the wine he had given her. She was far from drunk, or at least he assumed she couldn't get drunk on a single glass, but there was something spirited about her eyes, something bright and slightly careless about her gestures.
They had demolished the plate of baked fish between them, and now they were left picking at the bones and wiping up the lush, surprisingly sweet dark sauce with their delicious bread rolls.
"I find it hard to believe that you have never been on a date with a man before," he said, shaking his head. "That cannot be true..."
He wanted to say what a surprise it was because she was so beautiful, but she shook her head scornfully.
"Oh no, I don't think you understand exactly how gawky and awkward I've always been," she said. "I really do loosen up around the kids, and I think that's when I'm at my best, but truthfully, I'm a mess around men I find attractive. I was the same way in school, too."
"I don't believe it," he repeated. "I cannot think that anyone would look at you and not find you utterly adorable."
She flashed a grin at him, a look that was utterly endearing on her, and his heart beat a little faster.
"All right, nosy. You want an example, let me think... All right, let's talk about Peter Townsbridge. He was this kid who went to high school with me, and I thought I was in love. Of course I could never talk to him or do much of anything besides stutter and run away when he was around, so it wasn't like he knew about it at all. So instead, I would keep this notebook full of poetry all about him. Some of it was laboriously copied out of the poetry books in the school library, but other bits of it, I'm sorry to say, were painfully original."
"So you're a poet?"
"Oh god no, and I'm pretty sure that was the problem," she confided. "You see, teenage girls might think they are being super sneaky and secretive, but they aren't, and sooner rather than later, two girls from my English class found out all about the poetry notebook."
Ziyad couldn't help but flinch a little. He had a terrible idea that he knew where this was going, and a part of him wanted her to stop before she could tell him the rest.
"Of course they got the notebook away from me, and of course they stood on a table at lunch and read it out loud to the whole lunchroom."
Penny laughed, and to Ziyad's surprise, she seemed more amused than hurt by the memory.
"It was awful," she said with a sigh. "I froze. Everything in me was telling me to run away, to hide, to get on a bus to Timbuktu so I would never have to deal with anything like this again."
"I really hope this story ends with Peter Townsend being delighted with your affections..."
"Not even a little. As they read, a girl I didn't know got up and ran out of the lunchroom crying, and Peter ran after her. It came out later that they had been dating secretly, and she thought this was somehow directed at her. After that, Peter wouldn't even look in my direction, and I got the notebook back with quite a few rather cruel comments in the margins."
Ziyad flinched. He knew it was impossible, but he wanted to reach back in time to comfort the young Penny, to tell her that she would outgrow her tormentors, go on to see the world, and to be so utterly charming and capable that she could halt a man like Ziyad in his tracks.
"There was a silver lining though..."
"Oh?" he asked hopefully.
"One of the teachers who stumbled in at the last moment realized that I had taken one of the poems from Neruda and got me on a reading list full of similar things. She's the reason I read as much as I did, and that really helped, though there was really no helping my poetry at all..."
"Still, I would have liked to read it," he said sof
tly, and somehow that made her look up. The expression on her small face was at once confused and strangely touched.
"As sorry as I would be for you to have to suffer through that, I would have liked that a lot. Unfortunately or fortunately, the silly thing was lost years ago, likely when my grandmother and I moved from her house to an apartment."
"You lived with your grandmother?"
"Ever since my mother died," she confirmed. "She was already old when I was born, though. She just got frailer and frailer, and we couldn't keep up the house. So we moved, and she stayed in that apartment until my first year of college."
Penny paused, and he wondered if she would stop there. Whatever came after this was obviously painful. He didn't realize that he had reached out to take her hand until she squeezed his in surprise.
"She died. It was a cough that got bad really quickly, and even she didn't know how bad it was. I...I still miss her."
There was a moment of quiet there, and then she looked up at him with a rueful grin and mostly dry eyes.
"And now you can see my awkwardness in action. I'm out on what I kind of hope is a date with a man I find very attractive, and somehow we end up talking about my dead grandmother who raised me."
"Well, I am the one who asked about your grandmother," he said reassuringly, "so I only have myself to blame for that. As to the other...well, this is a date if you want it to be one. Otherwise, it is simply an apology for making such an ass of myself from the moment we met until fairly recently and a promise to do better."
Penny looked at him, and for some reason, Ziyad found himself flashing back to the lecture he’d had years ago in university, something about the dead having their hearts weighed on a scale. If their hearts were light, they could pass on to paradise, but if it was too heavy, it would be eaten. Right now, her green eyes wide and thoughtful, it felt as if Penny was weighing his heart, and all he could do was think about how much he hoped that she found it worthy.
"I think it is a date," she said, and then she glanced at him, surprisingly shy. "I hope it's a good one?"
He thought of the other dates he had been on, grandiose things that involved impulsive flights to different countries, buying yachts on the spur of the moment, extravagant dinners and days spent in bed making love to gorgeous women. Then he looked at the sweet girl who was sitting across the table from him, and he smiled.
"It is one of the best I have ever been on," he promised her, and he was rewarded with a brilliant smile.
She was even brave enough to tease him a little when they got up from the table.
"I have to admit, I envy whatever job it is you have," she said. "I don't know many jobs that would let me wander around as I please taking hapless, strange women to dinner."
He blinked down at her, but she had been distracted by the bowl of mints by the door. He took the mint she offered him, but his mind was spinning.
"So you don't know what it is I do?" he asked her in surprise, and she turned an amused glance to him.
"Is this going to turn into one of those things where you ask me if I know who you are all indignant and offended?"
"Not at all," he said hastily, "but I thought by now that you might have known."
"I don't, though I know you have money to burn and plenty of time to do as you please. What is it you do, Ziyad?"
He paused, wondering what he should do.
"Guess," he offered as they walked into the cool Rome night.
"Hmm, let me see... You were pretty close to being offended that I didn't know who you were. That says you likely think a lot of yourself, so are you an actor?"
"I was in one production of Pirates of Penzance when I was in college, but no, I am not an actor. Try again."
"All right... Well, you dress very nicely all the time, you seem to know a lot of important people, and you're very, very graceful. Are you a model?”
Ziyad had to laugh at that, something that made her pout adorably. The urge to lean over to kiss her was momentarily so strong that it made him dizzy, but he kept himself under a tight leash. He could only imagine what it would look like when he had just made amends, only to lean in for a kiss.
"I am not a model either," he teased. "I have had offers, and I have had some wonderful pictures taken of me, but no, I am not a model."
Penny made a face. "Whenever anyone takes pictures of me, I end up looking like an ugly little radish."
Her plain disgust made Ziyad laugh in surprise. "I can only imagine then that you have had poor photographers. A good photographer can make anyone look good, and honestly, as pretty as you are, I would say it would take no time at all to snap some pictures of you looking wonderful."
Other women would have been taken by his flattery. He could imagine Carissa leaning in to hear more, maybe asking what he would think of her in this dress or that one, or perhaps only in a string of pearls. Instead of doing that, however, Penny brightened for some reason.
"Do you spend a lot of time in photography studios?" she asked. "Do you know a lot of models?"
Ziyad looked at her quizzically, wondering where she was going with this. "I have spent a fair amount of time in photography studios, I suppose, and I have known my fair share of models..."
If he were being honest, he would have had to say that he knew quite a lot of models. However, while they were all gorgeous women, there was always something about his affairs with models that made them end dramatically and rather badly. He had sworn off dating models a little while ago, but he figured that in all likelihood, that wasn't something Penny wanted to know about.
"Ha, I caught you!" she said triumphantly. "You're a photographer."
He shook his head at that, grinning at her. "I'm sorry, but you're wrong, and those are three guesses. You owe me a forfeit."
Penny frowned at him, wrinkling up her nose. "I didn't know there was going to be a forfeit," she said, tossing her head. "If I had known, I might not have wanted to play at all."
"Are you saying you won't pay?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, and she looked at him with a stubborn glint in her eye.
"Not at all," she retorted. "I won't have it be said that I don't pay what is owed. Very well. What is your forfeit?”
Of course, the first thought that came to mind was that he wanted to kiss her. Suddenly, he ached to do so, but what kind of kiss would it be as a forfeit? She would do it with tightly pursed lips and rolled eyes, and that wasn't what he wanted at all.
"Tell me a secret," he found himself saying instead. "Something you've never told anyone."
Penny frowned at him. "I don't have any secrets I've... Oh. Well, I guess I do..."
Ziyad nodded.
"Everyone does," he said with a shrug. "If that is too much, I am sure I can come up with something more simple. Perhaps I will make you fold a hat out of a newspaper and wear it all the way home..."
"Oh god no, that would be humiliating! All right, all right, I'll share a secret with you..."
She paused as if to gather herself, and then she nodded. When she started speaking, her voice was lower than it had been before, a little softer, a little more reflective. Ziyad found himself wondering if that was what she would sound like first thing in the morning, gazing at him from across a pillow.
"When I was twelve, my mom died, and I had to go live with my grandmother. She was nice enough, she taught me a lot, but she wasn't my mother, you know? I was old enough to know that my mother was gone and she was never coming back, but that didn't mean I had to like it.
"One night, not long after I moved in, I climbed up on the roof. It was pretty easy, I just had to climb out of my window. I remember how cold it was, and how thin my pajamas felt under the cold wind. I sat there, and I looked up at the big, full moon and the stars, and I asked for...well, I asked for love."
"For love?" Ziyad echoed in confusion.
"Yes." Penny seemed to struggle with her story for a short while, and then she nodded.
"Love. My mom loved me a lot, and I would
learn that my grandmother did too, eventually, but it felt as if I was cold without it. I wanted people to love me, to care for me and to look at me kindly. I wished for it so hard. I was up there until the moon set, and when I heard some street cleaners start up, I climbed back inside and went to sleep."
She fell into a brief silence after that, and Ziyad found himself breaking it.
"So did you find it? Love, I mean. Did your wish come true?"
He could have kicked himself for asking her that question. Whether she’d found it or not, he had discovered she was here alone now, and he braced himself for a sad or angry look. Instead, the smile she gave him was surprisingly brave and bright.
"It hasn't yet," she said, throwing her shoulders back and sitting up straight. "But I have no reason to doubt that it will some day."
Ziyad laughed with delight.
"That's the right attitude to take," he said, and she grinned at him in agreement.
The sun was beginning to set, turning the sky above them to deepening violet. Despite the slowly darkening day, there were still plenty of people out. They dodged a pack of children running by with a soccer ball, bypassed flower vendors with large armfuls of blooms, and wove around a man who was carrying an enormous sack on his back.
"I wonder what he's got in there," Penny mused after they were past.
"What do you think he has in there?"
"Oh, it could be anything," she said gravely. "I mean, it could be death that he caught, or it might be gems that have been missing since World War II, or maybe enough shoes for twelve dancing princesses whose shoes wear out because they dance every night."
He glanced at her in surprise, and she blushed a little.
"I almost wish I had drank more wine," she said, making a face. "If I had, I think that would have made more sense."
"Well, it made perfect sense to me," Ziyad declared. "I think you are wonderfully imaginative, Penny."
For some reason, this was the compliment she heard. Instead of blushing or denying it, she simply offered him a smile that seemed to go straight to his core, and squeezed his hand gently.