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Willow

  They left the ballroom moments later, winding through the cracked and dusty hallways and into the gardens on the other side of the palace. Willow shivered with apprehension, knowing she’d agreed to do something reckless and outside of herself. But her heart remained heavy with the task Ibrahim had entrusted to her.

  Outside, the sunlight beamed down on their heads. They picked their way through the gardens and stood beneath a smattering of palm trees, gazing out over the overgrown flowers, the desert trees, and the dried-up fountains. Willow could almost imagine what it had looked like, ten years ago, with flowers creeping around the trees on bright green vines, water flowing through the bright air, and the bricks clean and winding toward a yonder gazebo.

  “It really was magical,” Ibrahim told her, sliding his hand along the small of her back. “But you know that. Don’t you?”

  “I think I do,” Willow sighed.

  The Sheikh allowed Willow to take the lead, winding them through the garden. As they walked along, tension seemed to fill the air around them.

  Was it romantic? Willow wondered. Or was Ibrahim just trying to play her, the way he was lying to his mother? Perhaps she was just a puppet to him. Someone meant to do his bidding, because he was so accustomed to getting his way.

  “Hey. Willow.” Ibrahim said from behind her.

  Willow whirled toward him, making intense eye contact. In his hand, he held a single white rose, which glowed in the sunlight. The sunlight showed the intricacy of the petals, the veins.

  He lifted it toward her. “Can you believe it? A single white rose, still growing. It’s like it was waiting here for us. The way I was waiting for you.”

  Willow felt her cheeks grow bright red. Reaching for the rose, she clung to it, lifting the petals to her nose. The moment sizzled with excitement, with longing. And, before she knew it, Ibrahim had approached her, placing his hand at the small of her back.

  Willow’s response was almost pure impulse. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Ibrahim met her lips with his, touching them tentatively before making the kiss longer, more passionate. The kiss made Willow’s stomach clench with desire. She leaned heavily into him, her fingers pressing at his taut stomach muscles.

  After seconds or minutes—she couldn’t tell—Ibrahim leaned back, gazing into her eyes. The moment still pulsed with meaning, but something in the back of Willow’s mind screamed out, curious and questioning. Was all of this happening because he actually liked her? Or was he simply playing nice because she was helping him get what he wanted?

  The Playboy Sheikh…

  She couldn't forget his title. People didn’t change. Right?

  “Thank you for all you’re doing for me,” Ibrahim murmured, pressing his lips against hers once more.

  Willow allowed the kiss to happen, allowed herself to get lost in it. She loved the feeling of his stubble against her cheek. She drank in his scent, his musk. She wrapped her arms around his neck, rising to her tiptoes, drawing her body into him. But she reminded herself, even as their lips connected over and over again, that none of this was real.

  It was a fantasy she was allowing herself to live. A fantasy of being the love interest of a heartbreakingly handsome, intelligent, wealthy sheikh. Her—a simple girl from Houston. It was an unlikely story. One she could tell her children someday, if she ever actually met the non-fiction man of her dreams.

  They made their way back to the car a few minutes later, Ibrahim holding her hand and rubbing his firm thumb over the soft skin of her hand. Every step felt like a daydream. And when she sat in the passenger seat, watching as Ibrahim sped the car back down the paved drive, Willow allowed her head to fall back. She felt the sea wind whipping at her hair, and she closed her eyes.

  She was alive for this unreal adventure, this bizarre but incredible twist of fate. And she was going to make the best of it.

  When back in Houston, back to her world of normalcy—the call center, the fundraising, her margaritas and tacos with Summer—she would giggle at this past. Had it all been a dream?

  And Ibrahim? He’d be lost in all the delights that Houston had to offer men like him, probably without any recollection of the way her lips felt against his. They would part ways and go back to living two starkly different lives in the same city, never to see each other again.

  But would she forget him as readily as she thought he would forget her? Of that, she couldn’t be sure.

  Chapter 11

  Willow

  Back at the hotel, Willow was torn from her reverie as she spotted Amira waiting for them in the foyer. Quickly, Ibrahim gripped her hand, again putting on a show as they entered.

  Amira wrapped her arms around Willow, hugging her close and whispering into her ear, “I just love the way you look together. You know, the entire city’s thrilled about it.”

  Squeezing Willow’s upper arms, she stepped back, flashing her bright smile. “I saw no fewer than three newspapers on the stand this morning about the ‘Playboy Sheikh’ finally finding a wife. And, of course, there are photos of you, Willow. Someone snapped a few at the restaurant. Those paparazzi—they always know how to find my handsome son. And now, his stunning fiancée!”

  “Mother, you’re embarrassing me,” Ibrahim said. He reached forward and kissed his mother on the cheek. “We didn’t expect to see you this afternoon. Would you like to go for afternoon tea?”

  Amira rolled her eyes at her son, giving Willow a knowing look.

  “As a woman, Willow, I know you understand this better than most. There’s always another task, when it comes to weddings. And now that the two of you are here, it’s time that we start planning in earnest.”

  “Of course,” Willow said, feeling her stomach clench. Spreading her arms, she heard herself say, “We’re at your mercy. What can we do to help?”

  “Perfect,” Amira said, smacking her hands together. “Willow, first off, I’ll need you to head off to the seamstress. I have a fitting scheduled for you in just an hour’s time, and a dozen dresses for you to try on.”

  Willow hadn’t eaten anything since a small breakfast of fruit that morning. Holding her hand to her stomach, she scrunched her nose slightly, wanting to protest.

  “Darling, don’t worry yourself. You don’t need to diet for the big day. You’re entirely slim enough,” Amira said. “Although, suffice to say, I wouldn’t head into the fitting with a big lunch in you…”

  “Mother,” Ibrahim nearly groaned, “we haven’t eaten yet. Maybe we can push back the fitting to another day.”

  “Nonsense,” Amira said.

  Gripping her phone, she lifted it to her ear, waiting for an answer. In the silence, Willow glanced up at Ibrahim. Discomfort and anxiety seemed to fill the space between them. The romantic tension she’d felt back at the palace had dissipated entirely. Maybe it had never been true.

  “Riyad, we’ll need the car back at the hotel as soon as you can get it here,” Amira instructed into the phone. “Willow’s just returned with Ibrahim, and I need her at the seamstress in an hour. Step on it.”

  With that, Amira hung up and stared at them, her eyes focused.

  “My driver’s coming to get you, Willow, and he knows I mean business. Ibrahim, you’ll have your fitting tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I need you to come with me to finalize the guest list. You’ll need to begin by writing to all the members of our extended family.”

  “Mother,” Ibrahim began, his eyes widening. “I’ve been out of the country for years. I barely know them.”

  “Come, now,” Amira said, clucking her tongue. “You knew them when you were a child. They were your cousins, your first friends. Don’t tell me that doesn’t mean anything to you anymore.”

  Suddenly, Amira thrust her hand forward, snapping her fingers. With a nod toward the door, she said, “Willow, Riyad is here. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  Willow gave a wide-eyed, frightened look to Ibrahim before rushing toward the door. This was to be her first outing in Reba
i without him by her side. Within seconds, she was buckled into the backseat of a sleek black vehicle, driving through the chaos of the city.

  She kept her eyes on the sidewalks, on the city’s people—their extravagant robes, their dark eyes and seemingly fiery personalities. Children and teenagers tore down the sidewalk on skateboards and scooters; street vendors filled pitas with spiced meat. The smell of spices filled the air, making Willow’s stomach stir with hunger.

  “Do you think we could stop for a brief moment?” she asked the driver. “Hello?”

  But she received no answer. Riyad seemed entirely centered upon his task, his hands gripping the steering wheel. The sunlight streamed in from the car’s skylight, bouncing against the quarter-sized bald spot on Riyad’s head. Willow stretched her arms over her stomach, sighing. Hunger, she supposed, was a bride-to-be’s reality. But she wasn’t even a bride.

  Four hours later—after two hours at the seamstress’s, and another hour selecting china, cutlery, and tablecloths alongside Amira—Willow was finally allowed return to their hotel penthouse.

  With her head nearly as heavy as her heart, she gazed up at Ibrahim, waiting to hear how his day went. But Ibrahim just poured them each a glass of wine, passing hers over silently. They clinked glasses, with Willow shaking her head slightly. She felt a smile creep over her lips.

  “I had no idea being your bride would be so…involved,” she sighed.

  “It’s chaotic, isn’t it?” Ibrahim laughed, running his fingers through his hair. “My mother refuses to pause for a moment. Wants it to be the most perfect day the country has ever seen. I think, somewhere in her heart, she thinks that if she can host this amazing wedding, it’ll convince us to move here. She wants me to have grandchildren and raise them here.”

  “If only she knew the truth…” Willow heard herself murmur, shifting in the wicker balcony seat. “She’d know never to hope for that again.”

  “But you have to admit, she’s having fun,” Ibrahim said, seemingly ignoring Willow’s comment. “She had, what? Fifteen sets of china for you to look at? She’s probably been scouring the royal storage rooms for weeks. She seems to know each pattern by heart.”

  Willow had loved to see the look on Amira’s face, as she’d pressed china plates, bowls, and platters into Willow’s hands. “This design dates back to the 1700s,” she’d said, her eyes alight. “If you can believe it. Ibrahim’s fifth great grandfather used it in his wedding. I’ll have to show you the portrait later. He married a woman from the Netherlands, of all places—a stunning blonde. Like you, Willow.”

  Willow’s heart stirred, thinking of the day she and Amira had shared. Growing closer to the woman she was conning hadn’t been something she’d planned.

  “Don’t you think this is good for her?” Ibrahim asked, taking a seat across from Willow. “She’s been looking forward to this for years. She told me she can’t decide between a dozen different gowns for the occasion, if you can believe it. She said something about changing halfway through, for the different moods of the evening. I had to remind her she wasn’t the bride!”

  “She might as well be,” Willow said, giving him a sad shrug. “This day is all for her.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time,” Ibrahim offered.

  Willow shifted in her chair, feeling strange.

  “I’d always imagined my wedding day to be…different. Not to say your mother’s taste isn’t absolutely perfect, because it is. I’ve never seen a more immaculately planned, artistic wedding. But when you were younger, didn't you imagine your wedding as this gorgeous day where you could do whatever you wanted, say what you felt…all because you had fallen in love?

  “I used to believe falling in love was the single greatest thing human beings could ever do. It seems so improbable. We’re pitted against one another in every other capacity. At our jobs. In sports. In music, art…you name it, we’re always competing. But love isn’t meant to be like that…”

  Willow trailed off, sensing she was getting carried away. Ibrahim’s eyebrows lowered as he took in her words. After a pause, he reached across the table and gripped her hand, surprising her.

  “That’s the beauty of this wedding, for you,” Ibrahim said, not realizing he was saying the worst possible thing, given the hammering of Willow’s heart—a response to his touch. “You’re allowed to fall in love with whomever you please after this. If you want to. I just don’t think it’s possible for me.”

  “You really think we’ll just turn away from this wedding and never see one another again?” Willow asked, her throat constricting. She swallowed several times, her eyes darting across his face. “You really think we can forget one another, just like that?”

  “I forget things all the time,” Ibrahim said, avoiding her eyes. “We’ll go our separate ways. And my mother won’t ever have to know.”

  Willow nodded slowly, stretching her arms above her head. Somewhere in the distance, a traffic jam was blaring honk after honk into the air, the city frenetic and wild in the lateness of the hour.

  “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Ibrahim said, unsubtly changing the subject. Standing and walking toward the kitchen area, he grabbed a menu and returned to the balcony, smacking it on the table between them. With a smile, he said, “If you don’t order everything you want on this menu, right now, then I’ll just have to order every single dish.”

  Willow chuckled, loving the way he eased the mood. Forcing herself to push away thoughts of his seeming lack of care, she glanced through the menu, tracing her finger along the American options—chicken fingers and French fries— and then on to more local foods.

  “Let’s order a mixed platter of our two cultures,” she said, gazing into Ibrahim’s eyes. “Unless you think I won’t fit into my wedding dress?”

  Ibrahim laughed—a deep, guttural, truthful laugh. “Willow, for what I’m putting you through right now, you should be able to do and eat whatever you want. You’re changing my mother’s life for the better, and for that I’m eternally grateful.”

  As they decided what to eat, bickering slightly over whether to order mozzarella sticks or onion rings, Willow found herself laughing outright. In the back of her mind, she questioned it: why couldn’t they have this much fun, together, as a real couple? Did Ibrahim actually have such chemistry with the women in his life back in Houston? She imagined him laughing alongside some model, at a billionaire’s party in some garden back home, and couldn’t picture what they might say to one another.

  Everything between them seemed too, well, perfect. Perhaps that’s how fiction worked, Willow thought.

  When the food arrived—platters of fried food and hummus and feta and olives and couscous, all steaming beneath the hanging lights of the penthouse apartment—the false couple busied themselves with clacking forks, fighting over the last bite of something or other, sipping wine, and silly conversation.

  When they finally said good night, it was past midnight, and Willow wanted nothing more than to pass out in bed beside the Sheikh, her arm flung over his muscular chest. She visualized doing so in the silence of her bedroom, knowing that Ibrahim was only a five-second walk away.

  Chapter 12

  Ibrahim

  Ibrahim rose early the next morning, his mind whirring with a muddle of emotions. He knew his mother liked to take a morning walk down at the beach, and he planned to join her for a moment alone: anxious to speak to her in private. He was hopeful she wouldn’t be putting on the ‘everything is perfect’ façade that she had been with Willow. He was hopeful she’d be real with him.

  All his life, Ibrahim and his mother had had a close relationship, one that existed in exchanged glances and body language to communicate everything they needed to. Often, as a child, he’d been able to communicate his displeasure with his father with just a twitch of his nose or a shrug of his shoulder.

  “Your father loves you very much,” his mother would tell him, tucking him into bed. “He just
has a funny way of showing it, sometimes. You have to accept him the way he is.”

  Ibrahim saw his mother at the edge of the pier as he approached. Her maroon robes flapped around her in the wind, making her look majestic and wild, and her black hair swirled out from the scarf she’d tied over it in little tentacle-like tendrils. As she spun around toward him, she waved a hand, gesturing for him to approach.

  When he reached her, she slipped her arm through his, drawing him closer. “You know you can tell me anything that’s on your mind, Ibrahim. I am always here for you, my son.”

  But Ibrahim’s heart hammered, knowing he couldn’t tell her. Not this time. He’d been tossing and turning all night with the decision he’d made: to con her into thinking he was truly in love.

  Confusingly, his heart had also begun to stir with lust, longing, desire for Willow: a woman he had been fully prepared to kick out of his life only days previously. He’d grown fond of the way she and his mother communicated. And the way Amira smiled at his fake fiancée? It made him feel elated and horrible, all at once.

  “It’s nothing,” Ibrahim said. “I just wanted a moment alone with you. Not to say I didn’t want Willow here…”

  Amira put a hand in his and guided him down the beach, kicking off her shoes so that she could dig her toes into the sand. Water lapped up beside them, still calm in the light of the morning.

  “She really is a lovely girl, Ibrahim,” Amira sighed. “I couldn’t have picked someone better for you to spend the rest of your life with. She’s genuine and kind and loyal—not to mention, extremely beautiful. I imagine you and Willow have many laughs together. She seems the type to lighten any mood.”

  Ibrahim thought back to the night before, when they’d ordered a banquet of food and cackled at jokes that meant nothing and were forgotten moments later. It was a different way to live: one that didn’t reflect his time back in Houston. Certainly, Willow was a far cry from the models he normally filled his time with. He was usually eager to kick them from his bed, from his life. On to the next one.