by Holly Rayner
Honestly, the fact that he hadn’t made me grin like a complete loon, my toes curling in absolute pleasure at the thought of seeing him again.
And that was why I picked my phone back up and typed out a quick response—before my anxiety could tell me that it was a bad idea, or that I was getting myself into a world of trouble, both of which might have been true.
Neither of those points, however, was even remotely helpful at the moment.
“Aziz,” I wrote. “I’m so glad to hear from you! Yes, I’d love to see you for dinner. Just let me know the time and place, and I’ll be there.”
I let the phone slip from my fingers again and spent the next half hour staring at the ceiling, remembering the feel of his eyes on me and the way his fingertips had danced across my skin—and planning exactly what I would wear. Yeah, it was days away, still. And that was quite a long time to wait when the person you thought might actually be your soulmate suddenly came back into your life.
But that just gave me more time to prepare, honestly. I wasn’t good at planning, and I hadn’t thought I was going to see that man again, so I hadn’t arrived home with a plan for what I was going to do when it happened. I hadn’t even spent that night with him thinking about what I might do when I saw him again.
It had just never entered my mind—which, at this point, seemed like a rather extreme oversight. Yeah, we might live on opposite sides of the world. He might be a sheikh, and me a lowly reporter.
Him rich as Midas. Me, poor as a pauper.
But we’d shared something, that night. Something so strong that we hadn’t been able to deny it. And one would have thought I’d at least consider what it would have been like to see him again. Maybe build something real.
Of course, I’d woken up the next morning and jumped right to the conclusion that he would see me as nothing more than just another girl in his black book. And if I’d been thinking that we might see each other again, that particular leap would have most certainly eliminated the idea.
But he’d gotten in touch with me. So I definitely wasn’t just another girl. I was, at the very least, important enough to stop his schedule for.
So a couple days to force me to build a plan for what I was going to wear—and what I was going to say—when we went out to dinner? A couple days to get used to the idea of him actually wanting to see me again?
Yeah, a couple extra days sounded like an extremely good idea.
Because I also needed to focus on selling that darn article. The fact that Aziz had contacted me—and was going to be in town—just confirmed that I had to find a way to get that article sold and get his watch back within my possession. The sooner the better.
Chapter 14
Aziz
I was sitting with my family at dinner and they were, in typical fashion, harping on me to move home, settle down, start a family…
You know, the usual things. The things every mother seems to want for her son, and the things that every father goes along with, even if he might secretly think that his son is only thirty-seven and still has plenty of time to figure out life and where he might fit into it.
And even though—I might have mentioned to them but hadn’t yet—said son was in charge of a relatively important part of the family business that actually required that he not move home, settle down, and start a family. Because yeah, I might have had one or two glancing thoughts about wanting to move home for a bit, take a break from the development world, and spend some time reading my books, but that didn’t mean it would be good for the company.
And I just wasn’t sure the rest of the family would go for it. All of the uncles and cousins and brothers who were in charge of making sure the family business kept right on ticking might have a very large problem with yanking one of the important pegs out from holding up that company. Regardless of what my mother thought.
In fact, I was surprised my father hadn’t said something exactly like that to her at some point. Or maybe he had.
He probably had. Though I would have been stupid to think any of that would have changed her mind.
“Aziz, you are old enough to have a wife and several children,” my mother was complaining loudly at that very moment, while at the same time shoveling more food onto my plate as if she was also afraid that I might wither away and die while she wasn’t looking.
She sat back down, put the tagine pot to the side, and looked sternly at me. “When are you going to give me grandbabies?”
I laughed, shaking my head. Why was it always about the kids, anyway? Why wasn’t it about my happiness and fulfillment?
That wasn’t to say, of course, that I didn’t want kids. It wasn’t even to say that I wasn’t ready to do the very things she was recommending that I do. A wife. A stable house on the family estate, which could only be called a full-on village at this point—complete with a carnival, depending on the season.
Kids.
A home. A base.
A wife who would always be there for me, and who would listen any time I had a new idea that I couldn’t wait to share with someone. A partner. A best friend that I never had to leave behind.
Those glancing thoughts I was talking about above? They were getting stronger the longer she talked.
Still. That didn’t mean it was her job to dictate when and how I did that—or who I married, because I was positive my mother probably had a list of candidates at least a mile long. Honestly, she probably had it in her lap right now, just waiting to be pulled out and presented like some sort of prize.
I slid my eyes to the side and met my older brother’s eyes—which were laughing, of course.
The bastard had already given in. He had a wife and three kids at home. So I’m sure this was extremely funny to him. I, however, didn’t find it so amusing.
“I will move home as soon as I am ready,” I told her, striving for patience. “And as for grandbabies, don’t you have at least five of them already? It’s not as though I’m your only son, Mother.”
She pouted at that, and I glanced at my father, who was grinning. I returned the grin, knowing that he was on my side, even if he was backing me silently—for his own preservation.
And then my phone gave me the ding I’d been waiting for.
The ding signifying the message box I had open with Faye. The box that had been sitting there idle ever since I left Dubai. Ever since I sent that message that might have been a terrible idea but might also have been the most wonderful idea in the world.
I almost upset the table getting my phone out of my pocket, eliciting a sharp exclamation from my mother and a bark of laughter from my father. When I saw that I did indeed have the message I’d been waiting for, I jumped up from the chair and scuttled to the other side of the room to read it, leaving my parents no doubt gaping after me—and my mother, I had no doubt, getting all sorts of ideas in her head.
She was, after all, a woman on a mission. And I knew her well enough to know that once she got something into her mind, anything that happened could be interpreted as a sign of that thing coming to fruition.
I didn’t follow that thought through to any conclusions, as I just didn’t want to go there right now, but I did duck further back into the corner and turn toward the wall to give myself at least a little bit of privacy.
Hey, there are some messages that you don’t read when you’re with company. There are some smiles that you keep to yourself. Some smiles that you treasure like they’re actually spun gold, and that you put up on a shelf in your mind, so you can take them down whenever you’re lonely and look at them again, to remember the way you felt when you first experienced them.
And that was exactly the kind of smile I got when I opened up that message.
I scanned quickly through it the first time, looking only for the general theme, and then, when I saw that it said what I’d hoped it would, I slowed down and actually took my time with the words.
“Aziz,” it read. “I’m so glad to hear from you! Yes, I’d love to see yo
u for dinner. Just let me know the time and place, and I’ll be there.”
She’d said yes. She’d said that she would love to meet me. She’d said to name the time and place, and she would be there.
I read through the message three more times, grinning like a fool, and then I finally looked up and started breathing again. My message had been sitting there for far too long for comfort, and there was a part of my brain that hadn’t stopped listening for that exact ping, as well as entire sections of my lungs that felt like they hadn’t breathed oxygen in a full day, just because I’d been holding my breath the entire time.
No, that wasn’t particularly macho. I was well aware of that. It definitely didn’t stick to my whole I-have-too-much-pride-for-this statement. And I would deny it until my dying day if any of my brothers or cousins asked about it—not that they’d know to ask.
But here, right now in this corner, having just read that message from her that said she was happy to hear from me? Right here, in this moment, I could admit to myself that it was exactly what I’d been waiting for. And that it meant a whole lot more than it maybe should have.
I mean, considering the fact that she was just a girl I’d met at a party and then slept with—and who had left the next morning without so much as a word of goodbye.
A girl who had sat with me after that party and played the most insane drinking game I’d ever made up. A girl who’d spoken to me like I was just a regular guy rather than a member of the richest family in the Middle East.
A girl who’d laughed at my jokes without even a hint of being fake.
I grinned at that, and admitted the full truth: that I couldn’t wait to see her again.
I went right to opening an online search and started looking for the most glamorous, most romantic restaurant in Los Angeles. Because I had a shot to take her out to dinner—to convince her that leaving without saying goodbye had been a mistake, and that we should actually give this thing a chance—and I wasn’t going to blow it.
I might have jumped the gun a little bit on that whole excitement thing, I admitted to myself as I paced my living room. It was only Wednesday—the day after I’d received that message from Faye—and though we were busy in Kayyem, in terms of how many flights came through our local airport, we were still a relatively isolated city in the middle of the desert.
Basically, we weren’t Los Angeles or Paris or London. We had only the one airport, and it was so far out of the way—internationally speaking—that it wasn’t a major hub of activity. It certainly wasn’t a stopping-off point, unless you were on certain routes to China or Australia, and were traveling there from Europe rather than the US.
And all of that meant that no matter how badly I wanted to get to LA, like, now, I had to wait for the next available flight. And that wasn’t happening until tomorrow.
I groaned loudly… and continued my pacing.
Yes, my bags were already packed. Yes, I’d made sure I had all the things you usually forget: socks, toothbrush, nail clippers, headache medicine. The glasses you only use when you’re reading.
The pajamas you don’t tell anyone you wear when you’re on the road.
I’d gone over the blueprints and mockups for the development in Hawaii so many times that I probably could have drawn them by heart at this point, and if I went through the checklists one more time I might actually lose my mind.
Sure, there were other things I could have been doing right at this moment. I was very rarely home for more than two days at a time, so there were a range of family members that I almost never got to see, and hadn’t I just been talking about wanting to actually get some rest? Sit in my library and read a book without interruption? Without other people suddenly needing me for this or that, and without having to entertain anyone else who might one day become a valuable investor or business partner?
Even better, I was in my hometown with nothing better to do. I could have gone to the farmers market—my favorite was in the oldest part of the city—for manoush and then coffee. Maybe even called up one of my two favorite cousins to go with me. If they were currently in town, which was always a sort of toss-up, these days.
One of them in particular would insist that we take the underground tunnels to get to the farmers market I had in mind—something we’d done nearly every day when we were younger—and the thought alone made me laugh out loud.
Back then, we’d been taking the tunnels because we were sneaking out to places where we weren’t supposed to go. At times when we weren’t technically allowed to be out of our parents’ houses. These days, we could go wherever we wanted, more or less, and do it when we wanted to. But I didn’t think that would change Ibrahim’s suggestion. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been just as obsessed with the tunnels as he was when we were young.
And the truth was, I wouldn’t have been against a little exploring with the man who really should have been my twin rather than my cousin.
But it would have to wait for another visit. Maybe after this project, I would actually get to take a vacation and stay home for months at a time—and if so, I’d call Ibrahim and the first thing I’d say would be that we needed to get down into the tunnels and run through them like kids. Perhaps even find a new branch that we’d never seen before.
Right now, however, I didn’t have the bandwidth for that. Not even close. Because all I could think about was Faye Darlow, those bronze eyes and skin, the way she smiled up at me, and the way her skin had felt under my lips.
I was jumping out of my skin to get on that plane and go find her, and I didn’t really care how stupid that sounded. It was going to make it impossible to think about anything other than her. Which meant that my family, my business, and even the city of Kayyem would have to wait until my next break to enjoy my company.
I hit the corner of the room, turned, and started pacing in the other direction, once again going over my plans for when I landed in LA, and reviewing where I could shove in more time with Faye before I had to leave for Hawaii.
Chapter 15
Aziz
A couple of days later, after spending far too much time obsessing about how long it took me to get there and how I definitely needed to take a break from work to invent a time machine, I found myself waiting outside of the most glamorous, romantic restaurant I could find within a fifty-mile drive of Faye’s address, clad in one of my best suits and holding a bouquet of daffodils.
I know what you’re thinking. Daffodils might not have been the most romantic of flowers, but I’d been perusing—okay, stalking—Faye’s social media accounts enough in the past couple of days to know that they were actually her favorite. Preferably in yellow, though she seemed to like the orange-colored ones as well.
I’d gone for yellow. Traditional. Beautiful. Simple.
Also, the only color the florist I’d found my way to had kept in stock.
And the way Faye’s face lit up when she saw them just validated that particular decision, thank you very much.
Though I have to be honest—my face probably did much the same. And it wasn’t because she had brought me flowers. It wasn’t because she’d brought me anything. It was for the pure and simple reason that I was getting to see her again.
And also, the fact that she looked just as good as I remembered. Better, honestly, considering she looked a whole lot more like herself. In her element, if you will.
She was wearing black tonight, some sort of pantsuit that incorporated both long sleeves and loose, flowing pants that did nothing to hide her figure, and it was absolutely glorious against her bronzed skin and general golden aura. A splash of pink at her mouth and eyeshadow to match, the linen of her outfit clinging to her toned frame, and I was completely and utterly hooked.
She’d also, I noted, put on heels that matched her lipstick, and that right there was something that I never thought I would care about—and suddenly couldn’t seem to resist. My entire body was drawn to her, like she was a magnet and I was nothing more than a pile of
iron shavings. She was the vortex and I was… well, anything at all, I supposed, being sucked in.
She was the sun. And the moment I thought of it, I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of it before. It fit her so well. The golden glow, the sparkle, the gravity…
The smile on her face when she saw the daffodils just made that pull even stronger.
“Daffodils!” she crowed. “How did you know? They’re my favorite!”
I grinned a bit sheepishly. “I may have spent some time doing… research.”
She cocked her head and gave me a look that I was very familiar with. The one that said she was about to start making fun of me. All sarcasm and lifted eyebrows and big, suggestive eyes, paired with a mouth that was twisted up and trying not to laugh.
“So basically, you’ve been stalking my social accounts. Stalker.”
For a moment, I thought she was serious. Then she broke into that beautiful laugh and took my hand.
“It’s so, so good to see you again,” she said warmly. She stood up on her tiptoes—necessary because even in her heels, she wasn’t nearly as tall as I was—and pressed her lips to mine, sending a wave of pure emotion through my body.
I slid my arms around her waist and pulled her tighter to me, deepening the kiss and losing the world around us entirely—until someone behind us cleared their throat.
“Mr. Al-Sharim?” that someone murmured. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but your table is ready.”
Faye and I pulled away from each other, somewhat abashed at the statement—but still sparking all over the place, just like we’d done that first night we met—and followed the hostess into the restaurant.
The place was really something; I had to admit. It was done up in dark leather and wood to match, with green carpeting and walls that looked like they’d been covered in satin.