Desert Sheikh vs American Princess Read online

  Thalatha, his brother, who Noelle had just been kissing, said, "I have never known you to be without a car. You do enjoy your fine Corinthian leather."

  "I repeat, that is not your concern," he told Noelle.

  "What are you trying to hide?" Narrowed green eyes searched his face, as if she could somehow discern his life situation there.

  "I hide nothing," he stated, locking his gaze with hers. "Also, I am not accountable to you for my actions."

  "Your actions?" She clamped on to the words like a dog clamped jaws on a piece of meat. "You mean you did something to the cars?"

  "Hey," Thalatha said. "I am in this conversation as well."

  Walid had had enough. If the fate of his country had not been at stake, if he did not have only nine days to rescue Askar, he would have thrown Miss Oldrich onto the first flight back to the United States. To tell the truth, to anywhere.

  He had done everything in his power to make her comfortable. She appreciated nothing. She accepted nothing.

  Seeing her react with ingratitude to her generous, loving parents had pushed his patience to the limit. Had they not given her everything she wished? Ensured her happiness? Protected her from her own mistakes?

  If only his own father had been the same. Ithnan would never have been sent to Hidd as a mere child. Thalatha would have received a true education and not ended up living a useless life.

  And as for himself... perhaps he could have been the kind of ruler Askar deserved.

  But however much he wished to, getting rid of Noelle was not an option. For now, the self-centered rich girl who put herself above all other things had to remain in the Red Palace. Honor demanded he treat her well so long as she stayed beneath his roof.

  That did not mean he had to like it.

  "Miss Oldrich, there are people in this world who have real issues. They are not force-fed money by loving parents who only desire to take care of them. They must solve their problems on their own. People's lives are at stake. Employment that will allow families to feed their children and send them to school." The words bled from him like a gushing wound.

  "Take a hike, jerk," she told him, her eyes wild with a child's temper tantrum.

  But he had already turned his back to her and strode back into the elevator. Had he once equated her with Askar itself? She did not deserve such a compliment.

  It was time to be done with Noelle Oldrich. And perhaps it was time to engage another plan, a contingency he had reserved in case Oldrich's loan repayment did not go through.

  He stabbed the button for the third floor and took a parting shot at Noelle. "Enjoy everything I have offered you with gratitude, Miss Oldrich. It is more than most people ever have."

  *****

  There was another way to acquire the funds Askar required. Unfortunately, merely thinking about it made something uncomfortable slither under his skin.

  No, he had a few days before calling the sheikha became a necessity. He could perhaps leave that until five days before the due date. Which meant Oldrich had four more days to transfer the funds.

  He was being irrational, he told himself. There was no reason not to make contact. Reda Farouk was a daughter of Askar. Surely she would lend her help if he called on her. Yet... he could not shake the feeling that the sheikha would demand something of him that he did not wish to give her.

  "What was that all about?" The voice, so close, made him freeze.

  In the elevator, Walid turned to see his brother leaning against the wall, casual and relaxed. In his mind, he turned to see his brother kissing Noelle Oldrich.

  As he replayed the scene, he had to admit it looked more as if Noelle had been kissing him. Her hands had been behind his brother's neck, pulling him down to her level. Thalatha's hands had been behind his back as if trying not to touch her.

  No, he could not blame his brother. Noelle was responsible for everything.

  The sooner she was gone from his palace, the better.

  "Are you sober now?" he asked his brother.

  Thalatha shrugged and pulled a silver flask from somewhere on his person and offered it. "Maybe I don't need to be sober. Maybe you need to be drunker."

  For once in his life, Walid considered taking a drink. Before his control kicked in. "You know I do not drink."

  "Start." Thalatha pressed the flask into his hand. "So, dear old Dad's investments went south, huh?"

  Walid looked at the shiny container. Would one drink be so bad? With Askar's ruin just around the corner and Noelle kissing other men, perhaps dulling his senses would be a welcome escape. "How do you know that?"

  "Can't say I'm surprised." Thalatha skirted the question, speaking in the casual, almost American tone that he adopted from time to time. "He wasn't good with money. Or women. Or ruling a country. Raising kids. Talking to the press. Making friends... You're not stopping me. You used to stop me when I trash-talked your favorite guy. You admired him once. What changed?"

  He had admired his father. Once. No longer. "Since the responsibilities of ruling fell to me, I have had the chance to witness his failures close up. I can no longer defend him."

  "You and I and Noelle have a lot in common, then." Thalatha pulled the flask out of Walid's hands and raised it. "To crappy parents."

  A chill settled on him. "Has Miss Oldrich been complaining about her tolerant, loving, protective parents?"

  In the blasting fluorescent light of the elevator, a shadow slipped across Thalatha's face. His arm punched out, slamming the emergency stop button, making the elevator car glide to a smooth stop.

  Walid let out a vicious swear at the delay, at being confined in this room with the man whom Noelle had kissed.

  When Thalatha spoke again, it was with seasoned rage. "You're kidding me about her parents caring about her, right? The ones who won't even pay a debt they owe to rescue her from a kidnapping?"

  Now Walid was on firmer ground. Of course her parents would pay. "The money will arrive shortly."

  Thale snorted in that way of his. "I am certain the check is in the mail. What has it been? A couple weeks since you kicked her father out. A man like Oldrich could easily liquefy a few million to get his daughter back. Yet he leaves her here."

  As much as Walid hated to admit it, his useless brother had a point. For a man who had received so little training or education, Thalatha could show uncommon wisdom at times. Often in the most irritating of ways.

  It was the question he had not allowed himself to ask. If Oldrich wished to protect Noelle, as he had claimed, would he not have gotten the money to Askar by now? Was it truly so difficult for Oldrich to raise a mere fifty million to pay his debt?

  If his own daughter had been kidnapped, would he not have brought down the heavens before allowing a separation of so many days to occur?

  A memory of his own father, lying to him about Ithnan being fostered in Hidd, crossed his mind. Yes, there were parents who considered children pawns in whatever destructive game they played.

  But Oldrich had never struck him as one of those. Then again, neither had his own father. "Oldrich not being able to raise the money is not evidence of neglect."

  "Not neglect," Thalatha agreed. "The opposite of neglect."

  Annoyance at these word games, at his brother, burrowed under Walid's skin like a sand tick. "Explain."

  Thalatha leaned back against the shiny wall of the elevator, the picture of ease and confidence. "Oh, I think I don't have to explain. Our dear father could have stood to neglect you." Thalatha held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. "Just a little."

  Thalatha echoed Walid's own opinion. Their father had poured all his attention, all this hopes, and all his requirements onto his firstborn, onto Walid. The constant lessons, the unending lectures on the subject of his obligation to reunify the broken provinces of Askar, the punishments when he was discovered doing something besides studying...

  But that had little to do with Noelle. Did it relate to Thalatha himself and his role in that hideo
us kiss? "You are jealous of the attention paid to me."

  That snort again, this time followed by a true laugh. "Not in the least. I would pick the way I was raised over the way you were. But I admit I never thanked you for what small dribbles of education I did get. From you."

  It was true. Some preadolescent part of his brain had noted the astronomical difference between the education he was receiving and the uneven smears of teaching that sometimes happened to his brothers. Had seen the unfairness. So he had taken it upon himself to see that his brothers got the books he had finished with. On receiving these books, particularly the math texts, Ithnan would drop to the floor wherever he was, in an easy cross-legged position, and turn to page one.

  Thalatha, five years younger than Ithnan, and outside the intense bond Walid and Ithnan shared, would declare no interest. But did not give the book back, saying that he would keep it so his brothers couldn't have it.

  Yet, more than once, Walid stumbled upon his youngest brother alone, struggling over words much too advanced for him. The first time this happened, Walid had gently offered to help. Thalatha, his too-big clothes previously worn by two older brothers, had thrown the book to the floor, thrown his chin to the ceiling, and walked away.

  On the rare occasions that his father left the palace, the royal tutors did not dare extend his lessons to his brothers, for fear of losing their positions. However, no one reported to the king that his oldest son would take the place of the tutors and teach Ithnan the lesson he had been taught that day.

  Thalatha declared these classes stupid. Whenever they happened, he stayed within close hearing range in order to call them stupid. When he wasn't lapping up what little knowledge nine-year-old Walid could offer.

  "I regret not continuing to give lessons after Ithnan left us," Walid admitted. With Ithnan gone, he had not seen the point of educating his ungrateful brother. He still did not know how Thalatha had learned English.

  "Those lessons were stupid," Thalatha said. "And I loved them. Thank you."

  The words momentarily stunned Walid. His brother had never thanked him before. For anything.

  He nodded acknowledgement. "I still fail to see the connection with Noelle Oldrich. Her parents seem concerned about her well-being. For example, when she found herself in difficulty at university, they stood by her and brought her home immediately."

  "And what trouble do you think she was in?"

  Walid looked to the floor, and yet he could not judge, never having been in a similar situation. "The typical, I imagine."

  "Very typical," Thalatha said. "She got drunk at a party. That is all. For that, they chopped her schooling off at the knees. She'd been there for six or seven weeks. She doesn't really remember. She was whisked home before something called Columbus Day."

  University had been denied him. He'd suggested it to his father, who had laughed. And that had been the end of it. At the time, going away to university had represented freedom, opportunity, and most of all, the choice to do what he wished for a few years until he was called upon to serve his country as ruler. Not to mention the acquisition of intellectual tools that he might use to fulfill his duties.

  He could not imagine how he would feel if he had escaped to university only to be wrenched back to his father's inescapable attention.

  "But they kept her safe." He heard weakness in his own voice.

  The woman whose solution to extending her vacation a few days was jumping out a window, being kept safe... She would loathe it.

  "Imagine always being kept safe, even when you did not wish to be. Never being allowed to spread your wings. Never being permitted to fail."

  "She has failed often enough here."

  "Always being rescued from the tiniest of inconveniences," Thalatha continued. His brother had never had a problem ignoring him, Walid noted, not for the first time. "Never out on your own, making decisions for yourself."

  "No responsibility," Walid pointed out. "Not unlike yourself, brother."

  For the second time in their conversation, Thalatha's features changed utterly. But instead of the earlier darkening, this time a neon light lit behind his eyes. His lips curled in a smile so intense that the corners of his mouth seemed to form half-circles that drew in upon themselves.

  And it seemed utterly, utterly false. If Thalatha had reached beneath the collar of his designer shirt to rip off a rubber mask and reveal a different person, Walid would not have flinched.

  What was happening with his brother? Walid had always seemed lighthearted and calm. Even more so in the months since their father's death. He had always spent time with their older cousin, Sheikh Lukman, who ruled Sadad, and their father's death meant he had even more freedom to do so. As for Sheikh Lukman, he was also freer, as General Ghalib had just been elected prime minister, freeing him from some of the more difficult responsibilities of ruling.

  "I have a deep and abiding responsibility to my fans," Thalatha said, referring no doubt to the seventy thousand fools who followed him on social media. "You think it is easy being this handsome? You should try it sometime. The massages. The facial scrubs. I spend a fortune on exfoliation alone. You do not even know."

  "Since the salary that you do not earn is funded by Askar, I know intimately, brother," Walid said. "I cannot imagine how you put up with such torture."

  "I know," his brother said. "I truly am amazing."

  Walid lifted an eyebrow at Thalatha. It did not have the intended intimidating effect.

  "But before I depart for New York," Thalatha said, "there is one more thing you need to know about the woman you kidnapped--"

  "I did not kidnap her," Walid snapped.

  "Right. You are simply not permitting her to leave. A different thing entirely." Thalatha's dramatic eye roll looked painful, but he seemed to suffer no ill effects from it, and continued. With less sarcasm. "She has a pirate princess living in her head..."

  *****

  Someone was going to get a kick to the head when Noelle saw him next. For now, she had to make do with stomping down the palace corridor.

  A male guard passed, sporting a bullet-resistant vest that would normally deserve a good, long appreciative eyeballing. An excellent look on any guy, so long as they weren't also pointing phallic weaponry at anyone who dared take a step.

  Instead, she scowled at him. He grinned back with good humor that made her scowl even harder, at great risk of her face staying that way, as her stepmom would have insisted.

  A head-kicking, yeah, Bonnie piped up. That'll teach him for walking in while you're kissing his brother. And so do all these nice people who are just doing what they're told so they don't lose their jobs.

  I thought you were on my side, she thought at the imaginary voice in her head, wishing very much that she could scowl at Bonnie.

  Always. But only when you're right. Why'd you kiss that guy?

  She sighed to herself, a drawn-out, nearly silent sound that made her shoulders droop. At least she managed to do it quietly, avoiding the attention of the other person walking down the corridor toward her. That person might not have noticed anyway, since she probably had to concentrate to balance the stack of boxes she carried. The tower nearly came up to her eyes.

  Why had she kissed Thale? Because they'd connected. Because he'd empathized with her. And because he wasn't so damn hard to be around.

  He felt... easier, she admitted, turning down the hallway to her room.

  Because pirate princesses like easy things, Bonnie said, with all the contempt an eleven-year-old could muster.

  Whatever, Noelle returned, feeling preadolescent herself.

  What was that shuffling sound behind her? She turned. Box person had followed her when she turned. Hmm. Those flowy peach-colored trousers. The way the now-familiar paralysis snuck up her arms. Could that be...

  "Faridah?" she asked.

  The person stopped. Now the multicolored cardboard boxes were an unfriendly brick wall, a division between them.

  Right. The
last time she'd seen Faridah had been in the market, in the lingerie shop. When she'd used her young friend as a human shield to hide behind while she searched for an escape.

  Not one of her stellar moments. Totally justified, though. If only Faridah had known how much she needed to get out of here.

  The heaviness that had started in her fingers sprinted up to her shoulders. Everyone else saw how useless Noelle was, how she was basically just good for spending money.

  She had never asked for Faridah to place all her hopes on her. The young woman had come up with all of that herself. Noelle was just a regular person, after all. Not a hero. Barely even competent. And to have to carry the burden of Faridah's over-the-top dreams? It was hard not to resent Faridah for what she wanted to place on her.

  "I am coming to your chamber," Faridah declared, a polar vortex in her tone of voice.

  "No problem." Noelle inched closer to the girl, hands out to take the big box off the top of the pile.

  "No." The stack was whisked to the side, without tottering. Not a bad skill, that one. Especially when anger blasted from narrowed eyes.

  "Faridah, I tried to come see you. Look, I just want--"

  Faridah's already stiff back stiffened even more. "I must take these to your chamber."

  Crap. Noelle had a feeling this was not going to go well. Probably because it hadn't so far. "Okay, let's not talk in the hall."

  Faridah let her open the door to her room, at least. When the servant had dropped the stack of boxes on the table, she turned to Noelle full on, with her lips turned down in unceasing contempt. "Your parcels, ma'am."

  "Parcels?" she asked. And ma'am. Ma'am did not sound open to an air-clearing dialog.

  "Gifts." The word was said with impressive irritation.

  "Look, Faridah, I don't care about these--"

  Her attempt to turn the conversation was chopped off. "You do not care about them. But of course not, because you are so rich." Faridah flipped a hand toward the packages. "These were given to you by those who have much less than you do."