Jameela turned to face him, her head resting against the cushioned car seat. “Anywhere with you right now is fine by me. A drive doesn’t sound so bad after the day I’ve had.”
“Good,” he told her and smiled. All the while he drove he sported a smile that slowly began to grow suspicious to Jameela.
“Why do I get the feeling you are up to something and this is more than just a drive?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he replied, and the way he said it made her sure of her assumptions.
“Open the glove compartment and take out the box inside,” he told her and kept his eyes on the road. She did as she was told, and sure enough there was a box there. Her heart skipped a beat as she thought about all the possibilities. It was too large for a ring, but big enough for a diamond set. “Open it,” he urged.
“Okay,” she said and flipped the box open. There was a single key inside. “A key?” she asked and held it up to him. “What’s it for?”
“You’ll see,” he said gleefully.
Jameela’s mind began to race even more than before. She was already at his home every weekend, and she surely didn’t need a key to get in. The staff already knew her, so she needed only to show up. But then, he wasn’t driving in the direction of his home either. It also wasn’t a car key, but it could be anything else. She grew anxious to get to the end of their journey, and her throat tightened as she neared the estate her grandfather had owned. She found it strange that she had only been thinking about it that very morning, to now be passing it. It seemed fate was being unduly cruel to her. Her emotions had swept her away again that she didn’t realize the car had stopped until she heard him speak.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
“Think about what?” she asked.
“That,” he said and indicated the property.
“You know what I think about that,” she replied softly. “That should have been mine.”
“I know,” he whispered and turned her face to him. “That’s why I got it back for you.”
The words came from his lips, but its meaning was lost on Jameela. She sat there staring at him as comprehension slowly drifted into her consciousness, and she felt a single tear roll down her cheek. She looked down at the key, and then it made sense. He had bought it for her. she turned her head away as more tears began to fall. “I can’t take this,” she said through tears.
“You already did,” he said as he took out an envelope from the glove compartment. It contained the deed to the estate.
“I can’t believe you did this,” she said. She wiped the tears from her face, but fresh ones kept replacing them.
“How could I not? I know how much it meant to you, and I don’t want you holding it over my head for the rest of my life,” he said and rolled his eyes.
Without even knowing it, he had connected with her innermost thoughts, and she had never appreciated him more than she did in that moment. She let the key and the envelope fall, so that she could show him just how much. “How do I every repay you?” she asked and kissed him with salty lips.
He kissed her in return before pulling back and wiping what remained of the salty tributaries on her face. “Just love me back,” he smiled.
She did too. “I already do,” she said and fell into his arms.
“So, how about dinner?” he asked, as if he didn’t comprehend the magnitude of what he had just done for her. After that, how could she possibly eat?
“I just want you to take me home,” she told him, and there was no doubt in his mind as to her meaning. He started the engine and made a U-turn. She found his free hand and gripped it between hers, and as they drove down the stretch that would take her home, she bit her lips and smiled. She felt his hand tighten over hers, and she looked over at the man who had brought her world to completion. And she knew, but the glint in his eyes, she would never be without him or ever want for anything again.
THE END
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Score
Bryan woke slowly. His eyes like lead weights were pure effort to open. His mouth was thick with the aftertaste of a night spent partying. Running his tongue along the roof of his mouth, he tried to swallow and grimaced at the taste. His body felt heavy, his joints aching. A cool breeze coming from the hotel room’s AC blew across his body.
He lifted his head from the pillow and looked around him at the three women draped around him and the bed. One had found her way to the floor of the bedroom at one point, it would seem. Stupid bitch. Bryan grunted as he pushed himself to a sitting position and cradled his head in his hand as a headache woke itself up in his skull.
“All right,” he shouted and clapped his hands twice. “Everyone up. Get out.”
Two of the girls startled awake, looking around them confused and alarmed. The one on the floor didn’t stir. The need to urinate made itself known in a big way, so he pushed himself to his feet. Whistling he twirled his finger.
“C’mon, move it.”
As he passed the one on the floor he gave her hip a nudge with his foot. A nudge that, any harder, may have been classified as a kick, but it wasn’t quite there yet. “Hey, move.”
“Would you calm down?” one of the girls asked as she dressed herself. “We’re leaving, all right?”
Bryan waved a hand at them on his way to the toilet. “Not fast enough. You shouldn’t even have been here when I woke up.”
“Ass,” one of the girls said.
The third one was finally moving by the time he made it to the toilet. As he relieved himself he took a whiff at his armpits and made a face. He needed to shower for sure before meeting his publicist. He lingered in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and taking his time while the girls got their stuff together and left. One of them knocked on the door to use the bathroom.
“They have one in the lobby,” he called back.
He heard her scoff but didn’t bother responding. They weren’t worth responding to. When he heard the hotel room door close, he finally took a breath.
All this money and girls stuff used to be cool when it first started. When he first signed on with his team and became an official NBA player, he couldn’t have been happier. He’d finally made it. Life was going to be good from there on out. Everyone bowed to his every whim as long as he kicked ass every night. And he did. The other players didn’t have shit on him. Game after game, night after night, it was drinking, and girls, and then more b-ball the next day.
Thing was, it all started to blend together. Now he just saw another hotel room. More girls to sleep with and to then kick out. It just wasn’t worth anything, he realized. People weren’t worth anything. There was him, and then the rest of the world. Sighing to himself, he showered, dressed, and caught a limo to go meet his publicist for lunch.
When he arrived at the restaurant, hungover and groggy he was surprised to not see his publicist sitting at the table. Instead, it was a young, curvy woman. She was beautiful in her uniqueness with striking eyes, wavy flowing hair, and incredible features. He was instantly intrigued by her.
When she looked up and saw him approaching she put on a smile and stood from her seat. “Hello,” she said holding out a hand to him.
“Where’s Rachel?” he asked, shaking the new woman’s hand.
“She was unable to attend and sent me in her place. I’m Maggie, her assistant. We’re just meeting to give you a quick rundown on what we’ve been working on, and I’m very familiar with your profile so I’ll be going over it with you.”
“Well, I can tell I’m in good hands,” he said, bringing her hand up to his mouth and kissing the back of her hand sweetly. The unimpressed smile she gave him said she was a professional, but not dense like the chicks that left his hotel room this morning.
The pleasantries out of the way, they sat at the table and ordered drinks and lunch. She did just as she promised and gave him the quick readouts of the publicity campaigns they currently had going as well as a couple of sponsorship deals in play the
y were going to take up with his agent.
As she went through each piece he did his best to put on his charm, flashing his watches casually so she could see. If she did see, she gave no indication at all. Didn’t she get how rich he was? It was like she wasn’t interested at all, which was impossible. They always were, especially chicks in her position.
After they were done, he leaned back in his chair and sipped at his water, wishing it was some liquor. “You’re really giving me the brush off right now, aren’t you?”
She put on that plastic smile again as she put the papers away in her briefcase. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh,” he said with a laugh, “I’m pretty sure you do. You don’t like me?”
“You’re our client. I like you as much as I need to in order to get my job done.”
“What if I was to ask you out to dinner?”
“I’d have to decline.”
“Why’s that?” he asked, tilting his head.
She gave him a genuine smile this time and folded her hands on the table. “Because I don’t like you.”
Bryan burst out laughing and slapped the table. Others seated around them looked over, but he ignored them. Let them look. It’s not like they didn’t know who was sitting next to them. They were welcome.
“Well I like you. If you don’t come to dinner, come to one of my games, huh? Like a thank you. Bring a friend. I’ll get you a couple tickets.”
“Sure,” she said. “I have a friend that would like that.”
A friend. Bryan chuckled and sipped his drink. Oh yeah, this one was going to be fun to crack. A challenge. He’d have her by tomorrow.
“You’re lying!” Maggie’s friend Stacy nearly shouted the words at her. “You actually met him? Like met him met him? You talked, and he talked back and everything?”
Maggie waggled her brows mischievously and took a sip of her coffee. They sat in Stacy’s kitchen, nearly huddled over their coffee cups as they chatted about their day. “Get this,” Maggie said, knowing she had Stacy on the hook, “he was actually flirting with me.”
Stacy slapped her hand on the counter. “Get out! No! Are you serious right now? Bryan Stappler hit on you?”
“Right?” Maggie said, warming her hands around the cup. “That’s weird, right?”
Stacy tilted her head and stopped herself from sipping her coffee to ask, “Why would that be weird?”
“Well I mean, c’mon.” Maggie waved a hand down her side as if she was on display on some gameshow. “This? He could have anyone. No one chooses this when they could have anyone.”
Stacy leaned in conspiratorially. “Maybe that’s why he wants it?”
Maggie looked at her as though she couldn’t have been more bored with the conversation. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Hey, you tell me. You said he was flirting with you. Guys love a challenge.”
Suddenly Stacy gasped. “Did you give in? Did you have sex with him?”
“Stacy, no, would you get ahold of yourself? When would we have slept together? We had lunch. For work. At a restaurant. There were people around.”
“And a tablecloth?”
Maggie laughed and had to set down her coffee cup lest she spill it all over herself. “We did not have sex under the tablecloth.”
When Stacy opened her mouth to say something else, Maggie cut it off with a raise of her hand. “No! We didn’t have sex at all, anywhere. And I’m not going to. You know his reputation just as well as I do.”
Stacy gave a thoughtful frown and shrugged a shoulder. “Sure, but still. Could be fun.”
“You sleep with him then.”
Stacy laughed. “Right, when would I get the chance?”
Maggie had been waiting the whole conversation to spring it on her. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the two tickets to Bryan’s next game. “How about two nights from now?”
“Shut up!” Stacy screamed and grabbed the tickets. “Oh, shut up! These are floor seats, are you kidding me right now? Are we going? Are we really going?”
“Hey, I may not sleep with the guy, but there’s nothing wrong with getting some free tickets, right?” Maggie said, not a little proud of herself. She ran her tongue over her front teeth and sipped her coffee. It tasted like self-satisfaction. It was delicious.
“Maggie,” Stacy said, holding the tickets to her chest.
“Yes?”
“I want to be you when I grow up.”
Maggie laughed again and once more had to set her coffee cup down.
The next two days went by quickly, yet somehow slowly at the same time. Maggie was swamped with work, but she kept finding herself thinking about Bryan. At first she was confused about why he would flirt with her. Stacy had a point about guys liking a challenge, but why would she be a challenge for him? She wasn’t anything, especially not compared to the girls she’d seen him with on TV or in the tabloids.
The man loved his women. Never stuck with one for more than a week. It was an ongoing joke in the office about his most long-term relationship was a model he saw twice in two weeks before breaking it off. It was ridiculous. He was a playboy that didn’t respect anyone, not even himself.
After that, she even doubted whether he had been flirting with her at all. By the time the game came around, she had convinced herself he hadn’t flirted with her at all. She’d somehow made it all up. She had the tickets because he was being nice, and she’d read too much into it.
Stacy was there in her team jersey, giddy like a little girl on Christmas. They found their seats, and Maggie couldn’t stop from feeling excited. She’d been to a few games before. Perks of the job. Nothing like this though.
It was surreal to be sitting there, level with the court. It was one of those things that was just never meant to be seen like that, like when she was stopped in traffic on the freeway. The pavement of the freeway was always seen passing as a blur. Whenever she could look out of her car window and see the freeway in all of its detail, it gave her this odd feeling of being out of place. Of not belonging where she was. Looking behind the curtain.
That was how she felt at the game, and it only got worse when the players ran out onto the court and started warming up. Stacy just laughed and giggled, stomping her feet quickly in her excitement. Maggie, though, just couldn’t get over how weird it felt.
When the game started, it was like being a part of it. She was there, could see the players in all of their detail instead of the slight blurs they were from far away. It was incredible.
After the second quarter, she had a surprise she hadn’t anticipated at all. Three men came down the aisle and stopped by their seats. One of the men asked to see their tickets. Maggie’s heart jumped into her throat. Were they in trouble? Somehow she instantly convinced herself that they had been sitting in the wrong seats this whole time. She knew it was unreal! Some things were just too good to be true.
She and Stacy pulled their tickets out of their pockets and produced them. After the man looked them over, he gave a nod and a smile and handed them back. Maggie only had time to think about how odd this was when the man waved to someone else up at the top of the stairs. A small team of people came down with a small table, flowers, candles, and food. They placed a pitcher of beer and two glasses, hot dogs, bbq chicken, fries, and an assortment of other things on the table in front of Maggie and Stacy.
During the game Maggie had noticed there were no seats in front of her and Stacy. She’d thought it weird but paid it no mind. Now it made sense.
Across from her, sitting on the bench, sweating and drinking his water was Bryan. He just sat there, elbows on his knees, grinning at her. She didn’t know if he could see her mouth well enough, but she mouthed a few choice words for him.
All she could do was try her best to hide her embarrassment at the attention. Meanwhile, Stacy was just gobbling it all up, laughing and waving at everyone around her who was staring. Maggie didn’t want to seem rude, so she ate and
had a beer. Truth be told, it was pretty good. Not that she’d ever admit as much to Bryan.
After the game all Maggie wanted to do was get out of there, but a number of people milled about the floor seats chatting and asking Maggie and Stacy about the food. Stacy was only too happy to talk about it, despite how much Maggie wanted to go. She didn’t know if they just took a long time, or if Bryan had rushed his time in the showers, but when she saw him crossing the court over towards them, she knew it was too late to duck out gracefully. She swore under her breath and turned her head away.
“What is it?” Stacy asked. When she looked over and saw Maggie looking away, she immediately put her head on a swivel. “Bryan,” she shouted excited. “Hi! Great game.”
“Hey,” he said. “Your Maggie’s friend, right?”
“Yes,” Stacy said, surprised to hear that he knew who she was. Stacy gave Maggie a quick backhand across her shoulder. “I’m Stacy.”
Maggie turned around and gave him a polite smile. Real smooth, mister. He knew full well that Maggie had never mentioned her, but by making Stacy feel special, she would welcome his presence. The guy knew what he was doing.
“The food was your doing,” Maggie said, making sure it didn’t sound like a question.
“You’re welcome,” he said, smiling at her.
ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance Page 7