The Sheikh's Priceless Bride Page 17

  “I don’t know what else to do with them,” I laughed, rolling my eyes.

  I stepped back toward the chalkboard, giving the class space once more. On the other end, my mother’s voice waned.

  “How are you doing, baby?” she asked. “Have you tried dating anyone lately? Have you found some new friends?”

  She was anxious about my recent move to a new location in Al-Jarra, knowing I’d left people behind. I’d only been in the new city for a few weeks, and, it was true, I felt the aching loneliness that comes with a new scene, a new start.

  In the back of my mind, I reminded myself that this was necessary. That each day, I fought for a paycheck for my mother. That each day, the scholarship program provided me with room and board, keeping me alive, and always contributing.

  I would be one of the reasons my mother remained alive. I had to be.

  “I’m working on it,” I told her, trying to smile through the tears that glimmered down my cheeks. “But as far as dating, who on earth has time for that?”

  “You should make time, honey,” my mother continued, her voice waning even more.

  “Mom.” I felt my throat catch. I knew I was about to give into a wave of pain and horrible sadness. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m sending another check over to you at the end of this week. I get paid on Thursday night—”

  “Oh, honey, stop it,” my mother whispered, rasping. “You need that money. You work hard for it. I don’t want you to—”

  “Mom, don’t be silly,” I said, feeling exasperated. “It’s part of the reason I’m here. I can live off the scholarship and—”

  “Tell me you’re there for reasons besides me, baby. Otherwise, I want you to come home,” my mother murmured, making my throat tighten.

  My gaze wandered toward the window and I stared out at the gorgeous Middle Eastern landscape. The mountains in the distance, shimmering with sunlight. Beyond that, the ocean churned on in all its turquoise and white caps, a sight I’d grown accustomed to on weekend hikes. The people were warm, alive in ways that the people in my South Dakotan town were not. They simply couldn’t be; times were hard, and smiles were hard to come by.

  “I do like it here, Momma. I just miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  I swallowed sharply, closing my eyes. In the background, I could hear the grumbling voice of my father—deeper, darker, from years of cigarette smoking, a habit he’d promptly quit after my mother’s diagnosis.

  “Can I talk to her?” I heard him say.

  Soon, the phone was passed to him. I could visualize it clearly: my parents, Sarah and Joe Peretti, poised at the kitchen table, watching as the sun rose over the bright green grass in the front yard. I’d seen it countless times before.

  “Hey, baby girl,” my father said, his voice still gravelly, filled with something ominous. I felt the unrest within him. I knew, somehow, that the wave was about to crash down around me. In the back of the classroom, two girls began to bicker over a doll, but I held back, feeling latched into another world.

  “Daddy,” I whispered. “Is Mom really okay? She sounds weaker than she did last week. And I know you had that appointment. You can’t keep things like this from me.”

  I could hear my father’s footsteps as he moved away from the kitchen. I heard the click of the door, telling me that he was locking himself away in his study. After clearing his throat again, he said, “It’s true that we didn’t get good news, Angie. But I don’t want you to panic about it.”

  Shooting down into the chair beneath me, I felt my knees begin to quiver. “Please, Dad. Don’t keep this from me.”

  “We found out that the tumor is growing larger, Angie. And the doctors are fearful that the cancer will spread if they don’t do the surgery soon.”

  “But Dad, we can’t afford the surgery yet…” I rasped, trailing off. “Can’t they do something? Do the surgery first, have us pay for it later? It seems like time is really important. Why can’t they see that?”

  My dad grunted, sounding aghast. “You try to tell these guys that you can’t pay. They just wave you out the door, telling you to get better insurance.”

  “And the checks I’ve been sending? Still not enough?” I asked, knowing the weight of the truth. It was never going to be enough. The type of surgery she needed was in the hundreds of thousands, far more than my paltry teaching paycheck.

  “It’s helping, baby,” my dad told me. “It’s just not quite enough right now. I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe I can take on another job,” I stuttered, my mind racing. I didn’t yet speak Arabic, but I could stagger through anything at a side job. I could work at the grocery store, or as a waitress. With enough fumbling and hand gestures, I saw no reason this couldn’t be my life. A life devoted to sending money home.

  I would strive as long as I could to keep my mother alive.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” my father said, his voice gritty and tinged with tears. “How are you doing, all the way over there? Your mother won’t stop talking about how you need to date. You’re 25 now, baby. You should start looking for someone. Even if it has to be someone from across the planet.”

  Snickering, I drew my fingers beneath my eyes, mopping up the tears. “Yeah right.”

  “Just think about it, will you? If these are your mother’s last few months on earth, then just know she wants you to be living your life the way you want to. Not just struggling to make us comfortable over here.”

  “Ha.”

  “I know. Selfishness was never one of your strong suits,” my dad said, chortling. “You were always giving the kids at school your toys. You gave them away right and left. Couldn’t keep anything in the house.”

  “I wasn’t that good,” I sighed, frustration brimming. “I was never as good as you thought I was.”

  “You’re right. You were better.”

  The call ended a few minutes later, with my father having to leave and help my mother brew a pot of coffee. Apparently, she was now too weak to hold up a pot of water, to pour it into the top of the machine.

  I shuddered as I said goodbye, feeling the tears rally once more. A sob escaped my throat, and then another one. Before long, I was a crumpled mess on my desk chair, mopping at my eyes with a pile of Kleenex.

  When I finally blinked my eyes open, I realized the entire second grade class—all nineteen of them—were gathered around me. One of them, a little girl named Aya, had her hand across my shoulder, patting it softly. Many of the kids looked self-assured, certain that if they could just be there for me, I would be all right.

  “What happened, Miss Peretti?” one of them whispered, his accent erring on the side of British, despite being raised in Al-Jarra. His parents were English, and spoke in that accent at home. Yet he’d taken on a few of my American slang words, dipping into one dialect after another. One culture after the next.

  “Just a bit of trouble at home,” I told him, sniffing. “Sometimes it feels very far away. But you must know that.”

  He nodded, his eyes growing wide, like saucers. “I know it,” he murmured. “But it’s going to be okay.”

  After a while, I gathered myself together, asking the students to return to their seats. Lifting the textbook from the shelf, I asked them to turn to chapter three. And, as we staggered forward together, we began to learn more English vocabulary, more phrases. But they looked at me with large, understanding eyes, telling me, over and over again: I wasn’t alone.

  Chapter 2

  Rami

  “You just think you’re so charming, don’t you?” This was the voice of Alim, my best friend since we were children. He traipsed behind me, his kebab dripping in his hand, the sauce dribbling across his pants.

  “You look like a mess, Alim,” I told him, swiping my napkin across his suit. “You can’t expect me to be out in public with you, looking like that.”

  Behind us, the girls I’d just made eye contact with snickered at us, their eyes glittering. They
were tall and slender, with long hair that gleamed in the sunlight. One of them held a kebab with thin fingers, nibbling at it daintily.

  She was the antithesis of Alim, like a graceful gazelle, poised. Alim hankered for her, or for someone like her. I could feel him, trying to mimic the swagger I had. But he was lost, still with that dripping kebab. An attractive man, sure. But he had nothing compared to me. And we both knew it.

  “You have to stop it,” Alim sighed, swiping his hand across his lower lip, trying to mop up the grease. “Just because we aren’t all tall, dark, and handsome doesn’t mean…”

  “What? I’m sorry. You think I don’t deserve the women I get?” I chuckled, tossing my head back. My dark hair caught in the breeze, and my dark eyes twinkled against the sun. With rippling muscles, firm biceps and a six-pack abdomen, I felt volatile and alive as we walked along, a veritable Adonis beside the shorter, stockier Alim. I could feel other people’s eyes upon me as we walked down the road.

  Another woman made eye contact with me as we walked, causing me to stop. As I paused, the girl blushed, lowering her eyes. Her long eyelashes fluttered.

  “How are you doing?” I asked her.

  “Oh, fine,” she murmured, her voice shy. “I see you out here often, you know that?”

  “So you’re telling me I’ve missed so many opportunities to speak with you?” I asked her, a small frown across my forehead. “That’s a tragedy, isn't it?”

  “Quite,” she said, flipping her hair behind her ears. Her eyes gleamed with excitement. I could almost sense the story she’d tell her friends after meeting me there. “Sheikh Rami Waheed,” she’d murmur, excitement causing her voice to waver. “He was walking down the road, and he spotted me. He stopped me, dead in the street. He couldn’t resist.”

  “We’d better be going to that meeting, hey?” Alim said, yanking at my elbow and giving me a stern expression. “No time to dilly-dally.”

  “Come on, now. There’s time,” I said to him, giving him a soft, eager smile. “There’s always time for… I’m sorry, what was your name?”

  The girl opened her lips, prepared to tell me. But Alim tugged at my arm a final time, pulling me to the other side of the road. Exasperated, he tapped his hand on my back, watching as the girl pouted, clearly disappointed.

  “She was just going to flirt with you for the next 15 minutes, ignoring me the entire time. As usual,” Alim sighed. “I just can’t hack it anymore, man. It’s too much.”

  “We can get you someone to love, my boy,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder as we continued walking. More and more women gave me coy smiles as we walked, but I let them pass by, humoring my friend.

  Above us, the afternoon sun had begun to beat down with ferocity. A bead of sweat swept down Alim’s forehead, along his temple. I swiped at it, teasing him. “You’ll never get someone sweating like a pig, though.”

  “Lay off,” Alim sighed, his nostrils flared. “What the hell are we doing today, anyway? I thought you had that meeting with your father…”

  “About the women he’s prepared to match me up with?” I laughed, tossing my hand through the air. “As if he believes I can’t find a suitable mate for myself.”

  Alim’s eyebrows were raised now. “You really think any woman would go for you?” he asked.

  “Alim, Alim,” I cackled. “You’ve known me nearly your entire life. Have you ever known a woman to resist me, if I gave her eyes?”

  “Sure. Last weekend at the bar. That Indian girl, with the cinched waist and the tight little—”

  “Come now, Alim. Don’t talk about women this way,” I said, winking at another attractive one who walked past us, her heels clacking on the ground.

  Alim rolled his eyes, protesting. “You talk about them this way all the time—”

  “Alim, Alim. If you ever want to find a woman to settle down with, you have to learn to woo them,” I told him.

  “Woo? What is woo?” Alim asked, his eyebrows stitching together above his nose. “Don’t just make up English words for the fun of it, Rami.”

  “I would never,” I told him, grinning slyly. “Due to my ability to ‘woo,’ as I said, I know that I can have any woman I want in the world.”

  Alim tilted his head, halting quickly. With his eyes sparkling, he protested, saying, “Sure, you can get anyone in Al-Jarra. But it’s because you’re the Sheikh’s son, Rami. No other reason. You’re a local celebrity, and that’s that. If you can’t see that—”

  “Ah, but there’s so much more to it than that!” I told him, smacking my palms together. With a sudden lurch of curiosity, I said, “What if we make this interesting, hey? Make it into a challenge?”

  Alim turned his head away from me. Beyond us, we watched as an older man, his hair an impossibly bright white, meandered past, leading a donkey. His back was hunched, showing years of hard labor. But after giving me a stern look, he saluted me. I felt a wave of affection for all of Al-Jarra. I felt more self-assured than ever before.

  “See? Even he wants to date you because you’re the Sheikh’s son,” Alim said.

  “I don’t think I hear a hint of jealousy, do I?” I asked, teasing him.

  “Stop it.”

  We walked along for a few minutes, both of us stirring with a strange mix of resentment and pure, unvarnished friendship. We’d been together for too long for us to not be holding both sides of this friendship coin. To feel more like brothers than anything else.

  “All right,” Alim said, his voice growing more certain. “I have the perfect bet for you, if you’re up for the challenge.”

  “When have I not been up for a challenge?” I told him, waggling my eyebrows.

  “What about you get a woman who doesn’t know you’re a sheikh to agree to marry you?” Alim continued, darting across the street and toward our favorite local cafe. He perched at the edge of it, poised to enter. From inside, an aromatic wave of roasted beans washed over us.

  “There’s just one problem to this challenge, Alim,” I said, holding the door open. My deep red and yellow robes swirled around me. “I’m always wearing my royal attire. And—”

  “Well, what if you didn’t?” he asked, tilting his head.

  We stepped toward the counter, ordering our usual with cocky smiles. I watched as the barista ducked her head beneath the espresso machine, eyeing the inner workings of the grinder. Her buttocks were tight beneath her dress, leading up to a little cinched waist. When she turned back to see it was me, a blush ran from her forehead, all the way down to her chest.

  “What if I didn’t what?” I asked.

  “Wear your robes. Look like a sheikh at all? You could play it off like you were a normal guy, to set the record straight. If someone could fall in love with you when you looked like everyone else—”

  “As if that wouldn’t be possible, Alim,” I said, pointing to my stellar grin. “With these looks and this charm…?”

  “Come off it. There’s tons of men in Al-Jarra who are twice as good looking as you, and they don’t have the luck you do with women. This will be the ultimate test.” Alim lifted his hands to the counter, accepting our coffees from the barista. He knocked his head to the right, gesturing toward me. “What do you think?” he asked, addressing the barista. “Do you think, if you didn’t know his name, you’d still find him attractive?”

  “He has a name?” the barista said, teasing me. She bowed her head low. “No disrespect, of course. I’m just kidding.”

  “See?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “I don’t even know if this would work. No matter what I was wearing, people would know who I was. I’m one of the most revered men in all of Al-Jarra.”

  “I don’t know about that,” the barista said, giving me a sneaky smile.

  “All right, all right,” Alim said. “I’ll think of a better plan.”

  We meandered through the city center, reverting to our typical bantering routine. Still, the bet lay heavy on my mind.

  As we wandered toward the weste
rn side of the city, I peered up at the sun as it swept toward the horizon line. At four in the afternoon, the school before us was ducking out for the day. The children rattled out onto the pavement, jumping into their parents’ cars and gabbing endlessly all the while. The chorus of their words filled my ears, bringing a slow smile to my face.

  I watched as the kids kicked footballs through the air, running around, wild and free. A few of them recognized me, waving tiny hands and calling my name. “It’s Rami! Hey, Rami!” They were unperturbed with whatever society asked of them, whatever courtesy they were meant to give. And instead, they greeted me as one of their own.

  “Man, even the kids are obsessed with you,” Alim sighed. “This entire day has felt like the first day of middle school all over again. When you had three girlfriends by sixth period and I just had a food stain down my shirt.”

  “We can’t all be winners,” I grinned.

  Glancing toward the entrance, I saw a beautiful woman standing there, watching the children as they darted home. She looked to be in her mid-20s, and she was pale—almost stark white in comparison to the children that surrounded her. And she held her chin high up, proud and beautiful. Her hair whipped around her, raven black, the taut lines of her body discernible beneath her dark green dress.

  “What about someone who wasn’t from here?” I heard myself ask.

  Alim scoffed softly, nodding his head toward the woman at the doorway. “You know this is the English-speaking school, right? That means she’s either British, or worse. An American.”

  “How is that worse?” I asked him, chuckling. I swam through my memories of the American women I’d dated. I remembered them being electric in bed, and good for a laugh. None of them had stuck around for long, but that suited me just fine.

  “You know how headstrong they can be,” Alim said, smirking. “They’re not going to just fall head over heels for you immediately, the way some women in Al-Jarra might. They’ve got their own goals, their own reasons for doing things…”

  “Now you’re speaking in generalizations,” I told him, rolling my eyes.