Not that he could see it from inside the dining room. He couldn’t see anything, save the clutch of friends who had gathered for their engagement party.
Jazmin, for her part, seemed perfectly happy to be at the center of everything. She sat gracefully on one of the leather sofas that ringed the perimeter of the room, her dark eyes sparkling as she followed the conversation between Lilian, an old college friend they had in common, and Joseph, who’d had classes with Rashid at university and gone on to start his own investing firm in the US.
As the future ruler of Omirabad, Rashid didn’t have the luxury of being a bad conversationalist. He’d spent a lifetime learning to negotiate a room and join in any conversation.
So it wasn’t that Rashid couldn’t go over to the sofa, sit down, and slip into whatever conversation they were having. It was that he didn’t want to. The party had gone long, and more friends had joined in as the evening progressed. The room’s air conditioning system was having trouble keeping the excited heat at bay. All the different voices rolled over him, one after the other, and Rashid’s chest ached for a breath of fresh air.
He scanned the room one last time, looking for anything out of place. Walking away when there were signs of trouble was not an option for Rashid, but fortune was in his favor. He saw only a large group of friends celebrating the engagement of the couple at the center at the party.
Rashid ignored the pit of resignation at the bottom of his gut and stepped out of the room. In two minutes, he was pushing open the door to the hotel’s inner courtyard, another gorgeous space. What he wanted most, however, was the open air.
He took in a big breath of it, tipping his head back to look up at the clouds swirling above the light from the skyscrapers around them. He should have been more excited to be at the party. It hadn’t been bad, exactly—he’d seen plenty of old friends and caught up on their lives, something that would be impossible to do at his wedding. Royal weddings never left enough time for the married couple to enjoy the guests, but that was the luck of the draw. He was a sheikh, after all, and a royal wedding was his destiny.
He’d been born for it. Why did it feel so stifling tonight?
It wasn’t even that he expected to be in love with his fiancée. Rashid had understood from a young age that love didn’t always come until after marriage. He cared for Jazmin, of course. They’d grown up together. Her father had been secretary to the king, Rashid’s own father, and her mother had worked with Rashid’s mother. She was in the palace as much as any of his siblings had been. He blew out a breath, trying to offload his unease. Jazmin was whip smart and gorgeous. She was familiar with palace life and skilled at navigating gatherings like this one. It would be easy between them. She knew, as much as anyone could, about the demands that would be placed on him when he took the throne. As the eldest of his parents’ children, he would take the throne, and that would be his life.
The fact that they weren’t marrying for love and passion meant that he could do right by Omirabad and focus most of his attention on the kingdom.
It was like his thoughts were arguing among themselves.
No—that wasn’t it. There were actual voices, coming from around the corner. A light breeze buffeted the words themselves. Rashid stepped closer.
“No.” A woman spoke the word in a tone that was low but insistent. “Not tonight, Barron.” Two things hit him in quick succession: he knew that voice from somewhere. And he knew the name Barron. Rashid hadn’t met many Barrons in his life, and that name on the breeze made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The Barron he had in mind was not a good man. He was the son of a man who had done business with the royal family of Omirabad, and they’d run in similar circles at Oxford.
Years ago, on another trip to London, Rashid had found him cornering a woman in a dark alcove of a bar. He’d had a half-finished drink in his hand and an expression on his face that Rashid had never forgotten.
He took another step forward. He’d intervened that night, but he had no idea if this Barron was the same one. Rushing in on some unsuspecting couple wouldn’t be the best decision in this moment, but—
“Come on.” It was Barron. No question. “It’s only a little wedding night preview. Surely you can’t argue with that.”
“Surely you can wait two days,” said the woman, her voice light and strained. It made his heart beat faster.
“That’s the thing,” Barron said. “I don’t want to wait two days. And you shouldn’t want me to wait, either. Not if you want to be a good wife.”
The breeze picked up then, rustling though the foliage around Rashid and blocking out what she said next. When it quieted…
“Impossible,” Barron was saying. “Two days from now, you might regret being so difficult.” His voice got louder as he spoke, and then he came around the corner, almost running into Rashid. “My apologies,” he said, putting a gentlemanly hand on Rashid’s shoulder and brushing by like he’d barely seen him.
Rashid blinked. Apologies to Rashid, but not to the woman he’d spoken to like that.
The woman with the familiar voice.
He had just made up his mind to step around the corner when she came into view, wearing a frown that was totally uncharacteristic of her.
“Nora Williams,” he said. “I thought I recognized your voice.” It was a stupid thing to say—a dead giveaway that he’d been eavesdropping—but Rashid’s heart was fluttering like a bird’s wings at the sight of her.
At the sound of her name, Nora looked up at him, and there it was—the smile he’d known since their days at school. Not university—secondary school at Westminster, where King Rafiq had sent all his children. Rashid and Nora had had classes together starting when they were sixteen. He could still see her now, sitting at the desk next to him in her navy uniform, her hair in a bouncing ponytail and her face all grin.
“Rashid.” She took a step closer. “Who’d have thought you, of all people, would be out in the courtyard? I guess our families’ circle is smaller than I thought.”
The Nora who stood in front of him had the same smile, but her red hair was styled in a twist behind her head with a sleekness that he only associated with school dances and royal balls. Styled, because, as it echoed in his mind now, she was getting married in two days.
To Barron Rochester.
The next logical thing to say was that he hadn’t seen her in quite some time. Since their graduation, in fact. He’d gone off to Oxford, and she’d gone off to…where had she gone off to? Rashid wanted to ask, but a strange pressure had built up in his chest, and the appropriate response flew from his tongue before he could force it into the air.
“You can’t marry him,” he said abruptly, knowing even as he said it that he sounded brusque and blunt and all too familiar. Because she was. She was too familiar and still too dear to his heart, even after all these years, to let her get married to a man like Barron. “You can’t.”
Nora’s smile faded. “Oh, Rashid. I am marrying him. The wedding’s in two days.”
“So I heard. Call it off.” He had some faint hope that Nora, like most of the people in his life, would simply go along with what he said.
But of course she didn’t. She was Nora, not a member of the palace staff.
Nora stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen each other. You’re taller.” She laughed. “Still every bit the crown prince, I see.”
“It has been a long time.” Too long. Why had it been so long? What had been so all consuming about Oxford and life in Omirabad that he’d allowed them to lose touch? Rashid didn’t have much time for social media, but that was no excuse. “I’ve missed…our friendship.” It was stilted, yes, but somehow saying I’ve missed you seemed too intimate for the moment. Even with her hand on his arm.
“I’ve missed it too.” Her eyes sparkled in the low light of the courtyard. “Remember all those projects we finished at the last moment?”
He did. The
y’d spent many hours together at the study tables in their dormitory, close enough to share notes but not close enough to touch. Rashid had loved it. He’d never said as much to her. Neither of them had.
Why not?
“What are you here for?” Nora asked, taking her hand away from his arm but staying close. “A getaway from palace life?”
“An engagement party.”
“Really?” There was that smile again. “Whose?”
“Mine,” he said.
Her eyebrows went up. “We’re almost like twins. I’m here for our rehearsal dinner.”
So she had gone through the motions with Barron, standing where they would stand for the ceremony, and still wanted to be with him.
It couldn’t be true. Rashid was gripped by the need to do something, to intervene, even though he knew he was overstepping the bounds of a one-time school friendship.
“If there’s anything I’ve learned from life, it’s that it’s never too late to change course.”
“Cold feet?” Nora cocked her head to the side, ready to listen, just as she always had been.
“Don’t marry him,” he said urgently. “Barron is not the kind of man who—” He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve anyone.
“Too late to change course on that,” Nora said, an edge to her voice. “I have to marry him, Rashid. It’s the only way.”
“The only way for what? Whatever it is, there’s another way, I promise you. Barron—”
“Will be waiting for me.” Nora looked up into his eyes. “It was lovely to see you, Rashid. Congratulations on your own engagement.”
“Rashid?” It was Jazmin’s voice.
“Someone’s looking for you,” said Nora, wearing a grin that seemed rueful.
He turned to look, and there was Jazmin at the other end of the walkway. “Give me a minute, Nora, and—”
When he turned back, she was gone. He half considered running after her, all those old feelings raging in his chest. He’d always felt protective of her, but now? Now?
“Who were you talking to?” Jazmin stopped at his side, looking at the corner Nora had disappeared around. “People are missing you at the party.”
“An old friend.” Why hadn’t she been willing to listen to him?
“Which old friend?”
“Nora Williams,” he snapped, and Jazmin took a step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it that way. It’s only that—” He shook his head. “She’s making a mistake. I tried to tell her.”
Jazmin studied him. “She was a school friend, right? Why the sudden interest in her mistakes tonight?”
He turned to face her. “She’s set to marry an awful man, and she doesn’t deserve that.”
Jazmin shrugged. “How do you know he’s so awful?”
“I know him. I’ve seen things.”
“Maybe she’s seen a different side of him.”
“I’m sure she has.” Irritation flared brightly under his ribs. “But I’ve seen what a callous, uncaring man he can be. The way he treats women—”
“You don’t know how he treats her.”
“I know how he will, and she doesn’t deserve that,” he insisted. “Marriage should be about trust and respect and love, not—not resignation.”
“Your friend can make her own choices about who she wants to marry, you know.”
“Of course I know that. I only want her to have all the information before she walks down the aisle.”
“Why are you so concerned about her marriage?” Jazmin’s voice rose to match the fire in her eyes. “Why are you out here arguing with me about someone else’s fiancé when you’ve abandoned your own engagement party?” She didn’t have to add and your own fiancée.
“It’s wrong. That kind of marriage is wrong.”
“Then it’s wrong for us, too,” Jazmin shot back.
He had no answer for that. The breeze rustled the leaves in the silence between them.
“We both know this isn’t a love match. We both know this is…a business arrangement. And I can see in your eyes that’s not what you want.”
“It is what I want,” Rashid said.
Jazmin squared her shoulders. “It’s not. Maybe it’s what you wanted before tonight, but it’s not now. I release you from the marriage contract, Rashid. The wedding is off.”
Grab your copy of The Sheikh’s Convenient Bride
(Omirabad Sheikhs Book One) from
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The Sheikh’s Fake Marriage: Sheikhs of Hamari Book Two Page 12