by Holly Rayner
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Frowning, Dakota pulled it out. Would this be her aunt with yet another question about the furniture delivery? Dakota appreciated everything Aunt Iris was doing to help her family with the move, but she really had been overbearing about it. She had been calling each member of the family several times a day with questions they couldn’t possibly have answered—what time would things be delivered, who would be making the delivery, how much should she tip them. Dakota decided she wouldn’t answer if this was Aunt Iris. After all, she was boarding a plane soon. If her aunt questioned her about it later, Dakota could always say she had already been in the airport.
But the number wasn’t international. It was a Baraqi number. Dakota hesitated. Should she take it? What if it was a reporter, calling to pester her with questions about the failed wedding or her family’s fall from grace? That was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. She already felt close to tears.
But this could be the last phone call she ever received from Baraq. Her curiosity was too great. Dakota tapped the button to accept the call. “Hello?”
“Dakota?”
Her breath caught in her throat. She knew that voice. “Majeed?”
“Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was afraid I wouldn’t catch you before you left.”
“You almost didn’t,” she said. “I was just about to get in the car for the airport.”
“You have no idea what I went through to make this call,” he said. “I couldn’t use my own phone because my calls are tracked, and my family would have discovered it. I’m banned from speaking to you,” he explained when she didn’t respond. “My father insisted that our whole family close off all contact with yours. He says…well, you can imagine the kinds of things he’s been saying. He’s never been a fan of the Lees, and with everything that’s happened this week, it’s been worse than ever. Your family might as well be a group of supervillains as far as he’s concerned.”
“It’s been the same here,” Dakota said, keeping her voice low so her family wouldn’t overhear. Although there had been no official ban in the Lee house on contacting the bin Ayads, she knew her parents would be highly displeased to find her talking to Majeed. “They have nothing but negative things to say about your family. Everything’s such a disaster. I have no idea how we ended up here. The wedding day started out so wonderfully, and then it all fell apart before I even knew what was going on.”
“I know what you mean,” Majeed said sadly. “You were really beautiful in that dress. I was excited to be marrying you, Dakota.”
“You were?”
“Very much.”
“How did you manage to call me?” she asked. “Surely you’re not at home right now?”
“No,” he said. “I’m at the airplane hangar. You remember that day?”
“When we took your plane out,” Dakota recalled.
“That’s right. There’s a landline phone here, and I’m taking a gamble. I don’t think my family is tracking calls from this line. I think our conversation will be private.”
“Smart,” Dakota said.
She leaned against her bedroom wall and gazed out the window. Her family, evidently tired of waiting, had gone outside and begun loading the luggage into the car. She saw her duffel bag getting placed into the trunk. Dylan glanced up at her window, eyes narrowed, and she wondered if he suspected what she was doing up here. If he did, though, he didn’t say a word to their parents. He resumed loading the car, and Dakota moved away from the window and out of view.
“So why did you go to so much trouble to call me?” she asked, hardly daring to hope.
“I couldn’t just let you leave,” Majeed said. “Not without saying goodbye. Not without seeing you one last time if I could.”
Excitement rushed through Dakota. If she could have chosen one thing to do before leaving Baraq, it would have been, without question, seeing Majeed one last time. But she had never imagined he would want the same. Not after the way he had rushed out of their joint press conference, looking for all the world as if he wanted nothing to do with her. But now, in light of this new information about his family’s ban on speaking to hers, his behavior made more sense. He couldn’t have stopped to discuss their aborted wedding with her, not with all the news cameras on him and his family watching.
But almost immediately, her spirits sank. The car was waiting outside right now, ready to take her to the airport with her family. How was she supposed to see Majeed? It couldn’t be done.
“Well?” he said, and she heard the eagerness in his voice. “Will you see me again?”
“Majeed…” Dakota hesitated. “I don’t see how I can do it. My family is leaving for the airport right now. They’re calling for me to come down to the car, and they aren’t going to delay their departure so I can see you one more time. They think our wedding being canceled was the best thing that could have happened.”
“Can you get away?” Majeed asked.
“What?”
“Can you sneak out?”
“I…I suppose so,” she said, thinking about it. If she took the back door, she could hop the fence and hail a cab from the street that ran behind her house. “But my family will realize I’m gone almost immediately.”
“They don’t know about this place,” Majeed said. “And even if they did, they wouldn’t have security clearance to get in.”
“Do I have security clearance?”
“You should do. I added your name to the list a week before the wedding, and I’m guessing they won’t have taken it off yet. And I’ll radio the gate and let them know to expect you.”
Dakota could feel the adrenaline building in her veins. “We’re really doing this?”
“I have to see you,” Majeed said. “Please. One last time.”
Dakota nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter 16
Cautiously, quietly, Dakota pulled the back door closed behind her. Slipping out of her room and down the stairs had been easy, with her family all preoccupied outside. She knew she had only a few moments, though, before they discovered what she had done. Would they know where to look for her? Majeed was right that the Lees didn’t know about his family’s private hangar, but they did have the bin Ayads’ contact information. With Dakota missing, would her parents think to contact Ubaid bin Ayad and ask if he’d seen her? And would the Sheikh connect Dakota’s absence with his son’s?
The road behind the Lees’ home wasn’t busy with people, so Dakota walked to the corner and hailed a cab without worry of being spotted by reporters. The driver seemed surprised when she told him where she wanted to go, but as he turned to face her, she saw his eyes widen slightly and knew he had recognized her. There were, she thought, advantages to having a famous face.
Dakota tried to enjoy the journey through Kezab—after all, who knew what would happen after this? She wouldn’t need to pass through downtown again if she went straight to the public airport after her meeting with Majeed—but she couldn’t focus. All she could think about was his voice on the phone and the kiss they’d stolen after dinner in her family’s kitchen. She pictured him standing at the altar, waiting for her, on their wedding day. She had been just steps, just moments, away from being his wife. Then it had all been snatched away.
The private hangar came into view. Dakota rustled in her purse, expecting to have to show ID—even if they did know her by sight, this was a very secure area, and surely there was protocol that would prevent the guards from letting her in without documentation. She pulled her driver’s license out of her wallet and looked up at the window, ready to present it.
And there stood Majeed, bending over, peering in the window and grinning at her.
Later, Dakota wouldn’t be able to remember which of them had opened the car door. The next thing she was conscious of was being in his arms, gasping for breath, inhaling the scent of him and feeling the gentle scrape of his stubble against her cheek. He embraced her so t
ightly that her feet left the ground for a moment. “Dakota,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
His arms relaxed slightly, but he didn’t let go of her, and Dakota didn’t let go either. After everything that had happened, it felt amazing to be close to him once again. She closed her eyes and imagined that instead of an airplane hangar they were standing at the altar. The altar she had never quite reached. She imagined their families around them, smiling instead of fighting, and that intricate, beautiful dress that had made her feel like the princess she was about to become.
Majeed rubbed his thumb gently up and down the back of her neck. She relaxed into his touch.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for calling me. I don’t know what I would have done if we hadn’t been able to see each other again.”
“Will your family be angry?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care.” She looked up at him. “I do so much for them. Everything in my life is about taking care of them. So I’m doing one thing for myself before I go.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Majeed said.
Dakota looked up into his eyes. “Majeed, I never got the chance to tell you, but I love you. Our marriage might have been arranged, but I wanted it in the end, and the fact that it didn’t happen…it broke my heart.”
Majeed took her hands in his. “I love you too,” he said softly.
“You…you do?”
“I do. I was planning to tell you on our wedding night, but now, with the way everything turned out…I wish I’d said something sooner. Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe if our families had known how genuine our feelings were, they wouldn’t have done what they did. Maybe our wedding wouldn’t have been perceived by the people as a sham. Maybe the Emir would have forgiven us, and you wouldn’t have had to leave.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
Dakota shook her head firmly. “What happened wasn’t our fault, Majeed. We entered into our marriage plans in good faith. We cared about each other. I love this country. I love you. I was excited about our future together, and I was excited to be joining your family.”
“I felt the same way,” he murmured, bending to kiss her neck. “I still do. I had a bias against you and the rest of the Lees because of things my father had told me, but after getting to know you, I was eager to meet the rest of your family. I could tell by the way you described them how much they meant to you, and if they were anything like you are, I knew I would like them very much.”
Dakota shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I gave them too much credit, then,” she said. “I think I always have. They ruined everything for us. For both of us. How could they have done that?”
She had felt so numb over the past several days that she hadn’t even realized this anger and resentment was within her. Now, suddenly, she could feel it rising, boiling hot and ready to strike. She was glad she’d run out on her family, glad they were probably panicking right now and trying to figure out where she had gone. Let them sweat a little for once in their lives!
Majeed took her hand and led her deeper into the hangar. “Come on,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Dakota squinted. The lights were off in the furthest recesses of the hangar, and she could barely make out the shapes of hulking planes lining the walls. She clung to Majeed’s arm, feeling suddenly nervous.
He stopped before one of the planes. “Remember her?”
“Is this one yours?” Dakota asked, placing a palm on the nose.
“That’s my bird,” Majeed said. “I told you I’d let you fly her again sometime, do you remember?”
Dakota closed her eyes and recalled the date they’d had together, flying over the coast. “I guess we missed our chance.”
“I don’t know about that,” Majeed said, stepping up behind her and lacing his fingers through hers. “She’s fueled up and ready to go. We could be in the air before anyone could stop us.” He bent his head to hers, and she felt his lips against her cheekbone. “We could leave together, Dakota. We could go anywhere in the world. Just you and me. We could leave the politics and the scandals behind us and settle somewhere new, where no one knows who we are. Where no one knows about the Lees and the bin Ayads and the misfire of a wedding that enraged a nation. We could just be Majeed and Dakota, young newlyweds in the south of France. Or in Fiji or Italy…even in America, if you’d like. It’s big enough, and I’m sure we could manage to disappear.”
Dakota leaned back into his sturdy warmth. It sounded so tempting. She could board this plane with him, right here, right now, and fly away from all her troubles. “I don’t have my luggage,” she said, turning her head to kiss him.
“We can buy whatever you need. We can replace it.” He spoke between kisses, clearly as hungry for her as she was for him. He turned her in his arms, and suddenly her back was to the plane, and her eyes and his were locked. “I have money. I’ll get us a little house, all the clothes you need, everything to live comfortably.”
He kissed her deeply, locking her hands in his, pressing her back against the body of the plane. “Say yes,” he murmured into her mouth, and she understood that none of this had been planned, that he had asked her to come away spontaneously upon seeing her. “Let’s get out of here together. We’ll build a new life. Say you’ll come with me.”
Dakota opened her mouth, feeling her answer beginning to form on her lips…
Her phone rang.
“Don’t answer it,’ Majeed said.
She slid a hand into her pocket and pulled it out. “It’s my mother.”
“Let her leave a message…”
But Dakota couldn’t do it. In spite of all her anger, all her resentment, this was still her mother. She accepted the call.
“Mom?”
“Dakota! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m…I had to take care of something before we left.” She couldn’t look at Majeed, but she felt his body deflate against hers. “I’ll meet you at the airport, okay? I’m already on my way. Just bring my bag.”
“Okay, Dakota. But no more surprises, right? You’ll be there?”
“I’ll be there,” she said, feeling her heart sink toward her stomach.
When she hung up the phone, Majeed was watching her sadly. “You meant it, didn’t you?” he asked. “You’re really going to go.”
“I can’t let you do this,” she said. “You can’t abandon your country to be with me.”
“The people of Baraq hate me. They think I don’t respect their traditions.”
“They’re just angry. It will pass. You are their tradition, Majeed. Your family. Your titles. You have to be here to carry that on. If we run away together, our whole relationship will be based on deceit and destruction.” She swallowed hard, unable to quite believe what she was saying. “I wish there was another way. I wish we didn’t have to end this. But I don’t know what else to do.”
He pulled her close. She knew instinctively that it would be the last time. “And to think I used to say Americans had no respect for other cultures.”
“I love you.”
“Maybe we can see each other again,” Majeed said. “I can call you. I can find a way to do that. And maybe someday, on a trip to the States…”
It seemed so unlikely that Dakota hated to pin her hopes on it. But it was something. “Maybe,” she agreed.
Majeed bent to kiss her one last time. Dakota held on, memorizing the strength of his shoulders and the softness of his lips. When they parted, she turned immediately and walked away, unable to look back so Majeed wouldn’t see the tears streaming down her face, out the door of the hangar and into the bright and searing sunlight.
Chapter 17
Two Weeks Later
Seattle was like another world after five years living in Baraq.
For one thing, Dakota lived on her own now. It was both a blessing and a curse. She could set the thermostat to whatever temperature
she liked without worrying about her father’s wrath. She could watch anything she wanted on TV without Dylan complaining about it, and she could eat an entire pint of ice cream with no snide comments from her mother about the number of calories involved.
In many ways, being on her own was like a dream. Dakota had even adopted a puppy, something she had always wanted to do but hadn’t been able to when she’d lived with roommates or family who objected. The dog was a little terrier named Ghost, and Dakota had spent many happy evenings curled up on the couch with him.
But even her new furry friend couldn’t fill the hole in her heart that Majeed had left, and living alone only exacerbated the ache of his absence. Although she had only been back in the States for two weeks, Dakota felt lonelier than she ever had in her life.
“You should get in contact with some of your old friends,” her mother had suggested. Dakota had considered it. But the truth of the matter was that she had nothing in common with them anymore. Dakota’s college friends were in business, and her own business prospects looked grim at the moment. LeeWay Corp had downsized significantly since the sale of its largest office to a third party in Baraq, and Dakota was currently out of a job. She was living comfortably on her savings, but it wasn’t the life she’d dreamed of when she’d graduated from college.
Those of her friends who didn’t occupy high ranking business positions, meanwhile, were starting families. Dakota’s social media accounts were glutted with pictures of adorable and indistinguishable babies. Dakota didn’t think she’d find much to talk about with these new parents—if anything, their newfound happiness would remind her more pointedly of how badly everything had gone with Majeed. She had been seconds away from her own happily ever after, and now she was here in the States playing house in a lonely apartment. It was like waking up from the best dream ever to discover that none of it had been real.
Ghost came trotting into the living room and put his paws up on her knees.
