Through the veil Hilda saw Norm write down her email address so he could send her the book. Then she saw Di flutter those eyelids in that strangely out-of-character way as she asked for Rahaan’s email so she could send him a copy as well.
And as they all stood and said goodbye, Di looked over at Rahaan and said in a voice that drifted clearly into this very real world:
“Oh, by the way, Rahaan: Di isn’t short for Diana. My real name is Diamond, believe it or not. Or, as the say south of the border: Diamante.”
17
Hilda stared at the diamond. Then she closed her eyes and opened them again. Shit. He was still here. And so was that diamond.
“It is a diamond,” said the Sheikh, holding the ring up to the sunlight streaming through the front window of the café. “See?”
“Yes, I see it’s a diamond,” said Hilda, glancing at the twinkling stone, then briefly into Rahaan’s eyes before blinking and looking away. Had she now bounced into a new parallel world? Was she totally and completely unhinged in space and time? An alien abduction might actually be a relief right now. “That wasn’t what I meant when I asked what the hell that is. I meant why the hell are you showing me a diamond ring in the middle of a café? I meant why the hell are you even here? Who are you anyway? What’s your game? If this is about the five grand or the fifteen I got from your brother—”
“Ah, so you admit it was a con,” said the Sheikh, placing the ring on the table far too casually. Somehow a diamond ring the size of Jupiter shouldn’t be sitting near a plastic salt shaker, Hilda thought.
“The only con here is whatever you’re trying to pull,” Hilda snapped, not sure where the venom was coming from. “Am I missing something, or did you show up at my store a couple of hours ago pretending to have an appointment. Then you bullied your way into my lunch meeting, and—”
“Actually, it was you who said ‘Let us eat!’,” said Rahaan, leaning back in his chair and placing his hands behind his head. There was that tattoo on the inside of his right bicep again. Definitely not Arabic letters. Some kind of symbols for sure.
“What is that on your arm?” she asked without thinking, gesturing with her head. “The tattoo.”
He shrugged and looked away for a moment, a half-smile showing on his face. “From my college days in England. Let us say that I was not the most humble nineteen-year-old king at Cambridge.”
Hilda frowned. “Were there other nineteen-year-old kings at Cambridge? Or are you just being humble?”
The Sheikh grinned. “Can we get back to the topic at hand? I did not come here from Manhattan to relive the pomposity of my youth.”
“You’re coming across as pretty damn pompous right now,” Hilda said as she watched the Sheikh lazily drape that tattooed arm over the back of an empty chair as he pushed his own chair away from the table and commandeered a third chair to use as a footrest. “Are you just going to take up the whole damn café? The way you’re sitting is called manspreading these days. I take it you don’t ride the New York City subways much.”
The Sheikh raised an eyebrow. “Why would I ride the subway?”
“Um, to get to work? You know what, never mind. This conversation is ridiculous. This whole day has been ridiculous. I gotta get back to feed my cat anyway, so—”
“Your cat had a full bowl two hours ago. And it did not appear to be in imminent danger of starvation.”
“Wait, did you just call my cat fat? How dare you?”
“You are correct. This conversation is ridiculous indeed. Now may we get back on topic?”
“What topic?!” Hilda snapped, almost shouting in frustration at what the hell was going on. Why was she sitting here with this guy she didn’t know at all, who had randomly showed up after two months, had just casually joined her for lunch, and five minutes ago, after Norm and Di left, had pulled out a diamond ring and said, “Ms. Hogarth, I have a proposal for you.”
“The topic of my proposal,” he said, green eyes twinkling, dark lips twitching mischievously like he was trying his best not to laugh. Obviously he was messing with her. Strange way to mess with someone you don’t know, but hey, the guy was a king from the Middle East. He might just be some eccentric lunatic. Probably inbred too.
Screw it, she told herself finally, taking a sip of her now-cold tea. Just stop thinking, Hilda. That’s the solution. Stop thinking, or else you’ll turn into one of these lunatics yourself.
“OK, I’ll bite,” Hilda said, exhaling and putting the cup down. “So I took five grand from you two months ago, and fifteen from your brother. Clearly you’re rich enough that you don’t give a shit about that, and—”
“Do not insult me by implying I do not take the value of money seriously,” the Sheikh said firmly. “My brother may be guilty of that, but I am not. How money is obtained and how it is spent is meaningful. There are moral implications of every transaction, whether it is fifteen thousand or fifteen billion.” He took a breath and shrugged. “Though you are correct that I am not here to attempt to recover the five thousand or the fifteen thousand. That money is yours, and you are morally entitled to it.”
“Morally entitled,” said Hilda, rolling her eyes even as she felt an involuntary smile break. “Well, that’s a relief. OK then. So what’s with the ring? You’ve decided that you’re morally entitled to ask me to marry you now? That was quick, Your Highness. I know I’m beautiful and charming, but this is a little early in our courtship, don’t you think?”
Hilda almost choked on her tongue when she heard herself spout words like marriage and courtship. OK, so maybe “Stop thinking” wasn’t the best advice to give yourself. You need to maybe think a little teeny bit before you toss out gems like that. Though speaking of gems being tossed out, that rock could solve a lot of problems. This alien baby ain’t gonna pay for its own fucking college.
Stop it, she told herself as she felt her mind squirreling its way down a path that seemed morally dubious at best, downright criminal at worst. Conning a billionaire out of fifteen or twenty grand was one thing. But coming up with a way to relieve this guy of a ring this big? That would be . . .
“I can already see the wheels turning back there,” said the Sheikh, a lazy half-grin hanging on his gorgeous face. “So I will tell you point blank, with no jokes, no bullshit, in all honesty, with Allah as my witness, that in six months this ring can be yours. I will give you papers detailing the history of the diamond and its valuation. I will formally assign ownership of the ring to you, and I will legally designate it as a gift, which means that I, not you, would pay tax on the transfer. It will be clean and legal. Six months, Ms. Hilda Hogarth. Six months.”
“Great,” she said, pretty much ready to just give up trying to understand anything about what in holy hell was going on in her goddamn life right now. “I assume there’s a catch?”
“Of course there is a catch, Ms. Hogarth. No gift comes for free. Everything is a transaction.”
“All right, what’s the deal?” Hilda said. “My life couldn’t get any stranger right now, so give me your best shot. What do I have to do?”
“Wear it,” he said.
“Wear what?” she said.
“The ring. You wear that ring for six months, by my side, and that is all.” He shrugged. “You convince people that you can tell the future and that your indecipherable star-charts actually mean something, yes? So for six months you must convince people that you are my wife, and that our relationship actually means something. Six months, and then we go our separate ways. Back to our parallel universes.”
18
Ya Allah, it is more like a perpendicular, upside down, bloody mad universe, the Sheikh thought as he heard himself follow through on the ridiculous scheme that he had come up with while flying back to the United States. It did occur to him that there might have been an air-pressure leak on his private jet and he was suffering from alti
tude sickness, which is known to induce madness if not treated.
But what was more insane was that this woman seemed remarkably calm. Or perhaps calm was not the right word. Unsurprised was more like it—not in a way that made it seem like she could have guessed any of this was coming, but still like it was not as shocking as it should be. Now the Sheikh recalled her saying her life couldn’t get any stranger, and he wondered what she meant. Yes, his life had taken a turn for the strange too, had it not? And this woman was in the middle of it. The woman, the dream, the ring . . .
And as the Sheikh sat back, he felt as if a veil had come down in front of him, and suddenly he was watching the world as if he were a step removed from it. Not outside his body but within it, somehow deeper within himself in a way he couldn’t understand.
He watched and listened as Hilda went back over what he’d just explained to her. She was smart, he thought. Clear-headed and analytical in a way that seemed so much at odds with her choice of career, even her choice of clothes. Those harem-style pants with their paisley brightness had given him a goddamn headache when they were walking to the café from the store. Of course, he didn’t need to look at the pants, but by God he couldn’t help glancing at the way her buttocks moved beneath that thin cotton. He had caught sight of her panty-line as she walked, and he had forced himself to look away before he got hard right there on the goddamn street!
Slowly the Sheikh forced himself out from behind that veil before he lost track of both his body and his mind, and he exhaled when he found himself back in the moment, back in the world.
“So all of this is to teach your brother a lesson,” she was saying. “This elaborate scheme is to teach your brother some responsibility? Why not just get him a puppy?”
“If you are not going to take this seriously, then I will offer the job to someone else,” said the Sheikh, trying to speak as firmly as possible. “I think I will be able to find another American woman who will accept a three-million-dollar payment for six months of fairly pleasurable work.”
“Um, pleasurable? Listen, buddy. Maybe it’s the harem pants that gave you that idea, but pleasure isn’t part of any goddamn deal,” she said, leaning forward on the table.
“Ah, so we have a deal then?” said the Sheikh, purposely not answering her question, keeping his eyes focused on her face even though the way she was leaning forward on the table in that v-neck black top was making it very difficult. Was she doing that on purpose? Was she already playing this game? Winding his cock up so she could grab him by the balls? Ya Allah, this woman was a dealmaker too, was she not? What a game this would be!
“I didn’t say that,” said Hilda. “I need to understand this a bit better. You do realize it sounds sketchy as hell, yeah? I mean, this is a classic setup where I end up dead in some pit across the border. Or worse, it’s a setup for the cheesiest romance novel ever written. The lame-ass, Fake Marriage plotline!”
“Earlier you were defending romance novels,” said the Sheikh, glancing down her neckline and quickly looking back up, the blood surging through his hard body as he blinked away the overwhelming image of her smooth, heavy cleavage. “And now it is a fate worse than death?”
Hilda groaned and rubbed both her eyes at once, and the Sheikh took the opportunity to glance at her breasts again. Ya Allah, what was wrong with him?! He was acting like a guilty schoolboy around this woman! Ogling at panty-lines and hints of cleavage!
“Oh, God,” she muttered. “What the fuck is happening?”
“Are you all right, Ms. Hogarth? Please. My comment about the romance novels was a joke. I am not expecting anything beyond a professional arrangement. No part of this deal involves private intimacy.” He paused and took a breath. “Though of course, it does not preclude it.”
“Wait, what? Does not preclude it? I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Fine,” said the Sheikh, and his eyes narrowed and his mouth went tight as he realized they were wrestling for the upper hand. “If the possibility of intimacy is so offensive to you, then we will preclude it. No matter what, it will not happen.”
She stared at him like he had turned into a giant bear before her eyes, and for a moment the Sheikh was certain she was going to pass out right there. He wondered if her fainting would actually be an excellent chance for him to get out of this ridiculous situation he was engineering himself into, but he knew he was not going anywhere. Dreams, parallel lives, and distracting cleavage aside, he was actually starting to have fun. By God, this was fun, was it not?! And that was the point of it all, was it not? To experience emotion. To feel joy. To play. To have fun! The point of life, yes? Parallel, perpendicular, past and future lives—all of them!
It was the reason he did the work he did, the deals he did—it gave him a kick, a rush, a sense of adventure. And did this scheme not have all those things built in? And the risk was not even that much: Three million for the ring was pocket change. But the reward? Ya Allah, there was some upside here, was there not?
He felt his cock move as he watched her run her hands through her hair, touch her neck, lean back in her chair and fold her arms beneath her breasts. Yes, there is some upside, he thought as he caught her glancing at that ring once again. This woman is my equal in so many ways—nothing like the women who enter my private chambers in Manhattan. Those women may be educated and intelligent too, but they lack something that this curious woman in those harem pants seems to have. It is a depth of some kind—not just intellectual, and not as simple as her personality. It is a depth that feels holistic, even though I suspect this woman can be as shrewd as my fiercest boardroom adversary. It is a depth that feels honest even though this astrologer has manipulated Alim and me into paying her twenty thousand dollars. It is a depth that connects to something similarly deep in me, like she is the answer to a question I have been asking for twenty years.
Ya Allah, that is it, yes? Deep down I believe that what happens with Hilda Hogarth in the next six months will answer the question of whether the teenage Rahaan truly saw a vision of the future or not. Is that what I am chasing here? The hope that she contains the answer, whether she knows it or not, whether she believes it or not, whether I believe it or not.
“I can’t,” she muttered, staring past the Sheikh and slowly shaking her head. “It’s too messed up. All of it. I just need to step back and figure this shit out. It’s just too much right now. I can’t.”
The Sheikh watched her as she whispered to herself, and something inside him said he needed to act. Fate, destiny, past and future be damned, Rahaan knew enough about physics to understand that the only thing real is the now, the present, the moment. And in a moment this woman was going to say no unless he acted.
Time moved in slow motion as the Sheikh calmly looked around the café. It had filled up a bit, and to their left were three teenage girls with their phones out as they chattered and giggled and selfied and shared. To their right was a young couple, the man staring out the window, the woman reading a book. Both their phones were lying on the table near their coffee cups. Behind Hilda was a middle-aged woman sitting alone, smiling as she scrolled through her phone. The perfect, camera-ready audience, thought the Sheikh. Do it, Rahaan. Do not think and just do it. The most vivid part of the dream was the physical part, was it not? Consciousness and possible worlds be damned, the one thing that is guaranteed to be real is the body, is it not? It can be felt and it can be touched. It is real, simple as that. So stop thinking and just do it. You start from this world, start from this moment, start from the physical.
You start with her, and you do it now.
And just as Hilda blinked and focused on the Sheikh, her lips slowly parting as she started to mouth the word no, Rahaan pushed his chair back so hard it slid across the café, making every head turn. Then he rose to full height, dramatically kicked an empty chair out of his damned way, grabbed that ring from near the plastic salt shaker, and went dow
n on one knee as oohs and aahs and eeks and omgs rose up from the audience as they grabbed their phones and swiped to their cameras.
“Hilda Hogarth,” the Sheikh said as he looked up at her and took her hand in his. “Will you marry me?”
And as she sputtered and gurgled like she was going to faint either in rage or shock, Rahaan pulled her close, slipped the ring onto her finger, and kissed her full on the mouth.
By God, he kissed her.
19
The kiss rippled through space and time as Hilda gasped for breath, the world slipping away as she felt herself kissing him back, kissing him like it was their first kiss and their last kiss, like it was their only kiss, the only kiss that ever existed, the eternal kiss that exists outside of space and time, that is created anew every time lovers meet, that is fresh and pure even though it is ancient and old, old as time, old as the universe, old as man and woman, old as life and death, sunshine and rain.
“Oh, God,” she gasped as she broke from the kiss and blinked. The sound of applause and cheers rose up around them, and she tried to focus, tried hard to focus even though everything was twisting and turning, swirling and swaying. She could feel her body tingle with electricity, burn with a fever, dance with a joy that made no sense. She could feel herself floating and sinking at the same time, soaring and crashing at once, being born and dying all in the same moment.
Now focus slowly came, and she looked into his eyes, green eyes warm and familiar, eyes looking out from the face of a stranger whom she swore she knew, had always known, would always know, again and again.
Start with him, came that whisper from inside her, from a place that seemed more real than reality, more vivid than a rainbow in the sun, a place where a part of her lived forever, where perhaps all of her lived.
Stars for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 8) Page 8
