The Sheikh's Priceless Baby

by Holly Rayner

  Chapter 9

  Faye

  The driver of the cab I’d hailed went squealing into the parking space at the airport, having taken me very, very seriously when I’d said I needed to get there as quickly as possible, and I reached over, yanked my carry-on bag out of the other seat, threw bills at the driver, shouted a thanks, and jumped out of the car, my eyes on the insanely beautiful—and totally modern—airport in front of me.

  I had half an hour to make it to the gate I was supposed to be at. They were probably already starting to board the first-class passengers, and here I was still dawdling outside of the airport.

  Well, dawdling was a bit of a stretch. In reality, I was sprinting, putting my long legs to work and giving them three missions: get me to the check-in counter, get me through security, and then get me to what would no doubt be the furthest gate possible before that flight took off.

  You’d think that there were a ton of flights from Dubai to Los Angeles, but that wasn’t the case at all. Americans didn’t come to Dubai as often as Europeans did, and it was not only a much longer flight, but also one that generally wasn’t direct.

  I, for example, was stopping off in London for a three-hour layover—just enough time to grab a sausage roll and a box of shortbread cookies—before I got home. And if I didn’t make my flight, there was a very good chance that I’d be stuck here for several days before I could find another one that I could afford and book it.

  Even worse, I was betting that I wouldn’t get credit for having worked my butt off to make the flight. I would lose the ticket entirely—my running through the airport notwithstanding—and I’d have to buy an entirely new ticket. Which I didn’t want to have to do. Namely because this one had already cost me thousands of dollars. I’d gambled with that money, thinking that I’d be able to get a good story out of it and make up the difference.

  I just didn’t want to have to gamble with another two grand.

  I trotted up to the check-in counter and went through a very rushed, very garbled version of checking in, the agent there understanding immediately that I had to hurry and doing her level best to make sure I made it. She even gave me a pass for security that indicated that I needed to be expedited.

  A quick sprint up the escalator to the left and I was in security, where I flashed the expeditious pass and found that it actually worked wonders. I was through security in three minutes flat—thank you, past Faye, for remembering to wear flip-flops rather than lace-up boots—and then I was in a flat-out run toward Gate 53. At which point the flip-flops stopped being an advantage and started being a liability. I paused long enough to rip them off and shove them into my bag, and then I was running again, apologizing to the people I hit on my way by and trying desperately to dodge other passengers.

  By the time I got to my gate, I was so out of breath that I could hardly stand up. The girl there looked at my ticket and gave me an enormous grin, though, looking almost as relieved as I felt.

  “We were afraid you weren’t going to make it,” she said in slightly accented English. “We’ve been calling you for about ten minutes.”

  “Woke. Up. Late,” I huffed. “Had to run.”

  Her grin got even bigger. “Well, you’ve made it, and we still have plenty of room on the flight. In fact, I think we might be able to fit you into first class.”

  First class? Maybe I should be late to flights more often, I thought.

  I cancelled that thought immediately afterward, though. First class was great, but it also wasn’t worth the cramps I could already feel starting in my calves.

  They sat me next to another empty seat in first class—probably because I was breathing so hard and sweating so much that no one else wanted to sit next to me—and I leaned back, closed my eyes, and tried to settle myself down again. Running through the airport is never a good time, and it’s especially bad when you had too much to drink the night before and woke up in a bed that wasn’t yours. I also hadn’t had a shower this morning, and I was pretty sure I had my shirt on inside out.

  But at least I’d made the flight.

  I took a deep breath, smiled a bit at having achieved that goal, and reached for my purse. My clutch from last night was inside, and I had gum in there. Gum I wanted to be chewing when the plane took off.

  I grabbed the clutch and brought it into my lap, the better for rifling through.

  And once I got into it, I saw the watch I’d taken off the table last night. The watch that belonged to Aziz Al-Sharim.

  Oh, God! I’d forgotten all about it—along with my intention to give it back to him with a recommendation that he fire that assistant immediately. Instead of doing that, I’d gone right up to his room, gotten drunk on scotch, gotten my interview, and jumped into bed with him. And now I still had the watch. When I was already on my flight to the US. With absolutely no way of contacting him, since we hadn’t exchanged information before I ran out of there.

  I mean, yeah, I could have found him if I wanted to, since I knew the name of his company. I was sure they had a number I could call, and I could just tell them that I had something of his and I needed to return it. No problem.

  Except that it was. Because they’d wonder how I’d gotten it and how I knew him, and they’d think—probably know—that I’d slept with him, and everyone would get all judgmental about the whole thing.

  And that didn’t even start to cover the fact that it would look exactly like I had actually stolen the watch and run out with it—even if I hadn’t. Because I was with him all night and I’d never mentioned it. Nor had I left it subtly on the dresser in his room, there for him to discover when he woke up. I also couldn’t exactly call him up and say, ‘Oh, hi, I have your watch and I swear I didn’t steal it, I just happened to pick it up… and leave the country with it.’

  Oh, God.

  I leaned back, closed my eyes, and tried with all my might to go to sleep—just so I could put this on the list of things to freak out about when I was at least at home, rather than thousands of feet in the sky over Dubai.

  Chapter 10

  Faye

  When I touched down at LAX, I went through the usual hassle of getting off the plane—easier and quicker after having been in first class, which was an added perk—then getting through the nightmare that was baggage claim, and finally getting out into the front pickup area. Another nightmarish experience.

  Every time I flew into LAX, I swore I would never fly there again. I’d go to Ontario or Long Beach, pay the extra fees, and have a smaller and less intimidating airport. And then I actually looked at what those extra fees would be and decided I’d rather deal with the chaos that was LAX than add an extra three hundred bucks to my ticket price.

  Outside, I found my best friend Rebecca waiting for me, just like she’d said she would be, so at least I had a ride rather than having to go stand in the line for a cab or one of the ride-share cars.

  “Please God, take me home,” I told her blearily. “No. Wait.” I bit my lip, knowing that no matter how much I wanted to go home, there was another stop I had to make first. “Can we go to my parents’ place?” I said. “I need to let them know I’m back.”

  “Isn’t that what they made phones for?” Rebecca asked, doing the tricky work it took to get out of a parking space and into the flow of traffic at LAX—which was like its own city within the city of LA.

  “They don’t like it when I just call them,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes. I’d slept all the way from London, but it hadn’t been enough. Not by a long shot. I’d traveled to the Middle East before, and if there was one thing I knew as fact, it was that the jet lag was so intense that it often lasted for an entire week. I wasn’t going to recover any time soon—and getting home and going back to sleep was first on my list.

  Well, second.

  “You know they’re in a bad way right now, anyhow,” I added. “I want to let them know that I think I have a way out of it. As long as everything goes my way.”

  I had m
y eyes closed, but I could practically hear Becca giving me that judgmental look that she always gave me when she didn’t approve of something. There was no way she could know what I’d done with Aziz, so it couldn’t be that. And she definitely didn’t know about me accidentally stealing his watch.

  It had to be something else. Something I hadn’t even considered yet.

  “What?” I moaned. “Out with it.”

  She didn’t even pause before she started talking—because if I was a straightforward, blunt butter knife, Becca was a paring knife that slit right through the skin. “Girl, you know you’re going to burn yourself out trying to save that house. You can barely afford your own place. How are you going to afford the mortgage on an actual house on top of it?”

  “I am very carefully not thinking about that,” I told her firmly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to sleep all the way to my parents’ house. You wouldn’t believe the night I had… was it just last night?”

  She snorted. “In that case, I’ll insist that you tell me about it the moment you’ve had enough caffeine.”

  I heard her, but I didn’t reply. I was too busy willing myself to go back to sleep—and not to think about the problem she’d brought up. You know, the one about the rent.

  Rebecca was right; I was barely making rent on my own postage stamp of an apartment. And my parents owned a pretty big house—which meant they had a pretty big mortgage. Realistically, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pick it up, no matter how many stories I sold.

  But that sure didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

  When I walked through the door of the house I was going to fight so hard to save, I found my parents actually packing their things. Packing like they’d been told to get out immediately, and not to pass Go on the way. Definitely not to collect that two hundred dollars.

  But when I came in on them frantically shoving things into moving boxes—and then let my eyes roam over to the stack of boxes sitting against the living room wall, and the mess they’d made of the stuff that hadn’t been packed yet—they had the grace to look at least mildly embarrassed.

  They also looked stressed as all get out. And heartbroken.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked. “Did something change since I flew to Dubai? Because I know you haven’t just randomly decided to move without saying anything to me.”

  My first thought, honestly, was that they were overreacting. Because as anyone with aging parents knows, people get paranoid when they hit a certain age. Prone to doing things they didn’t need to do just because they’re frightened. Or worse, misunderstanding a situation so completely that they actually don’t know what’s going on and just jump to the worst possible case scenario—and then act on it without asking anyone who knows better.

  My dad, though, shook his head. “We were hoping we’d be able to open the coffee shop again with the other shop moving out of the area. And we thought… we thought we’d be able to save the house ourselves. Shore up our savings for when we really got to retire. But it’s just not going to work. We got another notice on the house, and another chain store moved in where the old one was.”

  “We figured we’d get a jump on the packing. You know, so we’re not having to do it in a hurry later,” my mom added.

  I divided a look between the two of them, knowing that I couldn’t lecture them for trying to be proactive—but wishing they would be proactive in a slightly different direction. Maybe one that was more useful in terms of saving the shop and the house, rather than giving it up at the first sign of trouble.

  “And where exactly were you going to go?” I asked. “A hotel? My apartment, perhaps? What’s the long-term plan here, guys?”

  They both looked at me silently, and I knew that there hadn’t been a long-term plan. No, they were counting on me—the worst planner in the history of planning—to figure out what the next steps were.

  A string of curses flew through my head, but I sealed my mouth shut, determined that they wouldn’t leave my mouth. Determined not to make my parents any more upset than they already were.

  But I was already starting to see a big, big problem. Because I was counting on the money from the Aziz story to cover the bills for the house, but if they’d received another notice already, it meant the bank was stepping up its actions. Making it all more important.

  Expediting my parents, so to speak. Only they were in the wrong line, completely. They were in the line you didn’t want to be expedited through.

  The bigger part of that problem was that it would take me a couple of weeks to write and sell the story. And we didn’t have a couple of weeks. I didn’t even know if we had a couple of days. I needed to talk to the bank and find out what was actually going on, and how long they’d give me to come up with some cash. But I also needed something better, in terms of planning. Something more immediate. Something that would get them the money they needed right freaking now.

  And then I remembered the watch that I had floating around in my clutch. I remembered the diamonds and the designer name etched into the face. And I remembered that Aziz didn’t even know I had it.

  I remembered that I probably wasn’t ever going to see him again.

  I wanted to see him again. Oh man, did I want to. And I didn’t want to sell his watch, because that would make me just as much of a thief as I was afraid he already thought I was.

  But what if I just borrowed it for a little while? What if I pawned it, got the money, and then got it back as soon as I sold that article? Then I’d call him, maybe, admit the whole thing, and find a way to send it back to him.

  Or something.

  And in the meantime, I would be saving my parents’ house. At least for a little while.

  It was such a clear answer, such a straightforward path, that I immediately felt better. The stress I’d been carrying around with me for months lifted off my shoulders like a feather, and for the first time in all those months, I felt like I could actually breathe. I felt, even more importantly, like I might actually be able to save my parents the way they were expecting me to save them.

  I didn’t like the answer. But if it meant saving my parents… then I knew I was going to take it.

  “Guys,” I said quickly, moving to hug my mother and then my father. “I’ve got a plan. I don’t want you two to worry. I’ll be back in a little bit. I’m going to go run an errand. I think I have the money to save the house for a while, at least. Stop packing.”

  I turned around and left, already on my phone to get a cab and doing my best not to think about all the ways this could possibly go wrong. Trying really, really hard to feel like this was the right thing to do—and that I’d make it all right with Aziz later, when I could afford to.

  Chapter 11

  Aziz

  On Sunday morning, I opened my eyes as slowly as possible—and then realized quite suddenly why I’d woken up at all. My hand darted to the bedside table to swat at my phone, which was blaring the alarm so loudly that I worried for a moment that the people in the next room would hear it.

  Who on earth had set that alarm to be so loud? Because it definitely hadn’t been me.

  Another couple of blinks at the room that I didn’t really recognize for a moment, and then I remembered that I was in my resort in Dubai… and that I’d built each of these rooms with soundproofing, so that someone could do almost anything they wanted to in their rooms—I mean, within reason—without disturbing their neighbors.

  Including, as it happened, having the loudest alarm known to man.

  I grinned to myself at that particular memory. Not the alarm, but the soundproofing. And beyond that, at everything we’d done here. Every choice we’d made, big and little, to make this place everything I thought it could be. It was a big achievement, this resort, and I was looking forward to seeing what it did. I was incredibly proud of it, and the fact that it was finally built and done and opening, after six months of me eating, sleeping, and dreaming here on site. It made me think that I’
d definitely earned a vacation.

  Unfortunately, that vacation was going to consist of only a couple of days in Kayyem. Then I would be off again, this time to Hawaii, where we were breaking ground on the resort that the investor had been talking to me about at the party. I’d received an email from my brother yesterday, letting me know that I was heading there next, and I groaned a bit at the thought. I loved Hawaii. I loved the sun and the beaches and the greenery of it. I loved the absolute peace that came with being on an island and at least kind of away from the real world.

  But I didn’t want to go back to work.

  Especially in a state where it could literally rain every single afternoon during the rainy season. Because though I loved a good rainstorm, it wreaked absolute havoc on a construction site. Rain delayed everything—and I was thinking that the humidity of Hawaii was going to have much the same sort of effect.

  The rain, though… I smiled, picturing the opposite of a puddled and ruined construction site. Instead, I saw a rainy day, a big armchair, a stack of books next to me, and a never-ending supply of cocoa.

  Maybe some cookies. Or baklava.

  God, that sounded good.

  Then I remembered the girl who had pitched that exact scenario and told me that it was her favorite sort of day—particularly because trying to drive in Southern California during the rain was evidently a death wish. And at that, the smile faded a little bit. Grew a little frayed around the edges.

  Because that girl had left my room without so much as a goodbye yesterday morning. After the conversation we’d had downstairs in the bar, and then that insane drinking game we’d played here in my room—and everything that came after it—she’d upped and left like a mouse who just found out it had slept in the same bed as a cat.

  She hadn’t even left a note. Or a heart on the mirror in lipstick.