Stars for the Sheikh_A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel
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THREE YEARS LATER
LOCATION: GUANTANAMO BAY
STARS FOR THE SHEIKH
ANNABELLE WINTERS
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BY ANNABELLE WINTERS
THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (USA)
Curves for the Sheikh
Flames for the Sheikh
Hostage for the Sheikh
Single for the Sheikh
Stockings for the Sheikh
Untouched for the Sheikh
Surrogate for the Sheikh
THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (UK)
Curves for the Sheikh (UK)
Flames for the Sheikh (UK)
Hostage for the Sheikh (UK)
Single for the Sheikh (UK)
Stockings for the Sheikh (UK)
Untouched for the Sheikh (UK)
Surrogate for the Sheikh (UK)
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AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE (UK)
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright © 2017 by Annabelle Winters
All Rights Reserved by Author
www.annabellewinters.com
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STARS FOR THE SHEIKH
ANNABELLE WINTERS
You don’t travel through time. Time travels through you . . .
1
“Fifteen thousand dollars is not nothing, my brother. Do not fall into the lazy billionaire’s trap, where you start to lose track of the value of money.”
Sheikh Rahaan stood from behind his worn and battered leather swivel chair, stretching his heavy, muscular body and grunting when he realized he’d been sitting for almost four hours straight. Not good. He needed to remember not to fall into the other billionaire’s trap: where you overestimate the value of money, put it before everything else, lose sight of the fact that money in itself is fleeting and with no value other than what you gave up to get it.
Of course, Rahaan didn’t need to work for his money, didn’t need to give up those lazy afternoons sipping sweet tea on the grounds of the Royal Palace of Kolah, attendants and entertainments surrounding him and whichever rich and famous guests he chose to be with. He certainly didn’t need to spend his days in a New York City office highrise, sitting behind a desk on the forty-sixth floor of the tower. He did it because it was fun, and it was even more fun when you owned the damned building. Rahaan had purchased the tower on Central Park South almost three years earlier, and although most of the floors were still on lease to old, white-shoe Manhattan law firms and investment banks, Rahaan had taken the entire forty-sixth floor for himself.
This was his Royal Palace in America, he always thought when he stood by his office window, which overlooked the length of New York City’s magnificent Central Park, the expanse of perfectly designed green extending from 59th Street up to Harlem. One of the world’s most beautiful vistas, Rahaan had always thought, though most of the time he had his back to the window, eyes focused on that forty-inch retina-display monitor with numbers scrolling across the bottom of the screen, intricately patterned black-and-white spreadsheets filling the main space like stars in their cosmic arrangements, sometimes reminding the Sheikh of those clear black desert skies and diamond-like stars above his kingdom of Kolah.
Three years after taking his MBA from the Harvard Business School, Rahaan had decided to take his talents to Wall Street instead of Camel Alley—which was the term of endearment Rahaan and his brother Alim used for the business district in the capital city of Kolah, their small, wealthy kingdom nestled in the grand dunes between Saudi Arabia and the smaller Sheikdoms of the Arabian peninsula. His talents and his gift. His gift . . .
Rahaan blinked hard and clenched his fists as he extended his thick, muscular arms out wide, his wingspan almost covering the large window, body casting a strange, bird-like shadow over the heavy teakwood desk. Perhaps a vulture—which would be fitting, Rahaan thought. After all, he was what they called a “vulture investor,” always looking for dying companies to pick apart. Indeed, most of the companies he bought ended up being liquidated: all the employees fired and the assets sold off in parts. Profitable, yes. But that wasn’t Rahaan’s favorite part of the game.
No, Rahaan’s real joy was when he was able to buy a company that only looked like it was dying but was instead just very sick, with a dim hope of recovery. Those companies could be bought cheap and nursed back to health before being sold again or taken public. Now those were the goldmines—provided Rahaan could do a good enough job convincing the owners that their baby was indeed on its deathbed, mortally wounded, where their only option was to sell it to a cold-hearted vulture like the Sheikh, who would squeeze out the last of its value and then put it out of its misery.
“We can consider it a gift, brother Rahaan,” said the younger Alim, blinking and smiling nervously as he glanced up at the much taller Sheikh, who was rubbing the heavy stubble on his thick jawline as he grimaced and then frowned at his younger brother. “Islam is a religion of charity, and so we can just consider this fifteen grand a gift. Yes? I am sure the woman needs it anyway. Come on, Rahaan. You are giving out gifts all the time!”
“There is no such thing as a gift,” said Rahaan, his green eyes darkening as he glared at the soft-bodied, narrow-shouldered Alim. “Everything has a price, and nothing is given without expectation of something in return.”
Alim snorted. “You donate to forty different charities every year. What do they give you in return?”
“I get the emotional satisfaction of using my wealth to help those less fortunate,” said the Sheikh without missing a beat. Then he shrugged. “I also get a tax break. Everybody gets something. Everything is a transaction. There is no such thing as a gift. Remember that, Alim. You always pay a price, whether you know it or not. Whether you want to or not.”
Rahaan held his gaze steady, those gr
een eyes narrowed and focused, his jaw set. Alim was only a few years younger, but Rahaan was closer to a parent than a sibling when it came to the two of them.
Indeed, it had been just the two of them for most of Alim’s life—he was too young to remember their parents. Their father and his three wives had been killed in an explosion on an oil rig in the Arabian Sea, leaving just the two sons, one of whom was merely an infant, the other a teenager who was forced to become a man very quickly.
Of course, the demands of being Sheikh were easily shouldered by the confident, intelligent teenager—and in fact the young Sheikh Rahaan welcomed the challenge, rejoiced in the work, loved to spend long hours in the Grand Library of the Royal Palace of Kolah, studying the laws and customs of his land and people, the history of his family, searching for answers to the hundreds of questions he had about being the supreme ruler of his ancestral kingdom.
But those were not the only answers the Sheikh had sought in those old family records. Because there was one question that had plagued Rahaan ever since that oil-rig accident made him an orphan. Ever since the night before the accident, more precisely, when the teenage Rahaan woke from a vivid dream, his lean brown body glistening with sweat, his green eyes wide in shock, his mind swirling like the thick black smoke he had seen in his dream, his smooth face burning from the white-hot heat of flames that had felt so real.
He had seen it, he knew. The explosion. The accident. He told himself it had just been a coincidence—after all, nothing like that dream had ever happened again. And certainly he had known beforehand that his father and the queens were to inaugurate a new oil rig with pomp and ceremony. Perhaps the young prince had been subconsciously anxious about that offshore journey his old father and the sheltered queens were taking. And that anxiety could have certainly been the root of that dream. The explosion? Ya Allah, it was a damned oil-rig! If anything was to go wrong, an explosion or fire would be the most likely result, yes? Yes. Of course.
So it was most certainly a coincidence, but still the young Rahaan had been overcome with a crushing guilt, a soaring paranoia, an overwhelming fear that perhaps a demon had taken up residence in him, filling his mind with visions of the future, tempting the young man with the gift of foresight in exchange for his soul! After all, that was the way of the Shaitaan, the great Satan, the dark one himself, was it not? To tempt and tease, offer and release, draw you willingly into his lair so his minions can slip into the seat of your soul and eventually turn you into a servant of darkness! We gave you a gift, and now you must give us something in return! The most ancient of traps!
Of course, Rahaan outgrew those religion-induced fears, and as he traveled the world and studied in England and the United States, that memory itself felt like a dream, like even his kingdom of Kolah was a distant land of myth and fantasy, part of a former life, part of a boy who was no more. Yes, Rahaan was still Sheikh, but he ruled in absentia, relying on his Ministry of Elders to administer the kingdom and only look to him for executive decisions of the highest importance or symbolism. It worked well enough. Kolah was small and its oil-reserves were vast. So long as the pumps kept going, there was not much to do besides allocate the monthly stipends and organize a few camel races for the younger generations who were hosting their European and American college friends. Ah, the black gold, the dark blood of the desert. Such a gift.
We gave you a gift, and now you must give us something in return, came the thought as Rahaan blinked away a feeling that had not emerged in years. It confused him, and he frowned and cocked his head as he looked at his brother and tried to refocus on their conversation. Alim had jokingly mentioned that he had been hustled out of fifteen thousand dollars in some online scam. No big deal. A learning opportunity if anything. So why was this conversation making those old, long-buried feelings bubble up in the Sheikh?
“Ya Allah, brother,” Alim said with a groan. “Why did I ever bring this up? I thought you would see the humor in it, but I should have known I would simply get a lecture.”
“The lecture has not even begun yet, I am sorry to inform you,” said the Sheikh, holding back his smile as best he could. He stretched his arms wide again, turning and facing the window, planting his feet, finally lowering those arms and clasping them behind his back as he stood tall. “Now tell me, Alim. Who is this online scammer that has swindled the billionaire Royal Family of Kolah out of fifteen thousand dollars?”
Alim sighed and groaned again. “Ay, now it becomes about the family, does it? OK, brother. As embarrassing as it is, I will tell you everything, and I will take my lecture like an earnest student.” He sighed for the third time. “And perhaps I deserve a lecture. After all, astrology is a scam as old as the universe itself.”
The Sheikh turned, eyes wide, mouth twisted in amused surprise. “Astrology? Ya Allah, do you not remember your scriptures? Divination is the way of the Shaitaan, the work of the devil. If our old maulvi were alive, he would bring that camel-bone stick down hard on your knuckles!”
“Technically speaking it was not divination that I sought,” said Alim, rubbing his eyes as his olive complexion turned dark with color. “It was illumination. More about the past than the future. An astrological chart based on my star sign, which is different from a sun sign and apparently requires quite a bit of mathematical expertise to get right.”
“Oh, I am sure it takes some expertise,” said the Sheikh, covering his mouth as he wondered if he should simply have the gullibility beaten out of his brother by the palace guards during their next visit to Kolah. “Well, let me see this fifteen-thousand dollar, expertly put together, highly mathematical chart of my brother’s star sign. I hope there is a rainbow drawn on it as well. Some color to please the eyes, yes?”
Alim’s face was the color (and perhaps even the texture) of a sun-ripened tomato as he crinkled his brow and twisted his mouth, rubbing his eyes again before exhaling and looking up at the Sheikh. “Actually the chart only cost eight thousand dollars. But I never got the chart, and when I asked about it, she told me that she did in fact send it and perhaps it had been lost in the mail.”
The Sheikh just stared at his brother, not sure if he felt anger or pity at where he suspected this was going. “Lost in the mail,” he said quietly, nodding slowly as he rubbed his chin. “No UPS or FedEx tracking, of course. Please, Alim. Do go on.”
Alim’s voice went soft, like a child’s. “So I asked her to send out another copy,” he said weakly. “But she said each chart was hand-drawn and she didn’t keep copies because it was against her code.”
“Her code,” the Sheikh said, his voice deep and drawn out as his eyebrows slowly moved up. “By God, Alim, you are one in a million. But please. I cannot wait to hear the rest, even though I have already guessed it.”
“If you have already guessed it, then why force me to embarrass myself?” Alim shouted, finally losing his cool. “You can finish the story, can you not? Please, brother! I feel foolish enough as it is!”
The Sheikh sighed, rubbing the back of his head, fingers pushing through his thick black hair that could use a trim. He tilted his head back, looking down at his visibly uncomfortable brother. The boy had learned enough from this, he thought. Now there was someone else who needed to be taught about the consequences of their actions, that every action has a consequence, that just like no gift is given without an expectation of something in return, no offence is tolerated without swift and unequivocal retribution. It was the way of justice. It was the way of Wall Street. It was the way of physics, science, and the natural world. But most importantly, it was the way of the Sheikh. It was his goddamn code.
“Eight thousand dollars for a chart you never got,” Rahaan said quickly, glancing at an alert that popped up on his computer screen. “And then she asked for another seven thousand to re-do the hand-drawn chart. A special one-thousand dollar discount. Of course, you never got that either. And now she is fifteen-thousand dollars richer. S
he is also gone like the morning mist. It is a classic con-artist strategy. Two strikes and then disappear. Poof!”
Alim was huddled in the leather armchair near the side wall, almost laughing as he shook his head. “Actually, brother, she offered to draw me the chart for a third time. Only five thousand dollars for this one.”
The Sheikh looked up from the screen, cocking his head as he wondered if he had heard right. Then he roared with delight, clapping his hands three times, the sound ricocheting through the large office like a whipcrack before he slammed his heavy fists down on the table and laughed again. “Ya Allah, that is priceless! The balls on that woman! The standard con is to do it twice and then disappear. But this one tried for the triple! The goddamn hat-trick! By God, that takes guts.” He settled himself down and shrugged. “Or recklessness.”
“Is that not the same? Guts and recklessness?”
The Sheikh shook his head and pointed his thick index finger at Alim, looking back at the computer screen for a moment before turning again to his brother. “Recklessness is when you take a risk without having a clear idea of what you are risking. Guts is taking the very same risk but with your eyes open, with an understanding that the odds are against you but there is still a chance of victory.” He punched out a quick note on the computer, now straightening up and putting his hands on his hips, thumbs stroking his thick black leather belt which was as well-worn as that swivel chair. “OK, Alim. I was going to end the lesson here and turn back to more pressing matters. But now I am intrigued. I almost want to know if this astrologer has guts or whether she is simply reckless, like so many desperate con-artists. Indeed, I am curious about this code she speaks of. A con-artist with a code is an interesting twist.”
“Takes one to know one,” muttered Alim, almost to himself.
“I heard that,” growled the Sheikh. “And I take it as a compliment. Now tell me where this astrologer keeps her offices.”