Challenging the Doctor Sheikh

by Amalie Berlin

  Jibril knocked Dakan’s phone out of his hand with a quick swipe. It hit the floor hard, and he made sure it was broken by slamming his heel down on it, shattering the screen.

  “This is not your business, boy.”

  Clearly Jibril didn’t appreciate Dakan’s attempt at diplomacy.

  He got exactly two steps away before Dakan was after him. Another three steps and they were at the beverage bar. As he rounded it, Dakan grabbed Jibril’s wrist hard enough to spin him, but they’d kept things quiet enough so far that not many people in the room noticed their mild confrontation.

  Jibril turned and Dakan stepped in, his hand still locked about the man’s wrist. “You will only speak to her with cordial civility. Are. We. Clear, Prince Jibril?”

  He could’ve just nodded, and that would’ve satisfied Dakan. There were a number of things he could’ve said without the situation escalating.

  But Jibril’s face turned red, his volume rocketing up so he all but shouted, “Unless you’re the whore’s son and not the good Queen’s, leave it.”

  The sharply spoken words finally roused the interest of people in the ballroom, but all Dakan could really see was what might happen if they took Nira to Tabda Aljann. Was this kind of attitude the reason Mother had turned their king down? Did all the Al-Haaken men treat women that way?

  If Jibril knew about the relationship between Nira and himself, would he call her a whore?

  That was the thought that pushed him over the edge.

  All the rage and helplessness that had been simmering in him since that morning she’d been denied him roared to life, and Dakan’s fist flew.

  No amount of warning him to be good to Nira would work. This was not a man who would even respect his own women.

  He felt the impact and Jibril’s head snapped back. As Jibril staggered backwards, pain streaked up Dakan’s arm.

  Not good enough. Jibril wasn’t on the floor yet. And his hand could handle another round.

  Dakan pursued him, fists balling.

  Before that satisfying second crunch, something big and heavy impacted him from the side and he landed hard beneath the force of the tackle and the body that landed on top of him.

  He twisted, shoving at his attacker. Another Al-Haaken?

  No. Zahir.

  “What are you doing?” Zahir bit out in a sharp whisper, one hand locking around Dakan’s wrist in the same fashion as he’d detained Jibril.

  “Fixing something,” Dakan bit back.

  “Guards!” Well, damn. Father. “Detain my younger son.” Quietly angry again. The next thing he knew, several hands had him up and were marching him toward a side entrance.

  * * *

  Nira sought Adele at the start of the party, hoping to compare henna designs from the artist who’d shown up at the penthouse yesterday morning, only to find Adele entirely henna-free.

  “But this is your wedding celebration. Everything I’ve read and watched online says you should have these for your wedding. I just thought that you and Leila had yours together and the artist came to the penthouse to find me.”

  “No, no one came yesterday. Did you have to sit still for hours while it dried?”

  “Yes. But I really wanted to have it done sometime. It’s so beautiful.” She searched the ballroom, hoping to see Dakan. Would he have sent the artist to her? The man had been steadfastly avoiding her, other than the strange spying interlude. This didn’t seem like the kind of thoughtful gesture a man who wanted nothing to do with her would make. She didn’t even know where to file this memory aside from Sweet, Thoughtful, and Riddled with Mixed Signals.

  If he’d sent the henna artist, it meant he remembered her very first tirade about how all she knew she’d learned online.

  It meant he’d been thinking of her—which was at least something.

  A man shouted, “Whore’s son,” and her thought train was derailed amid a ballroom full of gasps. She turned in time to see Zahir and Dakan go flying. Before she could even form the intention to approach them Dakan was marched out by guards.

  The march took them directly past her, and Nira’s heart banged out of rhythm as his dark eyes again met her own. He shook his head minutely and glanced back toward the rude man. What did that mean?

  Leila fluttered toward the man Dakan had hit, ready to usher him out of the room. Damage control, no doubt. That’s when she got a good look at him.

  “Nira?”

  Adele said her name, grabbing her arm. “You’ve gone as white as a sheet. Let’s sit down.”

  She trailed where Adele led and sat like a sack of potatoes. Music that had gone quiet at some point resumed, and people began to mingle again.

  “He shook his head at me,” Nira said, looking at Adele. “Don’t go over there. Don’t speak to that man. I think that’s what he meant.”

  “Well, that man was shouting very rude things,” Adele began, but clearly didn’t know the context.

  She watched the door Leila and the man had passed through. “I think he’s my father.”

  Dakan had punched her father in the face. After having been called a whore’s son.

  “Do you think he was calling the Queen that?”

  “If he had been, Zahir would’ve leapt on him, not Dakan. He’s the Prince you were telling me about?”

  Nira nodded. It was him. He’d aged very well, although it was now possible he’d return home with a different-shaped nose...

  “Was he the one who had tried to marry Leila?” Adele asked.

  “That was his king.” She’d learned only enough of that to know there was a story: two men who had wanted the same woman and a rivalry birthed by the one who’d not been selected. “Dakan hit him. I think he hit him for me.” She wanted to go and find where they’d dragged him off to but she wasn’t family. “I think he meant my mum.”

  Adele motioned for a waiter, and soon a glass of juice was placed before Nira. “Drink this. You’re still very pale.”

  Nira dutifully picked up the glass, as she’d been told. Her hand shook and the liquid sloshed about enough that she had to add her other hand to the glass to steady it enough to get to her mouth, and split her attention between drinking and answering Adele’s questions about her blood sugar.

  Had he sent her mother away? Maybe she’d seen this side of him and had left on her own. Maybe that was where his venom came from.

  How dared he call her mum that vile word when he had been married while dallying with her?

  Leila came back without Jibril, and straight back out the door Daken had been escorted through.

  Adele came back and placed a plate with some nuts, fruit, and cheese on it in front of her. “Eat these.”

  “Will you take me to where Dakan is?” Nira wasn’t interested in food.

  “Not until you eat something.”

  All this being bossed around was getting really old. But Nira plucked up to cubes of cheese and popped them into her mouth, which turned out to be a lot of cheese to chew at once.

  “Finish that small plate and then I’ll take you.”

  * * *

  “Every time I come here, I try to be what is expected of me. This was too important for me to just let someone else deal with it. I handled it as well as I could,” Dakan said, his head now hurting almost as much as his hand. “Frankly, he needed a hell of a lot more than one punch.”

  “You try to be what’s expected of you?” Mother repeated. “You usually aren’t angry like this, so your cheek can be endearing. But when you turn violent toward a guest...”

  “A guest who was invited why? You knew who he was. You knew how he was.” Dakan shifted his attention to his father. “Who were you trying to provoke by inviting him? King Ahmad? Or me?”

  “I wanted to confirm the link to Nira’s mother,
” the King said. “It matters to her future and to yours. One of these days you will come to realize you wish to be with her, and that will not happen if she’s in Tabda Aljann. But here, in Mamlakat Almas, we have the advantage.”

  “I’m not going to marry Nira.” How many times did he have to say it?

  “Why?” His long-silent brother finally broke in. “You love her. You don’t deny you love her, you provoke international incidents because you love her, but you don’t speak to her, you don’t look at her. What is it you do wish from her?”

  Dakan had been asking himself the same thing for weeks. He wanted to be with her, and he wanted to protect her, but it didn’t feel like a right that belonged to him, even though he knew his aversion to the idea of marriage wasn’t entirely rational. He couldn’t even understand it himself, it was just there, part of a future that didn’t feel like it belonged to him.

  “I don’t think I’d be a good husband, and likely a worse father—she’s had enough experience with those. As you’ve said, I’ve a number of character defects. It’s better she finds that out before children get involved.”

  “Ridiculous,” Zahir said. “And that still doesn’t explain why you attacked Jibril. Tell us. What were you thinking?” It’d been years since he’d angered his brother enough to cause his spine to go rigid and that tone come to his voice. Zahir’s disappointment bothered him more than their parents’, but mostly what he felt in that moment was apathy for the entire situation. The fire that had blazed was...depleted.

  “How about I just go to my suite and you all return to the party?” Which his little showdown with Jibril had interrupted. “I am sorry for disrupting your celebration.”

  “You’re not forgiven,” Zahir said hotly. “Name a reason. Give us something we can use to smooth this over without an explanation that would shame Nira and her mother publicly. Otherwise it will be time for grand gestures. If that punch was your way of telling her you love her because you’re not man enough to say it directly, I don’t know what we can do with you.”

  Dakan said the only thing he could—the truth. “I wanted to spare Nira further humiliation at the hands of Jibril after...”

  “After what?”

  “After I did to Nira what Jibril did to her mother.” Dakan stood to face what must come. He knew what grand gestures meant: justice to the victim. Punishment.

  “She’s pregnant?” Fatiq asked.

  “No. But I took her to bed knowing we’d never be what she wanted. When he called her mother a whore, I heard his words extending to Nira and saw red.” Dakan drew a deep breath. He had no idea what else to say.

  The door opened to the ballroom and Nira and Adele stepped through. He looked at her long enough to decide she hadn’t been crying, so maybe Jibril had stayed away or left—the only positive he could take away from the evening.

  Turning back to his family, he muttered, “I have no other explanations. Do what you will. Make your grand gesture.”

  “Grand gesture?” Nira’s voice came from behind him, alarmed, but he didn’t turn back, just waited for the pronouncement.

  “Very well,” Father said, his voice resigned, like he’d always expected things with Dakan to come to this. “Can Zahir continue the work you began from England?”

  “It’s all lined out in proposals. I’ve hired an agent here to organize the budgets and another...” Dakan stopped. He wasn’t asking for details. “I have meticulous notes and two agents to help. They’re very efficient. It can all be managed by phone or email.”

  Just get on with it.

  This wasn’t how he’d intended to get back to London, but it would serve. He’d have to hope Nira would reach the same point soon and return home to finish the plans. Maybe his sentence would provide initiative.

  “Dakan Al Rahal, for breaching the sacred duty of hospitality and attacking our guest, you are exiled to the desert.”

  Dakan stilled. Those weren’t the words he’d expected. A dressing down for improper behavior, yes, not a reminder that he’d violated ancient, even holy ways.

  “Your passport is revoked. You will not leave our kingdom. You will not enter our cities. Until you can produce answers, you will not become a guest in another country, and you are no longer a prince of your own.”

  Nira’s throat went as dry as that desert they were sending him into. What did banishment to the desert even mean? Was it a death sentence?

  “Fatiq, that’s too harsh,” Leila said, stepping closer to Dakan.

  Dakan put his arm around her shoulders and murmured something at her temple. Whatever he said, Nira could see the tension in his frame. Stiff Dakan, Prince Dakan. Not himself. Was he ever himself with them? She hadn’t ever seen him do anything but argue with his father.

  “The desert always has answers,” Zahir said. “Meditate. Ask for guidance. I know you’ve never believed in it, but do it anyway.”

  “At least confine him until first light.” Leila was the only other person in the room who seemed as bothered by this as Nira was. “He shouldn’t travel in the desert at night.”

  The King nodded.

  First light meant travel under the brutal sun. How was that better?

  Dakan kissed the Queen’s cheek, then turned and walked straight toward Nira.

  Weeks with no contact, but simply seeing him walk toward her with that purposeful stride and determined glint in his dark eyes sent her still smoldering spark into a conflagration.

  He didn’t stop until he was chest to chest with her, his hands on her cheeks and his mouth sealed to hers. The kiss was so bare and pained, she felt drenched by it. He kissed her like a man who would never know pleasure or peace again.

  Nira curled her hands into the lapels of his tux, keeping him there, taking all the feeling pouring through his kiss.

  “Don’t wait for me,” he said against her lips when they both came up for air—exactly the opposite from what his kiss had said to her. “Go home. Be happy.”

  Other people pulled him from her. Once again, guards marched him away before she could think of a single thing to say that might make the situation better. Right after he’d told her not to wait for him seemed like the wrong time for a declaration of love.

  As they approached a large archway on the other side of the atrium, he called over his shoulder in English, “Don’t go near him, Nira. Don’t talk to him. Don’t go to Tabda Aljann. Don’t go to him, do you hear me?” As they rounded the corner of the arch he met her gaze again and dug his feet in to make them pause.

  Another story she didn’t know about her father. The difference was that this time she’d seen enough to make the leap of faith. Between Mum’s reaction to Jibril and Dakan’s, all her questions had been effectively answered.

  “I won’t,” she answered, saying the words he needed, though she probably would’ve agreed even if she hadn’t meant it at that point.

  He smiled, a subdued version of that grin that always made her heart melt, and then he was gone.

  Tears threatened, but Nira wasn’t about to cry in front of the King, who had banished him. For her, the party was over, but no excuses came to mind for her to make. She just curtsied, gathered the skirts of her expensive gown and muttered, “Please excuse me.”

  Once through the door, she skirted the ballroom, ignoring the curious looks from guests. Her mind swarmed with too many thoughts to focus on anything except what was essential to her sanity.

  Get to the room.

  Get her sketchbook.

  Let her brain switch off.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT WAS PART of Dakan’s make-up to always test boundaries.

  He’d been the child who would touch a bee after someone had told him it would sting him, just to see for himself.

  Don’t eat chocolate before bed or you’ll be sick. He
ate the chocolate.

  Don’t come back to the city until you sort yourself out.

  Dakan wanted to go back to the city. He wanted to go to the penthouse, wait for Nira to come, and take another bath.

  Meditate and ask the desert for answers? He’d fall asleep or die from some wasting sickness before the desert gave him any answers. He didn’t even know the stupid question—which seemed the bare minimum to know when starting a quest for answers.

  * * *

  A week in, and out of things to do, Dakan gave in and called Zahir. How did someone seek answers in the desert?

  An hour after the call ended, Dakan dressed and readied himself to walk in the desert, still with no idea about the question.

  By late afternoon he’d found the grave of his baby brother, and sat there for a while, picturing what life would’ve been like with three of them and the Lego house at eleven, six and four.

  Aafaq would’ve played inside with him—Zahir had been too old to get excited about the playhouse.

  He would’ve been the middle brother. Would that have changed who he was the way Nira believed being kept from her heritage had changed her?

  Dakan had never visited Aafaq’s grave before, and he’d never meditated either.

  Today he did both. A long talk he couldn’t finish before he ran out of water and had to return to camp.

  Before he’d even quenched his thirst, he knew he’d return the next day.

  * * *

  Zahir and Adele returned to England a week after their celebration, and Nira was tempted to go with them, but she wanted to be there when Dakan came back. The man had failed in his farewell attempt, but he could come back if he came up with whatever answers they wanted, so she waited, worked on the hospital, and walked on the beach with Leila—who was full of informative stories about the Al-Haaken brothers that explained everything she’d witnessed. Information Mum would probably like to know, just as soon as Nira worked out how to bring it up.

  She and Adele had exchanged email addresses before they’d gone, and having someone else to talk to made things a little easier. But a half-pound less than unbearable was still a heavy load.