Thomas went quiet now, those playful blue eyes darting towards Macy and then back to Fran. He smiled and nodded quickly, walking over to one of the three smaller rooms attached to the large open area.
“This is where the magical healing happens, yeah?” he said, peeking into the first empty room. “It’s pretty small. Hope nobody brings in a great Dane. Or a giraffe.”
Fran smiled and shook her head, walking past Thomas and stepping into the small pinewood-paneled room. “Nah, that’s gonna be my private office,” she said, walking out into the main space and gesturing towards one end of the room that had large windows overlooking the green hills that rose up beside the strip mall. “I’m going to section off this main area and treat the patients here.”
“But that’s the best view!” said Macy, almost protesting before smiling and shaking her head at Fran.
“Exactly,” said Fran with an earnest smile that lit up her smooth round face, put a light in her big brown eyes, perhaps added a shine to her dark brown hair that hung thick and wild, like each strand was trying to set off in its own direction, sorta like Fran herself was doing with this move from Phoenix, Arizona, to Smalltown, Vermont. “The view is for the ones who need it the most. Sometimes the best healing is done naturally, by the environment, by what surrounds you, by what you surround yourself with.” By who you surround yourself with, she added in her inside voice.
“Which is why she’s leaving us,” Thomas whispered, rolling his eyes at Macy and then making a pouty face.
“Stop that. You look ridiculous. I always feel like you’re imitating my fat frowny-face when you do that,” Fran said, puffing her cheeks out and then pulling at Thomas’s beard until he yelped and swatted her hand away.
“Your face isn’t fat,” Macy said, her own long face too tanned to show the color that accompanied her pitiful but polite lie.
Fran stopped in front of the full-length mirror that was on the inside of the open door to one of the smaller rooms. She stood in profile, patting her round bottom in those blue jeans that weren’t meant to be low-rise but felt that way because the waist was too tight for her round belly these days and so she just wore it lower down, just above her hips that were also getting alarmingly wide. She puffed out her cheeks again, trying to remind herself that she had always been reasonably comfortable with her curves, even though they felt more like bulges these days.
“Jason in town yet?” Macy asked now, stepping up behind Fran and hugging her, the two of them staring at their combined reflection until Fran pulled away and walked into the third empty room, which was the size of a walk-in closet. “He was going to drive up after visiting some college friends in Boston, yeah? Here, I’ll check with—”
“Jason and I broke up,” Fran said hurriedly, facing away from Macy and knocking at the walls of that third room. They felt sturdy, thicker than the rest of the walls. This would be a good storeroom for medical supplies, drugs, perhaps a small safe for papers and some cash . . . and that gun she was going to buy.
Fran turned and Macy was right there, the tall brown woman looking down at the shorter Fran, Macy’s thin eyebrows pointing down in a harsh V.
“You guys broke up? Really?” Macy said, frowning, her dark eyes not wavering at all. “Does Jason know that? Because he texted me last night from Boston, saying he couldn’t wait to drive up and check out the apartment you guys are going to be sharing.”
“It’s a one-bedroom, Macy,” Fran said quietly, looking down and trying to turn but feeling Thomas’s presence behind her, her two friends sandwiching her now, boxing her in, their concerned eyes trained on her, their frowns and furrows demanding answers, answers that Fran didn’t want to give, answers that perhaps she didn’t really have.
“One bedroom is all you need when you’re in love,” Thomas said, his voice almost indignant. Fran knew how much Thomas liked Jason—as did Macy. And in a weird way that’s why Fran had felt this urge to just get up and move rather than deal with this tangled web of friends who liked her boyfriend and wanted them to get married and have babies and live in some castle in the fucking clouds. A fairy tale that probably didn’t even work out that way for fairies!
“We’ve been dating for a year, Thomas. We were never in love,” Fran said, her voice still quiet, but with a steadiness now, a firmness that was quickly coalescing into that stone cold wall she could bring down to shut everyone out. “And—”
“Oh, God, you absolutely were!” Thomas said, stepping away from the human sandwich and throwing his stubby arms up and flapping them about like he was trying to take off like a bumblebee. “You are in love, Fran! And so is Jason! He told me that last week!”
“Was he drunk?” said Fran, rolling her eyes as she tried to block the memory of the last time Jason had said he loved her and she had pretended to sneeze and run to the bathroom for a tissue. She took a breath as she tried to lighten the mood so she could ask what she was going to ask Macy and Thomas to do for her, the reason she had asked them to come out here to help “settle her in.” God, I’m such a horrible person, she thought as she forced a quick smile.
“Drunk on the idea of having babies with you,” Macy said, folding her arms over her tight chest and holding the frown as well as the eyebrow-V.
“Of course, you gotta have sex first to make babies,” Thomas added, rolling his little blue eyes in a way that seemed to add a heaviness to the air suddenly. Those eyes went wide for a moment before Thomas mouthed a silent gasp and clamped his hand over his lips and blinked three times as he met Macy’s glare. “Shit.”
Fran was quiet for a moment. She swallowed hard, blinked harder, and then glanced at Macy before staring down Thomas until the man literally shrank away from her. She opened her mouth to speak, about to simply let loose about how what she and Jason did or didn’t do was none of Thomas’s damned business, that whether she chose to sleep with someone was private and personal, intimate and intricate, delicate and fucking discreet. She wanted to say that this was part of the problem, that this shit was too complicated with so many people involved, that things were so much simpler when she was alone, that she didn’t need a man and perhaps she didn’t even want a man. She wanted to say that yes, Jason was sweet and charming and gentle and kind, and he made her smile and made her comfortable and did everything she asked of him. She wanted to say that shit, that was the reason she was leaving, in a way! Because if she couldn’t bring herself to open up her heart and her body to a man as gentle and respectful as Jason, then there was no hope for her. That she was a broken woman, damaged goods, unable to find true happiness with a man, unable to bring a man true happiness. Fran and the animals from now on! Other people’s animals, of course. Fran didn’t want the responsibility of having her own pet.
But how the hell could she say all that? Better to shut up and walk away. It had worked well enough so far, hadn’t it? After all, she was doing something she loved, had just moved to one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and was about to start a new chapter in her life. Maybe a new book in her life. And the thing about starting new books was that you close the old books and put them away on that shelf way in the back, that shelf with all the other dust-covered tomes, stories of the past, stories that belonged in the past.
“What else?” Fran said now, placing a hand on her hip as she felt that hardness take hold, that comfortable, easy hardness that made her feel strong even though she knew she was weak, unbreakable even though she knew she was broken. “What else, Thomas? Macy? What else you got? Bring it. Is my life so fucking interesting that you guys have nothing else to talk about?”
Macy raised her eyebrows now, blinking as she broke eye contact in an uncharacteristic flinch. “Fran,” she said, softly, carefully, like she had rehearsed her words. “Oh, Fran, listen. Oh, honey, listen. We know. We know, all right? We know.”
The dread rose in Fran even as she saw Macy glance quickly at Thomas in that sickening way that told her that these two did indeed know, and just like everyone els
e who had ever known, they pitied her. They fucking pitied her.
“OK, so you know. You read that old article and you know,” Fran said, swallowing hard as she fought the tears, those annoying tears that seemed to come like some involuntary reaction whenever that part of her psyche was poked, prodded, stirred or struck. It really was strange, Fran thought as she swallowed again. Those tears were never accompanied by any emotion—no sadness or fear or pain. She could speak and smile and talk and think just fine even when those tears rolled down her round cheeks, like it was just her body crying, like her body and mind were disconnected at that point, the connection broken from what had happened when she was sixteen years old. “You know I was raped,” she said firmly, holding the eye contact even as those cold, lifeless tears rolled down like they always did when she accessed that memory.
Still, Fran always made sure she accessed that memory every so often, that she went over what happened that afternoon when four older boys—boys she knew and trusted—overpowered her in the laundry room of her own basement, that dryer humming its little tune, fluffing up the family’s clean white underwear as those boys took turns with little sixteen-year-old Frannie, pinning her down on that vibrating dryer as they finished and then went again and then kissed her and walked away.
Yes, she always made sure to think about that afternoon, when her parents were at work and the boys came to her door with strangely nervous faces, expressions that went cold a few minutes later when they were all inside the house and things were happening and they saw the look in Frannie’s big brown eyes . . . a look not of fear or panic or hatred but of disappointment, sadness, a look of resignation perhaps, the loss of a certain kind of faith in the world, a certain kind of trust, that special kind of innocence . . .
She knew it belonged in the past on that dusty bookshelf, but Fran forced herself to think about it sometimes because she didn’t want to bury it, didn’t want it sitting there behind everything she did, everything she thought, everything she felt. She wasn’t going to “repress” it, even though her therapist had said Fran was remarkably strong and she wasn’t in any danger of that, whatever it meant. Yes, Fran had smiled and talked to her therapist, before and after she found out about the pregnancy, before and after they did the abortion, before and after . . . before and after . . .
And God, it sometimes felt like before it all, didn’t it, when she was happy and whole? But those moments were fleeting and so hard to hold on to, and they seemed to come less often now, certainly less often over the past year, the year with Jason, even though she wanted so desperately to feel happy with him, to have him make her feel like how she felt before it all. But now here she was, and so when would she get to the after part, when it would always be happy, to the happily ever after? Could there be a happily ever after? Did she deserve a happily ever after, after what she’d . . . what she’d . . .
And now that coldness was back, that thick inner wall that came down when she needed it, that barrier that closed off emotion from logic, bringing forth reason and practicality while pushing away fantasy and wishful thinking. You dealt with how the world was, not how you’d fucking like it to be.
“So you googled me and you know I was raped when I was sixteen,” Fran said, her voice even stronger now, a strangely perverse feeling rising up in her as she watched her friends wince and look away at the mention of it in such matter-of-fact terms. “Big deal.”
“It is a big deal, Frannie,” Macy said, wide-eyed and hesitant for once. “And I was never sure how to bring it up with you, so—”
“Well, you don’t bring it up unless you want to. And if you want to bring it up, just say, hey Fran, I heard you were raped by four guys and you got pregnant and had an abortion. OMG, that’s so cool! Pretty simple, actually. Yeah?”
Macy gulped so hard it looked like she was going to choke. “Frannie,” she whispered. “Oh, honey, listen. I . . . I . . .”
Fran smiled tightly, her eyes narrowed down to lazy slits as she felt that coldness ooze through her in the most wonderful way, making her feel invincible, like she was stone all over, hard all over, impermeable, impenetrable. “It’s not a big deal,” she said now. “We were all kids, and I’m over it, and—”
“Oh, honey, you’re not,” Macy whispered, stepping forward like she was going to hug Fran. But then Macy stopped abruptly, her jaw tightening as she waved those long brown arms at the empty pinewood-paneled room with its industrial blue carpet. “Look at this, Frannie! Look at this! You’re up here all alone! You just walked away from . . . from a fucking perfect life in Phoenix, a life that you deserve, a life that deserves you! Don’t you—”
“And don’t you!” Fran screamed now, her entire body lurching forward as she spat the words out and pointed at Macy as Thomas backed up against the far wall like he was trying to blend into the pine. “Don’t you . . . don’t you . . . don’t you ever call me Frannie again.” Suddenly she was calm, that pleasant smile back on her face, that manic feeling swirling around and then slipping back into the recesses of her mind like a snake withdrawing to its dark nest, satisfied that a hiss was enough of a warning and it wouldn’t need to strike full just now. “Don’t call me Frannie. OK?”
Macy took a breath as she looked at the floor, visibly shaking as she slowly turned away from Fran, nodding gently as she glanced towards Thomas. She stopped for a moment, half-turning but not looking up.
“Listen,” she said quietly. “When you need me, I’ll be there. OK?”
“I do need you,” Fran said, folding her arms across her heavy bosom as she glanced up at the ceiling, making a mental note that the painters hadn’t done a very good job and perhaps the light blue ceiling above the blue carpet was just too much fucking blue. She looked over at Macy like her friend might as well have been the no-name painter. “I need you to tell Jason that I saw the ring at his place a couple of months ago, and the answer is no.”
3
“The answer is no, man! Don’t you speak American? No!”
Sheikh Zaal Al-Kirwaan sighed and nodded. The day had started well enough, and Zaal had had a nice conversation with a Muslim gas-station owner who resembled a balding, pot-bellied elephant. The elephant-man had gassed up the Sheikh's silver Range Rover, and after noticing Zaal's Arabian accent had smiled thinly and assured the Sheikh that Vermont was a wonderful, friendly, inclusive place. This gun store seemed to be a different matter, though, and Zaal sighed again and folded the pink slip of paper that the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles had given him as a temporary license while they processed the official laminated card that was apparently the only thing this man with the nose-ring would take as a valid form of ID. In a way Zaal did not blame the young man. It was indeed out of the ordinary for a dark-skinned Arabian man with a physique that made it look like he had been raised by the goddamn military to show up at a gun dealer in a little strip mall on the outskirts of Burlington and matter-of-factly ask for a Glock .17 and two German-made Sig Sauer semi-automatic sub-machine guns. The Sheikh did not have an American passport, of course, and so he had shown the tattooed twenty-something guy his bright green Kirwaani passport that was laminated with shiny gold Arabic letters that really said, “Sovereign Islamic Kingdom of Kirwaan” but might as well have said “This Brown Man is a Goddamn Terrorist!”
“I also have a Permanent Resident Card issued by the US Department of Homeland Security,” Zaal said calmly, reaching around to his back pocket before realizing that bloody hell he did not in fact have the card on him. He had placed it in the safe in his new, mostly unfurnished (king-sized bed and bulletproof safe only) home, along with the forty-thousand dollars in spending money he had withdrawn from the Barclay’s Private Bank branch in lower Manhattan shortly after arriving in the United States a few weeks earlier. “OK, no. I do not have the card on me.”
“You do not have the card on you,” said Mister Nosering in an openly mocking accent that made Zaal consider simply pulling that nosering out and making the man swallow it. It woul
d pass out cleanly the next day, Zaal thought as he reminded himself that he was not a Sheikh in this country and the last thing he wanted to do was call John Benson from a prison cell in Vermont, saying sorry but he was getting deported and could John please call in some more favors. Hah!
The Sheikh smiled as he took note of the faintest sense of vulnerability, that for the first time in his life he might actually have to be accountable to some law other than the laws of his conscience and the will of Allah. It was a chilling feeling, but Zaal welcomed it as a learning experience, reminding himself these were the consequences of his own actions, his own choices. He breathed deeply as he turned and looked out the store window, where he could see those green hills in the distance, rising above the rows of multi-colored pickup trucks and an unusual number of Subaru wagons that dotted the strip-mall’s parking lot.
Learning. It was all about learning. Indeed, that was what had gotten his royal arse exiled and condemned, in an indirect way! Learning. Learning and teaching.
“What are they teaching the students at your new schools, Cousin Yusuf?” Zaal had casually asked his older cousin, who had taken over as Kirwaan’s Minister for Education a year earlier, when Zaal had been touring South America with a group of old friends from Oxford, enjoying his last years of being just a regular prince and not the Supreme Sheikh of Kirwaan. Soon the current Sheikh—Yusuf’s father Ishfaq—would complete his twenty-year term and hand over the throne to Sheikh Zaal, who was heir-apparent at the time of his own father’s death, but had been too young to take over the duties of supreme Sheikh back then. Zaal’s uncle Ishfaq had taken over as Sheikh, and by Kirwaani law had been allowed to rule for a maximum of twenty years before Prince Zaal would take over, continuing his father’s line. That twenty years was coming up, and so Zaal had been taking a much closer look at the intricacies of administering the kingdom that would now answer to his authority.
Untouched for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 6) Page 2
