Indebted To The Sheikh (You Can't Turn Down a Sheikh Book 5) Read online

  “My father would have been so jealous if he knew I’d taken ownership of this place,” I told her. “I like to think he would be proud, after he got over his jealousy.”

  “Didn’t you inherit the estate from your father?” Cassie asked.

  I shook my head. “No, my uncle died with no children and left me the estate in his will. It was the most unexpected turn of events, like a fairy tale. Of course, I was wealthy before, but never on this scale. I was thrilled.”

  “I’d be thrilled, too,” said Cassie, laughing. “When Aisha—my best friend—and I were little, we used to daydream about what it would be like if we somehow found out we were the heirs to a foreign castle. Being a princess sounded like it would be really complicated but fun, getting to wear dresses and go out to dinner and be generally fancy.”

  “We can go out to a fancy dinner tonight, if you’d like,” I said hopefully. “This doesn’t have to be a quick trip.”

  “I’d love to go out,” said Cassie, delighted. “What else were you thinking about doing while I was in town?”

  “Salim—my nephew—really enjoys the museums,” I said. “We could take him with us if you wanted an educational visit. Other than that…I’ve got a hot tub on the roof, and I was thinking we could go up there tonight, once it gets dark…”

  I drew close to her as I said this, speaking in a tone that left no doubt as to what I had in mind.

  Slipping my arm around her waist, I added in a low voice, “That sound good to you?”

  But my clumsy attempt at being physical had the opposite of its intended effect. Cassie stiffened and pulled away with a determined look.

  “Listen, there’s something I have to tell you.” She spoke at a rapid clip, her eyes on the ground. I could see that she had been working up the courage to say this for most of the morning. “That book means the world to me, and that was true before I ever found out how much it was worth. I didn’t really have a father, and I lost my mother too early. That book is all I have left of my parents.”

  “Cassie, I—”

  But Cassie raised a hand to shush me; she wasn’t about to be interrupted.

  “I don’t know if I can explain to you why this matters so much to me. When I think back on my life, I tend to remember the difficult parts, mostly. I have to remind myself that it wasn’t all bad—that I had a mother who loved me and read to me and inspired me to pursue a career I’m passionate about.”

  “Cassie, I don’t know what to say.” She had tried to explain it before, but I don’t think I had fully grasped the meaning of the book to her until that moment. “I wish you had told me sooner.”

  “Just tell me that you understand,” said Cassie. “I feel like this whole trip will have been wasted if you come away thinking I cheated you out of that book. That was never my intention. It’s just that, sometimes, we want something so badly we’re willing to do anything to get it.”

  She’d been slowly backing away from me as she spoke, curling more and more into herself with her slumped shoulders and down-turned face. There was a part of me that wanted to cross the space that had opened up between us and take her into my arms, stroking and kissing her to signal that I understood.

  But then, seeming to guess what was on my mind, she gave me a warning look. I’d have to try harder than that, it seemed to say. Kisses could only do so much.

  Chapter 13

  Cassie

  That night, Salman took me to dinner at a French restaurant in the heart of Jubal, perhaps wanting to rekindle the spirit of our first night together. Over a candlelit dinner of onion soup followed by coq au vin, he told stories of his first days in business and punctuated the air with jokes designed to lift my mood. He could clearly sense the uneasiness creeping in around my eyes and thus, hoped he could rescue me with wine and whimsy.

  I appreciated the effort, though I couldn’t bring myself to talk about the things that were really upsetting me: the fear that I was leading him on and the memory of Icarus’s veiled threat.

  I had kept a lookout for anyone suspicious who might be following us. And I was careful not to text or email our exact location to anyone. The security at Salman’s palace was excellent, so I wasn’t concerned about any harm coming to him there. But we were extremely exposed, going out to dinner in the busiest part of the city. I tried to stay alert while putting the danger to the back of my mind.

  After a second glass of wine, my mood began to lighten a little. I could feel myself opening up to Salman, tipsy on the night and the smile in his eyes.

  “I assumed someone like you would have had a lot of girlfriends,” I said, “but you don’t seem the playboy type. I guess because you’re so busy working? It’s refreshing, in a way.”

  “Is it really?” Salman smiled indulgently, but I could sense that he didn’t particularly want to talk about it. “Have you dated much?”

  “Not especially. And it never ended well, or I don’t suppose I would be sitting here.”

  “I still sometimes find myself wishing things had worked out between me and my college girlfriend,” Salman said quietly. “We were at Oxford together, but ended up breaking up because I wanted to move back to Qia to claim my inheritance and she was moving to New York. We spent a few months dating long-distance before calling it quits.”

  I tried to imagine what might have happened if their lives hadn’t pulled them in different directions. Would they still be together today? Would Salman just be the creditor who had taken my book and my father’s estate, and would I have no hope of ever getting it back?

  “What about you?” Salman poured the last of the wine bottle into my glass. “Did you have any good experiences of dating, or was it all bad?”

  I scratched at the back of my neck. “I always felt like I had the worst luck with romance, but in retrospect, I suppose it could have been worse. I hear other people’s stories and feel grateful to have escaped my teenage years unscathed.”

  “You didn’t date at all as a teenager?” Salman asked.

  “Well, there was one guy. I still have this very vivid memory of being sixteen and him taking me to the pool. And when we got out there, he tore off his shirt and motioned for me to follow him into the water.”

  “And did you?”

  “He wanted me to. But I made it to the edge of the pool before I realized, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ I stood there frozen, wanting to keep all my clothes on. He laughed at me, and I was so humiliated, I burst into tears.” I shrugged at the memory. “We broke up not long after that.”

  “God, I’m so glad I’m not a teenager anymore,” said Salman with a shake of his head.

  “I know! I can’t believe that was half a lifetime ago.”

  He started telling a story and the conversation moved on to other topics, but my mind kept reverting back to that scene by the pool. The memory of the bikini incident had stirred something in my conscience, a hesitation that I wouldn’t have dared to voice aloud. I wondered if I was repeating the same mistake I had made then, hurting myself by trying to give a man what I thought he wanted.

  But as yet, Salman had been gentler and more respectful than that old boyfriend had ever been, and he hadn’t pressured me into doing anything I hadn’t wanted. There was something reassuring in the thought of dating a grown man who knew how to treat a woman.

  The main course having ended, the waiter removed our plates and brought back a selection of madeleines, eclairs, and rhubarb clafoutis, which we summarily dispatched while admitting that we had never made it more than a few pages into Remembrance of Things Past. “I read up to the part with the madeleines,” he said, “and then I bailed.”

  Perhaps it was the wine—we had started our second bottle—or perhaps it was the satisfaction of a large meal and a full belly, but everything he said seemed somehow sweeter and warmer and funnier than usual as if he had been polished down to his essence. When he rested his chin in his hands and smirked at me from across the table, my heart gave a little flutter like a hummingb
ird in flight.

  “What’s the nicest compliment you’ve ever gotten?” he asked me as we sat in the back of the limo, the street lights flashing over the curtains like an office scanner.

  “Gosh, I don’t know,” I said slowly. “One time, this guy told me I was ‘warm and comfortable, like an old pair of shoes.’”

  “What on earth did that mean?”

  “Beats me,” I said with a shrug. “I’m a shoe, apparently. Maybe I have a good soul. Get it?” I laughed. “That’s what passes for flattery in my life.”

  “Sounds to me like you need a better kind of man in your life.” Leaning forward, Salman brushed his fingers against the side of my neck. “One that knows how to compliment a lady.”

  “Aisha gives me the best compliments of anyone,” I said, “and if I ever meet a man who can do better, I’ll marry him. She once told me that I had the seductive heart of a flapper in the body and brain of a librarian.”

  “How accurate,” said Salman, impressed. “I feel like that description perfectly captures your essence.”

  “Careful, now,” I said warningly. “Most girls don’t consider it flattering when a man calls them a librarian type. Aisha can get away with it because it’s just true.”

  “I don’t see what’s insulting about it.” Reaching up, he began to run his hands through my hair. I shivered pleasurably. “Librarians are guardians of knowledge and lovers of learning. I’d be thrilled if a woman accused me of being a librarian.”

  “You don’t have the librarian look, though,” I told him, “which I think is what Aisha was talking about. You look like someone who was genetically engineered in a lab to sell colognes and fancy shaving cream.”

  “I’ll take my compliments where I can get them,” said Salman, leaning forward and kissing me just above—but not quite on—the lips. I blushed shyly, feeling the warmth and satisfaction of having his full attention.

  “I think it’s time you had somebody who smothered you with affection,” he said softly. “Someone other than your aunt or your best friend.”

  “I’m still taking applications,” I replied.

  “I’d like to apply.” He turned to face me straight-on, and at the same instant, began running his eager hands along the sides of my body. “You have the look of a woman who hasn’t been loved nearly enough.”

  “Thanks…I think?”

  It was hard to tell whether that was intended as a compliment or not. It was hard to think much of anything at all, because his body was pressing against mine and my brain was suddenly foggy and opaque.

  “I wish I could take you back to my high school so you could say that to me then.”

  “We could kiss in the halls until we were thrown out of school,” said Salman, hungrily brushing his cheek against mine. “I can just picture us making out in the principal’s office.”

  “Gosh, yes.” Somehow, Salman had intuited my long-standing desire to make love to someone after-hours in a forbidden place. “They’d give us detention because they were so jealous.”

  “Then we’d continue kissing in detention,” said Salman, and I stifled a laugh.

  The rest of the way back to the palace, he kissed and caressed me and told me what he thought of me in words that were somehow precise and sentimental without being vapid. How he loved the way I twisted my hand around when I was making a point, the old-fashioned look of how I pinned my hair up with a pen. Gone was the fear that he had ever wanted me just for my body; he reminded me of a sculptor who sculpted the same image over and over again because he took so much delight in it.

  My thoughts drifted back to the meeting with Gage in the park a few days before. It was hard to remember, but there had been a moment when his flatteries had seemed enticing. Now, they were shrunken, disheveled, like a tomato plant that had been left out too long in the New Mexico sun. Salman had a way of expressing love that dispelled all pretenders.

  For a few minutes, I was able to shut my eyes and imagine that I actually mattered to someone.

  “I sometimes wish I had the gifts of a poet,” said Salman. He was turning me over and over with his eyes, a pool player examining the table in front of him for the perfect shot. “Especially now.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because my own words are so inadequate. You’re like the white light that all the colors of the rainbow are trying to become.”

  My stomach gave a tumultuous flip-flop; it was like he was making love to me with his words instead of just his body. “I mean, that sounded pretty good to me,” I replied.

  Salman shrugged modestly. “I used to make fun of poets who would see a woman standing on a busy street corner and pine away from longing, but I think I get it, now. What would we do if we hadn’t met? Or had met briefly and then you disappeared into the Paris streets before I could get your number?”

  “Or what if I had given you the wrong number?” I added. “But then, I guess we would have met, anyway—the next morning.”

  “Yes, it turned out to be rather fortuitous that you walked into my office. If your father hadn’t passed—”

  “Then I’d have had no reason to come to Paris in the first place. We’d be a couple of ions that never bonded.”

  “How boring my life would be,” said Salman. “Sitting in my office like a caged bird.”

  “Maybe that would have been for the best.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Right away, I wished I could reach into the air and pluck out the words I had just spoken, remove them from Salman’s hearing and memory, but it was too late.

  “Salman, listen.” I rested a hand on his knee, and he pulled it away. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you all day, and it’s not about you—you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Since I could see I couldn’t avoid the issue any longer, I told him about my trip to New Mexico a few days earlier and my unwelcome reunion with David Icarus. Salman listened with confusion and curiosity as I explained how my camera was taken from me, how I was asked to leave the property, and how he had been threatened.

  “But, of course, he couldn’t have been talking about me,” Salman said when I had finished. “How would he even know about me?”

  “If we were talking about anything other than Fire Cloud, I’d think you were right. But they basically control half the internet. For all I know, they could be reading my emails, maybe even my text messages—and they probably are, given how furious they were when I published my exposé.”

  Salman’s eyes flashed concern and appreciation. Up to now, I had been the mostly passive recipient of his affections, but now, my feelings had been made manifest. “You almost canceled your trip, didn’t you?”

  I nodded, tears welling up in my eyes. “I must have picked up the phone to call you a dozen times, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t just the book—I wanted to see you, but I also didn’t want you to be hurt on my account.”

  “That sounds excruciating,” said Salman with transfiguring perceptiveness. “No wonder you’ve been so stiff and scared all day.”

  “Have I really?” It was goosebumps-inducing, knowing someone could see me like this.

  “Well, most of the day. Not that I loved spending time with you any less for it. I just worried that I had done something wrong.”

  “No, you didn’t do anything. I just knew I would be placing you in danger if we went out in public. I don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  “I appreciate your concern, really, but I can look after myself. Besides,” he added, leaning forward and kissing me on the top of the head, “being with you is more than worth a little danger.”

  “How are you so perfect?” I demanded—then flung a hand over my mouth, embarrassed at my own forthrightness.

  It wasn’t the first of that night’s embarrassments, nor would it be the last. When we reached the palace, it was nearly eleven p.m., and I steeled myself, feeling sure that Salman was about to invite me up to his bedroom. Despite the fact that I h
ad been given a week’s warning, I still didn’t know if I was ready. And I was exhausted from the long flight and little sleep.

  So, it came as a relief when he led me up a long flight of stairs to the rooftop, from the ledge of which we had a perfect view of the city to the east, with its palm tree-lined boulevards and rickshaw-crowded streets. There, in the shadow of the doorway, lay a magnificent hot tub large enough to seat the entire staff of the Hornpipe.

  Salman slipped fluidly out of his suit and waded slowly into the dark, foamy water, his boxer shorts billowing up around him. I was in shock for a full minute—both at his incredible body and the confidence he had in just getting almost completely naked, like it was no big deal.

  Turning to me with an eager smile, he motioned for me to join him. “Come on in,” he said, “the water’s lovely.”

  I stood at the edge of the tub, hesitant. “Are you sure it’s not too cold?” I asked shyly. “I’m already chilly.”

  “It’s a hot tub,” said Salman, as though this should have been obvious. As if to underline the point, he playfully stirred the water, sending drops in all directions. He had the confidence and grace of a professional athlete, only the sport at which he excelled was showing off himself.

  I dipped a toe into the water; it was as warm as he had said it would be. “If you’d told me we would be swimming, I’d have brought my bathing suit.”

  “Next time, I’ll send you a checklist of items to bring,” Salman said with a smile. “Like we’re having a sleepover or going camping.”

  “I suppose it is like a sleepover, in a way.”

  Was there really going to be a next time? He had brought it up so casually, as if the date was already planned. But the whole night, I had been operating under the assumption that this was our last night together.

  Tomorrow, I would go home and begin the long business of forgetting about him.

  “I thought you’d enjoy swimming,” he added. “You seemed like the type.”