by Holly Rayner
Most importantly, she hadn’t left any contact information.
And yeah, I was quite capable of finding that out for myself. Faye had worked with my family often enough that I knew her name and roughly where to find her professional history. I’d be able to get her information—if I wanted to. I’d be able to track her down with one call to the home office, no doubt.
But I wasn’t going to do it. I’d thought we’d had such a good time together, and I’d thought that we had really terrific chemistry. I’d thought that we… well, I wasn’t sure I’d thought about us having a future, and I still wasn’t sure how that would even work—considering she was from LA and I was never in one place for more than six months at a time—but I’d definitely thought she would at least wake me up before she left.
The fact that she hadn’t made me think that she must not have been having as good a time as I was. Or maybe she’d woken up in the morning and seen things in an entirely new light. Decided that I wasn’t as impressive as she’d thought I was.
Maybe she’d decided that she’d made a huge mistake, and had wanted to get out of there as quickly as humanly possible.
I sat up, swung my legs out of bed, and stood. Whatever Faye had thought or done, there wasn’t much I could do about it now. She was long gone—back to Southern California, no doubt, to write her story and try to sell it—and I was still here. Sure, we might run into each other again, when she came to do another story on the Middle East or on my family… but she might also decide not to do those stories anymore.
She might be so embarrassed that she never showed her face in this area again. I didn’t really buy that, not after what I’d learned about her. I wasn’t sure the girl was capable of anything but absolute floating, shining confidence—in both herself and her capabilities as a reporter.
But that didn’t mean she’d approach my family again. It definitely didn’t mean she’d ever give me the time of day again.
And I had to accept that. It was her choice, and if she’d decided that she didn’t want me to be a part of her life, then I wasn’t going to be able to change it. In fact, if she didn’t want me to be a part of her life, then why would I have tried to change her mind?
I had an ego, too. And running after a woman who obviously didn’t want me wasn’t exactly in line with having self-respect.
Besides, it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of time for a relationship. Even if that relationship existed by means of email and phone calls. I could barely get time for my own family between jobs. So it was probably better this way. Because Faye wasn’t the kind of girl I would have treated casually. She was the kind of girl I would have wanted to settle down with.
And I just didn’t have time for that right now, unfortunately.
At the end of the day, that was really all there was to it. It didn’t really make any sense to dedicate more time to it than I already had.
I started walked toward the bathroom and a hot shower, turning my mind resolutely to all the things I needed to pack before my flight out to Kayyem.
I shoved the books—which I hadn’t read, of course—into the front pouch of the suitcase, then managed to zip the whole thing up, swearing that this time, when I got home, I was definitely going to buy a bigger bag. This one was not only too small, but had also definitely seen better days. It wasn’t something the head of the department—let alone an Al-Sharim—should be seen carrying.
I shook my head at that thought, and how incredibly pretentious it had been, and then looked around the room, staring into corners and into the spaces underneath tables, checking for anything I might have missed.
Then I dropped to my knees to look under the bed—the home of forgotten things—and found… an earring.
I frowned and reached out to pick it up, bringing it out and into the light. And then I saw what it was. A small stud made up of rubies—or stones made to look like rubies—encased in silver.
I recognized that earring. I’d kissed the ear that had been wearing it on Friday night, when I’d brought Faye up to my room.
And at that realization, I rocked back onto my butt and shoved myself up against the wall, staring at the tiny piece of jewelry while dozens of thoughts raced through my brain, one after the other like they were competing to see who could get to the end first.
The thought that won held only two words: Faye Darlow.
This earring was hers, and even holding it was making me remember those sparkling honey eyes, those flashing dimples. The way she smelled—like coconuts—and the way she’d felt under my hands—like a live flame that was somehow made out of satin and rose petals. I remembered how right we’d been together, and how secure I’d felt with her in my arms. I remembered falling asleep with her cradled in front of me, my arms around her and her humming in sleepy satisfaction when I kissed the back of her neck.
I remembered the way she’d poked fun at me the way no one else did, and the way she’d treated me like I was any other guy. Sure, yeah, any other guy that she wanted desperately to interview, so she could write and sell a successful story. But certainly not anyone she was scared of. Not anyone she was going to let intimidate her.
I remembered how I’d seen that other journalist grabbing at her, and how my own hands had flexed into fists at the sight of it. How furious I’d been at someone else touching her—even though she wasn’t mine. And how relieved I’d been to see her neatly handling the whole thing, extricating herself, and getting promptly far away from him.
I remembered the smile I’d worn when I saw how angry he was at whatever she’d said to him as a parting shot.
I remembered falling asleep with her in my arms and promising myself, in that last moment that I was awake, that I’d find a way to see her again. That I’d find a way to see her often, and make it something real, because this had felt like a big, important thing. One of those big, important things that you don’t just run right past. One of those big, important things that you actually change your life around for.
And then she’d woken up and left without a word. Without so much as a note saying she’d had a good time, and thanks for the interview.
And that, I reminded myself firmly, was really all I needed to know. That was what I’d told myself just this morning when I woke up: that if she didn’t want me, and she was willing to run like I was a regret, then I would be a fool to try to run after her—or even let myself consider it.
I was better than that. I had more pride than that. And in this case, pride trumped the flames racing through my body at the thought of her.
I stood, tossed the earring into the same pouch in which I’d stored the books, and vowed to put the thought of her in an equally hidden place.
Chapter 12
Aziz
It took me all of one turn around the room—my final pass to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything—to come to the pretty certain conclusion that I wasn’t going to be able to put Faye to the side as quickly and as easily as I wanted to. Because every freaking thing in this hotel room reminded me of her.
The table, where we’d sat for a midnight snack, courtesy of room service. The couch, where we’d played that drinking game—and gotten very, very drunk. The bed, where we’d… well, obviously, the bed. The TV, which we’d talked about turning on, and had decided against, as we thought we’d both rather lay in bed talking than watching any program. The bathroom, because it held the tub that she’d been so enamored with.
She’d talked about taking a bath, even when she was so drunk that she’d barely been able to stand up, and had been so prone to giggling fits that she almost couldn’t get an entire sentence out without breaking into laughter.
The suitcase on the bed, because it held the earring she’d left.
And it wasn’t going to end there, I realized. We’d shared too many pieces of ourselves, and that meant that little things—daily things—were going to bring her up in my mind. I’d known the girl for a few hours at most, but she’d touched me so deeply and shared
so much of herself that it seemed to have colored the way I saw the world.
And that wasn’t something you just got over.
God, I had gone to bed an all-business real estate developer and woken up a sappy romantic. A poet. And not even a good one.
Though if I was a poet, I was also a man with a mission. One I no longer thought I could just put to the side.
I glanced at the clock to see that I was running about an hour early—not uncommon for me, as I hated getting anywhere late—and then moved toward my carry-on bag. I yanked out my laptop, moved to the table, and flipped the laptop open.
Let’s see, if I wanted to track someone down and I didn’t want to do it by actually calling the company that my family owned, how would I do it?
Easy answer. Social media. Everyone had it, and I knew Faye had to, as she was a journalist who would constantly be marketing herself. It would be a big part of her business plan—and an important way of selling her stories. After all, a magazine or newspaper or blog would be a whole lot more likely to buy a piece from someone who had a large following out there in the digital world.
That was just good business.
It took me three clicks to open up the main social media sites, and three more to find her. It turned out that when you searched a name combined with a very specific job heading—journalist, Middle East—finding a person was pretty simple.
And just like that, I was scrolling through her feed. She must have been one of the only people on earth who had the whole thing set to public, so that I could see it, but if she was truly using this as a marketing plan, then I guessed she needed complete strangers to be able to access her entire page.
And boy, was it a marketing device. There she was grinning for the camera with a girl who appeared often enough that I thought they had to be best friends. There she was again, on the beach at sunset. And there, a picture of the sunset without her in it. A picture of the desert at sunrise. A picture of a cactus in bloom. A picture of her on an elephant, looking like she was laughing so hard that she might actually fall off.
I could hear that laughter in my head. Hear the soft, tinkling chime of it. See the dimples that came along with it—and the sparkling eyes. I remembered the way she’d clutched at her stomach every time she laughed, like things were so funny that she could hardly stand it. And I remembered how charmed I’d been by someone who could laugh that much in the midst of adulthood, with all the complications it came with.
I remembered how much I’d wanted to learn from her. Learn to be that happy all the time, learn to look at life and laugh in its face. I remembered how much I wanted to take entire days—weeks, months—off, just to spend time hearing what she might say next. This was a woman who had traveled the world—these pictures proved it—and I wanted to travel it with her. Yeah, I’d seen much of it already, always on one job or another, but I wanted to see it with her, and through her eyes.
I wanted to take her home and introduce her to my family. She knew Kayyem, of course, but I wanted to give her a personal tour. I wanted to take her through the city and show her my favorite parts of it. The parts where I’d grown up. I hadn’t been back there much in the last ten years, and when I was, it was always a rushed situation. I was on my way from one project to the next, with one or two days to spare, so I never got to see the city—or most of my family.
My mother was constantly asking me to come home and settle down. Start a family. Live in one place for more than six months at a time. Make more time for her and my dad.
Become the man she wanted me to be.
I’d never wanted that before. But I wanted it with Faye. I wanted to make a home with her, design it around her, and make her the beating heart of my world. I wanted to wake up knowing that she would be there laughing—and then go to sleep at night, holding her in my arms, anxious to see what she would tell me when I woke up.
The question was: would she want it with me?
Well, I thought, there was really only one way to find out.
I had the split second of doubt that was bound to come with any leap this big. I didn’t know the girl, and she didn’t know me. We’d only been together for one night. There was every chance that I was making this a whole lot more than it actually was.
But there was also every chance in the world that I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t at least try to find out whether we could have that spark for more than the one night we’d been together.
I hit the ‘message’ option on Faye’s page to bring the box up… and then paused for a second. Forget the doubt about my own motivations, because there was a bigger question at hand: how was I going to do this?
Preferably without sounding like a total stalker?
‘Hello, Faye, I know this is awfully creepy of me to have stalked you on social media, but I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner sometime.’
No.
‘Hello, Faye, I couldn’t help but notice that you left without saying goodbye. This was the only way I could find you.’
No.
Then I started thinking about my timeline. I was flying to Kayyem for two days, and then I’d be flying to Hawaii for work. But I had a layover in LA.
A layover in the city where she lived.
Right now, that layover only lasted about an hour. But I didn’t think it would be hard to change it to an overnight stop. A stop that could include dinner—and a full night in LA.
And I grinned, then, and started typing.
“Hey Faye, sorry for what must look like a huge assumption, but I’m going to be in LA on Friday night, and I’d love to see you. Dinner? Your choice of restaurant? Please say yes. Aziz.”
I sat back and read it at least fifty times, trying to figure out if it was enough or too much—and feeling a whole lot like I was asking a girl out for the first time ever. Then I laughed at myself and hit ‘send’ before I could rethink it.
I got up, gathered my things, and walked quickly out of the room, already knowing that I was going to be checking that chat box every thirty seconds until she got back to me.
Chapter 13
Faye
The message had come in while I was asleep, but thanks to the app service—which included not only the message itself but also another notification that I had received said message, making it almost impossible for me to miss it—it was one of the first things I woke up to.
That didn’t mean I understood, completely, what it was. I’d been up late last night, having gone to several pawn shops before I found one that was willing to give me what I needed for the watch—and guarantee that it was a pawn rather than a sale. I would have a certain length of time to retrieve the watch, which was exactly what I’d been hoping for. No, there wasn’t any ironclad guarantee, but I did have a piece of paper that indicated that I’d pawned it rather than sold it, and I was under the impression that that was the best I was going to get.
I mean, I’d never pawned anything before. I didn’t know the rules and regulations, or whether there was some sort of underground Pawn Shop Honor Code. But I thought a piece of paper was probably the closest I could come to a contract with someone like that.
My plan was still to leave the watch there, use the money to save my parents’ home, and then work like crazy to sell that story. Once I’d sold it, I’d be able to go back, get the watch, and then…
Well, I still hadn’t decided what came after the ‘and then.’ Which was one of the reasons I’d been up late last night. Because no matter how many times I went through the plan, and no matter how many times I assured myself that it would work, and that I was doing the right thing—and that besides all that, I would probably never even see the guy again, unless I wanted to—I still couldn’t quite make myself feel okay about what I was doing.
I couldn’t quite make myself feel like it was actually…
I don’t know, clean. Upstanding. Especially after the night we’d shared, and all the laughter. Especially after the way he’d looked at me,
like I was the first and only person he’d ever met in his entire life who spoke to him like a human being rather than some sort of demigod.
“And now I wake up and have a message from that very demigod,” I murmured to myself, my thumb hovering over the message notification.
I mean, it wasn’t like I could just ignore it. Well, I could, but spend the rest of my life wondering what it could have said, and never knowing?
No, thank you. I didn’t like surprises, and I didn’t like unanswered questions. They left way too much room for your imagination to run wild and create problems that you would never be able to fix.
Besides, I couldn’t get the guy—or his lips, or his eyes, or the way he’d skimmed his fingers over my skin like he was just tasting it—out of my mind. Ignoring his message wasn’t going to change that. And the message might say something important.
So I tapped my thumb down on the notification before I could think any more about it.
“Hey Faye,” the short message read. “Sorry for what must look like a huge assumption, but I’m going to be in LA on Friday night, and I’d love to see you. Dinner? Your choice of restaurant? Please say yes. Aziz.”
I gulped and let my phone slip from my fingers. Dinner? On Friday night? After I’d just slipped out of his room without anything even remotely resembling a goodbye?
Either he was a glutton for punishment, or he thought that leaving without saying goodbye was completely normal. And neither of those things seemed… well, like a good thing.
Or.
Or he had felt the same spark I had, and had guessed at why I’d left without saying goodbye, and didn’t want to give up that easily. He was a man who was used to getting what he wanted, after all—and a man who worked hard to make sure that was always true. Should I have expected him to just give up on me without another try?
Or that he’d take my sudden, unexplained absence lying down?