Stars for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 8)

by Annabelle Winters

  The Sheikh narrowed his eyes dreamily, sighing and then slowly nodding. “Yes. I think so. And I also think Yusuf Iqbal is the key to bringing Di into it, dragging her into this battlefield even if she suspects that it is a set-up of sorts. His involvement in all of this is what makes me believe that I am right in forcing the issue on this oil-rig.”

  Hilda blinked and shook her head. “I don’t completely understand. You think he’s going to actually set up an explosion? To . . . what, avenge his father’s death or something?”

  “It does not matter, actually. It does not even matter what Di does. It only matters that Yusuf Iqbal has unresolved emotions that I believe Di will somehow tap into and connect with, pulling both her and him into a new parallel world, a world in which they work together to arrange an accident at the oil rig. That work might happen in this parallel world or the next. It may get pulled into our timeline today or in five days. It is hard to understand without falling into paradoxes and contradictions. But it will happen. Either way, it will happen. Di’s emotional energy will make it happen. I always thought Iqbal had a role to play in this, and this is his role. To set up the battlefield.”

  Hilda had to close her eyes tight for a moment. Eventually she nodded. “So you think Yusuf Iqbal in our current timeline wouldn’t do anything as ridiculous as killing his Sheikh or anyone else. But you also believe he still holds onto strong emotions that might somehow pull Di and him together in some other parallel world where Yusuf Iqbal is a little on the unhinged side? And then Di and Diamante could pull that parallel world into this timeline?”

  “Perhaps you should have finished that physics major in college,” said the Sheikh very seriously. “Because I think that was a bloody brilliant explanation. Ya Allah, quick. Let us draw a diagram!”

  Hilda laughed. “I guess it shows how messed up things are if the convoluted nonsense I just spouted is the best explanation we have!” But she understood what the Sheikh meant, and she realized that he was right. The details didn’t matter as far as what Di or Yusuf Iqbal was planning. Because the Sheikh, in his own way, with the brute force of his real-world intelligence, had pulled everyone into a timeline where something was going to happen in five days, on that oil-rig, on that final stage, with every player present, every parallel life in balance.

  And then it would be Diamante against Hilda. A race against time. A race across time. Who gets there first? Who gets to keep the world she wants? Who gets the ending she writes? Who gets the ending she deserves?

  “Say it,” he said suddenly, his voice cutting through her haze.

  “What?” she said, frowning and then melting when she saw the warmth in his eyes, like he was reminding her what this was all about, what they were all about.

  “You know what,” he whispered, kissing her gently on the side of the mouth. “Say it, my starry eyed soothsayer. Say it for me. Say it like you mean it.”

  And then she remembered what she was fighting for, she remembered who she was fighting with, she remembered why this would all be worth it in the end. So she looked up into his eyes, and she said it. In this world, in that world, in every world. She said it like she’d said it a million times, always and forever.

  “I love you.”

  47

  FOUR DAYS LATER

  Hilda watched the dolphins ride the surf of the deep blue waters, three of them playing together, their sleek gray bodies rising and falling with the waves. She’d seen these dolphins for three days already, and today was the fourth day. She waved to them from her perch on a metal observation deck on the western side of the oil rig, a spot she’d been coming to every evening to watch the sun set over the horizon.

  She waved once more at the dolphins, wondering if they were really the same ones she’d seen every day. Then she smiled and sighed, stretching her bare arms out wide and raising her face towards the setting sun, trying to catch the last of its golden warmth before the cool night breeze flowed in over the Arabian Sea.

  The past four days on the oil rig had been the most surreally peaceful time Hilda had ever experienced. Around them it was chaos: engineers and workmen working every second of the day, worklights and blowtorches illuminating the black of night, the screech of cranes, the thunder of metal beams being lowered into place, the rumble of the massive diamond-tipped drill being overworked in preparation for the ceremonial opening that was scheduled for sunrise the next morning.

  Yes, chaos all around her, but calm and silence inside her. In a way it felt like the Sheikh and she were all alone on an island, surrounded by the blue Arabian Sea, no one but the dolphins and the occasional seagull even aware of their existence. Rahaan was right, Hilda had realized once he brought her here on his thirty-foot boat and showed her the small but lavish quarters they’d be sharing. This was about them, and their focus needed to be on each other, on the internal and not the external, their own emotions and not the schemes and machinations of anyone else.

  Yes, Rahaan was right in that it didn’t matter what Di and Yusuf Iqbal might or might not be planning. That was Di and Diamante’s world, a world pulled into existence by the darkness of their despair, the fire of their ambition, the twisted transformation of an emotion that had started as simple jealousy and humiliation and was now leading to the attempted assassination of a king, a prince, and an astrologer. You couldn’t write a romance more convoluted than this, she thought. Fake marriages, secret babies, time travel, evil princesses, and . . .

  And happy endings, Hilda thought with a shiver as the sun began to slip beneath the dark blue of the horizon, its fierce gold morphing into a dull red glow, slowly bleeding into the indigo of the approaching night. Yes, happy endings. The happy ending that she would need to fight for.

  They had held back from making love the past four days, even though Hilda could tell how badly the Sheikh wanted it, how badly he wanted her. But although her arousal and need was strong too, there was a serenity in the way she exercised self-control, a deep peace in knowing that she was preparing herself to fight for her dreams, her ending, her birthright. It still sounds ludicrous, she thought as her mind drifted for a moment and she wondered what Di was doing. It’s like the evening before a battle, isn’t it? This is how armies used to do it in the old world, soldiers camped on opposite sides of the battlefield the night before, campfires burning bright, the sounds of men feasting and talking, the underlying tension palpable but somehow tempered by a calmness, perhaps even an excitement. After all, it was all a play at some level, wasn’t it? It was all drama. Actors on a stage, using emotions as their weapons, faith taking the place of the shield, someone’s hatred powering the arrow, another’s love sharpening the point of the spear.

  I really must be insane, she thought as she watched the sun finally disappear as those three dolphins rose and dived for the last time before night swooped down. I am seriously sitting here, the night before some kind of assassination attempt is likely to kill all of us in the middle of the ocean, preparing myself to take on a cosmic adversary, do battle in the realm of the psyche, in the depths of the subconscious, the heights of the dream-space, the underworld between timelines.

  But somehow it felt sane, even though it sounded mad. Yes, she thought as she heard the Sheikh step onto the metal deck behind her, his familiar, masculine scent swirling through the air and awakening her body as if to remind her that the body is the house of the consciousness, the body is as spiritual as the soul, the body is still made of stardust, just like the body of the goddess, the body of the universe.

  Stars and stardust, she thought as she rose to her feet and let the Sheikh pull her into his body. The cool night breeze was coming in, and the waters of the sea looked black as the night sky as they stood there together. For a moment Hilda felt a panic rise up when she realized the sky was shockingly black, with no stars, no moon even. Her breathing picked up as she felt her brain trying to kick down the door she had bolted shut in her mind
, the door behind which she had locked up logic and reason, common sense and rational thought, those voices that wanted to slap her upside the head and scream that the only thing more far-fetched than believing someone’s planning to kill you, your man, and your child tomorrow is believing that you can stop it by stepping into a goddamn dream!

  The panic almost had her, the darkness almost took her, the self-doubt almost broke her. But then she saw the twinkle of Venus, the first star of the evening, and soon Venus was joined by her sisters, ten of them, a hundred now, millions suddenly popping into the sky like diamonds, the eyes of the goddess reminding her that she would not be sent into battle alone and unarmed, that she had the strength of her man behind her, the blessing of a child inside her, the gift of the divine within her.

  But she would still need to fight for her ending, she knew. And when she saw the full moon glowing through the mist of a cloud, she understood that yes, the stars were indeed shining, but it was up to Hilda whether she could reach the stars when it counted, when the time came.

  “Just before sunrise,” the Sheikh whispered against her neck. “When the night is darkest and the stars are brightest. That is the chosen time. And when the heat of the sun flows across the cool waters, it will be over, one way or the other. Come. Let us go inside, my love. Let us prepare to greet the sun.”

  48

  Di watched the sun rise over the desert. She'd returned to the United States and was back in New Mexico. Day was just breaking over the badlands. She’d driven out here alone, to a spot she’d come to a long time ago, when she was a teenager with fake dreadlocks and way too many beads around her neck. She’d camped out here with three friends, one of whom had just been through a vision quest ceremony where she’d taken peyote under the supervision of a Native American shaman. Of course, the three girls just had a box of cheap wine and some weed with them that night, but Di remembered the stories of that vision quest: Images of other worlds, the supreme sense of meaning, the overwhelming feeling of being poised above reality somehow, looking down on life like one could see all the events taking place, all of time laid out as if on a map. Deep wisdom. Divine focus. Open consciousness.

  The only way to harness that deep wisdom, focus those powerful emotions, make sense of the connections between parallel worlds, is by reaching an altered state of consciousness, like people have done for centuries on vision quests . . . shamans who claim to see all the mysteries of the universe in their travels, able to reach across space and time in their visions, to come back with stories of their journey, stories of their adventures, stories of their future, a future they claim to be able to rewrite . . .

  “Well, Diamante, here’s where our story gets rewritten,” Di said out loud as she looked down at the three button-shaped pieces of the peyote cactus she’d gotten from a colleague in the anthropology department. “Shaman or psycho, we’re doing this. You and me, girl. We were powerful enough to change our timeline and get this far. Can we change it once again, like we did to bring Alim into the picture? Can we bring another pawn into our game, pull ourselves into a parallel world where something happens on that oil-rig where all three of them are going to be gathered when the sun rises over the Arabian Sea?”

  She glanced at her watch and sighed as she did the time-zone math. The kingdom of Kolah was almost twelve hours ahead of the Western United States, which meant that the sun had just set in the Middle East. And since it was just about sunrise in New Mexico, it meant that they were almost precisely at opposite ends of the cycle. Shortly after the sun set over the New Mexico desert, it would begin to rise over the Arabian Sea.

  Di thought through her plan again. She needed to go into her altered state about three hours before sunset, just to make sure she was deep into her trance by then, her consciousness opened wide before her. After that . . . who the hell knew! She’d have to follow the breadcrumbs left by her emotions, find a psychic bridge to a parallel world where she could find someone to sabotage the oil-rig or plant a bomb or something. Di didn’t know who it would be, but she knew there would be someone whose emotions were strong enough for her to connect with—connect with and then manipulate, just like she’d done with Alim.

  Yes, there will be someone, she thought. And the irony—or the madness, rather—is that Rahaan knows who that someone is! That’s why he’s planned this oil-rig event, a re-creation of the event that killed his father and mother, a tragedy surrounded by strong, unresolved emotions for both him as well as many others who lost loved ones. Rahaan is setting the stage, is he not? He’s setting up the battlefield, tempting me to step in and see if I can take what I want, conquer him and Hilda, claim my throne, claim the ending that I want! And he knows that I will answer the call, because he knows that the fire and ambition of Diamante is within me, integrated and alive. He knows that I will not try something as stupid as attempting to kill anyone myself—certainly not a heavily guarded Sheikh and Prince! He knows that I will take the bait even though I know it is bait. I will take the bait and accept the invitation to battle, because I know I have a chance to win. And he knows it too. He has forced my hand, but I have forced his hand too. Just like I cannot defeat him alone in this world, he cannot face me alone in that world. It will be Hilda who must do it.

  Because the battle will happen in the dream world, in the open space within time, the grand hallways of eternity, a world where you cannot get to yourself, great Sheikh. Do you have that much faith in your woman, you arrogant Sheikh? So much faith that you are willing to risk it all by sending her to meet me on this cosmic battleground? You believe your shared love is more powerful than the ambition of a scorned woman who was denied her due? You believe Hilda is powerful enough to seize her happy ending from the warrior-grip of Diamante? You think you and Hilda together is enough of a match for me and Diamante put together?

  We shall see, won’t we. We shall see.

  49

  “See who it is,” whispered Hilda from the bedroom of the royal quarters on the rig. After pacing and trying her best to calm down, she’d finally gotten under the silk covers to ready herself for the night. But then someone had pounded on the metal door past the anteroom of their chambers, and Rahaan had angrily shaken his head and muttered something about telling his guards he did not want to be disturbed.

  “I do not care who it is,” the Sheikh growled. “I gave orders, and my orders are final. I was not to be disturbed. I will have my guards thrown to the sharks if that knock comes again.”

  The knock came again, more urgent this time, and Hilda finally let out a giggle as she watched her king flex his arms and turn towards the door. “There aren’t any sharks here, just dolphins. Just see who it is, Rahaan. It sounds urgent.”

  “Everything is urgent it seems,” the Sheikh rasped as he finally strode out of the bedroom. Hilda heard him yank open the door even as a sudden panic rose up in her as she worried that oh God, what if this is the assassination attempt?! What if the guards are lying in pools of their own blood outside, the rig has been cleared, Alim’s throat has been slit, and—

  Just then the Sheikh walked back into the bedroom and Hilda sighed and clamped her eyes shut tight as she forced herself to try and relax again. But one look at Rahaan’s tight jaw and she knew she needed to ask.

  “What?” she said, almost afraid to hear the answer. The stillness of the past few days seemed long gone, and the uneasiness of being in a place where seemingly anything could happen was rising up in her again. “Who was it?”

  “Yusuf Iqbal,” said the Sheikh quietly. “He was in a bad state. I could literally see the conflict all over his face. He was almost begging me to relieve him of the pressure of whatever he has planned. To free him of the conflict.”

  “What did he say?”

  Rahaan shook his head. “He was rambling. But mostly it was something about calling off the opening ceremony. Like he was giving me one last chance.”

  “To wha
t? Back off? Was it a warning? A threat?” said Hilda.

  The Sheikh took a breath and sat down on the side of the king-sized bed, his weight causing Hilda to almost roll towards him. “It wasn’t a threat. Not intentionally, at least. It was strange, like he was confused. Perhaps confused about what he is planning—whatever that might be.”

  Hilda nodded and placed her hand on Rahaan’s broad back. “Which means you were right. He has been pulled into this, but it is into Di’s world, a world where he is just a side player, a pawn.”

  The Sheikh nodded, but then he shook his head. “Or maybe it wasn’t him giving me one last chance to back off. In a way it was me pulling at him. My conflict.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Rahaan turned on the bed, and she could see the struggle on his face. “I think this last-minute conflict is because it is my emotional needs that are pulling him away. I am struggling with the decision of sending you, my woman, alone into battle on a battleground I cannot enter. A part of me still wants to resolve this in my world. In the here and now, even though I know that my physical strength, my wealth, my willpower . . . none of it can be relied on in this realm of shifting timelines. It is that sense of powerlessness that is tearing me apart. That sense of being vulnerable in a way I have never experienced.”

  Hilda took a breath and closed her eyes once more. He was right. But he was also wrong. “You’re not sending me into battle alone,” she whispered, pulling at his flowing tunic and forcing him to turn once more to her. “You’ll be my foundation. My source of strength. The arms holding me upright. The horse I ride upon. This is our story, Rahaan.” She looked down at her pregnant belly and into his concerned eyes. “It is our family. You were right when you said that it’s my unresolved emotions about this child in those three worlds that’s causing all of this, which means only I can resolve it. I have to see those stories through to the end.” She paused and swallowed hard as a moment of doubt rose up and then subsided. “And I have to make sure they end the way I want. For us. All three of us.”