The Sheikh's Secret

by Knight, Kylie

  “Five dinari,” the driver said, when he’d said he was going to Manama.

  He looked in his wallet—and the first of his problems came to light: he had no cash on him. Shame burned him—he’d never not been able to pay for the things he’d wanted—and for a moment his mind went blank as he fought back the terror at the thought of having to spend the night at the bus stop—or forever. Eventually he was able to convince the driver that Melinda had five dinari—that he could call her and she’d meet him in Manama with the money. The driver scowled but let him on, grumbling about how terrible rich people were. The other people on the bus—mostly women, some men—and one chicken farmer, apparently, who had a contraption with three cages, each holding two fat chickens—stared at him, their faces blank, their eyes resentful. Or maybe it was just that he was imagining things. I am the prince of Bahrain, he wanted to shout to the world. But the words would not come—because for all he knew his father was striking his presence from everything in the palace. I was the prince of Bahrain. Somehow that only made him sad.

  Melinda, thankfully, managed to meet the driver, as she’d promised. She paid the five dinari, smiling ruefully at Bashir as she did so. “Thanks,” he’d said, as they got into her car.

  “You don’t use much cash,” she observed.

  “Never had to,” he’d said.

  Now, sitting on the floor of her apartment, looking out over the sparkling city below them, the emotions came to him, hitting him like in waves, one after another—anger, despair, dread, fear. Anger that his father could still be so close-minded in the twenty-first century, despair that he was twenty-eight and had no idea how or if he could survive in the world, dread anticipating a life where every cent would have to be scraped from the gutters his own hands, fear that that wouldn’t be enough. He wasn’t stupid. He’d read the papers, he knew how hard it could be for a man like him.

  “Then maybe we should go to London,” said Melinda. “The jobs are there.”

  “I just opened my flat for renting, and sold my car,” he said. “Misha is there picking up my personal effects. If my father hasn’t ordered him back to Bahrain already.”

  “That’s really bollocks,” she said.

  “You have no idea,” he said. “I’ve lost everything I ever had, in three minutes.” Suddenly he laughed—it wasn’t really his, and part of him had known this all along.

  “You think your father is really going to cut you off?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea what he’s going to do,” he said. “He could decide to forgive me tomorrow, or never.”

  She put her head on his shoulder and sighed. “You should have just agreed,” she said. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

  “I know,” he said. “And part of me is kicking myself for being so obstinate. But I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I had.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” she said, kissing him.

  “Even if it means I’ll be a deadbeat boyfriend?” he asked, smiling. Making a joke of it was the only way he could keep his sanity right now, with the swirling mess of muddy emotions in his blood.

  “I’m going to say ‘yes’,” she said, pushing him down onto the floor. “Because even though you’ve never held a job before, I think—” she began to unbutton his shirt, her hands kissing his bare chest like flowers, cool and pale. “I think that you can’t not want to pull your own weight. I think you’ll eventually be glad to be out from under your father’s thumb. We’ll spite him with our happiness.”

  It was the best way to get revenge on his father for being so cold as to kick him out like that—he couldn’t refute that. And her hands running up his body felt so good—and her perfume, a blend of jasmine and lilacs, accented the heady scent of her, the delicate scent of her skin, soft and soothing to his mind and body. Despite the turmoil of the night, he could feel the fires of desire begin to glow within him. “You’re a good man,” she whispered. “That’s all that matters.”

  “How do you know I’m good?” he asked, as she undressed before him, her body twisting and curving as she slipped out of the confines of her dress. The lights were dim, and the windows were open to the desert chill, which made goose pimples spring out on her skin, making her nipples stand up. He reached for her breast, and felt her heart beating, sending its pulsing shivers through the softness and into his hands. “We barely know each other.”

  “I know you’re hurting,” she said. “I know you called me when you needed help. I know that I want you in a way that I’ve never wanted a man before.”

  He reached up and pressed a kiss against her throat while his fingers toyed with the buds of her nipples. She shuddered, pressing her body against his. “I want to make you happy,” she whispered, “and when your father decides to look you up, whether it’s a week or a year or a century from now, I want him to see you with real smile on your face, and real joy in your heart, when you tell him this was worth every cent of the fortune you gave up.”

  Her conviction was contagious. Of course we can, he found himself thinking, as he found her hips with his hands. The fiery warmth deep in his guts, that had been burning quietly as they kissed and groped each other, grew to a roaring flame as he felt her close around him, the slick hot wetness tight around him, squeezing him even as he stretched her. His blood began to run hot with need.

  The boundaries between his body and hers dissolved—where their skin touched, there was no him and her, only a sensation of heat and desire, raw and primal, mingling, and their bodies pulsed together, and the flames that had been stoked began to consume him. The urgency was there again, the pressure was there, the need was there—and it felt like she was sending a pulse of pure desire through his hands straight into his core every time he touched her. The need—it was almost too much.

  It was too much—the sweet, sweet, pleasure of release washed over him, and the flames of desire suddenly melted into liquid satisfaction. Her voice, as she cried out above him, seemed far away—the look in her eyes was distant, and he slipped into the sweet, soft darkness with her body folded around his like a cloak of happiness.

  When he woke again, he found that they were curled up, face-to-face, on the floor. She was still asleep, her body soft and slack. He touched her face. She smiled at him, and he understood, then, that he hadn’t chosen to be with her instead of his father’s pawn. He already was with her—she was already a part of him—it was just a matter of realizing it.

  It would all work out. Somehow. He didn’t have any idea how they could make it work, but he would have his doctorate soon, and he spoke three languages, and she was a good caterer—they could make it work, if they both believed it was worth it. There was something comforting about being with her—if he’d been disowned without her, he’d probably still be lost, wandering the desert road on foot.

  The smile she gave him as she slowly opened her eyes alone made losing his trust fund worthwhile. He fell against her again, kissing her. “Let me please you,” he said, grinning.

  “Again?” she asked, her eyes going wide with delight.

  “You’re worth it,” he said.

  “Damn right I am.”

  ***

  It had taken them a while—three months, to be exact—to settle into their new lives. It took almost six weeks before Bashir found a job and received his degree. They’d moved to a house in the meantime, closer to where she worked; the cost of the house was offset by the money he’d gotten for the car. It seemed like a reckless move, buoyed only by their faith that their relationship would last. And that faith was tested: in those three months they had bickered, and they fought, but they also drove her car down to the beach at night, walked with each other in the water in the moonlight, made campfires and toasted marshmallows in the desert.

  It was an odd existence to Bashir, at first—not having Misha following him around, having to stop and think about whether he had enough money to buy something before he bought it. He was not so helpless as not to know how t
o do anything—in London, he had no servants—but it was still strange to him not to have someone behind him all the time, to buy only one lunch at a time instead of two.

  In that time, he had not heard back from his father, nor had he attempted to make contact with the king. His email draft folder was full of letters beginning with “My dear father” but he never got beyond the first “I’m sorry it came to this”. He’d met with Miriam once or twice—she’d never thought their father would disavow him—and she confirmed what he suspected: he was being excised from the family. His name had been taken off the family trust, and his father was telling his brothers and sisters not to contact him. Not that any of them listened. When Malakar and Salamin came to visit, they’d invariably stop by the house for a talk and a cup of tea. Did they resent him for the privilege of being allowed to fall in love? He couldn’t know. They were his brothers, after all—there’d always been an insurmountable rift of pride between them that kept them from delving too deeply into each other’s consciousnesses.

  Still, he had the feeling that his siblings admired him. He was working for Bahrain’s UN office by this point, and with the money from the flat rental in London, and Melinda’s catering business, they were able to live quite well. He began to learn how to cook, telling Melinda that she spent her whole day cooking for other people, so it was only fair that he cook for her. It made her blush so prettily when he could have something nice to serve her, though he never told her about the times he’d screwed up and had had to order something from the restaurant down the street. He was fairly certain that she could tell, but she was too polite to criticize, and anyway she seemed more amused than anything else on the days when that happened. She was a happy presence in his life, and he tried very hard to reciprocate.

  And every now and then, when he stepped outside of his office to get lunch or a cup of tea, he thought he saw a tall blond Russian watching him. He was always too far away for Bashir to tell if it was Misha, but Bashir had his suspicions. On a whim he called the passport office one day and asked about Russians entering or leaving the country—there were a few oil tycoons and some real estate developers who’d put up money for the mansions in the south of the island, but none of them matched Misha’s description. He thought about sending Misha an invitation to come over, but the man was probably still on his father’s payroll. It was strange, too, that of all the people in his former life, Misha was the one he missed most. They’d never been more than courteous to each other, but even now, three months after he left and started his new life, he’d wake up wondering why Misha wasn’t snoring in the next room. The man had shadowed him for eight years; for all the trouble he’d given his former bodyguard, he had the feeling that Misha felt the same brotherly affection for him as he did for Misha. Why else would the man be following him around?

  When they first moved together, he bought a ring for her, intending to propose to her in their new house—a new house, a new life. It had a nice symmetry to it. But the move took longer and was harder than either of them thought it would be, and he didn’t realize that she’d color-coded the boxes and she didn’t realize that his shirts needed to be kept folded in a certain way and they ended the day fuming at each other. It took three days before they were able to speak to each other civilly again. They were able to get over it, and move past it, but something changed between them during that time—they were together, but more so, in a way. Or maybe it was less so. He couldn’t decide. The things he’d learned about her during that time were not things that he could unlearn—there was no return to the blissful ignorance with brought them together anymore. And yet, at night, after a long day at work, he found that he wanted nothing more than to sit on the couch with her, holding her and being held.

  What does it mean? He didn’t know. He kept the ring in the inside pocket of his windbreaker, where he tucked his cell phone. Most of the time he forgot it was there.

  Melinda called him one day at his office, asking him to come home early. “I suppose I could manage,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “I know it’s a few days early, but today was the only day your brothers and sisters could all be here for your birthday.”

  “You asked them to come?” He couldn’t keep the delight out of his voice.

  “And that big Russian bear you miss so much,” she said, and he could hear the joy in her voice.

  “Misha? How did you manage to get a hold of him?”

  “I have my ways. So will you come home early?”

  He looked around his office. He’d spent all day correcting the translation of a French proposal into Arabic, and he still had eight more pages to go. It can wait, he decided. The French weren’t like Americans or the British, always pressing for things to be done yesterday. They had a sense of decorum about these things. “Let me get another two pages of this god-awful translation done,” he said, “and I can be home at around four.”

  She sighed. “Does that mean I should make dinner?”

  “You’re never going to let that go, are you?” he asked. One of their biggest fights had been halfway through their second month of living together, when he’d said that he going on a job interview and would be home “at around three”. For him, that meant anywhere between three and five. It wouldn’t have been a big deal except that that afternoon Melinda had brought some potential investors to their house, and she’d expected him to be home, have the house clean, tea made, sweets arranged.

  “Not until I land an investor,” she said. She’d been looking for someone to help her buy industrial cooking equipment and lease a bigger space that wasn’t on the wrong end of Manama. Bashir was still sorry about it—in the six weeks since that had happened she still hadn’t managed to land another investor.

  He sighed. She’d forgiven him for being late, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten it—or would ever forget it. “You know this is going to get old at some point,” he said. “I said I’m sorry.”

  “At some point, sure. But not yet.”

  “I’ll be home at four,” he said. “Okay?”

  “All right.”

  He sighed and went back to his translation, but found that his mind was wandering—he was too excited at the prospect of seeing his brothers and sisters together, and Misha. Miriam and Adaal, his other sister, would undoubtedly have their share of family gossip—there were whispers of some kind of scandal involving Alya and an old groom, so they would probably know the whole, real story. Strangely, though, he felt no joy in Alya’s shame—his new distance from his family gave him a new appreciation for what Alya was going through. He had not gone so far as to call her and offer to talk to her, but the thought of sharing in her misery (if she was capable of it) no longer appealed to him. As for his brothers, Malakar might have finally managed to purchase that Dodge Viper he’d been going on about for almost five years, and Salamin had been to Siberia, so there would probably be interesting stories from all sides.

  He tried to focus on the edits for another thirty minutes but gave up. He stood up and packed his laptop away. “I’m heading home early,” he told the office manager as he walked by the man’s office. “Something came up.”

  The office manager didn’t even look up from his computer—he was playing solitaire. He just nodded and waved Bashir away. Bashir had sometimes wondered how long it would take the man to notice if he’d stopped coming to work.

  On his way home, Bashir bought a bouquet of flowers. If his brothers and sisters were coming it was the sort of thing they’d expect a man to bring to the woman he was living-with-but-not-married-to. And one thing he would not give them was more fodder for the family gossip mill. He and Melinda were making things work. That was all there was to it.

  He was a little early when he pulled up into their driveway—but right away he could tell that nobody was there. What’s this? Did they all park their cars somewhere else? There was no reason for that. Maybe Melinda had asked them to go somewhere. He was fifteen minutes early, a
fter all. Or maybe they weren’t there, yet. But he knew Melinda—she’d have had them all there by three-thirty, if she told him to be at home at four.

  It would give him a little time to make the tea, he decided as he parked his car and went inside. “Melinda?” he called.

  The house was silent. Odd, he thought. Would she be out as well?

  He put on a pot of water on to boil and went through the house. There was nobody there. That’s odd, he thought again. What could possibly be going on?

  He put the bouquet in a vase and set it on the table in the living room. Not knowing what else to do, he opened the refrigerator, thinking about what he’d want to make for his siblings when they got here. Melinda had left a platter of stuffed dates in the refrigerator, so he got those out and set them out. Then the water boiled—and as he made the tea there was still no sign of Melinda or his siblings.

  Now he was beginning to get nervous. Melinda was not the kind of person to lie to him about his siblings coming over. She knew what they meant to him, being the last connection to his former life. But just as he began to wonder if he should call the police, he heard her car pull up to their house. He looked out their bedroom window, and saw her get out of her car, swearing and cursing.

  “Melinda,” he called, as came down the stairs. “What’s going on? Are my brothers and sisters coming over or not?”