The Sheikh’s Second Chance Lover

by Rayner, Holly

  Blaine grinned. “Happy anniversary.”

  “Are you serious?” Brooke had never celebrated an anniversary with a boyfriend, and certainly not anything so minor as one month. She had noted the milestones, at times, but only in her own head.

  “Why not have a celebration?” Blaine asked. “There’s never a bad reason for a party, right?” He hesitated. “Is it too much?”

  “No, it’s great!” She stepped inside. “I just never would have expected anything like this.”

  “Well, I like to keep you guessing.” He took her by the arm and led her out to the balcony. “Have a seat, and I’ll get the wine.”

  “We’re having wine?”

  “Good wine, I think.” He pulled up a bottle from the corner of the balcony, where it had apparently been resting. “I asked your aunt. I don’t know anything about wine. This is supposed to be good with lamb.”

  “We’re having lamb?” Brooke was floored. “I never get lamb! You can’t get it in any restaurants around here.”

  “You’re not kidding. I went to the grocery store in Liberty.”

  “You mean you made it yourself?”

  “You didn’t know I could do that, did you?”

  “Did you know you could do that?” Brooke certainly hadn’t taught it to him. She loved lamb, but had only tried to cook it once, with disastrous results.

  “No,” Blaine admitted. “I found a recipe online. I hope it’s good. It looks like the picture, which bodes well.”

  “I’m sure it’s wonderful,” Brooke assured him. She was impressed enough at the effort that it almost wouldn’t have mattered.

  “On the side we have asparagus and mashed potatoes with garlic,” Blaine said. “And tiramisu for dessert.”

  It was obviously a menu planned specifically for Brooke, composed of her favorite foods. But how had he known? She hadn’t taught him to cook any of those things. Though she couldn’t recall having mentioned them, she knew she must have—how else could he have known? He must have been filing the information away, waiting for an opportunity to surprise her with this.

  Blaine retreated to the kitchen and emerged with two plates, each containing a perfectly cooked piece of lamb, a scoop of mashed potatoes, and several asparagus spears. He placed one in front of Brooke. “Ladies first.”

  Brooke cut into her meat. It came apart easily and was juicy and tender. She savored the first bite, taking a sip of her wine. “This is wonderful. How long have you been planning this?”

  “A few days,” he grinned. “Good surprise?”

  “Wonderful surprise! I’ll have to think of something for you next!” Already she was wondering what she could possibly come up with that would measure up. What were Blaine’s favorite foods? All she could think of was fried chicken, and that wasn’t nearly special enough.

  Blaine set down his wine glass and took her hand. “Brooke, the truth is, I wanted to talk to you about something tonight.”

  “Okay?”

  “The day we met, when I asked you to sculpt me, you mentioned that it would be a unique way of getting to know someone. And the truth is, I think you were exactly right. Getting to know you has been one of the most unique and wonderful experiences of my life, and certainly much more than I ever expected from a little town in Vermont.”

  Brooke blushed. She was unaccustomed to hearing him speak so earnestly. Blaine was like her—he used humor to deflect serious situations. But now he was looking deep into her eyes, holding her hands, and speaking from the heart.

  “I wake up every day happy to be here,” Blaine said. “I leave my window open at night so I can wake up to that Vermont morning smell, because it puts a smile on my face. Brooke, when I left New York, I thought I was going to hate it here. But the truth is that I’ve never been happier. And even though Jasperville is a beautiful town, I don’t think it’s the reason I’m so happy. I think I wake up with a smile on my face because the smell of the air reminds me of you.”

  Brooke glanced down at their linked hands. “This summer has been amazing for me, too,” she admitted. “And it’s been so far outside my expectations. I thought I’d be spending all my time working, maybe occasionally meeting my friends for dinner or a drink, and going to a movie once a week with my mother. And I was happy with that. But the day you moved in, everything changed. I can’t believe now that I almost didn’t take the commission you offered me. I can’t believe I almost let that opportunity pass me by.”

  “You mean the opportunity to see me naked?” He grinned.

  Brooke burst out laughing. “I knew you couldn’t be serious for five minutes!”

  “But I am serious,” he said quickly. “About the rest of it, I mean. I’ve never been so serious, Brooke.”

  “I know.” She squeezed his hands. “You couldn’t have cooked me this meal if you weren’t serious about me. You must have been paying attention to every word I’ve ever said. I don’t remember telling you how much I love asparagus.”

  “You did,” he said. “You were telling me about the birthday dinner you had when you were fourteen, remember? How you tried asparagus for the first time, and you felt so grown up when you realized you loved it? And after that you asked your parents to include it in your dinner the next year—”

  “—but they thought I was joking,” Brooke finished. “I can’t believe you remember. That story wasn’t even about the asparagus. That was a sidebar.”

  “I find you fascinating, Brooke.” Blaine reached across the table and grazed her jawline with the side of his thumb. “I remember everything you tell me.”

  Brooke leaned into his hand and closed her eyes. A moment later she heard a puff of air and the soft warmth of the candle disappeared, and then Blaine was pulling her close. Their lips met across the table, and they rose to their feed in unison, still hand in hand. The warm night breeze blew Brooke’s hair back from her face, and she felt Blaine’s hair tickling her cheek.

  Without breaking the kiss, he sidestepped, taking her with him, away from the table. He backed up against the outside of the apartment building and dropped her hands, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her body against his. One hand traveled up her back, finding its way into her hair. The other moved downward, slowly, temptingly. Brooke could taste the wine on his lips, and when he moaned, she felt the resonance against her own tongue.

  “We should go inside,” she breathed.

  Blaine’s eyes searched hers. “What about dinner?”

  “I’ve had enough.”

  She reached around him, grabbed the sliding door, and shoved it open. Then she pivoted, backing into the apartment, bringing Blaine with her. He came willingly, and Brooke felt powerful. She fully controlled this situation. It was a heady thing.

  Then Blaine grasped her wrists, both in one of his large hands, and pinned them to the wall above her head. Brooke gasped, eyes wide, as he lifted her with his other arm. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Blaine deepened the kiss, still holding her arms, and Brooke surrendered to him. She gasped against his mouth, arched her body against his, and lost track of the world around them.

  Blaine broke away and pressed his forehead into her clavicle. “Brooke.”

  “I know.”

  He stepped back, letting her slide down the wall and putting a few feet of space between them. Brooke did her best to recover her breathing. Was he putting a stop to things?

  She didn’t want to stop.

  “Let’s go away together,” Blaine said. “Just the two of us.”

  Brooke nodded eagerly. “Where should we go?”

  “Let me take you home to Shunayy.”

  “To Shunayy?” Brooke had been expecting him to say New York, or maybe California. “Blaine, that’s halfway around the world. I can’t afford a plane ticket to Shunayy.”

  “You don’t need to. I’ll pay. I told you, I have money.”

  “But I couldn’t let you…”

  “Brooke, please. It would be a privilege.” He stepped slightly cl
oser to her and, as if on cue, her breathing came faster. It was harder to think straight. “I haven’t been home to see my family in a long time, and I’d love to bring you with me.”

  “You want me to meet your family?”

  “I met yours,” Blaine pointed out. “And we got along great. I know they’ll love you as much as I do, Brooke.”

  He loved her?

  “Think about it,” Blaine pressed. “We could leave tomorrow. Twenty-four hours from now, we could be there. It’s not like we have anything holding us back, right? I don’t have a job, and you don’t have a supervisor to report to. We can get away for a few days.”

  Brooke tried to think. It was so hard to say no to him right now. He’d gone to all the trouble of making her this wonderful dinner, and she wanted to give something back to him. And then there was the magnetism between the two of them, the urgency, the feeling that she would do or say anything if it meant he would stop talking and start kissing her again.

  But there was something more, too. She had been listening to Blaine as much as, it seemed, he had been listening to her, and she had never heard him talk about his home country with such longing. She had taken that at face value, assuming he simply preferred the United States and didn’t want to go back. But now here he was, more vulnerable and open than she’d ever seen him, practically begging her to come back home with him.

  Maybe having her along would make the trip a little easier. Maybe whatever had been stopping him from going for all these years could be overcome if she was by his side.

  Maybe he loved her. And maybe she loved him, too.

  And besides, Brooke thought, struggling to be pragmatic in the face of all this emotion, this was a wonderful opportunity to see a part of the world she’d probably never get a chance to visit again. She would be crazy to pass it up. A free airline ticket to Shunayy and a native tour guide? It was sure to be a trip she would remember forever.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Really?” A look of delight spread across Blaine’s face. “Oh, this is so great, Brooke. We’ll get a hotel room in the capital—you’re going to love Shunayy City; it’s so beautiful, especially at night. It’s like a clean version of New York.”

  Brooke laughed. “No roaches?”

  “None. And then we’ll go out to the coast—hey, I can drive us!—and I’ll show you the falls. And you’re going to love the desert. You can see forever.”

  “It sounds beautiful.”

  “It is. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, except for maybe here.”

  Brooke closed the gap between them and kissed him. “I can’t wait. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Thank you for saying yes.”

  She leaned in to kiss him again. The next thing she knew, she was in his arms, and they were moving toward his bedroom. Blaine kicked the door open and fell back onto the bed, pulling Brooke down on top of him, and they began finding their way out of their clothes and into each other.

  10

  Ali

  Ali woke to the early-morning sun making its way in through the slatted blinds. For half a second he winced, reflexively, at the pale light and made as if to roll over and back into sleep, but then he realized there was no need. He wasn’t tired.

  For the past decade, Ali’s celebrations had consisted of staying up far too late, drinking liberally, and surrounding himself with high-energy friends and loud music. Even the more tame parties he had attended, the fundraisers, had been overloaded with free drinks and guests so pleased with themselves for their own charitableness that they had often run much later than intended, causing Ali to find himself stumbling into bed in the wee hours of the morning.

  But last night hadn’t been like that at all. He and Brooke had gone to bed immediately after dinner—before they’d even finished dinner, really. It suddenly occurred to him that the leftovers were probably still out on his balcony, but he was feeling too peaceful to get up and investigate. He would deal with that later.

  They hadn’t gone right to sleep, of course. They had been awake for hours once they’d hit the sheets. Ali was no stranger to encounters with women, but he had never experienced anything like that. Every time it had seemed like they were done, one of them would reach over and pull the other right back in. At one point, Ali had wondered if they would ever stop.

  Eventually, of course, their energy had run dry. Shoulder to shoulder, fingers and legs entangled, they’d stared at the ceiling, occasionally looking over at each other as they recovered. Ali hadn’t been able to stop smiling, and Brooke’s face had radiated with a tired contentment. She’d fallen asleep first, so he’d gotten to watch the way her eyelids drooped and her face relaxed. By the time her breathing became deep and even, Ali had started to lose his own grip on consciousness, and he’d slipped into warm, welcoming dreams.

  It had been the most exhilarating night of his life, but Ali couldn’t imagine he’d been up later than midnight. He glanced at the clock by the side of his bed. It was seven thirty now, and he felt fully alert. That was stunning. A full night of sleep, and here he was, waking up fully refreshed before the sun was even all the way up.

  Beside him, Brooke stirred slightly, and he turned his head to take her in. Her hair was loose, as it so rarely was during the day, fanned out behind her on the pillow. As she’d slept, she had rolled toward him and now lay on her side, one arm draped loosely across his waist. Her foot nudged gently at his. Her eyelids fluttered, and Ali thought she must be dreaming. He hoped they were good dreams.

  It occurred to him to wonder, suddenly, how much of what had happened last night Wellers had been aware of. True to form, his security team had been all but invisible since Ali had moved into this apartment. He knew there were cameras in here (in the main room, but not in the bedroom or the bathroom, thank goodness) and he knew Wellers was living in the apartment right downstairs, but Ali had never spotted a single lens, and the only time he’d seen Wellers had been when the security captain had dropped by to deliver more of his possessions from the house in New York. As for the rest of the security team that was probably here, Ali hadn’t seen them even once. He had to admit, they were good at their job.

  Wellers’ presence, visible or not, was a large part of the reason Ali had chosen to serve dinner out on the balcony last night; not only did it made for a romantic setting, he also thought it far less likely that there was a camera out there. Wellers would know that Brooke had been in the apartment last night, but he knew she was in the apartment most nights.

  Of course, this was the first time she’d stayed over. As soon as they emerged from the bedroom, it would be obvious to whoever was watching the cameras what had happened.

  He wasn’t sure why he was so concerned about this, exactly. It wasn’t as if he wanted to keep Brooke a secret. At least, not entirely so. But right now, what had happened last night felt special enough that he would have liked to keep it between them, just for a while. The idea that somewhere Wellers was sitting and talking to a member of his team about the fact that Ali had fallen in love as if it were nothing more than a detail to be monitored was immensely frustrating.

  To take his mind off the security team, he looked over at Brooke. He longed to wake her. Lying here with her in his arms, he still felt her absence, just because of the fact that they were separated by sleep. He missed her witty conversation, her boldness, the way she seemed to wear every emotion right on the surface, so that he never had any doubt as to what she was feeling. He admired that about her. It was easy to hold your feelings back. Letting other people see them was harder.

  His mother, he thought, would like her.

  His father would like her, too. Brooke had a strong sense of duty that Ali’s father would especially appreciate. Ali would make sure to mention the fact that Brooke had chosen to move home to be with her mother after her father’s death. He thought both of his parents would admire that kind of self-sacrifice. Certainly he admired it.

  After vi
siting with his parents, he would take her out to the lake house his family owned. It had been Ali’s favorite place as a child. From there it was a short drive to the coast, and they could travel out every day to walk on the white sand beaches and look at the falls. Or they would stay at the lake and Ali would take her out on the boat. They could swim off the pier. He could get ingredients at the local store—Arabic foods, thing she wouldn’t have tried cooking with before—and together they could figure out recipes and make dinners. The master bedroom of the house, he recalled, had a whirlpool in it. It would be fun to get Brooke in there.

  He sat up slowly, careful not to disturb Brooke, and started to leave the bed. If they were going to Shunayy, he’d better book tickets as soon as possible. He’d meant to do it last night, but he’d gotten distracted, not that he could regret what had happened. But there was no time to waste now. He started to rise…and fell back as realization washed over him.

  He wasn’t going to Shunayy. Of course he wasn’t going to Shunayy. Nobody would allow him to do that. What on earth had he been thinking?

  Whoever had issued that death threat against him, the one that had started this whole mess, still hadn’t been caught. He knew Wellers would have informed him and allowed him to go back to New York if that had happened. And just as surely as he knew that, he knew the security team wouldn’t let him anywhere near a plane bound for Shunayy while someone there wanted him dead.

  He couldn’t even blame them. It would be insane to go. And if it had been just him, Ali might have been willing to take the risk. After all, his family had received dozens of death threats over the years and no one had been killed. No attempts had ever even been made on anyone’s life. Ali knew Wellers had to take death threats seriously—that was his job—but Ali didn’t take them seriously at all. They were practically meaningless.