by Holly Rayner
They’re not talking about me, Dakota reminded herself. They’re noticing Majeed. He’s famous here too. They’re excited to be hosting royalty, that’s all. They’ve probably been gearing up for this moment since he called to book the reservation.
Majeed stepped up to the desk. “Hello,” he said cordially. “I made a reservation a few hours ago. The name is Majeed bin Ayad.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the overexcited receptionist breathed. She was so worked up that it took her several tries to pull up the correct information on the computer, and Dakota’s nerves settled. She began to feel sympathetic toward the obviously starstruck woman. It must be hard to have royalty come into your place of work, she thought. How would she feel if the President dropped by her office?
Finally, they received their room keys and were sent on their way. The room Majeed had booked was on the highest floor of the building, and as soon as they reached the elevator, all the tension that had built up in the lobby seemed to burst over them.
Dakota moved to kiss Majeed at the same time as he reached for her, and before she knew it, he had her in his arms, up against the wall with her legs around his waist. Her headscarf had been yanked loose—she wasn’t sure which of them had done it—and now hung messily around her neck. Dakota knew she would have a hard time ending the kiss if the elevator stopped to let more people on, but fortunately, it didn’t. They rode up to the ninth floor in a single, smooth, passionate ascent.
They disentangled as the doors slid open and stepped out onto a tiled hallway that had one side exposed to the open air. It was lined with arches that during the day would admit a wealth of sunlight. At night, the path was lit by the soft bulbs she had seen from down on the beach. Majeed led the way to their room and unlocked it, holding the door for Dakota to enter ahead of him.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed, stepping in.
It was a small room, smaller than most hotel rooms she had been in, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Instead of the cookie-cutter, conference room feeling Western hotel rooms gave her, she had walked into an atmosphere she thought she wouldn’t find in any other hotel on earth. The floor in here was tiled, too, but the hallway tile had been replaced with small glass pieces that formed a beautiful mosaic. The bed sat on a raised dais at one end of the room. It was a large four poster, framed with mosquito netting and covered with the softest, cleanest looking white comforter Dakota had ever seen.
The other half of the room was modeled on a traditional Baraqi tea room. There was no television set. Instead, a cluster of non-identical, color coordinated chairs had been artfully arranged around what looked like an antique coffee table. The table had a hand-stitched runner across it, and a series of white teacups had been set across that.
At the far end of the room was a pair of French doors, and Dakota went to these and pulled them open. Beyond the doors was a beautiful patio that curved outward, arcing toward the sea. She stepped out, resting a hand on the bronze railing. She could hear the waves crashing from here, lapping at the shore.
How had she ever left this place? How had she not appreciated the magnificence of it every moment she had lived here? She knew the answer, of course. She had never expected to have it taken away. If she had known her time in Baraq was limited, she would have appreciated it more. She would have done so many things differently.
Majeed stepped out onto the patio behind her. “Beautiful,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
“I meant you.” He bent to kiss the curve of her neck.
She turned in his arms, tilting her lips up to meet his. “Can we stay here forever?”
“I wish we could,” he said.
“Majeed, what are we going to do?”
He lifted her in his arms. “We’re going to make the most of the time we have,” he said. “We’re going to take advantage of every moment we have each other, Dakota. I’m not going to waste another second with you. They’re too precious.”
She nodded, her gaze locked firmly within his.
He carried her to the bed and lowered her gently, bending to kiss her, and began to loosen the scarf that was still knotted around her neck.
This time, there was no argument, there was no resistance. They both sensed that their time was running out and that it was now or never. They both felt the strengthening bond between them and the attraction that had rapidly become too powerful to deny any longer. When Majeed tossed her scarf aside and moved to lift her shirt over her head, Dakota did not stop him. She knew where this was going, and this time she didn’t hesitate.
They fell into each other with a kind of exhausted relief. The toll that their journey had exerted on them, the stress of hiding in Baraq and making sure Dakota wasn’t seen, their mutual worry over what would become of their relationship when they ran out of ways to put off the inevitable—it all disappeared in the blissful pleasure of finally, finally being together in the way they had denied themselves for so long. Dakota forgot how to think. She forgot everything except Majeed.
Finally, satisfied and exhausted, they rolled apart, hands still clinging together. Dakota stared at the ceiling and tried to recover her breath. “We should have done that a long time ago,” she said softly.
“Would it have made a difference, do you think?” Majeed asked.
She turned to look at him. He was wide-eyed, clearly emotional, and she knew he wanted her to say something that would help. The trouble was, there was nothing she could say. Their predicament was impossible.
“I don’t think it would have changed anything,” she said finally. “I loved you before. I love you now. But we could have enjoyed more of each other for a longer time.”
“Maybe that would have made it harder,” Majeed said.
“I don’t think it could be any harder,” Dakota admitted. “I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to you, Majeed. It’s been tormenting me. When you were talking earlier about marrying someone else…that broke my heart.”
He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “I was talking about you,” he said softly. “I can’t picture marrying anybody else. I doubt I ever will.”
Dakota didn’t believe that. Someday, he would move on. He would get over her. But she clung to his hand anyway and allowed his words to ease the pain.
Chapter 22
“Dakota. Dakota, wake up.”
Dakota was drifting lazily through the upper levels of her dreams. She had been on her honeymoon with Majeed, somewhere in the tropics, sunning herself on a beautiful beach with a fruit flavored cocktail in her hand.
In the dream they had been shoulder to shoulder, fingers entwined, and their story had been at its beginning instead of coming to a harsh and unpleasant end. She didn’t want to wake up from the dream. In the light of day, she knew, she and Majeed would have to discuss their future and what to do next, and there was very little hope in that conversation. Better to stay on the beach, where everything was beautiful and filled with possibility.
“Dakota!”
Majeed was shaking her shoulder now, and the movement forced her awake.
“What?” she asked, scowling. The night they’d spent together had been so perfect, so beautiful. Why was he ruining it?
He had already run from her side out to the balcony. She sat up in bed. He was behaving strangely, squatting down and peering through the railing as though trying not to be seen.
“What’s going on?” she asked, climbing out of bed and hurrying to his side. “Is everything okay?”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her down to squat beside him. He pointed, but it was unnecessary. Dakota had already seen them. Police cars filled the parking lot. There were dozens of them. A crowd of onlookers had gathered to see what was going on, and Dakota could see a couple of officers acting as crowd control, forcing them away from the hotel. There was also a news van on site, and a reporter was talking urgently to a camera.
“Oh, no,” Dakota said softly.
“They must have recognized you,”
Majeed said.
“Oh, God. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Majeed breathed. “They might already be on their way up here.”
“They’ll deport me if they catch us,” Dakota said.
“You’ll be lucky if you don’t get arrested,” Majeed said grimly. “You entered the country illegally. And you’re high profile, so the Emir might decide to make an example of you.”
“What could happen?” Dakota’s heart was pounding as if she’d just run a marathon. Why had she insisted on coming back to Baraq? They should have stayed together in the States. Majeed could have extended his stay by a few more days. Any trouble he would have gotten in would only have been with his family. They should never have come here.
This was always temporary, she thought. I should have listened to Dylan and ended it when I had the chance. But even now, faced with arrest and deportation, she couldn’t find it in her to regret anything she had done. Every moment spent with Majeed had been wonderful. She was glad to have had them all.
“You could be sent to prison,” Majeed said. “But I won’t allow that to happen. I promise, Dakota.”
“You won’t be able to do anything about it if they arrest me,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that you’re royalty. You don’t have the power to overrule the Emir if he decides I need to be locked up. And if you try to intervene, you might be arrested. You have to let it happen.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t let them do that. I’ll get us out of here. Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” Dakota said. But as she looked down at the sea of police officers, she couldn’t see how Majeed could hope to get away. The officers had made a perimeter around the outside of the hotel, and the lobby was sure to be packed with them, along with any onlookers who had managed to worm their way in. How could they get out unseen?
“Maybe we should stay here,” she said. “Maybe we should hide in the room, Majeed.”
“No,” he said. “You’re panicking. Breathe. Think. They know what room we’re in.”
“How?”
“The only way the police could have found out you were here is from the receptionists,” Majeed said. “They’re the only ones who saw us, so they must have made the call. And they have a record of which room we booked. It’s only logical that they would have turned that information over to the police, along with our whereabouts.”
“I can’t believe they would do something like that,” Dakota whispered.
“It isn’t real to them,” Majeed said. “We’re just famous people. We’re a scandal in the headlines. And you have to understand, you’re famous around here, but nobody really knows what to make of you. The country fell in love with you when you were going to be their new sheikha, but then all those stories were printed about how you ran out on your own wedding, and you had no respect for Baraqi tradition and culture. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would like to see you embarrassed in the headlines after that.”
“But that isn’t what happened,” Dakota said. “And it is real. I love you. The rest of it is what’s not real. But this, here, in this hotel, was the most real night of my life.”
“I know,” Majeed said, gripping her hands. “Believe me, I feel the same way. But right now—”
He was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Dakota gasped.
Majeed swore. “Quick,” he said. “Get under the bed. All the way back against the wall. Don’t make a sound.”
Dakota scuttled under the bed, too frightened to ask questions. She pressed her back against the wall and tried to quiet her breathing, listening desperately to see what Majeed’s next move would be. She couldn’t imagine how he would get them out of this one. If those were police, if they knew she was up here, it was only a matter of time before they searched under the bed, and then it would all be over.
Majeed now strode across the floor, and Dakota thought his footsteps seemed heavier than usual as if he was trying to make a production of the fact that he was here. He paused beside the bed for a moment and ripped back the comforter so that it was hanging half on and half off the mattress. It probably looked careless, Dakota realized, but in fact he’d covered up her hiding spot. It was still an incredibly flimsy hiding place, and one that would take the police only a moment to figure out, but maybe that moment would be the extra time they needed to make their escape.
Now she heard Majeed opening the door. His voice was louder than it usually was, and Dakota realized he had raised his volume for her benefit. “What are you four doing here?”
Four, she thought. Four officers. He’s telling me they outnumber us, so we can’t hope to simply overcome them. She found she was glad. Sneaking into the country was one thing, but Dakota would rather be arrested and take her chances with the Emir than try to fight her way out of police custody.
“Sorry to bother you, Your Highness,” one of the officers said.
She realized then that Majeed had opened the conversation in English—again, almost certainly for her benefit—so the reply came in English too. But the officer’s tone wasn’t the way people usually spoke to Majeed, Dakota noticed. There was no deference in his voice, and he spoke the honorific almost sarcastically. “We were informed that the occupier of this room might be harboring a fugitive.”
“Well, as you can see, the room’s only harboring me,” Majeed said drily. “Unless you mean to suggest that I am a criminal? In which case, I believe we should summon my father’s attorney before we proceed any further.”
Dakota wasn’t sure whether that had been a good move or not. Majeed was probably used to reminding people of who his father was, and that was a powerful card to play in a desperate circumstance like this. But if the police had been sent here by the Emir, they held the trump card when it came to royalty, and the thought of Sheikh bin Ayad wouldn’t scare them.
“The team at reception claims you checked in last night, accompanied by a young woman,” the officer said.
“That’s correct,” said Majeed. “I was on a date.”
“A date with whom?”
“Well, that’s certainly a very personal question,” Majeed said.
“Was it the American girl, Dakota Lee?”
“What? No. Dakota Lee’s visa was canceled. She went back to America.”
“The receptionist says she saw you two together.”
“The receptionist is mistaken,” Majeed said smoothly. “Perhaps all white Americans simply look the same to her.”
“You were up here with a different white American woman?”
“Yes. I was recently on business in America, and we met there. By a happy coincidence, the young woman works at the company I was doing business with, in its Kezab office. We flew back together and got to know each other better.”
“And where is this young woman now?” the officer asked.
“At work, I presume,” Majeed said. “She left very early.”
“Enough of this,” said a new voice. One of the other police officers, Dakota assumed. He sounded older and harsher than the first. “Search the room.”
Dakota’s breath came rapidly. Here was the moment no amount of smooth-talking would be able to get them out of. A search of the room would expose her almost immediately, and then all they would have to do would be to look at one of the many pictures of her face that were available all over Baraq to know who she was.
And then, suddenly, an ear-splitting ringing sliced through her thoughts, followed a split second later by the hard-pattering noise Dakota associated with sudden rain. What the hell? She shifted the blanket that hung in front of her aside an inch and saw that the tile floor was now wet. What had happened?
The second police officer, the one with the authoritative voice, answered her question. “Fire alarm,” he snapped. “Everybody out now!”
“But what about the girl?” A woman’s voice, this time. A third officer, Dakota suspected.
“If she’s in here, a fire will get her out. We’ll guard th
e exits. Move! Take him with you.”
The voices receded, and Dakota scrambled out from under the bed, the sprinklers embedded in the ceiling immediately soaking her. Was the building really on fire, or was this a false alarm? And where had they taken Majeed? She had no idea what to do next, but she couldn’t go through the lobby. If only there were another way out…
The fire escape. Of course! It came to her as clearly as if Majeed had left written instructions. They had passed a fire escape yesterday on their walk around the exterior hall leading from the elevator to their room. Maybe—just maybe—the officers had left it unguarded.
She ran along the hall, slipping on the wet tile and grabbing the railing to keep herself upright. There was the fire escape. She crouched low, peering between the railings. There were no police cars in sight on this side of the building, and if anyone was down there, she couldn’t see them.
Dakota clambered over the railing and climbed down the fire escape, moving as quietly as she could and hoping that the scream of the alarm from inside would cover any noise she made.
She almost screamed herself, though, when a hand grabbed her arm. She spun around—
It was Majeed. He pressed a finger to his lips and then pulled her close to his chest for a second. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he said. “We have to go. Now.”
“Where are we going?”
He took her hand and pulled her along behind him, directly away from the hotel, not toward the road or the beach but deeper into the sands of the desert. “The house my family owns is only a few kilometers away,” he said. “We can get there on foot.”
“Won’t they look for us there?”
“Yes,” Majeed said, “but we have a head start, and once we arrive we can take the car.”
“There’s a car there?”
“It’s mine,” Majeed said. “I bought it to tinker with. It’s an old sports car. But it runs, and it will get us out of here. We just need to find a place to hide until things die down and we can get back to the plane.”
