The Sheikh's Priceless Baby Page 8

  I put the thought away to explore later for one of the projects I was working on. Because I liked it quite a bit—but this was not the time to think about business. Right now, the only thing I wanted to think about was Faye and her glowing eyes and those bright pink lips and the fact that I’d traveled halfway around the world just to see her.

  Okay, technically I’d traveled halfway around the world for a project I was working on, and she’d been a happy stop on the way. But I would have traveled all the way around the world just to get to spend a single night with her, if I’d had to. And I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

  I’d have done it in a freaking heartbeat. And I didn’t think I’d ever been able to say that about another girl in my life.

  Actually, strike that.

  I knew I’d never been able to say that about another girl.

  I put that thought away for later perusal, as well. Because it was going to lead me to a place that I wasn’t ready to go. A place that had a whole lot of questions—and half of a globe—packed into it.

  And I just wasn’t ready to rain on my own parade with that sort of thought. Not right now. Right now, all I wanted to do was enjoy my date.

  And also, catch up with what that date was saying. Because the moment we were seated, Faye started talking. Not that I was surprised by this, as it was pretty much exactly what I’d experienced from her before. I was surprised, though, when she asked whether I’d been home between Dubai and Hawaii—which was where I’d told her I was headed next. It was, after all, the reason I was in LA.

  “Seems a shame to travel halfway around the world again without having stopped by to see your family, when you were so close,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “I mean, you were right next to them in Dubai, and now you’re in an entirely different day from where they are.”

  “It would also have been dangerous to my health not to stop off in Kayyem, as my mother would have quite literally followed me to Hawaii and strangled me if I did that,” I noted seriously. “Of course I went home. I was there for two days before I had to leave again.”

  Faye leaned forward on her elbows, her eyes shining in a way that confused me—considering we were talking about nothing more than going home to visit my family—and said, “Tell me all about it. I haven’t been to Kayyem in ages, and I miss it terribly. Paint it for me. Has anything changed since the last time you were home? New buildings in the city?”

  It turned out that Faye was even more in love with my hometown than I’d realized. She’d been there more times than she could count, using the excuse of work, and she knew the city almost as well as I did.

  Well. She didn’t know about the tunnels. And she’d never been to the exact farmers’ market that I counted as my favorite. But aside from that, she knew all the museums and coffee shops and even about the camel races—which I’d never been brave enough to try—and the history of the oldest fountain in the city.

  Before long, we were comparing our favorite places in Kayyem, arguing over the best place to get kibbeh, and trying to decide whether Turkish coffee was really better in Kayyem than it was in Turkey itself. She’d had it in Istanbul, she said, and she thought it was too strong there.

  “Though,” she said fairly, “I only had it at the one place. So I guess it could be that they just didn’t do it well.”

  I took a sip of my own wine, marveling at this woman who discussed her time in Istanbul like she was talking about her weekend at home. All casual grace and tossed-out mentions. The Hippodrome. The outdoor book market. The Hagia Sophia.

  And all of it like it was no big deal. Like it was the coffee shop around the corner, where she went every single morning.

  I’d never met a woman as well traveled as I was, and it made me feel as though we were kindred spirits.

  Citizens of the world. Or something slightly less cliché.

  Regardless, I was starting to feel like I could talk to her twenty-four hours a day and never get tired of hearing her stories about the cities where she’d been. Definitely never stop comparing my views with hers, when it came to the cities we’d both seen.

  “I love the Middle East,” she admitted. “It’s so different from the US, but there’s something about it. All the history. The rich foods, the spices, the smells, the stories…”

  She faded off, her eyes going all dreamy, and in that moment, I thought I fell a little bit in love with her. Not because she loved the Middle East, though I found that fascinating, but because she was the sort of person who fell in love with a place because of things like its history and sights and smells.

  I worked with the brand new so often that history had started taking on an increasingly important meaning to me. And finding someone else who saw the world the same way…

  Well, it had never happened before. If I’d ever met anyone that in love with history, they hadn’t bothered to tell me about it at the time—probably because they were too busy trying to figure out how to take advantage of my name and the power my family wielded.

  And as I watched Faye talking about walking through the ruins in Rome, her eyes glassy with memory, I decided to jump in with both feet. I decided to stop holding back—not that I’d been doing much of that, anyhow—and tell her exactly what I was thinking.

  At least, sort of.

  I started by telling her about the underground tunnels—which she said now she’d heard rumors about, but never actually seen, and had never truly believed in—and told her I’d take her there one day.

  When we were in the city at the same time.

  And that thought was so risky, so exciting, that I blew right past it, almost afraid that she would tell me that it would never happen.

  “My cousin and I used to flee to those tunnels every time we managed to get out of the family compound,” I told her, dropping my voice and transferring the secret to her like I was giving her a jewel.

  She suppressed a smile. “The family compound?” she repeated. “What kind of childhood did you have, exactly? Because that sounds—”

  “Right,” I said, realizing now that it probably did sound pretty pretentious when I put it that way. “Sorry, it’s just what we’ve always called it. How about… family village? Family estate? Family grounds?”

  She actually put her fork down on her plate—with the bite of food she’d been about to take still on it. “Your family has an entire estate?” But then she frowned, a number of thoughts flitting across her face one after the other. “You know, actually, that makes sense. The Al-Sharims are the richest family in the entire zone. You own the entire city. I bet you have… what, over a hundred acres? Right outside of town, on the north side?”

  Now it was my turn to frown. Because she was… exactly right.

  “How did you know that?” I asked, surprised.

  She shrugged and gave me another one of those small grins, this one triumphant. “The last time I was in Kayyem, I paid a cabbie to take me on a tour of the city. When we got to the gate that sat at the north of town, he refused to go any further. Told me there was a forbidden estate right there. One that we weren’t allowed to enter.”

  I groaned, horrified and embarrassed. “That is, in fact, the family estate,” I admitted.

  She shuffled her shoulders in a triumphant little dance. “And now I know where you live,” she sang.

  I snorted, at both the dance and the song. “And what are you going to do with that information, exactly? Show up at my door and kidnap me? Hold me for ransom?”

  She leaned forward on the table, her face turning crafty and incredibly sexy, her eyes somehow more dewy, her lips more pouty.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she whispered. Then she grinned, incapable of maintaining her own joke. “I’ve always dreamt of living there, you know. It’s like my big, life dream. But it’s nearly impossible to get citizenship. I’ve looked into it. A lot. So I guess I’ll have to visit as often as I can and pretend.”

  I reached my hand forward and hooked one of her
fingers with mine. “I hope you’ll tell me when you visit next,” I said softly. “So I can make sure I’m there, too.”

  I’d never given a foreigner a tour of the city, but suddenly I couldn’t think of anything better than being able to show Faye around my hometown. And it wasn’t only because of that incredibly sultry, sexy look she’d just given me.

  I wanted to see her face light up when she went into the tunnels for the first time. I wanted to introduce her to the best farmers’ market in the entire city. I wanted to take her through those forbidden gates and into the estate that cabbie had told her she wasn’t allowed to see.

  I wanted to tell her she could stay there for as long as she wanted. As long as she was staying with me.

  Chapter 16

  Faye

  Dinner passed entirely too quickly, and before I knew it, Aziz was yawning hugely and calling for the bill, his eyes half closed with fatigue.

  “It must kill your body to be traveling so much,” I said, looking up at him with concern as we left the restaurant. “And always in a different time zone. I don’t know how you handle it. When I get home from a trip, it takes me weeks to feel like I get back on the right time. But you probably get to a new place and have to jump right in, huh?”

  “You get used to it,” he said with a shrug. “And once I’m on a site, I’m usually there for long enough to get used to the time zone and actually live a normal life for a while. I mean, if you call working fifteen hours a day and hanging out with only men a normal life.”

  “Well,” I said, frowning, “it doesn’t seem like any way to live life. Not in the long term, at least.”

  He jerked to a stop, stopping me with him, courtesy of our joined hands, and gave me the longest, oddest look possible—as if there were about three million things he wanted to say, and he couldn’t figure out how to put a single one into actual words.

  “What?” I asked, confused. Had I said something wrong?

  “I do want to settle down, someday,” he said finally, thoroughly shocking me. Then he gave me a crooked smile. “Keep that a secret, though, as I’d hate for my mother to find out. I can’t have her thinking she’s been right this whole time!”

  We got into the car he had waiting for us laughing at that, but behind my laughter, I felt something else. Something that felt a whole lot like an idea. Not a plan, precisely, but more like… a glimmering, shimmering thought. One that was so thin and slippery that I couldn’t see it straight on, or even grab onto it. Every time I tried, it slithered away from me like a piece of tissue paper in the wind.

  But I knew it was there. And I knew it made me feel sort of warm and tingly inside.

  So when we got into the car, I snuggled up against him in the back seat, soaking in his warmth and strength and smell and storing it away for after he was gone, knowing that I’d want to remember this moment—and knowing that at some point, I’d be able to grab that idea that was floating around in my head and actually look at it.

  By the time we got to my house, Aziz was yawning so much that I was frankly surprised that he was still awake at all. I was also a little bit worried about sending him away and counting on him to make it through the city to his hotel again.

  First of all, this was Los Angeles, and though I lived in a decent area, it was still a big, tough city. Especially for someone who didn’t know it. Add into it that he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, and I was seriously mistrusting his ability to get back to his hotel alone.

  And yeah, I admit, there was a more-than-slight part of me that wanted to suggest that he actually stay the night at my house and just skip his hotel altogether.

  But when I mentioned it, he shook his head regretfully. “I have a really early flight, and my hotel is close enough to the airport that I won’t have to get up so early,” he said. “Besides, I’m going to be falling asleep about five seconds after my head hits the pillow. Is that really the kind of guy you want in your bed?”

  I brought my face close to his, moving until our eyes almost crossed in their need to keep track of each other. “I want you in my bed. I don’t really care about what you’re doing there. Even asleep, you’re good company.”

  He gave me one of the most regretful looks I’d ever seen, though, and shook his head. “I’m going to have enough trouble getting up in the morning as it is. I don’t want to think about how hard it would be to get out of bed if I had you in it. I’d spend the rest of my life laying around, refusing to move.”

  “I get you,” I said, nodding.

  I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to get out of bed if we were both in it, either. Particularly not to get on another airplane. I generally loved flying to new places, but if Aziz was in the place I was leaving…

  Well, I understood what he was saying.

  It was a lot harder to remember that when he leaned in to kiss me, though, his lips fluttering lightly over mine like a moth’s wings until I grabbed him and pulled him closer, transforming the kiss into a deeper, more electrified thing. He returned my passion, tilting my head to give him better access and backing me up against the door of my apartment until I groaned in something between pleasure and frustration.

  And then, to my even greater frustration, he pulled away, though he kept his forehead resting against mine.

  “Give me your number,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket and handing it to me. “I’ll call you as soon as I land, and I’ll be back the moment the site can spare me. I want to see you again. I want to see you for a longer period of time than one night.”

  I smiled, took the phone, and texted myself, then returned it to him.

  “Promise?” I asked softly.

  “With all my heart,” he returned.

  Then he turned and was gone into the night, leaving me standing on my doorstep with two thoughts in my mind: one, that idea I’d had was getting smaller with every step he took. I could feel it fading away into nothingness—and before I’d even had a chance to know what it really was. And there was a good reason for that.

  Because the second thing? I knew I couldn’t see him again. Even if I’d just made him promise that I would.

  Or rather… I couldn’t see him again for some time. He might be ready next week, but I would have to put him off. Indefinitely.

  I couldn’t see him again until I had his watch in hand once more. Even seeing him tonight had been a risk. It was only a matter of time until he figured out that the watch was gone, and from there, where it had disappeared to, and even if I had the most innocent explanation in the world—which I actually did—it wasn’t going to mean much unless I could literally hand his watch back to him while I was making my excuses.

  Even better, honestly, if I could give his watch back before he figured all that other stuff out and came asking about it.

  I couldn’t have him back in my city until I could do that. No matter how much I already wanted him back under my hands, where I could feel and touch and smell him.

  I was starting to think that this thing with Aziz might be something incredibly special. But that would disappear the moment he realized I’d stolen his watch. Unless I managed to get it back again before he reappeared in my life with questions.

  Chapter 17

  Faye

  Two Weeks Later

  “So you don’t… work for the Al-Sharim family?” the voice on the other end of the line asked suspiciously.

  Suspiciously, and full of judgment. Like the moment I admitted that I didn’t actually work for the famous family, with an official contract and business cards and whatever else, I would be the biggest disappointment on the face of the earth.

  I almost groaned in the woman’s ear. What was it with people asking me that freaking question? Did I have a sign on my forehead that said ‘affiliated with the Al-Sharims’ or something? Or worse, did not working with the Al-Sharims somehow invalidate me as a human being? Did it invalidate any story I wrote on them?

  “No, I don’t work for the Al-
Sharims, but I have written a number of articles about them,” I said politely, fighting to maintain my professional mask. “I emailed you quite a bit of work in that realm, so you could have a look. Several members of the family actually know me by name.”

  And one of them comes to LA just to take me to dinner, I didn’t add. Because I seriously doubted that it would elevate my standing in her eyes to know that I had a serious crush on one of the Al-Sharim sons.

  In fact, it would probably make her think even less of me.

  “But you don’t work for them,” the woman repeated.

  I bit my lip hard, my patience wearing razor-thin. “No, I don’t work for them,” I repeated. “I do, however, have a long-standing relationship with them. Which was why I was invited to the party in Dubai, and how I landed that interview with Aziz Al-Sharim, the head of their real estate development department. The man responsible for every single international resort that bears the Al-Sharim name. And I can guarantee that I’m the only one who got a personal interview with him. Mine is the only story that will feature his answers to specific questions.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and I held my breath. It was the best pitch I could give, that one about getting the interview with Aziz, and I was telling the truth about him not having given an interview to anyone else.

  I knew, because I’d asked him straight out if he had. And I trusted him to have told me the truth about that.

  No one else had gotten a Q&A session with him. I mean, no one else had slept with him, either, but I didn’t think that part was really worth mentioning. It certainly wouldn’t do anything for my reputation as an ethical reporter.

  Then, suddenly, the woman on the other end of the call came back.

  “I’m just not sure we can carry it,” she said bluntly. “If you worked with them, then maybe. If you were a recognized part of their organization, or if we could count on you for follow-up features. But since you don’t, it’ll be hard to validate you having gotten a one-on-one interview with such an important person. I’m sorry.”