Curves for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 1)
Page 16
And so Samir sat down, Aya by his side, and he called the last phone number on the list that Aya had placed before him.
“Miss Cindy? It is Prince Samir from the Nation of Farrar. You are in Europe currently, yes? An eight-hour flight from the United States. A charter flight is being arranged for you as I speak. Yes, Prince Samir from Farrar. No, just stop for a moment and listen. Please listen, Miss Cindy. Listen carefully.”
43
The pounding on the door at 4 a.m. was not unexpected, but Wendy still nearly fell off the couch in shock when she heard it. The doorbell was ringing too, and with the pounding and ringing, it sounded like a goddamn fire-truck outside her door.
Oh, God, he’s already here, Wendy thought as she rolled to her feet and stumbled towards the door, almost falling on her face because her left leg had fallen asleep.
“Coming,” she groaned as she staggered to the door, stopping for a moment at the small round mirror near the coat rack to confirm that yes, she did in fact look awful right now. Great.
She flung the door open as the emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to hold out, to hold it all in, to stay strong and stick with her choice. And now she was terrified that she’d melt the moment she saw him, the second she smelled his familiar musk, the instant he walked up to her and took her into his arms and reminded her that there could be no question about their love, about what was right for them, about what was going to happen with them.
With a last deep breath she opened her eyes and forced herself to look at him, and the sight made her blink and then blink again.
“Cindy?” she said. “What. The. Hell.”
“Hey, sis. Can I come in?”
Wendy blinked again, holding on to the doorknob just so she could stay upright. She stepped back in bewilderment and let her sister walk in.
“Wow,” Cindy said, whistling as she looked around. “So this is how a waitress in Wisconsin lives, huh. Not so bad. I could get used to it.” She shrugged now, making sharp eye contact with Wendy, something like indignation in her eyes. “And you know what? I WOULD get used to it if I had to! If I had to give up my vacation homes, my travels, my shopping. If I had to actually WORK to support my family. I’d f-ing DO it, Wendy! You taught me that much, whether you know it or not. God!”
Wendy didn’t even bother to ask what was going on, because a part of her had no damned idea, and another part of her suddenly understood everything so fast it made her dizzy, breathless, almost overwhelmed.
Cindy sat down hard on the couch, crossing her legs and spreading her arms over the back, looking up at Wendy with an expression of indignation, affection, and straight-up what-the-HELL-were-you-thinking!
“So,” she said to the still-standing Wendy. “You wanna go first, or should I?”
Wendy didn’t speak. She didn’t even move. Finally, after blinking once more she slowly closed the door and leaned against it, eventually sliding down to the floor until she was sitting on her butt, knees up to her chest, back against the door.
“OK,” said Cindy. “I guess I’m up.”
“Uh. Yeah,” Wendy said quietly.
Cindy took a breath and sat up straight. She opened her mouth, raised her finger, and took another deep breath before speaking. “OK,” she said. “Here goes.”
44
And an hour after sunrise, when Zahain bounded up the stairs two steps at a time, shouting her name and crashing his body right into the door, it was already ajar, and he tumbled right into the tiny living room, almost falling over Wendy and Cindy, who were spread out on the center carpet, both of them lying on their stomachs, half-finished cups of tea beside them, an empty packet of Oreos to the left, a lot of cookie-crumbs to the right.
45
The silver jet was thirty-thousand feet above the rest of the world, heading east at close to the speed of sound. Wendy was in his arms, and all she could see through the windows was clear blue sky. No clouds. Nothing standing in the way.
“I still don’t understand why you had to run,” Zahain was saying as Wendy stared out the window, that smile stuck on her round face that perhaps had aged just a bit over the past twenty-four hours.
Wendy stayed quiet, but the Sheikh kept talking. “So I understand now that it was Aya, not Samir, who wanted to keep us apart. She thinks of Samir as her own son, and in her mind she was doing the right thing. She wanted us to be apart at least until after the child is born. She knew that an illegitimate child could not become Sheikh. It is part of the old law. The fine print, I suppose. She also knew that if you were to have my child out of wedlock, it would make you impure according to the old traditions, which means the Council could not recognize our union even if we tried to marry later on. If I insisted on marrying you, thereby violating the laws, the Council would have forced me to step down as Sheikh. And you did not want me to ever have to choose between my country and you. Have I got that right, Wendy? At least nod, if you refuse to talk about it!”
Wendy looked at him dreamily, but still no words. Finally she nodded, looking away as she did it.
Zahain keep going. “And Aya showed you some documents—email exchanges between her and the royal house of Khawas, the small nation that is the major oil supplier to Cindy’s husband. Aya has some old connections there, as she does in many places in our part of the world. So Aya convinced you that Cindy’s husband would never get a long-term contact again, plunging Cindy’s family into bankruptcy.”
Another nod from the still-silent Wendy.
“Unless . . .” Zahain said with a deep breath, “. . . unless you made the choice to leave Farrar, to leave me, leave us, leave your own happiness behind in exchange for Cindy’s happiness. Leave me behind so I’d never have to choose between the nation I serve and the woman I love. So you made these choices on your own. Choices for Cindy, choices for me. On your own.”
Zahain shook his head, his jaw setting in anger for a moment before he just smiled in resignation. “But Wendy,” he shouted, now starting to laugh at the madness of it all. “Though I feel like a cartoon character when I say it, you do remember that I am a BILLIONAIRE, yes? And once we are married, your sister is part of MY family, Wendy! OUR family! She would never want for anything again! Why did you choose to run? You could have just come to me! One conversation would have resolved all of it! I would have fixed it before dinnertime! What were you thinking, Wendy!”
Wendy stayed quiet, her eyes still fixed on the blue vista outside the window. True, she had not explained that to Zahain. And she would not explain it to him.
She glanced at him now, her eyes focused and intense, the love momentarily buried in something else: that fire, that strength, that fierce independence.
At least some of what I wrote in that letter is true, she thought now. So no, Zahain. I’m not going to explain why I chose to walk away instead of coming to you to fix everything with your power and money. You can damn well figure it out yourself, don’t you think?
Zahain stared back at her, and it took him a minute but he got there soon enough. He blinked and looked away for a moment, and when he turned back to her, she saw the respect, the admiration, the recognition in his eyes.
“Because you don’t need a man to fix everything for you,” he said quietly, trying to roll his eyes in playful sarcasm but not able to make it work at all. “You don’t need a man to save you. You don’t need a man to protect you. You don’t need a man to—”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t WANT a man,” Wendy said now, trembling as she felt herself start to break, melt, dissolve into his love and understanding. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want a man, Zahain,” she said again, her voice soft, her pitch low and husky. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want a man with everything I’ve got, want him with a desperation that’s so deep it scares me, want him with me forever, his smell, his touch, his—”
And she was interrupted as the plane dipped suddenly, giving her that funny feeling in her belly, and she looked up at the Sheikh
in surprise. “Turbulence?”
“No,” Zahain said, his voice barely a whisper as he kissed her hard, kissed her full, kissed her like she needed to be kissed. “Paris.”
And as that silver jet glided its way into the city of love, the place where this dream began, Wendy asked herself if there was another reason she had run.
Could part of the reason be fear, she asked herself. Fear to let myself dream of those things that I never allowed myself to dream of as a girl: marriage, motherhood, a man I trust and love? And now, when I was so close to that life, did I just freak when I realized that maybe I DO want that dream?! That I do want it. I do want it. I do, I do, I DO!
I do.
46
And forty-six days later, when the fireworks lit up the night skies above Farrar, when the Sheikh and his bride made their vows in Arabic and English, when the people of Farrar cheered and called out his name and her name in the same breath, Wendy Williams, the Waitress from Wisconsin, blinked away the tears and whispered softly, just for herself:
“It all happened backwards,” she said under her breath as her husband looked over at her, his smile full just like moon above them. “It all happened backwards, but from this day on, I’m only looking forward.”
And the Sheikh took her hand and led her down the winding red carpet that led to that pink sandstone palace that looked more like a dream than ever. And perhaps it was a dream. But this time it was her dream for a change.
This time it was her dream.
∞
FROM THE AUTHOR
Hey! I hope you liked the book! Curves for the Sheikh is the first in my new series of Sheikh Romances featuring curvy ladies and sexy Sheikhs! Flames for the Sheikh is out October 21st, and Hostage for the Sheikh comes out November 5th. Both are available for pre-order right now!
Pre-Order FLAMES FOR THE SHEIKH!
Pre-Order HOSTAGE FOR THE SHEIKH
Happy reading!
love, Anna.
ab@annabellewinters.com
Amazon Author Page
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