by Holly Rayner
“Okay.” She washed her hands and started opening cupboards. “We’re looking for something big and deep, probably metal… Here.” She pulled it out and showed him. “Mixing bowl.”
“Got it.” He had adopted the expression of a very serious student.
Ellie showed him how to work the meat with his hands, rolling it into the shape of meatballs. He was clearly uncomfortable, making faces as they worked, but she admired his willingness to make the effort. She felt confident Mahmoud had never had to do this before in his life. Once the gravy was simmering, the kitchen began to smell like home.
“I’ll call someone to serve,” Mahmoud said as he washed up at the sink.
Ellie shook her head. “Not today.”
“No?”
“This is my meal, and I’m going to serve it.”
She sent him to the massive dining room table to wait and found plates and silverware. Careful not to drip—she couldn’t imagine what might happen if she were to drip gravy in the palace—she ladled out a serving of meatballs onto each of their plates. Then she pawed through the fridge. It was mostly juices she didn’t recognize and bottles of wine, but at the back she found a few cans of what appeared to be a local version of cola. Perfect.
At the table, Mahmoud was waiting with his napkin tucked into his shirt collar. Ellie giggled. “Very distinguished.”
“We can’t very well have the Sheikh dripping gravy on his attire.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to mess up that T-shirt,” she quipped. She set his plate in front of him, cracked open one of the cans of cola, and poured it into his goblet. “Your majesty’s beverage.”
He pushed the chair next to his out with his foot. “Join me.”
She put down her own plate and watched anxiously as Mahmoud cut a meatball in half and took a bite. “It’s delicious.”
“Thank you. Grandma made them every Thanksgiving.”
“Such a strange holiday.”
“Because of the imperialist thing?”
“Yes. But also just because Americans have gone on celebrating it all these years. Why do you do it?”
“I thought you liked traditions.”
“I suppose I’m trying to understand them.”
“It’s a holiday where we get to spend time with family and eat a lot,” she said. “Who wouldn’t like that?”
“Isn’t that every holiday?”
“Well. Maybe. But Thanksgiving is fun.”
Mahmoud popped a meatball in his mouth whole. Some gravy dripped on his shirt. It was the most undignified—the most unguarded—Ellie had ever seen him look. No. You do not have a crush on the Sheikh just because he’s wearing a T-shirt. Not acceptable.
The trouble was she almost definitely did.
Chapter 23
Mahmoud
The next morning, Mahmoud asked Ellie to meet him out on the helipad.
“You have a helipad?” she exclaimed.
The Sheikh smiled wryly. He’d grown accustomed to her mild outrage at every luxury he enjoyed, and in truth, it had given him a fair bit to think about.
Of course Mahmoud knew that most people didn’t have helicopters, but he couldn’t say it was something he’d ever really thought about. Planning this trip, however, it had been at the forefront of his mind. Most people couldn’t take off to the beach for the afternoon just because they felt like it. Being Sheikh might be lonely and it might be a lot of pressure, but in many ways, he was very lucky.
He handed Ellie her ear defenders and helped her into the helicopter. She looked at him and spoke, but he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the whirling blades. He tapped the button on the side of the ear guards, indicating that she should press it.
She did. “Where are we going?” her voice piped into his ear.
“I thought you might like to see the beach.”
“The beach?” Her head whipped around. “We’re in the middle of the desert!”
“We’re a small country,” he reminded her. “The borders are very nearby.”
“So we’re just flying to the beach.”
“We are.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I brought a picnic.”
“Wine?”
“Naturally.”
She settled back in her seat. “All right, then.”
As the helicopter rose upwards, Mahmoud grabbed Ellie’s hand and pulled her toward his window. “Look. The palace from above.”
“Wow,” Ellie breathed, taking it in. “That’s really something.”
“There’s your room,” he said, pointing. “See the balcony? That’s your pool.”
Ellie pulled back a little. “Um… Do helicopters fly over the palace…often?”
Mahmoud smiled inwardly, remembering the day he’d accidentally walked in on her. Although he still felt badly about it, he was glad for this indication that it apparently hadn’t stopped her from taking full advantage of her pool. “No,” he reassured her. “No one’s allowed to fly over the palace. Only my personal aircraft have permission.”
“Oh. Good.”
Before long, they had left the city behind and were out over open desert. To Mahmoud’s surprise, Ellie seemed just as excited to see the rolling dunes as she had been about the palace. She pressed herself against the window, staring out at the vast expanse of sand. Mahmoud was reminded again of the first time he’d seen the Pacific Ocean, so much bigger and grander than any seascape he’d previously experienced. Ellie had seen deserts before, no doubt, but perhaps none as massive as this one.
The sand gave way to sea. Mahmoud ordered the helicopter down on a clear patch of sand and hopped out, bringing Ellie with him. He reached back in for the picnic basket and a couple of towels. “Why don’t you find a place to sit,” he suggested, shouting to be heard over the helicopter as it wound down.
Ellie accepted a towel and walked off. Mahmoud followed her dutifully until eventually she stopped and spread her towel on the sand. “Is this going to be above the high tide line?” she asked him.
“It’s high tide now.”
“Oh. Good.”
He unpacked the bread and cheese and the bottle of wine. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“I forgot the wine glasses. I can’t believe it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We can drink from the bottle. If you think your dignity won’t suffer too much, that is, Your Majesty.”
He looked at her. She was teasing him. “I can drink from the bottle.”
Ellie popped the cork, took a swallow, and passed it to him. “We used to do this in college. We didn’t have any nice glasses, so whenever we wanted a bottle of wine, we’d just pass it around and share it.”
He drank and passed the bottle back to her. “Why didn’t you just buy glasses?”
“Eh. We were lazy,” she said. “We never went to the store because we’d thought of something we needed. If we went to the store, it was because we were bored, or it was two a.m. and we wanted to have an adventure at the all-night convenience store.” She took another sip. “I guess you had servants to go for you when you thought of something you needed.”
“Does that really bother you, Ellie?”
“No, it doesn’t. I know you need people around to help you. You’re a busy guy, I get it, you can’t be mopping your own floors.”
“You seem like you’re not comfortable with it,” he said.
“That isn’t it,” she said. “I promise.”
He turned to face her fully. “Then what is it, Ellie?”
Chapter 24
Ellie
His hand was just inches from hers. Was he aching for her touch as much as she was for his? She was lost, swimming in his eyes. “I…”
“I like you, Ellie,” he said softly. “I like you a lot.”
“I like you too…”
“Then why do you keep your distance from me? Don’t argue,” he said, holding up a hand to stop her objections. “I see you doing it. Every ti
me I think we’re getting close, you pull away. You object to my money, or my family’s traditions—things I know you know I can’t help.”
“I know you can’t,” she said. “Your money…makes me uncomfortable sometimes, because it’s not what I’m used to. I don’t know exactly how to handle it. I find it weird going to the market and taking anything I want. I don’t know how I’m supposed to treat servants. But I can handle those things.”
His hand grazed her shoulder and a shiver ran all through her body, despite the heat on the beach. “Then what is it, Ellie? Tell me.”
Ellie sighed and looked out at the ocean. The beach they were on was more of an inlet, surrounded by cliffs on three sides, and she imagined it would be impossible to access without an aircraft or a boat. It was no surprise they had the place to themselves. And it was gorgeous—white sand, clear water—but it was no California. The beaches back home were like none other in the world.
And yet, lying here on a beach towel next to Mahmoud, she found she could forget how far away she was from home. She could forget about her job, about Mark’s behavior at the convention, about the fact that she was almost definitely fired as soon as she set foot on American soil unless she could pull a miracle out of her pocket.
She could even forget about the fact that Mahmoud was a sheikh.
With the sand in her toes and the sound of waves lapping on the beach, with no servants and no one around but the two of them, she could pretend they were just a young man and a young woman. She could imagine she was just here on a date with an attractive guy who had been nothing but kind to her, and she could almost give in to the temptation she’d been staving off for days.
Except…
Except he hadn’t been nothing but kind to her, had he?
He’d abandoned her.
She sat up and shook the sand out of her hair, and he followed. “Mahmoud…”
‘What is it?”
“It’s about…when we first met.”
“At the palace?”
“No, in college.”
“Ah.”
“It was a fun night,” she said. “I thought we had a good night together.”
“We did! I always remembered what a great conversationalist you were, how much you made me laugh. Perhaps it’s overly sentimental of me, but you were my favorite part of college, Ellie.”
“What about your friends?”
“I told you before. I never had any friends. I wasn’t permitted.”
“Mahmoud…”
He cupped the back of her neck, met her eyes, said nothing.
“You just left me there. At the bar. I asked you back to my place, and…that wasn’t something I did a lot. Or ever. I never asked guys to come home with me. You were the only one. And then you just disappeared.”
He sighed. “Ellie.”
“And I waited for you. I sat on that barstool for almost an hour. I kept thinking you’d be back any minute, and meanwhile people were going home… I felt so stupid, Mahmoud.”
“Ellie, I’m sorry.”
“Why did you leave me like that?”
“It was never my intention.”
“That doesn’t explain—”
“Do you remember what I told you?” he asked. “What I was doing there that night?”
“You said you’d come to the party with a friend.”
“But I tell you now I didn’t have any friends.”
She breathed in. “Oh…”
He took her hand. “I snuck away from my bodyguards,” he said. “I’d been dreaming of doing it for four years, and I knew that night was my last chance. I thought they’d never find me in a computer science party—what reason could I have for being there? It wasn’t my major. I didn’t know anyone who was attending. The story I told you, about accompanying a friend, was a lie.”
“Why did you lie to me?” She was barely breathing. History—her history—was being rewritten for her as she listened.
“I had to say something,” he said. “I couldn’t very well tell you I’d given my security detail the slip. Accompanying a friend was the most believable story I could think of.”
“But you could have said goodbye…”
“Ellie, I promise, if I could have done so, I would. My bodyguards arrived as I was retrieving my coat. I had every intention of coming back to your dorm with you.” He smiled. “For ice cream, as I remember.”
“Ice cream,” Ellie breathed.
“But once they arrived, I had to go. I couldn’t put up a fuss; I would only have drawn unnecessary attention to myself. They were never going to let me stay, Ellie. Not even to say goodbye. They took me away before I ever had a chance.”
This changed everything. Didn’t it? What she felt about him… He was no longer the guy who had abandoned her all those years ago.
She could think of him differently now. She could let go of what had happened, because it was never really what had happened at all. She hadn’t been abandoned that night. He had wanted her.
Maybe he still did.
His face was awfully close to hers…
“I don’t know what to say,” she said softly.
He traced her cheek with his thumb. “You don’t need to say anything, Ellie.”
“I was angry with you.”
“I tried to contact you.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “It turns out you weren’t the only Ellie Mills in Palo Alto that year.”
“I told you,” she said. “I’m just an ordinary California girl.”
“Did you tell me that?”
“Well, I think about it.”
“You, Ellie Mills,” he said, “are far from ordinary.”
“I think I’m about to kiss a sheikh on a beach.”
A smile played at his lips. “I think you are.”
And then she did.
Chapter 25
Mahmoud
It was miraculous that he’d gone so long without touching her. Now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to get enough.
He loved how she responded to him, arching into his body, letting him take the lead as they kissed. He slid his hands down her sides and she hummed into his mouth. The sound mingled with the lapping of the waves, and Mahmoud decided maybe this was heaven.
All my life, I’ve had everything I wanted, and not a moment of it ever came close to this.
She broke away from him with a little gasp. “What are we doing?”
“Do you not want to?” There was no real concern in his question. He knew she wanted to. Her eyes were wide with desire and she was breathing like she’d just run a mile.
“You’re…”
“I’m what?”
“A sheikh.”
“And?” He kissed her again, not waiting for an answer. God, he thought, I could do this forever. Never mind running the country. Would they really miss me? I wonder how long I could stay away…
Ellie pulled back again. “Mahmoud.”
“I love it when you say my name. No one ever says my name.”
She closed her eyes. “Mahmoud.”
He kissed her cheekbone, very near her nose. “One more time.”
“Mahmoud…”
“Mmm.”
“Are you allowed to do this? With me?”
“Do what?” he asked, trailing kisses down her neck.
“Stop it,” she giggled. “I can’t concentrate when you… Are you allowed to be with someone like me?”
“Someone like you?”
“American. Not royal. I don’t know.”
“I can do whatever I want,” he said, saucily. “I’m the Sheikh.”
She braced her hand on his chest and held him at arm’s length. “I’m serious. I don’t want to get arrested for seducing you.”
“I won’t let them arrest you, I promise.”
“Because, you know, really, you seduced me.”
“Did I?” He wasn’t listening. He was back to kissing.
“You brought me to
your palace. Bought me expensive gifts. Took me to a secluded beach.”
“Mmm. You cooked me dinner, though.”
She melted back into him, groaning. “Fine. We seduced each other.”
“Agreed.”
“And it’s really okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “I checked.”
She sat up a little. “You checked?”
“Well, when I realized I had feelings for you—”
She swatted him. Mahmoud relished it. It had been so long—had it ever happened in his life?—since someone had touched him playfully like that.
“When did you realize that?” she asked.
“The first night you were at the palace.”
“That soon!”
“I suspected sooner. When I saw you on the news, all the feelings from that night five years ago came back. That was when I knew I had to see you, no matter what, to see if there was any chance you felt the same way.”
“So you have been seducing me!” She was triumphant.
Mahmoud allowed himself a smile. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Mmm.” She relaxed into his arms.
Suddenly, all the urgency went out of their embrace, and it was enough to lie together and listen to the rush of the ocean.
We have as long as we want, Mahmoud realized happily. I’m not expected anywhere for days. Ellie can leave her job and stay here; she won’t need to worry about money anymore. They could take their time in ways they hadn’t been allowed back in college, get to know everything about each other. There was no need to rush.
But then Ellie was rolling on top of him, and all the patience flew out of his body.
“We should go back to the palace,” he said softly into her ear.
He expected an argument—this was Ellie, after all; God knew she always had an opinion, it was one of the things he liked best about her—but she clambered to her feet and started rolling up her beach towel without a word.
He knew, without having to ask, that she understood exactly why he wanted to go back to the palace and that she was agreeing. Knowing that, recognizing what it meant, watching her roll up that towel was one of the most arousing things Mahmoud had ever seen.