EIGHTEEN
The building stood as a stark obelisk in the center of the city block. Other skyscrapers pierced the sky around it. The only thing different about this building was that this was where Lacy was. She could be on any floor, in any room.
At a moment’s notice, if they even suspected Walid was inside, they would kill her. That was their mistake, however. They expected an answer. They expected anything other than what he was doing.
How did he know this? Because the False Sheikh was his sister.
As Walid’s men stormed the building, swirling about it in search of security measures and finding the entry point with the greatest success rate with the lowest possibility of discovery, Walid pieced together events and created a timeline in his mind. She must have been ill-content with Walid’s leavings, knowing he was off to secure a much grander wealth for himself.
His sister had never been one easily satisfied. As Walid had given up his birthright, it had taken a bit of extra time to prepare his effects for travel. His sister must have appointed a governor for her holdings and flown to New York ahead of him. There she established herself, her wealth and family name before Walid could even plant his feet in the new land. Her mistake was calling him. She needed him to know that he was done, that she had won.
It was a mark of arrogance, and her greatest failing. Right now, she sat in that tower of corruption convinced she had him beaten. She expected his call, or to see his flight out of America. If he knew his sister – and he knew her better than any of his other siblings – she sat in the highest point of the tower drinking coffee, gloating.
The building was nearly empty of all employees. The entry way, halls, and offices were all dark with only the most minimal of lights working. This was not a building in active use. If he were to guess, he had to assume his fool of a sister purchased the entire thing, likely for this purpose alone. Walid and his men, however, were ghosts in the day. They were smoke.
They avoided every guard where they could, and incapacitated them when they had to. The security was thickest in the first three floors. It was clear that no one was meant to get past that point. When things thinned out, Walid and his men found a guard with rank and ambushed him in his patrol. Secreting him away to an abandoned office.
“Where is the woman?” Walid asked, a knife to the man’s throat.
The fat, sweating man, his stubble a sign of poor hygiene and personal upkeep looked from one man to the other, and licked his slug-like lips. “You won’t get away with this.”
Walid leaned in, glaring holes through the man’s skull. “We’re not even here. If you do not tell me what I need to know, I will slaughter every person in this building to acquire what I desire. Tell me what I need to know, and your friends survive the day, confused, but breathing.”
The fat man swallowed. “So, if I tell you, it’s like I’m saving their lives?”
Walid scraped the sharp blade of his knife along the man’s fat wattle, shaving a line of stubble. “Precisely.”
The man nodded, his cheeks wobbling with the motion. “Okay. 20th floor. Manager’s office. Down the hall on the right, third one. You won’t make it. Security is tight. Just leave now and—“
His voice cut off as Walid clapped his hand over the man’s face. “Gag him, throw him from the window.”
“Sir,” one of his men said.
Walid raised a brow, which silenced him. Still, the unraised question was not out of place. “Or stuff him in a closet.”
The men nodded. Walid looked the guard in the eye.
“If he makes a sound, however, we return to the window idea.”
NINETEEN
Lacy gave one final check of the room to ensure everything was in place before setting off her plan. The chair was positioned to the side, facing the side the door opened. The waste bucket was full of liquid and ready to be thrown. The only light in the room now came in threw the window as the lamp was no longer functioning. She was as ready as she could be.
She picked up what was the power cord for the lamp, and pushed it into the socket. She bent the ground wire down and had to remove the plating around the socket to actually get it in, but after a small spark, it was in. The wires were attached to the doorknob of the office.
Picking up one of the side tables, she lifted it by the legs and began smashing it against the window. This high up, the windows were all shatterproof. There was no way she could even crack it, much less break it. Still, the men stationed outside her door didn’t know that. When they heard the racket, the first grabbed the doorknob. The lights flickered and dimmed, and there was a crash outside.
Lacy kept banging the table against the window, as though this was her plan all along and she was trying to get away while they were distracted. The other began slamming his shoulder into the door to avoid touching the knob. Lacy listened as the man rammed the door, and when the door started to crack, she dropped the table and dashed to the chair.
As the man crashed through, the wires coming free of the door as he threw it open, Lacy picked up the rubbish bin and tossed the water at the man. The liquid conducted the electricity from the loose wires through the man, taking him out as well. The man’s gun went off before he fell to the ground, his body tense as a rod.
Lacy grabbed all the furniture in the room she could move to make a sort of bridge over the wet parts and climbed her way out of the office. Opposite the office door slumped the first man. His hand still smoked.
Lacy poked his body with her foot. When he didn’t respond, she refused to let herself think about what she’d done. She just reached over and grabbed his gun. This was it. The moment of truth.
All she had to do now was get away without being caught.
TWENTY
The door leading from the stairway to Lacy’s floor was unlocked. The security cameras were easily avoided, but they thought surely there would be some sort of alarm or lock preventing entry. Nothing close to it. Pleasantly surprised, Walid and his men entered the floor undetected.
“The guard said down the hall, but that was from the elevator,” Walid whispered. “Split up. Find the elevator bank. Find Lacy. She survives, or everyone dies.”
The men all nodded and disappeared into the jungle of office hallways. Almost instantly, gunshots were heard at the far end of the floor. Men shouted, automatic weapons fired. The worst possible disaster had taken place.
Walid and his men dashed down the hall, no longer concerned for stealth, but he couldn’t understand how this could have happened. They had been so careful! To lose it all now made no sense at all.
As soon as he rounded a corner, one of his men grabbed him and pulled him into a row of cubicles. “They’re not firing at us,” his man whispered.
Walid ducked his head out, curious who had drawn their fire. To his surprise, his man was right. All of the guards were firing down the hall in the opposite direction. A single gunshot rang out from the far end. Then another. They were slow, and poorly aimed, but it was enough to keep the security at bay.
“Drop the gun!” one of the security shouted.
“Suck hot lead,” Lacy shouted back.
Lacy!
Walid launched himself down the hallway when he realized they were shooting at his love. There was something about the close quarters of an office hallway that made sprinting feel like warp speed.
The world blurred for him as he pulled the second blade to his other hand and dove at the guards. Walid’s men, loyal to the last, were right behind him without a word spoken, without a sound to give them away. The men had time to cry out as they died, but little else.
When Walid stood from the last of them, his daggers bleeding red, he saw Lacy poke her head around a corner. She came from around the corner, running for him, the gun dropping from her hand, forgotten. Walid dropped his blades and rushed to her.
They met, taking up one another in their arms like they couldn’t hold on tight enough.
“You came for me,” she whispered,
her quivering voice full of disbelief.
“I will always come for you.” He pulled her face back just far enough to look into her eyes, to see her features once again. Drawing in a deep breath of her perfumed scent, he kissed her, then took her by the hand and led her down the hall.
As they left the building, there wasn’t a guard left. Walid had what he came for, and his sister knew it. He suspected she called the withdraw the moment the first gunshots were reported. That was her normal mode. Either total annihilation in a single attack, or retreat. It was a dangerous tactic, but brutal when it succeeded.
For Walid, he was just glad to have Lacy back. They didn’t speak the entire trip home. She sat beside him, her body pressed against his, her head against his chest. Walid held her in his arms, protective, loving, and stroked her hair. When he had her home, he took her through her house to her second, secret living room and laid her down on her comfortable, cheap couch.
There, in her safe space, it was as though the full weight of what had just happened finally crashed against her. She broke down, burying her face in her hands as she cried.
“I thought you didn’t want me.”
Walid held her in his arms as she cried. “That was never true. My want for you was unplanned, but truer than anything I’d come to experience in my life. There was danger, however, and I feared for your life.”
Lacy looked up at him, and he could see the desperate hope in her eyes. It was a hope that he was happy to know he could reassure. “You mean you were pushing me away because you were trying to keep me safe?”
“Yes. Absolutely, without any hint of doubt, yes. I am in greater love with you than I have ever been with anyone, or anything. If I thought it would have bought your safety, I would give up my whole empire for you. When I realized it was my sister competing against me, however, I knew that wasn’t possible. Even if I left, she would have removed you. You’re a threat because of how I feel for you.”
“I see,” Lacy said, looking down. “I don’t want to be a liability to you or put you in harm’s way. Perhaps we should separate, for the sake of our baby.”
“Or,” Walid said, and took her hands in his. “Marry me.”
Lacy looked up, shocked. “What?”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life like I am about how I feel for you. Be my wife. Whatever life has in store for us, I wish to share it with you by my side as my equal and my partner.”
Lacy threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him. “Of course yes.”
They were married a few short months later. Walid’s business was soon completed, though he had to take on a new lawyer while his wife was on maternity leave.
Walid’s sister had indeed disappeared, leaving no trace behind. Walid was glad to see her glad, but stayed on his guard for the day she would return to complete what she’d started.
For now, though, Walid and Lacy were happy, and would be for a long time to come.
THE END
Sweet Surrender
Chapter 1
It never ceased to amaze Emily that the worst part of her day was also the best part of her day. Unlocking the door to her small bakery, she felt simultaneously exhausted and rejuvenated. It was an odd combination of feelings and she felt them every day. The moment that the lock clicked open, she would shed the fatigue that her morning job placed in her body and her soul would become lightened. Opening the door and looking around her tiny space, she was proud to call her little shop her own.
Most people probably wouldn’t think it was much just by looking at it, but she had sunk every dime that she had saved in her entire life to put her name on this place, and she was incredibly proud of it. At night she had dreams of expanding and becoming a world famous baker, of really being able to make a career out of her baking. But for the moment, those were only dreams that she kept secret in the dark while she lay awake at night. She knew that there would be very little chance that she could ever afford to even get a bigger place, let alone the dreams she had. But she worked hard at her morning job so that she could make the ends of her life meet.
Every day when she stepped into her bakery, she forgot her money troubles and her annoying job as a receptionist, and instead let herself breathe in her own happiness. It was in her bakery, while she mixed and frosted, experimented, and made her customers happy, that she truly lived her life. Emily threw on the lights and let her butter yellow bakery come alive. She couldn’t help but smile. She grabbed her apron off of the hook behind the counter and got herself ready for the day.
Her first task always was to check over the list that her night shift girl left for her. Kara was a sweet college girl who was hoping to own her own business someday even though she wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted that business to be. She was very responsible and the two got along great. It helped that Kara was only a few short years younger than Emily, but Emily’s past made her seem lightyears ahead. The list Kara had left wasn’t very great, a need for a new tub of buttercream frosting and she left a list of three cake batters that they were out of.
Turning on the radio, Emily went back into her open kitchen and got to work. When she first opened her shop, she was concerned that her customers being able to see into the kitchen and watch the girls work would be uncomfortable. But she had quickly learned to love it. It was fun being able to interact with the customers that came into her shop. Many were local to the area so she was familiar with them and would have friendly conversations while she prepared their orders. But since Miami is such a tourist hot spot, she would get customers from all over the country, and she loved that too. It gave her a chance to meet all kinds of people and learn about places all over the country.
Emily had never been one to travel. Even if she forgot the fact that she didn’t have the money to do so, she never felt much desire to leave Miami. The culture, the people, the weather, and her little shop were all she needed. It all made her as happy as she felt she could be. It had been a slow afternoon and Emily was singing loudly while she pulled out a couple trays from her ovens. Luscious smells of cupcakes wafted through the air and it made even her own mouth water. While she would routinely have cakes, pies, pastries, and almost any other sweet bakes good she could think of, cupcakes we always her favorite.
The bell above the door chimed, pulling her away from her singing and her growling stomach. Peeking through the cut out wall in the kitchen, she shouted out a welcome to her guest and told them she’d be right out. Immediately she knew that it wasn’t going to be one of her regular customers because they always would look into the kitchen, knowing that’s where they would find her. Wiping her frosting filled hands on her apron, she exited the kitchen and offered a friendly greeting to her guest.
“Hi! Welcome to Emily’s Kitchen! What can I do for you today?”
The woman who was standing at the door looked up from where she had been tapping away at her cellphone to take in the shop.
“Is this the place that I saw online? With the four star reviews?” Emily noticed the tone of disbelief that the woman held. As if something so tiny couldn’t possibly be significant.
But the truth was Emily’s baking spoke for itself. She didn’t need a fancy place or a lot of money, customers raved about her food and she knew that her tiny slice of heaven was a Miami hot spot for desserts. While most of the time she tried to be modest about her success, there were times, such as when someone came in acting like a snob, that she had no problem boasting about her accomplishments.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Can I get you something?”
The dark haired woman took off her sunglasses and did another sweep around the shop before she turned and opened the door. Believing that this woman was about to leave, Emily turned to walk back into the kitchen, feeling annoyed. But she turned back around when she realized the woman wasn’t leaving.
“Honey, this is the place. Come on already!”
Her customer’s heels clicked further into the shop and Emily co
uldn’t help but notice how posh the woman dressed. Her black blazer perfectly tailored over a red pencil skirt with pumps that Emily wondered how anyone could walk in. Emily looked down at her own clothes, loose fitting jeans, a black faded t-shirt with a frosting covered apron, and to complete the look, a pair of sneakers that had seen far better days. Immediately she could tell this woman was in a whole different class than her, and that she was going to be a pain.
Behind her the door opened again, this time a man stepped inside. Emily almost lost all thoughts, even the rude woman who was still standing in front of her. The man was drop dead gorgeous. Tall with dark hair and tanned skin that reminded her of caramel when it’s made just perfectly, smooth and rich. He was dressed as well as the woman, wearing a tailored black suit that fit his body perfectly. Even underneath she could tell that the man was toned and muscular. In short, he was easily the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.
“Hello, my name is Nora, and this is my fiancé Abdul,” the woman put out a delicately manicured hand for Emily to shake.
A small amount of disappointment hit when she heard the word fiancé, but she recovered quickly. “Hi, I’m Emily, the owner of the shop.” Emily shook both of their hands and watched as the woman took out a handkerchief to wipe her hand after Emily shook it.
It was all Emily could do to stifle an eye roll.
“This place has amazing reviews for making custom cakes and we were hoping that we could have a wedding cake tasting.”
SHEIKH'S SURPRISE BABY: A Sheikh Romance Page 77