by Holly Rayner
Her mother’s hand found hers. Dakota looked over. Anne was smiling at her, eyes watering. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “You’re going to do great. We’re already so proud of you, honey.”
The hall was a massive two-story building with an outer balcony running around it. As they drove up to the back door, where Dakota and her family would enter, she saw that people were already on the balcony holding glasses of champagne and chatting. Her nerves twanged again. The event had already started. Things were in motion. Dakota didn’t want to back out, but there was something irrevocable about seeing her wedding guests. It was final now. There was no turning back.
Her dressing room had been prepared with platters of fruits and vegetables and bottles of water. Too nervous to speak now, Dakota took a seat in a winged armchair and closed her eyes, trying to relax and breathe.
A bottle of water found its way into her hand. Dakota opened her eyes. Karida was watching her. “You’ll be fine,” she said soothingly. “I went upstairs and checked on Majeed. He’s excited to see you.”
That helped. The knowledge that Majeed was here, in the building, that she would be seeing him soon…as crazy as all this was, Dakota wasn’t going through it alone.
Her father poked his head into the dressing room. “Everyone decent? It’s time.”
Dakota followed her father out of the basement and up to the main floor. They paused outside the door to the ballroom, where the wedding was to take place. Dakota could hear music coming through the heavy oak doors. Karida and Rachel were giggling like schoolgirls now, waiting their turn to walk down the aisle.
The oak doors opened, and the doormen ushered the bridesmaids through. Dakota heard the music swell. She tried to peek in as the doors were closing. It was impossible to see very much, but she could tell the room was absolutely packed. She gripped her father’s arm tightly.
The doors opened again, admitting two of Majeed’s little cousins, the flower girl and ring bearer. Now it was just Dakota and her father outside, waiting. It was almost time.
Ben turned to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’m so proud of you,” he whispered. “You’re a remarkable young woman, and I love you.”
Then the doors were open again, and they were stepping through.
At first, Dakota couldn’t recognize a single face. It was all too much to take in. Flashes were going off as reporters snapped her picture. The music swelled, and then she saw Dylan, sitting near the aisle and giving her a thumbs up. Dakota felt a smile steal across her face. A few rows ahead of her brother, the Emir was nodding, clearly pleased with what he was seeing.
And then she turned her eyes to the front of the room, and there he was, looking taller and more handsome than she had ever seen him.
Majeed met her gaze and smiled at her, and for the first time since all this had started, Dakota wanted to break away and run to him. Her heart soared. She loved him. She was marrying him today, and she loved him. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Chapter 12
“You look beautiful,” Majeed whispered as he took her arm and led her the final few steps up to the altar. “Absolutely beautiful.”
Dakota grinned. “They were working on me all day. I feel like an art project.”
His hand lingered on her arm. The intensity of the skin on skin contact between them made Dakota a little dizzy. She felt like a schoolgirl, looking for signs that a boy liked her. If only there was some way she could ask, some way she could know what his answer would be without ruining the moment. He likes me, she reminded herself. I can tell. And Karida said so. At the very least, he does like me.
But it wasn’t enough. Not when she felt the way she did. What if he didn’t love her the way she loved him? Could he possibly grow to love her as much, in time? Perhaps someday, in the far future, they would laugh about this moment. It would be a hilarious anecdote that she had been so unsure of his love because by that time, he would love her completely. She gripped his hands in hers.
“Are you nervous?” Majeed asked.
“Yes,” she admitted.
He nodded. “So am I.”
Dakota felt a rush of affection for him. In this way, at least, they were sharing the same emotions right now. The same nervousness, and—if the smile that kept stealing over his face was any indicator—the same pleasure at being here.
She glanced down into the assembled crowd. The round face of the Emir was easy to pick out. He was smiling up at them, and Dakota took a moment’s pleasure in knowing that his ultimatum to the Lees and the bin Ayads had been satisfactorily met. She had saved her family, yet again; they would be able to stay here in Baraq. But this time she’d done more than help her family out. She gripped Majeed’s hands tightly in her own. This time, she’d gotten something wonderful for herself out of the deal.
Dakota looked farther back. There was Dylan. He made a face when he saw her looking at him, and Dakota knew he was trying to get her to crack and start laughing up. Her brother was incapable of taking anything seriously, she thought. But she really ought to thank him. If he hadn’t gone stirring things up at the New Year’s Eve party, it never would have become necessary for the Lees and the bin Ayads to make any kind of arrangement, and Dakota wouldn’t be standing up here with Majeed right now.
She spotted her father in the back of the room. Ben Lee was jockeying with another man, each of them nudging each other to the side and trying to fix their cameras on the altar. After a moment, Dakota realized that the man beside her father was Ubaid bin Ayad. The Sheikh had actually turned away from the front of the room and appeared to be berating Ben Lee, who was doing his best to ignore his verbal barbs but continued to shove the other man’s camera out of his way. Great, Dakota thought. Even today, they’re fighting. I should have known it would be like this.
“What do you think you’re doing,” a voice rang out from somewhere in the crowd, jerking Dakota’s attention away from the squabbling fathers. Beside her, Majeed was also scanning for the source of the cry, and Dakota saw the Emir turn and scowl as he too tried to divine who was interrupting the wedding. A moment later, the question was answered. Anne Lee had jumped to her feet, and beside her, so had another woman.
“I am the mother of the bride,” Anne proclaimed. “Etiquette dictates that you run your choice of dress by me first, to avoid this exact problem.”
Dakota did a double take. Both her own mother and the other woman were wearing the same dress. And as the other woman turned toward the front of the room, Dakota got a good look at her face for the first time. It was Majeed’s mother.
“Oh, no,” Majeed said under his breath.
“Excuse me,” the Sheikha said, drawing herself up haughtily. “I am Baraqi royalty, and you are a tourist. How dare you sit here and try to lecture me on etiquette on my son’s wedding day? If you had a shred of decency you would go home and change clothes immediately.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Anne sputtered. “I’m not going to miss my daughter’s wedding ceremony because you think you’re entitled to a dress. You go home and change.”
“Mom, stop it,” Dakota begged. “Everyone’s staring.” And it was true, most of the assembled Baraqis had turned their focus from the bride and groom to the arguing mothers. Maybe she should have expected it, Dakota thought. After all, the Lees and the bin Ayads had never managed to get along at any kind of party or social event. Why had she thought this would be any different?
The mothers were interrupted by a loud crash. Dakota whirled around. Her father’s camera lay in pieces on the floor. Ben was staring down in shock as if he couldn’t believe what had happened, but after a moment he looked up, eyes blazing. “You broke my camera,” he shouted, moving so close to Ubaid bin Ayad that Dakota imagined the Sheikh could probably smell her father’s mouthwash. “That cost thousands of dollars.”
“It was cheap American trash,” bin Ayad scoffed. “I will happily give you a copy of my recording of the blessed event if you want real high qua
lity.”
“Like hell,” Ben snatched bin Ayad’s camera away, tripod and all. “You owe me this rig in payment for the one you broke. I know what’ll happen if you film it. You’ll focus the whole thing on your son, you won’t get any shots of my daughter.”
“Did I not generously send a photography team to your home to take portraits of your daughter all day?” bin Ayad demanded. “Did I not send her a prep team to ensure that she looked her best today?”
“She doesn’t need any of that to look her best.”
“At least put on a jacket!”
Dakota spun again. Her mother was waving a jacket in Majeed’s mother’s face. “You’re an embarrassment. You’re clearly just trying to show me up. You must have found out somehow what I was planning to wear and copied it to make a mockery of me.”
“You Americans are always convinced you’re the best at everything,” Ubaid bin Ayad bellowed over the din in the room. People were turning toward one or the other argument, climbing on their seats to see what was going on. “You come into our country and set up your little aeronautics company when we’re perfectly happy with our own businesses—”
“Little company?” Ben bellowed. “We’re the most profitable aeronautics company this side of the Atlantic.”
“I know for a fact that your photographer sent pictures from my house to yours this morning,” Anne snarled. “I was in those photos. You knew what I would be wearing. There is no excuse for this, you attention-seeking—”
“What was I supposed to do?” Majeed’s mother yelled, her face red. “Did you want me to go out and pick up a different dress today? This is my son’s wedding day. I’ve been planning for weeks.”
“We’ve all been planning for weeks.”
“Enough!”
Everybody froze at the sound of the deep, commanding voice, and turned where they stood. The Emir had gotten to his feet. He gazed around, an expression of distaste on his face.
“I can’t believe I thought the Lees and the bin Ayads could be counted upon to go a single day without some kind of scandal or upheaval,” he said. “This is appalling. We are at a wedding.” He turned to the two mothers. “Nobody is interested in what you’re wearing. Both of you, please leave the hall at once. My guards will escort you.”
“What?” Anne cried. “You can’t throw me out. My daughter is getting married!”
“Oh, no, she isn’t,” Ben snapped, marching up to the altar and grabbing Dakota by the arm. “We should have known better than to enter into an arrangement with people like this. We should have known it would be a joke. Come on, Dakota.”
“Dad, no!” She pulled away from him, her hand still locked in Majeed’s “I want to go through with this. I want to marry him.”
“Well, he doesn’t want to marry you.” Majeed’s mother had joined them at the altar. “He told me so himself, right after the arrangement was made. He thought it was a terrible idea, didn’t you, Majeed? He told me you were a frivolous American, and I thought he was probably right, and then somehow you changed our minds about you. You must have thought you were so clever, standing here, about to marry into the royal family to get your rabble-rousing parents out of trouble with the Emir.”
A gasp went up around the room, accompanied by murmurs. Dakota’s heart sank. The fact that their marriage had been arranged to meet the Emir’s ultimatum hadn’t been known by the general public. Dakota knew that arranged marriages were something Baraqis took very seriously, and they were generally not something that was done to negotiate one’s way out of a political, financial, or social debacle. The Lees and the bin Ayads had disrespected the institution, and Dakota had always known that if the people found out the truth, they would be angry about it.
Ben Lee seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same time. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you?” he snapped, and this time his grip on Dakota’s arm was so firm that she couldn’t break free. “Not even for one day. Well, this is over. Consider the wedding canceled, and good riddance to you all.”
He pulled Dakota away, back up the aisle. She was too stunned by what he had done to even struggle, and it wasn’t until they had passed through the heavy oak doors that she broke his grip. “Dad! What did you do?”
“You couldn’t marry into that family, Dakota. I should have known. I should have realized they would never change. I let myself be fooled by his words. He’s a good speaker, that Sheikh, and his son is even better.”
“They’re good people, Dad. I really like him. I wanted…” she swallowed hard, suppressing the lump in her throat. “I wanted to marry him.”
“You don’t know what you want,” Ben said absently.
“How can you do this. You pushed me into marrying him when I said I didn’t want to, and now that I actually want to, you’re pulling me away.” She could feel her carefully constructed hairstyle starting to slip out of place, but she was too agitated to care. “You’ve never let me do what I wanted, Dad. Not once.”
Dylan came bursting through the doors. “It’s mayhem in there. The bin Ayads just pulled Majeed out through a back door. The Emir says both families will be speaking at a press conference in two hours.”
“A press conference,” Ben sputtered. “We won’t be doing anything of the kind.”
“It’s not you they want, Dad,” Dylan said. “It’s Dakota. And Majeed, too. People are pretty angry in there after what they heard. They’re saying this whole thing was a sham, that the royal family has no respect for the traditions of the people.”
“That’s between the bin Ayads and them,” Ben said firmly. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Dad,” Dakota interrupted. “Stop it. I want to do the press conference.” She hardly knew what she was saying, but her mind had latched onto one thing: the press conference would feature her and Majeed. That was where he would be, so that was where she wanted to be, too. They were supposed to be exchanging vows right now. She could hardly believe how quickly everything had fallen apart.
“Dakota,” Anne said, “you don’t have to do this.”
“Mom, this is literally my job. Talking to the press after an incident. We have two hours, right? Somebody get me some clothes, I’m not going in front of the press in this dress.”
The press conference was taking place in the very same hall in which Dakota had almost gotten married just a few short hours ago. The altar had been cleared away now and replaced with a long table. It wasn’t necessary, Dakota thought as she took her seat, for the table to be this long. Both families could have sat along it, comfortably, side by side. Perhaps that had been the plan when it had been set up. But the Lees weren’t in attendance, and neither were the bin Ayads, and Dakota felt as if Majeed was seated miles away from her.
The seats in the hall, which had earlier been filled with wedding guests, had cleared out, leaving room for several dozen reporters in the first couple of rows. The only person to have retained their seat from the wedding was the Emir. He sat like a statue, regarding Dakota and Majeed. Dakota felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty room. He was angry, that much was apparent. They hadn’t gone through with the wedding. Would they be given a second chance, or had her family’s visa renewal applications already been tossed in the trash?
She had changed out of her dress—that gorgeous, custom-made dress that had fit her perfectly and made her feel like a confection—and into one of her sharpest business suits. The suit made her feel in command of herself as she sat before the waiting crowd. She watched them whisper to each other as they speculated about what she might say, what explanation she and Majeed could possibly offer for today’s events.
Dakota hadn’t been able to look over at Majeed at all, but she could sense him next to her. She was hyper aware of every movement he made—reaching for the water jug, scratching his chin, shuffling the papers in front of him. She wished they had had time to talk prior to this. It would have been nice to get their story straight.
Finally,
the room silenced. The Emir got to his feet, raised both hands, and said, “Miss Lee and Mr. bin Ayad will respond to your questions for fifteen minutes,” and then sat back down. Was that really all the instruction he was going to give them?
A reporter in the third row got to her feet. “Is it true your marriage was arranged to mitigate the well-publicized corporate rivalry between your families?”
Talk about cutting straight to the point.
Dakota decided that honesty was probably the best policy, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t blur a few lines. “That was how it began,” she said. “That was how Majeed and I met. We were trying to figure out a way to negotiate a truce between our families. In the process, we…” she swallowed. She hadn’t said this aloud to him yet. “We developed feelings for each other.”
Another reporter rose to join the first. “I don’t think you’ve adequately answered her question,” he said. “Arranged marriages are a cherished part of Baraqi tradition. The partners to be arranged are carefully selected by the families involved, and usually with the help of a spiritual leader or a mutual friend. There are rituals involved—the first meeting, for example, which is chaperoned by the heads of each household. It often takes years for an arrangement to come to fruition. It is an important part of our cultural heritage, and it is certainly not a way for Americans to come in and exert corporate dominance over Baraqi businesses.”
“Nobody did anything like that,” Dakota protested. “There was no business deal on the table. It was only about helping our families to get along better.”
“It was about securing a powerful ally for LeeWay Corp,” the first reporter said. “Isn’t that right? With a daughter in the royal family, Ben Lee’s social and commercial power was bound to increase exponentially. And Sheikh bin Ayad must have known that bringing the most successful aeronautics company in the country under his thumb would have untold benefits for him.”