Second Chance to Wear His Ring

by Hana Sheik

  The truth, he reminded himself. Amal was hiding something. And whatever the secret was, it had inspired his mother to omit just enough to bring him home again.

  He had to know what his reason for returning was if he stood any chance of regaining the fragile and temporary peace of mind he’d had before reuniting with the one woman who truly battered through his defenses.

  The woman he’d once loved with the whole of his being. Amal.

  Apparently, she still had some hold on him.

  Amal arched her head back, her smooth neck bared to him where her veil’s silky material was slack. Her chest rose and fell faster, her tiny puffs of warm air brushing his tense jaw, his face having pushed closer on its own accord. His body was running the show. That couldn’t be a good thing.

  But he needed his answer. And he needed it now, before he did something he seriously regretted.

  Like kissing her.

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve always wanted to write and publish romances, and to be able to do it fills my heart with such joy! It’s not easy, this writing business, but it’s so very worth every second of doing what I love, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

  It took six years of writing a dozen or so romance manuscripts before I finally felt ready to tell the story I was meant to all along.

  My first published Harlequin novel, Second Chance to Wear His Ring, is that story.

  Set in Somaliland and Ethiopia, this second-chance romance sprung to life in my mind as most of my stories do: with a simple what-if. In this case, what if the heroine has amnesia, and the hero with whom she shares a childhood past, and who hasn’t been home in a long while, reunites with her?

  My hero, Mansur, and my heroine, Amal, have grown to mean so much to me. Not only because they look like me, but because I’m getting the chance to share my love for my other home, Somaliland, with you.

  I hope Amal and Mansur’s story touches your heart as it has mine.

  With lots of love,

  Hana

  Second Chance to Wear His Ring

  Hana Sheik

  Hana Sheik falls in love every day reading her favourite romances and writing her own happily-ever-afters. She’s worked various jobs—but never for very long because she’s always wanted to be a romance author. Now she gets to happily live that dream. Born in Somalia, she moved to Ottawa, Canada, at a very young age and still resides there with her family.

  Second Chance to Wear His Ring is Hana Sheik’s debut title for Harlequin.

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  To my family, who love and support me endlessly.

  To the Sassy Scribes: Ann, Ash, Heather, Jade, Jayne, Laura, Melanie, Nico, Suzanne.

  Finally, to Nic Caws, the best editor a newbie author could ask for—thank you for taking a chance on me.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Caribbean Nights with the Tycoon by Andrea Bolter

  CHAPTER ONE

  “MANSUR, I NEED your help.”

  The closing words of his mother’s voicemail had kept Mansur Ali awake on the flight and alert on the bumpy ride from the airport to his childhood home.

  Manny gripped the roof handle, peering out the truck’s dusty, dirt-tracked window. How had he ended up traveling from Pittsburgh to Somaliland in the end, after vowing he wouldn’t? He leaned back into the matted sheepskin car seat cover, knowing exactly how. One missed call from his mother was what had done the trick.

  She had answered his return call, but her explanation had been vague at best, dodgy at worst. Even so, he’d understood that something was wrong. It was enough of a reason to fly home to her.

  Spying the sky-blue gates of his family property, Manny sat up, anticipating he’d get his answer soon, in person.

  The driver, a distant older relative, grinned at Manny. The gaps in his teeth didn’t dim the sunny gesture. “Your mother will be so happy to see you. For days she’s talked about only you.”

  “Yes, it’s been too long,” Manny agreed, his Somali rusty from little use these days.

  Leaning on the horn, the driver waited for the gates to be opened by other staff before he eased the pickup onto the spacious driveway.

  Manny didn’t wait for him to quiet the engine, exiting hastily. Outside, he faced the morning chill. His flight had come in early, though seven a.m. was well past the usual morning hours he kept. He had a self-imposed grueling schedule as CEO of a multimillion-dollar construction and engineering firm, Aetna Builds. Adrenaline kept him upright after zero sleep.

  The whole house hopped with activity. One of his mother’s new maids closed the gates she’d opened for the truck and Manny nearly collided with another unfamiliar young woman, this one carrying a mop and bucket. Soapy water sloshed out, inches from his expensive handmade Italian loafers.

  Though she didn’t know how much the shoes were worth, she stammered an apology for blocking his path.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  She had enough to worry about, with the bucket looking way too heavy for her to carry alone. Besides, those wide, startled eyes of hers suggested she knew who he was. As did her sudden urgency to cover her head with the shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

  Manny redirected his gaze, allowing her privacy. The bespoke three-piece suit gave him away. He hadn’t dressed for his new surroundings. Getting to his mother had been his prime objective. And his mission wasn’t over yet.

  “Is my mother inside?” Manny nudged his chin toward the entrance the woman had staggered from, bearing her load.

  She nodded, still gawking at him.

  Manny thanked her, breezing past in his hurry to see his mother.

  Frankincense perfumed the air, its sweet, thick tendrils curling around him, calling up childhood memories.

  Squinting, he tried to get his bearings, waiting for his vision to adjust. The house had always been dim inside. His mother swore by natural light, despite the electricity working fine. Manny resisted flicking on the lights in the entrance. He crossed the spacious entrance hall to the living room.

  “Mansur.”

  Facing the door, his mother had noticed his entry and now called to him, her eyes as large and disbelieving as the young maid’s. The sound of the truck’s running motor grumbled in with the cool breeze. The door to the veranda was open, as were all the windows in the tastefully furnished living area.

  She shouldn’t look surprised. She had known he was coming. Manny had left a message for her before he’d boarded his private jet. He’d figured she must have heard it as she’d sent the driver to fetch him.

  Then again, she was likely shocked that he had shown up. She hadn’t expected him to heed her summons. And what did that say about him?

  That you’re a failure of a son, maybe?

  He scowled at the thought and fixed his attention on the scene before him.

  His mother stood with the help of a woman who had her back to Manny. He assumed it was another maid. That was the wrong assumption.

  “Amal...” Manny breathed her name. It felt too long since he’d allowed himself to think about her. A whole year, to be exact.

&n
bsp; If he’d known they would cross paths so quickly he would’ve arranged for his mother to meet him elsewhere. Perhaps in his old bedroom. She’d likely furnished it for him, in the hope that he would opt to stay with her rather than check himself into a hotel.

  But it was difficult to think about his accommodation when his mother was approaching him with Amal.

  He flinched as they neared, his instinct roaring at him to flee. His heart, a battering ram, drummed so loud he feared that Amal would hear it. That she would know how easily she continued to affect him.

  Curiosity kept him rooted. But he was seconds from storming out of the house to spend his first day here in a hotel.

  Only the flash of emotional pain in his mother’s wet eyes cooled his indignation. Halima Ahmed Adan didn’t shed tears lightly. Only two instances came to his mind before this: when his father had died last year and when Mansur had announced his plan to leave for America on a college scholarship at the impressionable age of seventeen.

  But she was crying now, her shawl forgotten where she’d left it on the ornately patterned floor cushions.

  “Hooyo,” she said, and the Somali term of endearment wrapped itself around his heart. It meant mother, and by choice he hadn’t had one this past year, for reasons he was still ashamed to contemplate.

  Moved by her tears, Manny stepped into her open arms and sank into her embrace.

  She pressed her mouth to his ear. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” Manny murmured.

  Over his mother’s shoulder, he met Amal’s eyes. Her face free of makeup, her tawny, reddish-brown skin glowed as if freshly scrubbed. She wore a neutral expression. Her midnight-blue silk veil was styled to match her dress. Snug around her chest and curvy hips, its flowing design was meant to discourage the kind of heated thoughts slipping into Manny’s head unbidden.

  Squeezing his mother tighter, Manny eased his hold when she gasped and gave a small laugh. He’d almost forgotten he was hugging her.

  “Forgive me,” Manny mumbled, releasing his mother.

  When his hands dropped to his sides again he flexed his fingers, the lingering feel of her warming his gut and falling over him like a comfort blanket. It was easier to hold on to the grudging anger.

  Noting where his attention was directed, his mother grasped Amal’s hand and pulled her closer. “Have you forgotten Amal?” she asked.

  Like he could forget Amal Khalid.

  She had become almost like one of his family after the tragic loss of her mother.

  Amal and her two younger brothers had been taken in by their kind-hearted grandmother when their father abandoned them. They’d moved in next door as strangers, though that had quickly changed since Manny’s mother and Amal’s grandmother had been close neighbors and good friends. Naturally he’d grown close to Amal, and to her brothers, as well. And, without siblings of his own, Manny had thought of them all as family.

  But that had ended once he’d awakened to his attraction for Amal.

  Then she had broken his heart.

  Mansur’s eye twitched from the strain of holding his composure. Tension thrummed through his body. He wanted to leave, but he’d have to wait. Fleeing this meeting wasn’t an option for him. Besides, his path converging with Amal’s had been bound to happen eventually. Twelve months was a long enough reprieve. Plenty of time for his head and heart to heal. For him to move on.

  “Salaam.” Amal held his gaze, her soft voice accented when she greeted him in English. “Welcome home, Mansur.”

  “Salaam. It’s good to be home.” If only he believed himself.

  Amal’s cocoa-brown eyes assessed him. She wasn’t smiling, her pouty mouth curling as she frowned. Finally, unable to stand the prickling heat of her stare, Manny snapped, “What is it?”

  Amal grimaced, and Manny’s mother sucked in a sharp, warning breath.

  Manny forced a smile, making a second attempt at polite conversation. He could be civil. “How have your brothers been, Amal?”

  “Good.”

  His smile slipped at Amal’s curt response. Curiosity thrumming through him, he wondered aloud, “That’s all?”

  Amal’s sculpted brows swooped down, and her mouth was a long line of displeasure.

  This questioning was bothering her. It shouldn’t. He wasn’t asking anything private. In fact, Manny had kept it light and impersonal on purpose. There was his heart to consider, and he wasn’t allowing it to guide him this time. Not again.

  Not ever again, he vowed.

  Still, his curiosity wouldn’t let this go. Amal was hiding something. And, judging by his mother’s pinched expression, she knew exactly what. He highly suspected that she wouldn’t tell him, though. Both women shared a rapid look, and if he’d been only lightly suspicious before, it only intensified after their furtive glances.

  “Is Abdulkadir still working at the travel agency?” Manny queried, tilting his head. He stared hard at Amal, willing her to crack. “What of Bashir? Is he still out of the city at university?”

  At the mention of her brothers Amal’s gaze flicked to Manny’s mother. He didn’t miss the panic softening her mouth, parting her lips and widening her eyes.

  “Yes, Abdulkadir and Bashir are where you left them,” said his mother.

  “I didn’t ask you, Mother.”

  Manny’s jaw clenched. He paid no heed to his mother’s cool regard. Later, she could scold him all she wanted. For now, he wanted answers. And he wanted them from Amal.

  When Amal didn’t speak, he turned for the door leading out to the veranda. “Follow me,” he told Amal. She visibly bristled, her frown intensifying. But Manny needed some explanation, and he had a sense that Amal would follow him if he started forward.

  Knowing his mother meant to trail them, he said over his shoulder, “I’d like to speak to Amal alone.”

  Something was definitely going on. He needed to find out why he had come to Somaliland again, a year after his promise to return home only on his own terms.

  These weren’t his terms. They weren’t even close.

  Out on the narrow veranda, Amal sidled past him, her eyes squinting and shifty with suspicion, acting as though he meant her harm.

  Stifling his hurt at her reaction, he arranged his mouth into a semblance of a smile. Amal wasn’t buying it. She narrowed her eyes, hugging her arms about her middle.

  “Is there something you’d like to tell me?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing.” She lifted her small chin, staring at him down her pert nose as best as she could when she stood a head shorter.

  Manny might have believed her response, too, if he hadn’t noted the trembling of her bottom lip. She was shaking like a leaf out here, and he guessed only some of it was due to the chill clinging to the late spring morning air.

  “You’re cold,” he observed, unbuttoning his suit jacket.

  He cornered her then, and saw her lips tightening as she peered up at him, all fierce defiance. The parts of Amal’s personality he recognized seemed to be mixed with bits of the new person she’d become in his absence.

  Draping the jacket on her, he smoothed the charcoal-gray herringbone wool over her shoulders. The need to touch her was strong. After all, he’d denied himself for so long. How could one moment of indulgence undo the steel encasing his heart? And they had been friends once. Good friends.

  But you ruined that, didn’t you?

  The thought provoked a sneer from him. If only it were that easy. If only he hadn’t tried to see her as more. It wasn’t enough that he’d lost a whole lot; he had also obliterated their long-standing friendship.

  His comfort now was that he wasn’t alone in wanting this. Right in that moment she mirrored the same stabbing, hot attraction unfolding in him. It knifed him in the gut. Over and over. Exacting and brutal. Leaving him breathless.

 
; His adrenaline was at a shaky high and his head was full of cotton, so that he almost forgot why he’d risked exposing his still pathetically weak heart by invading her space.

  The truth, he reminded himself. Amal was hiding something. And whatever the secret was, it had inspired his mother to say just enough to bring him home again.

  He had to know what the reason for them wanting his return was if he stood any chance of regaining the fragile and temporary peace of mind he’d had before reuniting with the one woman who truly battered through his defenses.

  The woman he’d once loved with the whole of his being. Amal.

  Apparently she still had some hold on him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be demonstrating nearly as much patience with her.

  Amal arched her back, her smooth neck bared to him where her veil’s silky material was slack. Her chest rose and fell fast, and he felt tiny puffs of warm air brushing his tense jaw, his face having pushed closer of its own accord.

  His body was running the show. That couldn’t be a good thing.

  But he needed his answer. And he needed it now. Before he did something he’d seriously regret.

  Like kissing her.

  “Amal.” He gritted her name, hating how the syllables still warmed his blood. “What’s wrong?”

  Amal’s mouth parted, but no sound slipped free. Her eyes shimmered with fear.

  Concerned, he cupped her chin and kept their eyes level. She was going to tell him what had frightened her—because he sensed it had nothing to do with him.

  “It’s her brain.”

  Manny snapped his head to the side, hissing sharply at the sound of his mother’s voice. He’d told her to stay out of it.

  He made an effort to give Amal space now they weren’t alone. They were single adults locked in what might be misconstrued as a lovers’ embrace. Maybe one time he wouldn’t have cared... But now? Now, he most definitely cared.

  Dropping his hand from Amal’s chin as if he were scalded, he gave her space and scrutinized his mother more fully. “What does that mean?”