The Sheikh’s Unexpected Son: The Blooming Desert Series Book Three

by North, Leslie

  Maybe it was best to head back to London after all.

  Raed pulled his phone from his pocket as lunch was winding down. Surprise crossed his face, then irritation. No one else noticed but Lise. They were too busy chatting and enjoying one another.

  “What is it?” She arranged the final pieces of Jake’s lunch on the plate in front of him and put a hand on Raed’s elbow. Raed lifted his eyes from the screen and scanned the room to see if anyone else noticed.

  “One of the VIP donors I’ve been courting reached out and offered me a tiny window of opportunity to meet in the Emirates. If I’d seen the message a few hours ago, I could have been on my way, with things organized. Now I’ll have to rush there and hope that the man will still want to meet.” Tension sang through his body, his shoulders rising and brow furrowing. “If I hadn’t been here—”

  Raed stood up abruptly, giving his goodbyes, and Lise stood up with him, gathering Jake into her arms. What else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t sit here with his friends while he rushed off to some business meeting. Guilt tumbled through her stomach, and she tried to push it away. His long stride ate up the distance between the café and where the cars waited.

  Lise caught his arm. “Wait. Is this one guy really so important that you have to rush off? Your friends were talking about some really interesting things in there, and—”

  “Fun conversations are not the point,” he said over his shoulder and slipped out of her hold.

  “What is the point?” Her voice turned him around at the car. The pain in Lise’s heart had spread through her chest, and Raed came back to her, stopping along the way to look and see if anyone was watching. In this moment, she didn’t care. “Why are you so determined to have this massive global career when there’s plenty to do in your own kingdom? Your friends—”

  “My friends? What do they have to do with this?”

  “They were talking about their own hopes for how to change the world—their worlds, Qasha’s world. There are so many things that your foundation could put its weight behind, right here in Qasha. And the timetable doesn’t make sense. I know you think you need this to be an enormous success before you’re thirty and have your name known across the planet, but—”

  “There’s nothing else—”

  “Maybe you should think about what’s right in front of you. You love this place. You’re happy in it. Would it be so bad to put your energy here instead of flinging it out all over the planet?”

  “This foundation and its goals are who I am. And what I want.” Raed’s eyes burned into hers, and Lise badly wanted to look away. But she did not.

  “More than you want me?” The question felt sharp-edged coming out of her mouth, and that desperate hope roared to life again. Silence. She waited another beat, giving him every chance. Then finally she said, “I have a decision to make. My news—”

  “Will have to wait.” He stared at his phone, tapped furiously at it.

  “That’s my answer, then,” Lise said, more to herself than to him.

  “We have to leave now, Lise.”

  Why had she rushed out here after him, as if she couldn’t survive in a world without him? That wasn’t true. She’d been without him ever since he first swept through her life, and she could be without him again. Lise turned back to the café. They still had Jake’s high chair set up by the table, and Raed’s friends had made no move to get up. It looked like they were ordering desserts.

  “We have to leave,” Raed repeated, sliding into the backseat of the car.

  “I’m staying here. Jake and I are enjoying ourselves.” She heard the car door thump shut as she walked away.

  Her eyes stung with unshed tears, but Lise blinked them away. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to get herself together in front of other people. It wouldn’t be the last time. And she knew what to do when things went horribly wrong—pick herself up and keep going. If her mother had taught her anything, it was that.

  The cool of the air conditioning dried the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes, but it did nothing to soothe the painful crack in her heart. Lise bounced Jake on her hip, and the man who’d been sitting near them at the table waved them back over. Fareed. That was his name.

  “Forget something?” He was already searching by the time they got back to the table, while Lise’s skin burned with embarrassment and the pent-up urge to cry. “I didn’t see anything you left behind, but—”

  “We thought we would stay,” she answered brightly. “I know we’re not part of the original group, but Jake is having so much fun with the other kids.”

  “And you’re having fun with us,” said Fareed’s wife. Her name was lost in Lise’s heartbreak, but she smiled at her just the same.

  “I am.”

  She settled back in her seat and let the conversation cover her.

  He wouldn’t even listen to her. The dismissal on Raed’s face outside on the sidewalk sank its teeth into Lise’s mind and wouldn’t let go. It hurt so much that he wouldn’t even listen to her. And no, she hadn’t been the most articulate. She hadn’t put together a presentation on how focusing on his own country would be just as beneficial—if not more beneficial—than pouring all of himself into an international foundation.

  But it wasn’t the foundation that stung.

  It was the still-ringing silence after she’d asked him if he wanted her.

  Why had she ever thought he wanted her? Kisses and sex were one thing. Wanting a relationship was another. She should have known there was no room for a relationship to expand, no extra space that wasn’t taken up by his plans for world domination.

  There was no room for her “small” ideas. No room for her “small” plans. No room for her and Jake and their relatively simple dreams. Lise had never wanted to take over the world for her son. She’d only wanted him to be loved.

  She’d only wanted to be loved herself.

  “You all right?” Fareed asked. “I think we’re going to head back to the park.”

  “I’m great,” she lied. “Jake can’t wait to run some more.” Truth. The more he played now, the easier it would be at bedtime. And Lise had plans to make. She had to pack, talk to her boss about the promotion, and get back to London.

  Lise tried her best to feel relieved on the way back across the street, holding Jake’s chubby hand and feeling his excited energy. He’d be happy to chase the other kids around all day. He would be happy, even if she had to recover from a broken heart. That was what mattered in the end. That Jake was happy and grew up to have a good life. She didn’t need Raed for that.

  She took one deep breath, then another. There was a future waiting for her in London. A better job. A better life than the one she’d left. There was nothing for her here. Nothing at all.

  18

  Raed couldn’t stop thinking about Lise.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about how hurt she’d been when he hadn’t answered her. Of course I want you. The words had been on the tip of his tongue, but what would he say after that? Of course I want you, but the two of us—we’re not meant for the things I have planned. Lise had turned her face slightly away from Jake as the meaning of his silence sank in. She hadn’t wanted her son to see her disappointment.

  And then, as if Raed were any other man in the city, she’d turned and walked away from him.

  The images wouldn’t leave his brain. His mind turned them over and over on the private plane to Dubai. Stephen sat in the front of the plane at one of the tables there, papers spread out in front of him, preparing for the meeting. And here was Raed, staring out the window and thinking about Lise.

  He’d called a second car on the way to the airport with extra guards so they’d be safe in the park without his own security detail. He’d gotten an alert just before takeoff that they had arrived safely back at the palace, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she was right. He had enjoyed himself. He’d enjoyed the ride over to the park with Lise at the wheel. He’d enjoyed watching Jak
e run around with the children of his old friends. He’d enjoyed how it felt to sit in the diner with them, talking about everything and nothing, like no time had passed. It felt like being at home.

  It felt like being with Lise and Jake.

  More memories flooded in. The morning horse rides, with his son’s finger shooting out to point at everything. The Arabic words Jake had been learning. Lise standing at the sink in the kitchen of the guest house, suds up to her elbows. The way she would talk to him. The night she helped him with the presentation and fell asleep. God, how charming she’d been...

  The plane touched down in Dubai with Stephen flattening his hands on the table to keep all of his papers in place. Cell service came back online as they taxied toward the terminal reserved for private flyers, and the first message to appear didn’t make Raed feel any better about leaving the café and hurting Lise in the process.

  He’d missed the meeting. He texted back.

  Just touched down. If you’re still in the city, I’ll come directly to where you are.

  The reply came immediately. We’re en route. But Maria says that we should take a meeting if you can meet us in Europe.

  “Don’t get off the plane,” Raed told Stephen, who was waiting by the door, though the flight attendant was still in place. “We’re leaving again.”

  Stephen’s eyes went wide. “For where?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He exchanged a few more texts with the donor, a man named Raoul Alfaro, who owned his own investment firm and was a rising star in the global arena. Raed had met his assistant, Maria Castro-Martinez, at a conference a few years back, before she started working for Raoul. How fortunate. How unbelievably fortunate. They’d spent several hours one evening at a conference venue bar talking about business and his ideas for the foundation and a particularly bad speaker they’d seen that morning. Raed had stayed in touch. And now look at her. Her own plans were coming to fruition, and his—

  Well, his were coming to fruition, too, only there was something missing.

  He didn’t dare let himself think of her.

  “London,” Raed called the moment the next text came in. “We need to go to London.”

  “Sir.” The flight attendant had a genuinely apologetic expression on her face. “We need to switch out the flight crew. Would you prefer to disembark while we do that?”

  Dubai was a glittering city, and under any other circumstances Raed would have enjoyed a layover here. But a pressure had taken root at the back of his skull and wrapped around to his temples. He wanted to be back in the air, preferably heading home, but that wasn’t on the table. London was on the table. London, and his foundation, and nothing else.

  “Let’s go to the restaurant you like, the one in the center of the city,” suggested Stephen. “That will give the crews a bit more time. We can go over the presentation and iron out the details for the meeting.”

  “Not now,” Raed snapped. The thought of traveling through the city in the traffic and the noise was too much to bear. “We’ll wait in the private lounge.” He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “Turn the plane over as quickly as possible.”

  There was a beat as both the flight attendant and Stephen stared at him, and Raed wondered if he’d lost his grip on all of this. But he hadn’t. He’d only gotten to the heart of the problem between Lise and himself—that they were wholly incompatible when it came to the lives they wanted to live.

  Stephen nodded to the flight attendant, who pushed open the door and hit the switch to let the stairs descend. Raed followed Stephen down and across the tarmac to the terminal. A pair of sliding glass doors opened to admit them, and another attendant waited on the other side with towels and water as if they’d been riding horses through the desert and not traveling on a private jet. Raed dabbed his face with one of them, then indicated one of the offices that opened off the lounge.

  “I’ll meet you out here in fifteen minutes,” he told Stephen, who went immediately to the bar.

  Raed settled into the leather chair in the office and dialed the palace. He wanted to talk to Lise, but in the wake of what had happened, calling her phone seemed almost too intimate. The system at the palace meant that someone would take the phone to her. It was a relic of the old times, when a servant would have to come fetch people to meet at a landline, but it worked for Raed right now.

  “Ms. Danbury,” he said to the person on the other end of the line. “Quickly, please.”

  But it wasn’t Lise who answered.

  “Raed,” his mother said, her voice even. “How is Dubai?”

  “My trip here has been cut short,” he told her. “My meeting with Raoul has been...rescheduled. I’d like to talk to Lise, please.”

  Nenet cleared her throat. “She’s not able to come to the phone right now.”

  He stifled a sigh. “Is she not in the palace?”

  “She’s busy packing.” He sat up straight in the chair, hoping it would help him hear better—or at least help him understand what his mother had just said. Packing for what? There was no end date for the pilot project. In fact, he’d left it open-ended so they had time. This thing at the café—it had only been a bump in the road, not a dismissal. “Your pilot project worked very well, and as a result she’s been offered an excellent promotion back in London. I gather she was trying to tell you about it earlier, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  Raed couldn’t think of a single word to say. His mind was an empty, cavernous space, echoing with his mother’s words. An excellent job opportunity. Back in London. Packing. If she was packing, that meant she was going to leave as soon as she could. There would be no discussion of what had happened, and when he got back, the guest house would be empty.

  “Fine,” he heard himself say. “She has to focus on what brings her security and success in her career. I understand that. It’s what I do.”

  “The crew is ready,” Stephen said, poking his head in the door. “They wanted you to know—”

  “Give me a minute,” Raed managed through gritted teeth. “A minute.” Stephen didn’t linger. “Give Lise my best wishes,” he said, and then he hung up the phone.

  * * *

  Lise could hardly breathe, listening to Raed. He sounded like a stranger, cold and distant, and she hadn’t realized how much hope she’d still been clinging to until the moment he sent his best wishes. Her skin felt hot, then cold, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up and her cheeks heating beyond reason. Nenet put a hand on her elbow, and Tali slung an arm around her shoulders.

  At the touches, Lise burst into tears.

  Nenet put her arms around her, and Lise cried. She cried for all the time she’d spent in Qasha trying to get ahead in her career, only to fall hopelessly in love with a man who would never feel the same way about her. She cried for the time they’d spent together in the guest house, their son sleeping in his room, enjoying one another as if there were no outside responsibilities, nothing other than their family. She cried for the bitter end of it all. It would never be the same again.

  “I really hoped—” Oh, and now she was crying in front of Raed’s mother. It couldn’t get any worse than this. “I really hoped he would react differently to the news.”

  Jake bumped into her shins then, wrapping his arms around her legs. “Mama?”

  Lise scooped him up, wiping furiously at her eyes. “I hoped he would, but he didn’t.” The quaver in her voice was awful.

  “He’s an idiot,” Nenet said. Lise blinked, tears catching on her eyelashes and obscuring her vision. “I raised a fool. I am so, so sorry.” Nenet took her free hand and squeezed.

  “She’s right,” added Tali, handing her a tissue. “A fool.”

  “It’s fine.” Lise swallowed back another wave of tears. “It’s fine, because it means I was right. Now—now what do I need?” She put a big smile on her face, not allowing any more tears to fall. Not in front of her son, who put his hands on her cheeks and leaned in for a sloppy kiss.
“What do I need, buddy?”

  “Need,” he echoed.

  “I need my passport.” It was the last item she’d left out to pack, and Lise plucked it from the dresser in her room and dropped it into the messenger bag that doubled as a diaper bag and carry-on. “That’s what I need.”

  “If there is anything,” Nenet said, looking her in the eye. “If there is anything at all that I can help you with—”

  “You’ll be the first to know.” Lise reached out and pulled her in for another hug. There had to be some way for Jake to visit his grandmother, but right now, Lise couldn’t think of how that would work. It would never be normal between them. It would never be casual for her to fly into Qasha and come to the palace and see Raed. “We’re going to be okay,” she reassured Nenet, though she didn’t feel it herself. “We will.”

  “Anything at all,” said Nenet. “I mean it.”

  “I’ll ride with you to the airport,” Tali said, taking the handle of one suitcase. “We’ll make plans in the car.”

  19

  They touched down in London late that night, and by the time the wheels hit the tarmac, Raed was exhausted. The news of Lise leaving the palace had burned through him like wildfire, leaving his muscles aching and his head throbbing. Worse yet, the name of the hotel where he’d be meeting Raoul hit him like an arrow through the chest—it was the same place he’d stayed with Lise two years ago.

  The front desk put him in the same room.

  Raed stepped off the elevator in the penthouse suite.

  He’d tried to convince himself that it wasn’t a big deal, being back in this place. It was just as luxurious as always, with brand-new modern furniture and the same view of the city. Sparkling water waited for him on the coffee table. He had done some dirty things to Lise on a coffee table in that very spot, if not the same one.

  But it wasn’t only the sexy memories that flooded in now. It was all of them. Her laugh as she stood at this same window, looking out at a glorious sunset. The way she ran when she was chasing Jake. The joy she took in her son. And Raed—she had taken joy in Raed, too. It had shown on her face and in the way she held herself. Lise hadn’t been tense around him, not after a while, and she had accepted him into her life and into Jake’s life—