The Sheikh’s Fake Engagement: The Blooming Desert Series Book One

by North, Leslie

  Now she sat in the living area of Rafiq’s suite in the blessed naptime silence. She’d been surprised to find out that he still rested in the afternoons, but that was good for everyone. The morning had been a busy one. Her breakfasts with Hamid had been replaced with a morning video chat. They kept the conversation to how Rafiq was doing with his studies, but Tali found herself far more taken with the way Hamid’s face lit up when Rafiq showed off his new books and new knowledge. Tali had made a point of talking about the regions Hamid was visiting, and Hamid loved it when Rafiq rattled off the facts he could remember.

  She stretched her arms over her head. The man was undeniably attractive. He’d looked even more attractive when Rafiq came out in his new costume. Rafi, the World Detective, they called it. It was for Rafiq to wear when he did his “investigations.” That was Tali’s way of getting him interested in geography, history, nature, and science. She’d also gotten one of the staff to bring him an oversized magnifying class, which completed the look.

  Rafiq had run off after showing Hamid his new costume, and Hamid chuckled. “I didn’t expect you to teach Rafiq, you know. You’re not an early childhood specialist.”

  “Well, no.” Tali fluffed her hair. She also looked pretty good on the computer screen, with her bright red lipstick and matching day dress. “But I was the oldest child. I helped with the other three, so I’ve got some skills.”

  What she hadn’t said to Hamid was that she’d also had to find her own way to do everything. The family culture hadn’t wanted a woman with a strong will, who had her own plans for life, so she’d had to plant the seeds of those plans one by one in her family’s minds. Was she doing that with Hamid? Only a little. She’d be gone in a month, anyway, and then...

  She didn’t really want to think about that, though she couldn’t say why.

  “Come on!”

  The little voice in her ear made her jump. “You’re awake,” she gasped, and sat up with a laugh.

  “It’s time for water science afternoon.” Rafiq bounced on the balls of his feet, already wearing his swimsuit. Tali hadn’t exactly planned on swimming, but why not? They could end up in the pool, and it would burn off plenty of energy for the day. She called one of the maids to sit with Rafiq while she changed into her swimsuit and a flowing white cover-up, and they set off.

  “Are we inviting the other kids today?” Rafiq loved when they went around the palace and included his cousins—and a couple of sons and daughters of high-ranking advisors—in their plans for the day. One loop around the main parts of the palace, and they had a gaggle of five children. One little girl had a huge straw hat that made Tali laugh. Being an honored guest at the palace really wasn’t so bad.

  They all went poolside, surrounded by guards and staff, and Tali brought out a bunch of plastic toys for the water table that sat near the pool. Rafiq hadn’t used it much, but it was large and fancy with plenty of room and features for all of them. The children watched her, wide-eyed, as she taught them about the basics of water tension and leaks using a leaf and a plastic bag.

  Then, one by one, she got out her collection of objects. “Sink or float?” She dropped the same leaf onto the water table. It floated.

  They repeated the process with a foam ball, a piece of wood, and a rock. Rafiq’s eyes went huge. “What about people?”

  “Hmmm,” Tali said. “What about people? Do you think they’d sink or float?”

  “It depends on if you can swim,” chimed in one little girl.

  “What if you just jumped in?” asked Tali.

  “You’d sink and then float.” Rafiq’s eyes glowed with anticipation. “I want to jump off the diving board. Can I, Tali? Will you catch me?”

  “I won’t catch you, but I’ll hold a floatie. That way you’ll have something to aim for and grab onto. And I’ll be right there in the water. Sound good?”

  All the children cheered, and Tali took off her cover-up, grabbed a foam noodle from the pool house, and climbed into the water. The pool was the perfect temperature. The water kissed her skin, cooling her off. There hadn’t been a better day than this in a long time.

  * * *

  His son was on a diving board.

  It was his own diving board, technically, because the palace was Hamid’s. And it wasn’t a very high diving board, as the pool wasn’t deep enough for competition dives. But the sight of his skinny body up there made Hamid’s heart fly into his throat. His heart pounded. This wasn’t what he’d expected to find when his personal assistant told him that the children were at the pool with Tali. He’d expected a tame game of catch. Something other than Tali holding a pool noodle in the water and smiling up at Rafiq. The other children crowded around the ladder. Two of the guards had gotten in the pool with Tali. All of them, to a one, looked so happy.

  Blue skies framed the scene, reflecting off the water. Atop the diving board, Rafiq was bathed in golden light. He looked like something out of a magazine or a memory. He looked like something out of Hamid’s own childhood. But he didn’t feel the soft ache of nostalgia, watching his son close and unclose his fists.

  “Here’s the floatie,” Tali called to Rafiq. “Aim right here. You’ll be fine.”

  Rafiq inched forward, a wild grin on his face. “I’m going to jump, Tali.” He sounded so excited. This was a far cry from how nervous he’d looked when he’d been up in that tree with Tali. There had been an element of fear, back then. Now, Rafiq only looked jittery in the way that all kids did when they tried something new. Why hadn’t he ever taken his son to the diving board himself? The moment had slipped away from him.

  Couldn’t they see the danger? Jumping off a diving board at any height was a risk. No. He had to stop them, had to say something, but the word stuck in his mouth. And then Rafiq jumped.

  His body jerked forward. Where was he? Why wasn’t he coming up? But then Rafiq’s head broke the surface and his arms went over the pool noodle. Tali cheered, her voice high and happy, and everybody else clapped.

  “I’m swimming!” Rafiq shouted. He splashed in the water, doing an approximation of a dog paddle while Tali held the foam toy under his chest.

  Hamid, finally unfrozen, stepped out of the shadow of the building. His son was all right. He had lived. Tali might redecorate rooms without his permission, but she’d never put his son in danger. Look at them, surrounded by friends and guards. She had half the palace staff with them by the looks of it. Nothing was going to happen to anybody. Still, his heart didn’t slow.

  His shadow fell over the water as he reached the edge of the pool with a towel he’d swiped from one of the tables.

  “Dad! Look!” His son looked like an otter, water streaming from his dark hair, and he cut through the water at top speed to get to the side of the pool. He scrambled up the ladder at Hamid’s feet and the two of them stepped back from the edge. Hamid couldn’t help himself. He checked Rafiq over to make sure there were no injuries. The little boy seemed completely well, other than his chattering teeth. A few minutes in the sun would cure that.

  Hamid felt the others watching as soon as he’d convinced himself that Rafiq was all right. A silence had fallen over the pool. Hamid was used to it. But he could see the discomfort in the rest of them. The guards had all turned to face him, their dark glasses obscuring their eyes. Two of the women on staff crouched down next to the other children.

  Everyone in and around the pool was waiting for his reaction.

  People had been waiting for Hamid’s reaction since he was sixteen years old. This was different. For the first time in a long time, he saw them—all the people on his staff. His son. The way they all circled around him, in his orbit. But there was more to them, wasn’t there? They weren’t focused on traditions, and things like the jubilee didn’t keep them up at night.

  “Tali’s been helping us do experiments. I want to see if that leaf floats again.” Rafiq dashed off to the water table, and Hamid straightened up. He put on the smile he wore in public and gave the group in
the pool a nod. Carry on. I’ll be going.

  And then Tali climbed out of the pool.

  Somehow, he hadn’t noticed her making her way to the side, but as she rose out of the water his breath caught. The rest of the world dimmed.

  In her usual clothes—bright, flowing, loud—she was striking. But in her black bathing suit? He couldn’t wrap his mind around how stunning she was.

  Don’t just stand here.

  He cast about for another towel, grabbed it, and met her at the table where she’d stowed her cover-up. Hamid draped it around her shoulders and leaned in. “Is this a challenge to me?”

  “What?” Her huge dark eyes met his, wary and suspicious. “A challenge to your authority? I wouldn’t—”

  “Not my authority. Though none of this is quite suitable. The gathering is not suitable. The noise is not suitable. But more importantly, that bathing suit is not suitable.”

  She sucked in a little gasp. “Why?”

  “Because you look too damn sexy in it. And that’s the real challenge to me.”

  Tali’s mouth dropped open, and heat roared to life at the base of Hamid’s spine. It was absolutely against tradition to kiss a woman he was not engaged to by the side of the pool, with so many staff members watching, but he wanted to do it. He wanted to feel her mouth against his. Feel the shock go through her skin. Feel the way she would undoubtedly melt into him. Her cheeks reddened, and a strange ache went through his palms. Touch her.

  Hamid grinned down at her, and then he allowed himself one thing. He allowed himself to put one finger under her chin and gently close her mouth.

  6

  Several days later, those moments by the pool with Talitha seemed stuck in Hamid’s mind. He could still see the ripples of the water reflecting off her wet skin, still feel the way the towel draped over her shoulders where he’d wanted his own hands to be. And, of course, his efforts at distracting himself had failed. The two of them had decided to read the same book—a colorful history of the region circa the 1400s—to focus their discussions at breakfast, but the book always seemed to lead to other topics, and others, and others, until Hamid found himself rushing to meetings on the verge of being late.

  He tucked the book under his arm on the way to their usual breakfast on the fourth day and swore he’d keep the conversation short, light, and on the book. Hamid’s hands could ache all they wanted. He wasn’t going to touch her. Not at breakfast. Focus on the book.

  The sun-bathed dining room welcomed him, along with a splash of color—Talitha, in a purple flower-patterned dress that nipped in at her waist and flowed to the floor, where her feet peeked out of strappy sandals. As he entered the room, she was laughing, leaning into a canvas.

  A canvas! On an easel, out on the terrace, the big double doors thrown open to let her out. Beauty and the Beast played and coiled around her ankles, and his mother sat in a seat a few feet away, her face lifted toward the sun. They’d come early to the dining room to sit in the sun, the two of them. A surge of jealousy took him over. He couldn’t have known she’d come early for breakfast to sketch.

  His mother turned her head and saw him. “Good morning, Hamid.” She stood with all the grace of her decades as a queen, her cats darting to her.

  “Good morning,” Talitha echoed, a light in her eyes. Her hand and pencil worked quickly over the canvas.

  Hamid bent to kiss his mother’s cheek as she went by, and she patted his shoulder. “She’s good, Hamid.”

  “Good?”

  “Her sketches.”

  Then she swept out of the dining room. Talitha still focused on her portrait, her tongue caught between her teeth. Hamid found himself irresistibly drawn to her, found himself pulled out onto the terrace and behind her easel.

  It was wide and sturdy enough to fit two drawings side by side. Talitha was adding layers and shadows to the one on the left—Beauty and the Beast. The one on the right was finished. A sketch of his mother, her face more relaxed and happier than Hamid had seen her in a long time. His breath caught at the sight of it—and at the sight of the gorgeous slope of Talitha’s neck, her hair gathered up in an intricate twist at the back of her head.

  “Your breakfast is on the table,” she said softly. “Wheat germ, cereal grains, honey, preserves—and of course your fruit. I’m having a healthy breakfast, too.”

  Hamid looked back into the dining room, where cut-up pieces of fruit glistened on a small plate next to Talitha’s bowl of Choco Loco. He laughed, and his chest lightened. “How is your collection of cereal box toys coming along?”

  “Better now that your mother is eating the cereal too.”

  Hamid’s jaw dropped, and Talitha looked back at him, a huge grin on her face.

  “A joke! Of course she would never.”

  The two of them laughed together, but the laughter settled into a deep silence that made Hamid suspicious. It was too quiet out here, with only the rustle of the breeze in Talitha’s dress and her pencil against the canvas.

  The inner doors to the dining room opened in a rush, and they both looked toward the commotion. Hamid’s ancient councilor, Mubarak Al-Balushi, hurried across the room with a stack of tabloid magazines. Hamid’s stomach sank. Tabloids were never good news. His secretary, Mahir, followed close behind, frowning at a phone.

  “Your Highness,” huffed Councilor Al-Baluchi. Talitha and Hamid abandoned the easel and stepped inside the cool shade of the dining room. “Some news has broken.”

  So vague.

  “Let me see.” Hamid took the papers from the councilor’s hands. There he was, on the front page, only it wasn’t a photo of him walking into the jewelry store—that would have made sense to him. That’s what he’d been expecting from the moment he saw those papers in his councilor’s hands. But it wasn’t. It was a photo of Hamid with Talitha. She grinned up at him as he put a towel over her shoulders, her gorgeous bathing suit on full display. And worse, on the corner of the front page, another photo—Hamid with his fingertips under her jaw, looking deeply into her eyes.

  He snapped the paper closed, but the images stayed behind. He hated the sensation of looking down on himself from—where would the photographer have been? One of the palm trees just outside the palace walls, with a telephoto lens?

  “This isn’t all of it,” he said to the councilor.

  “No,” the other man said, looking forlorn. “The media has exploded with speculation.” His eyes widened. “And—”

  A blustering voice echoed through the hallway outside. The owner of the voice appeared a few moments later, pushing his way past two palace guards and into the dining room.

  Talitha’s father, Yusuf.

  Yusuf’s face had gone purple with anger, and his jaw was locked. Hamid felt Talitha step to his side, which gave him an odd burst of joy. Focus, Hamid.

  “You’ve gone too far.” Yusuf kept his hands pinned in front of him, but Hamid could tell that the man wanted to stab a finger in his direction. “You have defiled my daughter’s honor. You have ruined her. She’ll never find a husband now.”

  The bubble of joy in his chest burst, and fury hurried in. Hamid kept his face a careful blank—showing emotions in situations like this was always a weakness. But what surprised him the most was the source of the anger. He’d expected to be furious about losing his privacy, to be molten with rage over the photos splashed all over the press, but it was Yusuf’s words that had him ready to snarl. What unholy disrespect was that, to say that about Talitha? To say she had lost even an ounce of honor? Hamid stole a glance at Talitha, whose face was as frozen as his—only hers was frozen in sadness. She lifted her chin and wiped the look away, but he had still seen it. And he wouldn’t stand for it. He took Yusuf in from head to toe, hopefully making the man feel as small as he’d made Talitha feel.

  “Your daughter and I are engaged,” said Hamid carefully. “So that is not a problem.”

  Shock paled Yusuf’s face. “What? That can’t be! You didn’t ask my permission.”
<
br />   “I didn’t have to. You made her a member of my household, remember?”

  Yusuf sputtered, casting his gaze around for someone to help him. Hamid’s councilors looked studiously away. Mahir folded his hands and pretended to look at something out the window. There was nobody to bail Yusuf out.

  “What about my bride price?” Yusuf clutched uselessly at the empty air near his thighs.

  “Your debt is forgiven,” Hamid said. Talitha stepped even closer. That had to be a good sign. She was physically aligning herself with him, wasn’t she? “And it’s a small price to pay for the honor of your daughter’s companionship.”

  Each word dropped from his lips as naturally as if he were telling the unvarnished truth, and as the last one flew across to Yusuf, Hamid was struck by the thought that it was the truth. He did enjoy having Talitha around. In the gym every morning he looked forward to seeing her at breakfast and turned over witty phrases in his mind, imagining how she’d smile or laugh, how the spoon would shake in her hand when he said something particularly funny. He liked having her around. But that couldn’t be right, could it? He’d only invited her because her father had tried to outwit him. Real feelings? No, it couldn’t be real.

  * * *

  Your daughter and I are engaged. The words still bounced around in Tali’s head, none of them quite making sense. When they did make sense, she was shocked at the joy they sparked at the center of her. It couldn’t be, though—she could not be excited at Hamid offering to marry her out of spite for her father. Her father was acting horribly, to be sure, but what was Hamid thinking? She couldn’t even be sure he meant it. But if he did…Yes, something deep inside of her said, I’ll be your wife.