Older Woman, Younger Sheikh Read online

"Come in," yelled Amin. His gaze had lost its softness, turned accusatory. And then he turned away from her, as if she had never been anything to him.

  The door swung back on its hinges, the heavy wood threatening to shatter as it hit the office wall. MacIntyre stomped in, with the collar of her brother's expensive suit jacket fisted in one meat hook of a hand, a "Clobbering Time" look on his face.

  Farid, on the other hand, looked like he was about to have a brain aneurysm as he practically ran to keep from getting dragged along behind MacIntyre's long strides.

  "Miss Rania," MacIntyre said, in an even tone. "I'm afraid I must inform you that there's been a family emergency."

  Her mind went one place, and one place only. "Jeddah. No."

  Farid managed to nod.

  "There is a car prepared," MacIntyre informed her. "We can be at the hospital in minutes."

  Through the cotton balls that filled her body, she managed to register the sensation of Amin's hand slipping into hers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rania watched the steady beeping of the heart monitor through an unearthly haze. A cloudy distance hung between her and the hospital room. The only thing in sharp relief was Jeddah's drained body. She lay in a bed full of electronic gadgets, with stainless steel guardrails like prison gates running along its sides.

  Rania clung to Jeddah's hand. The bones felt strong under the papery skin, but her grandmother's hands were still, which was wrong, wrong, wrong. Jeddah's hands always moved. Those hands baked sweets that tasted of cinnamon, they took broken things away, they made wrong things right, and they fluttered when she spoke, like three-dimensional punctuation.

  Now, the only things that fluttered were her eyelids, weakly.

  "Rania," she said.

  "That's right, it’s me." Her heart pounded with excitement. "You're awake. How do you feel?"

  "What happened to me?"

  Jeddah's hands still didn't move. Nothing in the world would be right until the two of them sat in Jeddah's kitchen again, her grandmother's hands waving in the air as she told a hilarious story of how she grew up with five brothers.

  "You fell, Jeddah. The doctors are doing tests."

  "Bah," she said. "Tests. The answer to the test is that I am dying."

  "That's not happening," she stated. Not ever. Jeddah could not die. She wasn't allowed. She would live forever because she had to. They could grow old together, many, many years from now. They would be old ladies walking through the streets with linked arms, wearing striped trousers with flowered shirts if they wanted to.

  And everyone else could screw off.

  Jeddah's strong fingers tightened weakly around her own. Rania had to stop herself from squeezing so hard she'd never be able to let go.

  "You're a good girl, Rania. Don't tell anyone, but you were always my favorite."

  "Am your favorite. And will be for a long time. You're going to get better."

  Jeddah shook her head slightly, but she didn’t argue. "What your father did to you was selfish of him."

  "He had no choice. I don't blame him."

  "Why not? You should blame him. Your father should have protected you, not served you up like the most prized dish at a feast." Jeddah's weak outrage made Rania's throat constrict.

  "Try not to talk, Jeddah. Save your strength for getting better."

  "I will do as I like. Don't tell me what to do, young lady. I will say everything I have held in for too long."

  "Oh, please," she countered, with love and admiration. And a little annoyance. "When have you ever held anything in?"

  "Hmmph." Jeddah's eyes sparked with a hint of their usual mischief. "That is true. But a dying lady can say as she pleases to the granddaughter that she loved the best, and who deserved better from everyone."

  "My life's been good, Jeddah. I haven't lacked for anything. I've been happy. I've been privileged."

  "Stop that.” Jeddah's teeth clicked as she bit on the words. "Other people sacrificed you. Stop sacrificing yourself. Don't be a martyr for people who never cared for you. Why should you protect those who are embarrassed and ashamed of you? Do you think you are admired for it? What do you get out of it?"

  "Those little girls depend on me. Without what I've done, they wouldn't have food in their mouths."

  "No, Rania, they depend on their father, their parents. And their parents should not depend on you. What your father did to you was an abomination. But your father is gone. Why do you continue to defend him? Would you defend another man who did this to his daughter?"

  Would she? The idea repelled her. So why stand up for her father?

  "Rania, you take care of others before yourself. But they don't thank you, don't care for you. After your father's death, you could have walked away from the sheikh. But you did not. You can spend the rest of your life doing everything for other people, and you can feel righteous for it. But it also means you do not have to try to accomplish your own dreams, does it not? It means you do not have to take the risk of failing."

  "But if I walk away, Farid will lose his job and the twins…" Even as she said the words, she knew they were not true. The Amin she had known when she was young would never hold Farid's family hostage for good behavior. And in his core, he was still that boy who wanted to rescue her.

  The jewels that had appeared in her apartment. He thought they were hers. He thought her passport was her own, too.

  He thought she was paid a salary.

  He thought she had been with Ghassan of her own free will.

  "Doctor," Jeddah said to the man who had just entered the room behind her. A hint of her usual sharpness tinged the word. "You are quite attractive. You must look after my granddaughter."

  "I think I've had enough of men looking after me, Jeddah." Her heart pinched at giving her Jeddah grief as she lay so still in the bed, her breath making more noise than it should.

  But it felt important to assert herself. And Jeddah was a good place to start.

  She could work her way up to asserting herself with other people.

  Jeddah squeezed her hand. "Yes, I think you have."

  A cell phone beeped behind her, making Rania twist in her chair to give the doctor the evil eye—but ice spiked up her spinal column when she saw no doctor standing behind her.

  Amin, of course. With half-hooded eyes, he glanced up from the screen of his mobile, straight into her gaze. "I must get this," he announced, and swished out of the room as if wearing an imaginary desert cloak.

  "I think I would not mind if he looked after you," Jeddah whispered, a hint of a wicked smile toying with a corner of her lip.

  "That's Amin Al Nawaz, the new sheikh. Ghassan's heir. Ten years younger than me."

  "Little Amin?" The admiration in Jeddah's voice stayed right where it was. "Not so little anymore. Whatever they fed him in England agreed with him. We need more of it here."

  "About fifty years younger than you," Rania pointed out. But Jeddah sounded stronger for the argument.

  "I would never steal away a man who looks at you like that man does when you cannot see him do it."

  Any lingering sentimentality I have in regards to you will end when confronted with the reality, Amin repeated in her mind.

  "He doesn’t care about me, Jeddah. Even if he did, he's too young for me."

  "You may tell yourself that, but the way he looks at you… I do not think he will be denied," Jeddah insisted.

  She shook her head. "I was Ghassan's mistress. Society would never accept me… And why am I arguing this as if it's a real thing that could happen? It's not. End of story."

  End. Of. Story. Whatever else happened today, this was the end of her story with Amin.

  "But you care about him."

  Rania opened her mouth to deny it, but no words came out. Jeddah, of all people, saw the truth about her.

  "He is beautiful, but that is merely attraction." Jeddah seemed to be getting stronger with each word. "What I see in your eyes is true caring. Perhaps even love—he
has only returned to Qena in the last few days. How did this happen?"

  "It didn't," she admitted. "How I feel about him started so long ago."

  "Tell me," Jeddah said.

  Her eyes unfocused, gazing into the past as if the old pictures moved in front of her on a plasma screen. In high-def. And 3D.

  She would never forget that night. The night of her seventeenth birthday. A month after her father had informed her that she had to become Ghassan's mistress or the ruthless sheikh would rip their family apart.

  Amin's parents had been killed in a helicopter accident. Ghassan had been the nearest relative, and even that was tenuous. Since Ghassan had married into the family (Amin's mother's late sister), the two shared no blood at all. But Ghassan had thrilled at the idea of molding a child who was technically a prince. More importantly, Ghassan got the chance to take guardianship of Amin's father's business, Al Nawaz Industries.

  For the weeks before her seventeenth birthday, she'd been at Ghassan's place every day. Her father had been made to wait at Ghassan's pleasure, but she had wandered the former palace freely.

  At first she'd only caught glimpses of a pair of haunted eyes peeking at her around corners.

  With patience—and a few of her younger brother's toys—she'd drawn the shy, skinny ten-year-old into something like friendship. At least he stopped running away when she entered a room, though he wore the same neutral expression, his face never even twitching with any emotion. He'd still kept his silence, still cocked his head at her in suspicion, his eyes darting toward the nearest exit, planning his escape.

  Except once.

  The night the servants had prepared her to go to Ghassan's bed for the first time.

  After the servants had left her alone in Ghassan's bedroom, bathed and scraped and painted, adorned in French designer fashion and jeweled from toe to throat, Amin had snuck in.

  She'd been slumped in a chair. Rings sparkled on her fingers. Henna tattoos swirled on her hands and feet. The traditional decorations of a bride's skin. The golden bed with silken sheets had loomed like a dragon in a Western-style fairy tale, one she didn't dare turn her back on for fear it would consume her.

  Then Amin had been standing in front of her, in his bare feet. He had never liked to wear shoes in those days.

  I will take you away, he had said.

  She'd blinked at him, unable to make sense of his words.

  He'd drawn himself up to his full thirty-three inches. You should not stay here. I am here to rescue you. We will escape. When I am older, I will marry you.

  She'd held her breath. If she hadn't, she would have crumbled into a weeping heap. Even with all her strength going to swallow back a mixture of terror and despair, a few fat tears had fallen onto the rust and blue mosaic tile between her feet.

  Amin wore a backpack that weighed down his small frame. He swung the pack onto the floor and tore the zipper open. Inside were several liters of water and packages of round flatbread, stolen from the kitchen. He pulled out a swathe of black fabric and thrust it at her in his fist.

  A burka.

  Clever. So clever. For an instant, she gave herself up to the fantasy.

  She was supposed to put it on. Hide her face and let her make a daring escape with him. They could leave the country, and then live together. Become a little family—the girl betrayed by her parents and the boy who had lost his. She could find a job. He could go to school.

  It would work. They could be happy together, take care of each other.

  She wanted that more than anything in the world, and all she had to do was reach out and take the clothing he held out to her.

  Her insides melted. This boy wanted to risk everything for her even though he'd only known her for weeks. The few sentences he'd spoken tonight were more words than he had said to her the rest of the times they'd seen each other put together.

  But the fantasy was just that—an unattainable dream. If she escaped becoming Ghassan's mistress, he would dump her family on the street. Her father would lose his job at Al Nawaz. Her little brother wouldn't get to go to university. No one would look after her beloved grandmother. Not with Ghassan pulling strings behind the scenes.

  Her happiness, her future, had to be buried so that other people's happiness could blossom.

  Despite the burning lump stuck in her throat, she swiped the tear tracks from her cheeks with the backs of her hennaed hands and forced a smile. The same smile that she would force for the next sixteen years.

  She took the burka from him and stuffed it back in the pack.

  I don't need to be rescued from anything, Amin, she’d lied. Go back to your room, and I'll see you in the morning. I'm going to be living in the palace now. We can be together every day. Won't that be fun? You can read me some of your book tomorrow.

  The muscles in her cheeks ached from that damned lie of a smile. Amin narrowed his eyes at her and said nothing.

  Then the door jostled on its hinges, the herald that Ghassan was about to enter.

  Please go, Amin, she requested, her stomach crawling inside her as if trying to get out.

  The corners of his lips flicked down, then back to neutral, his face blanking into his normal flat expression, showing exactly zero emotion. She turned to the door, letting him escape through whatever hidden passage he'd used to arrive.

  And Ghassan had taken her.

  "But then he went away to school," she told her Jeddah. "He returned… different. Harder. Colder. He's not my adolescent knight in shining armor anymore. He's…"

  "More like Ghassan."

  "No," she bit off, to her own surprise. But truth coated the word. "He's not like Ghassan. He grew up, that's all. Of course he's not a kid anymore. He wouldn’t do the things Ghassan did.”

  "Few men would."

  "That's right. And if it seems that way, there's a misunderstanding. This is the guy who tried to rescue me.”

  How had she forgotten that little detail about Amin? He’d hated wearing shoes so much as a kid.

  And all they time they’d been on the boat, he’d gone barefoot. Maybe sending him to school had done exactly what she’d intended—give him the chance to grow up away from Ghassan.

  "Rania? What are you talking about? What seems what way?"

  Right. Jeddah didn't know about that. Rania patted Jeddah's hand. "Don't worry, everything will be okay."

  And for the first time in sixteen years, those words had a hope of being true.

  As Rania ran, the clatter of her designer shoes against the mosaic tile floors of the palace echoed. The sound punctuated every useless step. Where was he?

  She gripped two handfuls of the damned skirt that threatened to make her face-plant and hiked it up to her thighs.

  “Merda,” she swore, and kicked off the heels, abandoning the infuriating things. There. Now she could make some progress.

  With renewed speed, she ripped around the corner that should have ended at the main ballroom. Instead it ended with MacIntyre's chest.

  The smack sent the breath swooshing out of her lungs in a reverse gasp, creating a sucking vacuum under her ribs.

  A pair of big hands wrapped around her upper arms. Good thing, too. They were the only things holding her up.

  "Miss Rania," the meaty man said. "You okay? The servants told me you were sprinting around here like the devil was chasing you. What do you need? Is it your Jeddah?"

  “Am"—she barely had the oxygen to get the name out—“in."

  "Amen? Why? Are you praying?"

  She punched him as hard as she had strength to. She might as well have assaulted a marble statue.

  "Gotcha," he conceded. "I'll take you to him."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  What was he doing here?

  A doughy man stepped into the hallway, the door to Amin's apartments closing with a smack behind him. His suit was expensive, but well worn. He walked with the confidence of a man who knew his world would never be shaken.

  Well, she had a surprise fo
r him.

  "Oh, man," MacIntyre said. "I can't stand that guy. Is it okay to say that? He is your brother."

  “Yep." Something inside Rania went cold. And hard. But the coldness, the hardness, straightened her spine. Gave her something solid inside her. "Say whatever you want."

  Farid turned to her, barely acknowledging her presence.

  Hmm. That was a change. He hadn't just started in on the insults right away. Must be having an off day.

  "Hello, Farid," she opened. "Why are you in the palace at this hour?"

  "I am not accountable to a whore," he said, with a quarter of his usual venom.

  MacIntyre's fist tightened dangerously.

  "That's more like it, but not up to your usual standard," she informed him. "I give that insult a six-point-four out of ten. Lack of creativity."

  He snorted her direction and turned to go.

  "You really hate me, don't you?" she called after him.

  He snapped around, faster than she would have predicted he could move. "You have allowed men to treat you shamefully."

  "You're right. I have."

  Farid's heavy eyebrows slammed together. Not what he expected.

  "But it didn’t start with Ghassan." She shrugged. "In a way, he was the least of the men who treated me like dirt. He just wanted to sleep with me. He didn't have any obligation to protect me, not like Father did."

  Her father's words, so far in the past, alternately thanking her for her sacrifice and telling her she had no other option, faded in her mind. As if the ink in the writing was drying, leaving a fine powder that could be blown away in a dusty cloud.

  "Don't you say one bad word about our father." Farid flung his index finger in her face.

  Big mistake. MacIntyre's hand clamped around the digit and twisted. Farid yelped in pain as the finger bent backward in a way not intended by nature.

  One flick and Farid would need a cast for six weeks.

  She laid a hand on the small of MacIntyre's back. Without her needing to say a word, he let her brother go. Did she imagine that growl MacIntyre emitted? From Farid's cringing expression as he cradled his finger, maybe not…