Stars for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 8)

by Annabelle Winters

  Though now it seemed like selling might have been the wiser choice, the Sheikh thought as he took a breath and walked to the deck-railing of the thirty-foot boat that was bobbing about a hundred meters away from the still-under-construction rig. They were almost a year behind schedule already, and now he was being told it would take another ten months before they could start pumping!

  “It looks almost ready to me,” said Alim, shrugging as he tugged at his goatee and glanced over at the Sheikh.

  “I agree,” said Rahaan, holding a straight face as he saw the foreman almost melt into a puddle of muted anger. “You have two months. I am already setting a date for the opening ceremony.”

  “By Allah, great Sheikh! Two months is madness! There was a reason your father could not build a rig in this part of the ocean! The sea bed beneath these waters is shifting sand, and we have to dig deep and wide to secure the foundation for an oil rig this size! I implore you, do not make us speed up the process. Remember what happened the last time one of our oil rigs was rushed to completion.”

  Rahaan’s jaw went tight as he turned and looked down at the foreman. Did the man really just say what he said?! By Allah, what gall!

  The Sheikh saw Alim raise his eyebrows, and Rahaan placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, staying him.

  “Your name is Yusuf Iqbal,” Rahaan said to the foreman, looking at him closely, realizing that although the man was short and round, he was powerfully built, with a strange confidence—even defiance—in his sand-colored eyes.

  “Yes, my Sheikh,” said the man, holding eye contact for several seconds before looking down towards the Sheikh’s feet. “My apologies for my thoughtless, insolent statement. Please, I am—”

  “You are barely older than myself,” said Rahaan, frowning and touching his chin as he tried to read the man, size him up. The Sheikh could usually make a solid, accurate character assessment in a moment—something that came in handy when he had to make quick decisions about firing deadweight executives from the struggling companies he purchased. But he couldn’t get a clear picture of this man for some reason. Almost like the man was in a state of flux, blocking the Sheikh’s powers of perception.

  “I am two years older than the Sheikh,” said Iqbal, bowing his head once more and then looking up and holding Rahaan’s gaze in a way that was respectful but far from submissive.

  “I was fourteen then, and so you were sixteen during the time of the great tragedy,” Rahaan said slowly, his voice deepening, his green eyes steely and unwavering as he stared down the man. “You were a teenager as well. What can you possibly know about an oil rig’s state of readiness back then? Speak, Yusuf Iqbal.”

  Yusuf Iqbal finally blinked and looked past the Sheikh. “Of course I was a boy. Like you, my Sheikh. But I paid close attention, because like you, I too lost my father in that explosion.”

  The Sheikh’s eyes narrowed as he tried to think back. Yusuf Iqbal. Iqbal. The name did ring a bell. It had been years since Rahaan had been to the Hall of Archives in Kolah’s Royal Palace, but he had studied the reports of the tragedy so many times as a youth that he could almost recite them word for word. Finally it hit him, and his body stiffened for a moment before he spoke. “Yezid Mohammed Iqbal,” he said softly. “Your father. He was the head of Kolah’s Royal Corps of Engineers. Educated at Jamiah Milliah University and then at the California Institute of Technology. He worked in the oil industry in Texas, USA, for some time before my father offered him the position in Kolah.”

  “Not offered. Ordered,” muttered Yusuf Iqbal, making sharp eye contact with the Sheikh before looking down at the deck and nodding quickly.

  “Speak freely, Yusuf Iqbal,” snapped Rahaan, a sudden anger rising in him as he watched this man’s body language. The Sheikh was feeling a vague discomfort from all this, from this man himself, and he did not like it. “I would rather my people speak their dissatisfactions or concerns directly and honestly than mutter under their breath and give me sharp looks that I am supposed to interpret like I am a goddamn psychic. Speak freely. I assure you, I will not have you thrown to the sharks if you offend me. It is just the three of us within earshot, and you may speak your mind. Clearly there is something you want to say. Spit it out, Yusuf Iqbal. Speak to my face like a man instead of mumbling like a schoolboy!”

  Alim glanced over at the Sheikh, his eyes wide, and Rahaan realized that he’d been speaking at the top of his voice, almost shouting at Yusuf Iqbal. It was not like him, the Sheikh thought as he blinked and tried his best to soften his expression.

  But Yusuf Iqbal did not seem fazed, and he held his head high and began to speak, his voice sounding deeper, different, like something had changed in the man over the last few moments, as if they had all stepped into a different reality—different in a subtle, almost eerie way.

  “My apologies again, great Sheikh,” said Yusuf Iqbal. “I mean you no disrespect. You have been a gracious and generous Sheikh as long as you have reigned, and I would not stand to hear a man say otherwise. My sharp tone was misguided, and my behavior is inexcusable.”

  Rahaan smiled, exhaling and looking past Yusuf Iqbal and towards the distant shores of Kolah, just a golden strip on the horizon, past the deep blue swell of the Arabian Sea—the sea that was a graveyard to many, he remembered. Strong emotions ripple through the years like the waves, rising and falling, changing form, he thought. But emotions that deep never truly go away.

  “And perhaps my tone was harsher than it should have been, Yusuf Iqbal,” he said quietly. “As a boy I carried anger and grief for a long time. Allah knows it is still in me somewhere. I only imagine it was the same for you. Come, sit with me. I will call for tea. We will talk. Of course, first let us take a moment and remember our fathers and the other innocent souls whose final resting place is beneath these very waves.”

  “I remember my father every day when I wake up and go to work across these waves,” Yusuf Iqbal said quietly, placing his thick arms by his side and looking up at the Sheikh. The man’s long white tunic billowed in a sudden gust of breeze, the extra cloth around his shoulders and sleeves rising up like wings for a moment. “And since we speak of work, I must get back to my engineers now. We have to do one year’s work in two months, and so I must beg the Sheikh’s leave and respectfully decline his offer to leisurely drink tea above the graves of our fathers.”

  The Sheikh held the man’s gaze for a long, strange moment before nodding once and giving him permission to leave, choosing to remain unmoved by the last comment. He watched Yusuf Iqbal walk to the aft of the boat and quickly descend the metal ladder to the dingy that would take him back to the oil rig.

  Once the dingy was far enough, Rahaan nodded at a white-clad crewman who stood silently on the forward deck, and the man spoke quickly into a walkie-talkie. In a moment the powerful engines of the boat roared to life, and the Sheikh placed both hands on the side rail and watched the dingy and the oil rig fade into the distance as that odd dreamlike feeling came closer, closer, too close perhaps.

  The Sheikh exhaled hard as he turned away from the sea, trying to turn away from his thoughts as well . . . thoughts that had made him question his own sanity over the past two months. Thoughts of that night in New Mexico. Thoughts of that dream. Three dreams in one. Three women in one. One woman in three dreams perhaps.

  “At least there are no more wet dreams,” he muttered, trying to make himself smile even as he fought that intense need to go back there, to be close to her, a closeness that he still felt to her, a closeness that made no damn sense just like a dream should make no damn sense when you’re awake.

  But the dream is the only way it makes sense, he thought as he turned towards the shoreline and put his sunglasses back on. It is the only way to explain this feeling of closeness.

  14

  “Not too close now,” said Hilda, placing her hands flat on the round table in the center of her store, p
alms facing down, head slightly bowed, big brown eyes dramatically narrowed as she stared into the candle-flame and tried to make it seem like she could see visions of this suburban stoner-chick’s future.

  The candle flame danced before her, and perhaps it was because she was sober as a judge’s chauffeur, but the words came to her easily now, making her almost believe in the crap she was spouting to this dazzled nineteen-year-old with a platinum debit card.

  “He is tall, but not too tall,” Hilda said in a low, deep monotone, doing her best not to go full gypsy on the girl—not yet, at least. Wait for a sign that you’ve got a hit first, then you can lay it on and pull her in for the “special” session reserved for stoners with platinum debit cards.

  “Perfect,” the girl mumbled, her glazed eyes mesmerized by the candle-flame. “Tall is sexy, but too tall freaks me out. Is he rich?”

  Hilda gently closed her eyes and opened them, allowing a low hum to come from her throat as she nodded. “It is coming to me . . . give it a minute . . . ah, I see . . . I see a car, two cars, a garage full of cars, a house, big, very big, with grounds, lawns, beautiful and exotic. You are with him, the two of you holding hands.”

  “Ohmygod, what about a ring?! Do you see a ring?” the girl shrieked, her tongue hanging out, making her look like a teenage tennis player trying to concentrate on serving right.

  Hilda did the vibrating-hum again, blocking out the annoying thoughts that she was pregnant without a ring. She hummed again, wondering if this girl would use her own version of the humming technique to get the future she envisioned. Ohgod that was so mean. Not every woman’s a whore like you, Hilda, she reminded herself. Not every woman gets knocked up without a fucking clue who the baby-daddy is!

  You do have a clue, came that annoyingly persistent thought from the back of her even more annoyingly sober brain. The only problem is it’s impossible! You’re further gone than Stoner-Girl if you believe a man can knock you up in a goddamn dream!

  “A ring,” Hilda muttered quickly, forcing herself to get back to business even though her mind was wandering again. After all, she was gonna be a mom in six months. Mom to what, she didn’t know yet. Perhaps an alien lizard king. That was about as plausible as a good-looking Arabian stud doing the deed in a dream.

  Except the man is real, came the voice in her head that she wished was actually a voice—that way she’d know for sure that she was crazy! Yes, the man is real, the orgasm was real, and the dream was . . .

  “A ring,” Hilda said again, raising her voice to a squeak and almost breaking the spell for Stoner-Girl. “Yes, I see a gorgeous, shining ring. Gold band, with—”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” gushed Stoner-Girl as she got sucked in again.

  “Thick gold band,” said Hilda. “Diamonds studding the sides. I see it clearly on his right hand. Maybe an Ivy League college ring. No, it’s a sports ring! From a sports title, maybe even the Superbowl—”

  “Wait, the ring’s on his hand? What a bummer!” cried Stoner-Girl, and now Hilda knew she’d lost the game. Hilda had read Stoner-Girl as someone who was already rich and so perhaps would be more impressed with someone famous, but no: Stoner-Chick just wanted a no-name rich dude with a ring for her. Shit. Shit. Shit! That’s what you get for being too creative.

  Hilda tried to turn it around, but the buzz had officially been killed, and Stoner-Girl paid the advertised discount fee and strutted out, staring at her phone on the way.

  “Goddammit!” Hilda said, slamming her palms back down on the wood, making the table jump and almost knocking the thick red candle over. “Almost had her for the full-price menu! Gotta remember that even a modern hippie-chick wants her diamond ring. Ring me! Ring me! Ring me!”

  She screamed out the last bit of her private rant, slamming her palms down on the table again, biting her lip as she tried not to cry. God, how was she gonna do this? She wasn’t bad with money and she could probably figure that part out, especially now that the wine budget had been freed up. But more than that, how was she going to handle this mentally! Being a single mom was one thing. But like this? Hell, she couldn’t even tell her two or three friends about it, because what would she say when they asked the obvious question?!

  “Who’s your daddy,” she muttered, giggling as she ran her fingers through her hair, clawing open the braid she’d artfully done along one side. “Who’s your daddy!”

  “Sorry, am I interrupting?” came a man’s voice from the door, and Hilda started in her chair and blinked through the candle-flame as she tried to shake that eerie sense of being someplace else but still here, of being someone else but still herself . . . just like she was pregnant but still celibate. Was she carrying the new messiah? The devil’s spawn?

  Alien abduction and secret government experiments is more like it, she thought, squinting at the man and wondering if she’d stepped into the X-Files and this was a secret government agent who was going to explain what was going on and then erase her memory with a radioactive tampon.

  “No,” she said, still squinting as she tried to make out the shadowy figure standing in the doorway. For a moment she thought it might be him . . . the man of her dream, the man she’d taken for a cool five grand, the man whose name she didn’t even know.

  Ohgod wait, she thought as it hit her that the handsome Arabian guy had paid with his American Express card, which meant she actually did have his name on the receipt somewhere! Had she seriously not looked it up for two months? Talk about denial. Wait, what was she denying? It can’t be denial if it’s ridiculous to begin with, yes? Oh shit, where was that—

  “Hilda? Hilda Hogarth?” said the man as he stepped forward, the yellow light illuminating him finally. It was not him, Hilda thought with a sinking feeling that almost pissed her off as much as it confused her. Was she sitting here pining for some guy she barely knew?!

  “Yes? Sorry, I don’t know—oh, shit, Professor Norm! Oh, wow, I didn’t even . . . what are you doing here?” she said, standing and stepping away from the round table, her face going red as she tried to casually hide that crystal ball with her left hand. She shook her head and stared into the soft eyes of her physics professor from UNM-Santa Fe. He’d aged a little—after all, it’d been almost ten years since she’d dropped out of college—but it was certainly Professor Norman: that uneven, orange-brown beard, soft, light-brown eyes that were earnest and intelligent, sandy hair that was most certainly on its way out, thinning terribly at the top. “How are you, Professor! It’s been what . . . nine, ten years? What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, God, please call me Norm,” he said warmly, stepping forward like he was going to hug her but then hesitating and extending his right hand for an awkward handshake. He blinked as she shook his hand, now smiling as he glanced around the chaotic little store, eyes resting on that crystal ball before he looked back at her. “Well, the wife and I are in town for a seminar, so I thought I’d say hello.”

  “Well, I’m . . . I’m . . . I mean it’s great to see you, Prof—I mean Norm,” said Hilda, pulling at her hair and squinting a little. “I didn’t think you’d even remember me, let alone know where I worked, what I did.” She took a quick breath and glanced at the crystal ball, going a bit red again as she frowned and looked back at the middle-aged physics professor who seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh. “Go ahead,” she said finally, smirking and placing her hands on her hips. She’d always liked the professor’s gentle demeanor and earnest way, and so screw it, she thought. Let him laugh. “You can laugh now. It can’t be healthy to hold it in like that.”

  Now they both burst into laughter, the professor doubling over and shaking his head, squeezing Hilda’s arm warmly as he rubbed that crystal ball and giggled himself back to calmness. “Well,” he said finally, taking a deep breath. “This is actually the reason I remember you so well, Hilda. My best students usually want to work for Intel or NASA, so you�
��ve always sort of stuck out in my mind.”

  “Your best students usually graduate too, I bet,” Hilda said, brushing off the compliment as she remembered that she’d actually done pretty darn well in Professor Norm’s classes. Not so good in the rest of her classes though. Yeah, Einstein supposedly flunked math and history too, but he probably didn’t have a scholarship riding on his grade point average. “And they don’t fail math, history, English, and psychology. Not to mention most of the other physics classes I took.”

  Norm pursed his lips and shrugged, nodding and shrugging again before smiling that gentle, easy smile. “I remember. Made it kinda hard for me to convince the scholarship board to make an exception for you.”

  “You tried. I know that. It was good of you, and I always appreciated it.” Hilda waved her hand at him. “College just wasn’t for me. Couldn’t drag myself to those boring classrooms, which is kinda important if you want to not fail. But whatever. What about you, Professor? You said you’re here with your wife? When did you get married?”

  Norm cocked his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Three . . . no, four years now.” He frowned, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a very large, clunky phone. “Which reminds me, I should . . .” He trailed off as he poked at the screen, looking up when he finished. “Di will actually be really interested in hearing about what you do. It’s right up her alley. Oops—getting ahead of myself here. Sorry. I didn’t even ask. You up for lunch with me and Di? Our treat. Come on.”