Stars for the Sheikh_A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel

by Annabelle Winters

  The Sheikh sighed as he glanced at his private cell phone, which had just lit up with an incoming call. “So what do you want me to do, Hilda?”

  “The problem isn’t what I want. It’s what she wants.”

  “But you said nothing ever happened between me and Di—Diamante—in that parallel world. So her need to be with me cannot be that strong.”

  “Strong enough to turn her goddamn hair blonde!”

  “Well, I certainly feel no need to be with her, Hilda. So it is a non-starter. Ya Allah, forget Di!”

  “I can’t, Rahaan. And you know that,” Hilda said, sighing and nuzzling back into him. “I don’t have a complete picture of that world in which all three of us are connected. But judging by the way Di’s expression changed before she ran from the store earlier, I think there’s a chance she will have the full picture before I do! The emotional ripples are clearly very strong for her too, albeit in a different way. There’s something more than just jealousy going on in Di’s story, and we can’t just forget about her until we understand what she wants, how she wants the story to end!”

  The Sheikh grinned, turning to her and shrugging. “Well then, my time-traveling queen. Let us find out how that story ends. Yes? Come, I think it is time for your romance hero’s mighty cock to take you back there. For scientific research purposes, of course. Purely a clinical study. Here, let me get that bra off.”

  She laughed and pushed him away as the phone buzzed again. The Sheikh ignored it once more, his attention now on her pesky bra. But Hilda ran and grabbed the phone and tossed it to him, sticking her tongue out before skipping away to check on Sabbath, who’d taken up refuge in the suite’s bedroom.

  The Sheikh answered even as he watched her butt bounce in a way that made him feel faint as she left the room. But then he tensed up when the caller identified himself.

  “Albuquerque police department,” came the voice over the phone. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  38

  “Di left her phone in the hotel room,” the Sheikh explained to the wide-eyed Hilda, who was sitting cross-legged on the couch, cat between the two of them, everything and everyone on high alert as the television blared in the distance, reports of Norm’s brutal murder all over the local news. “They unlocked it and found my number in the logs from the last few days. So they called.”

  Hilda nodded as she glanced at the TV. Di’s photograph was all over—photos of her as a redhead, of course.

  “You told them she’s a blonde now, yeah?” said Hilda, still mesmerized by the television, her right hand absentmindedly stroking Sabbath, her body rocking gently back and forth like she was in a trance. “Oh, God,” she said for the hundredth time, it seemed. “Norm . . . oh, my God, Norm! I can’t even . . .”

  The Sheikh held her close as Sabbath looked up at the two of them before lazily getting off the couch and slinking away to explore a new corner of the large hotel suite. “She left her phone . . .” he said, thinking aloud. “Was that intentional or not?”

  Hilda frowned. “What difference? She’s clearly lost it, either way. Lost her mind, I mean—not the damn phone.”

  “It does make a difference,” Rahaan said grimly. “If it was intentional, it means she was thinking rationally. She knew she could be tracked using her phone, so she left it.”

  Hilda swallowed hard, trying to hold on to her own damn rationality. “OK. So then she’s on the run. Either way, she’s unhinged, Rahaan. She won’t get far.”

  “Cash withdrawn from her bank yesterday afternoon in Santa Fe,” Rahaan said, reading aloud as he scrolled through the breaking news updates on his phone. “And they’ve just gotten word from sources at the airport that her name showed up on a flight manifest. She apparently flew to Houston yesterday, and then—”

  “London,” said Hilda, turning up the volume on the TV. “It’s on the main news now. Shit, they missed her in London. But they’ve tracked her connection to . . .” She trailed off as the news anchor delivered the update with relish.

  “Abu Dhabi,” the Sheikh repeated, partly in disbelief as Hilda felt the cosmos closing in on her once again. “Ya Allah, what in God’s eternal name . . .”

  “Oh, God, Rahaan,” she whispered. “She had too much of a head-start for them to intercept her at the airports. The flight landed in Abu Dhabi six hours ago, and she’s already cleared customs and immigration there.” Hilda swallowed hard. “Rahaan, why in God’s name would she go to the Middle East?”

  “Kolah is a four-hour drive from Abu Dhabi,” the Sheikh said softly, looking at his phone and reading a message that had just come in, his face all business, serious as all hell. “Three hours if she gets a driver who knows how to cut through the southern part of the Great Southern Desert.”

  “Would she be able to get across the border, though?” Hilda asked. “Aren’t there guards or some kind of checkpoints? Even if she got there before the news hit, doesn’t she need a visa or something? Can’t you alert your—”

  “La ymkn 'an takun,” Rahaan muttered, standing bolt upright and staring at his phone, the color draining from his face so fast Hilda rose to her feet and grabbed his arm. “La ymkn 'an takun!” he said again.

  “What is it, Rahaan? What’s going on?”

  But the Sheikh just stumbled across the room like he was drunk, shaking his head like a dog with ear-worms, muttering in Arabic, blinking rapidly, muttering again. Finally he stopped and turned to her, his green eyes narrowed to slits, like he’d just figured out what was going on and it was bad. Really goddamn bad.

  “In your dream Diamante marries the younger brother,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “The young prince who is set to be king because his older brother has chosen exile, because the older brother removed himself from the line by choosing a woman that disqualifies him from the throne. That was the dream, yes?”

  “I . . . I think so,” Hilda said, frowning. “I mean, that part was clearer in the dream from two months ago so I can’t be certain. But yes, I felt the undercurrent of it when I returned there yesterday.” Her frown cut deeper as she stared at the fearsome look on the Sheikh’s face. “Wait, you have a younger brother,” she said as he glanced at her and then back at his phone, half-nodding, half-shaking his head in confusion. “But he’s not involved, and Di doesn’t even know him. So why are you asking? Oh, God, Rahaan. What’s happened?!”

  The Sheikh spoke slowly, carefully, his face so serious Hilda almost dropped to her knees when she heard him speak. “Di entered my kingdom of Kolah almost two hours ago. She was not detained.”

  Hilda went quiet even as the craziest thought began to take form in her mind. “She wasn’t detained at your border because . . .” she said hoarsely.

  “Because she was accompanied by the crown-prince of Kolah. As his wife. Di has entered my kingdom as my brother’s wife, Hilda! Somehow, someway, my younger brother, to whom I have just abdicated the throne as a result of my fake marriage to you, is married to Diamante!”

  Hilda collapsed into the couch as the room began to spin. An older brother giving up the throne for a woman. A rejected princess marrying a prince she did not choose. But how . . .

  “But how, Rahaan? They don’t even know each other, do they? How could they have met and gotten engaged overnight? It’s . . . it’s impossible, Rahaan!”

  “So is this,” said the Sheikh, pulling her close and placing a hand gently on the round of her belly. “This is impossible too, is it not? Hilda, we were impossible up until the moment that . . .”

  “Until the moment we weren’t. It was impossible until it happened. Until we happened. Until this happened,” said Hilda as clarity hit her like bag of sandstone bricks. “And it happened overnight, before we even knew each other. Oh, God, Rahaan. That’s what’s happened, isn’t it? Di has somehow, someway pulled all of us into a new parallel world! Her world this time.”


  39

  Di smiled at Alim as the young prince waited for her to step out of the silver Range Rover that had stopped outside the side entrance to the Royal Palace of Kolah. She gazed up at the red sandstone pillars gracing the facade, gasped when she took in the sheer immensity of the great white marble dome in the center, squinted as she glanced up at the towering gold minarets rising from the palace’s four corners, pointing up at the stars, the heavens, perhaps the future.

  Diamante’s memories had poured into Di’s mind as she tossed and turned during the long, restless flight from Houston to London. She clearly saw Diamante’s motives in that parallel world, understood why she’d agreed to marry the younger brother in that world. Di realized that it was no longer about Diamante getting the man she wanted. It wasn’t about petty jealousy. It wasn’t about a man at all. It was about a woman. The ambition of a woman.

  After the rejection, Diamante had decided she didn’t want the exiled king anymore. She didn’t want the king to love her. She didn’t want the king to marry her. She didn’t want the king at all. Diamante wanted the kingdom! She wanted to be Queen! A queen with no king! That was her endgame! She’d channeled the anger and humiliation from her rejection into something grander, a burning desire for power over not just the man who’d rejected her but over his family, his people, his land, his future! Those were the emotions that collapsed her parallel worlds, creating a bridge across time, merging Diamante’s reality with Di’s!

  The realization had blasted through Di’s consciousness at the tail end of her journey, when she’d fallen into a deep sleep on the flight to Abu Dhabi. She’d seen the worlds merging as Diamante’s humiliation transformed to ambition, her need for revenge moving beyond just the man himself, a twisted transformation of emotion, a sense that if she couldn’t possess the man, she’d possess everything else—his kingdom, his land, his people, and his family. Starting with his brother. The younger brother. The weaker, unprepared younger brother. Easily manipulated. Easily overshadowed. And when his purpose was served and she was queen, easily eliminated.

  Di had awoken with a start when they landed in Abu Dhabi, her body burning with a fever as her mind buzzed with images and memories. She could feel things being rearranged within her own mind, and she shuddered and shivered as she tried desperately to separate dream from fantasy, reality from imagination, this world from that world, herself from Diamante. She needed her wits about her when she got off the plane, she knew. Had they found Norm’s body yet? Had they already tracked her name on the flight manifests? Would armed guards storm the plane and escort her away? Would Interpol be waiting to pick her up? Would the goddamn CIA put a bag over her head and shove her into a white van with a painted logo that read, “Creamy Instant Arugula”?

  But as the plane slowly taxied to the gate, Di felt Diamante in the background, and she got a strange sense that something significant had happened. Something else changed while you were dreaming, she realized. And this time it was you who forced the change, yes? It was you this time, not Hilda. You’ve opened your consciousness to Diamante so completely that her emotions are coming through with a power that’s causing a shift in the timeline, pulling together past and future, parallel and present. The physics says that is indeed possible, that it indeed can happen. And now your emotions say that it has happened! Something has changed in a way that helps me. But what?!

  Your memories have not re-aligned yet, so you don't know what's changed yet. No, you don’t know what has changed yet, so be alert, she’d told herself as the plane finally got to the gate and passengers started disembarking. Be alert and ready to roll with whatever new event has been pulled into your world. It could be something in the news. It could be an incident at the airport. It could even be a person or people. Keep alert and have faith. There will be a sign.

  A sign, she thought, almost laughing in gleeful shock when she walked into the airport lobby and saw a white-clad Arab holding up her name on an ornate . . . sign! His uniform bore the seal of the Kingdom of Kolah, and two veiled female attendants stood with him as if ready to serve a member of the royal family. The realization took a moment to register, and when it did, Di almost buckled at the knees when she understood the power of Diamante’s emotions, understood her determination, the sheer intensity of her will to possess and destroy.

  Oh, God, Di thought as she followed the silent train of attendants out to the front of the airport, right past customs and immigration, directly to where a silver Range Rover flanked by two black Range Rovers was waiting. Waiting for her. Waiting for the . . . princess? The queen?

  “I still cannot get over the sheer genius of this idea, Di,” said the young crown-prince of Kolah, the narrow-shouldered Alim, when Di got into the large backseat. “And it has worked out brilliantly. This is a scheme worthy of my brother, the great dealmaker himself! Ya Allah, when all is said and done, perhaps Rahaan will even be impressed with me! Yes, I think so. He will be impressed. Once he gets over his anger and humiliation at what we have done, of course.”

  Di straightened her hair and swallowed hard as she tried to put the pieces together. She searched her memories as the heavy car pulled away from the airport and Alim gave his driver instructions in Arabic. Slowly she found what she was looking for, those rearranged memories that explained what the hell was going on in this parallel world she’d pulled herself into.

  “You think Rahaan will be angry?” she said cautiously as the pieces fell into place, the images of what had happened in this timeline coming to her like a mixture of dream and memory. The Di of this new parallel world had visited New York City and met with Alim, told him she was a professor at UNM and an old friend of Hilda Hogarth’s. She’d told him how Hilda had confided in her that this ridiculous Sheikh Rahaan had offered her an obscene amount of money to pretend to be his wife for the next few months—done it just to teach his lazy younger brother something about responsibility!

  “Hilda agreed to the deal because she needs the money, but she’s apprehensive about traveling to the Middle East alone with your brother,” Di remembered explaining to Alim in this new parallel world. “She asked me to come along, and I was like, what the hell. Sure!”

  “I suspected Rahaan was up to something,” Alim had said. “And when I heard that his mysterious new wife was the very same astrologer who had cheated me out of fifteen thousand dollars two months ago . . . ya Allah, I had laughed and told him he was a fool to think that I could be so gullible! Of course, I simply assumed all of it was a lie and the Ministry of Elders had never actually been informed. But then he showed me his official letter to the Elders, and I confirmed that it was indeed delivered to the Ministry, informing them that his marriage was official and that he had abdicated the throne and would step down officially in six months. So I backed down again until you showed up and confirmed my earlier suspicion that it is indeed a ruse.”

  “No marriage certificate, though, right?” Di had asked when they met in New York in this new world. “You should have asked to see one. That would have called his bluff.”

  “A marriage certificate would not be needed. The Sheikh’s written declaration is as good as gospel for the Ministry. So by law they would have to allow the Sheikh to abdicate, forcing me to ascend to the throne.”

  “Abdicated the throne . . .” Di had mused, trying to beat back the soaring ambition of Diamante, who seemed to want to get to her future with a fearsome desperation. “So technically speaking, you are already king?”

  Alim had shrugged his narrow shoulders and scratched his thin neck awkwardly. “Technically, I suppose so. But it will be months before the Ministry goes through the motions of consulting the Council of Clerics, who will then go through the Islamic Holy Calendar and select a suitable time for the actual ascension. The formalities will take about six months, which is why Rahaan has made the deal with Hilda for that long. Of course, I assume that after four or five months Rahaan will go back to the Min
istry and declare that his marriage has been voided, and therefore there will be no abdication. Yes, four, maybe five months. Rahaan will watch me squirm and sweat for five months, and then he will pull the plug on it, giving me a fine lecture on growth and maturation, responsibility and the real world. Perhaps a reminder to visit a gymnasium. Ya Allah, I love my brother, but sometimes I wonder about his thought processes.”

  “There’s always one crazy in the family, am I right?” Di had said, looking Alim up and down before glancing around his lavish penthouse in Midtown Manhattan. Video games and glossy magazines, posters of comic book heroes and villains, the lingering smell of pizza and Chinese delivery. It really did seem like an overgrown teenager’s place—with a breathtaking view of the New York skyline, of course. “OK, listen, Alim. I came to talk to you because I’m worried about my friend Hilda getting caught up in something bad. But you seem like a decent man, and other than a lot of old pictures of your brother with actresses and supermodels, there aren’t any serious red flags I saw when I googled Rahaan. So I think your brother is being honest in this deal.” She’d shrugged and given him a look as she prepared her sales pitch. “Honest with Hilda, at least. Not with you.”

  Alim had laughed and clapped his hands. “By Allah, my brother! Yes, he is a good man. Your friend is not in any danger, if that is what worries you. But regardless, you said you would be accompanying her when Rahaan brings her to Kolah for a visit, yes?”

  “Actually, that’s what I came to talk to you about,” Di had said. “I—”

  “Say no more. It is the expense you are concerned about? I will have a jet available for you when the time comes. I myself am scheduled to leave for Kolah tomorrow to meet with the Ministry of Elders, so I will not be able to accompany you on the journey. But no matter. You will arrive in Kolah as my guest!”