Sheikh's Marriage of Convenience

by Ella Brooke

  After she left the flat in Paris, she hadn’t let any grass grow under her feet. Danielle had felt that if she didn’t keep moving, she would simply put down roots, a monument to sadness and grief. After spending a night in a dull little motel, she had found a train to Amsterdam nearly at random. All she knew was that a fair number of her colleagues had found good work there and that it was some distance away from Paris.

  Within days of entering the city, just when she was beginning to worry about her savings drying up, she ended up landing a job at Jannsen & Foley, translating French documents into English. It was far from exciting work, but it was steady and stable, two things for which she was very, very grateful.

  If she kept busy, if she made sure that she was either working hard on translations or walking in one of the many beautiful parks that the city of Amsterdam contained, she didn’t have to think about Faris. If she kept moving, like a shark, she wouldn’t fall into the despair that sometimes felt as if it were choking her.

  The problem was that she had to sleep sometimes, and when she did, her dreams were full of him. It would have been bad enough if they were nightmares, ones where he shouted terrible things at her and mocked her mercilessly, or even ones where he left. She had had a few of those.

  No, the tragedy was that those dreams were all happy ones. They would be walking down the boulevards of Paris, or perhaps they were passing time in one of the delicious bistros in Dubai. Sometimes they explored towns that she had no name for that he knew like the back of his hand, and sometimes, they were simply holding each other in front of a roaring fire. In her dreams, she was so happy, and waking up every morning was like reliving the heartbreak all over again.

  It was getting better, though. The pain was dulled, and tonight, she had even managed to go out with her coworkers.

  They were only into the first beer at the bar when she realized sadly that she had nothing in common with them. This wasn’t a new thought. Whenever she had gone out with people before, she had felt like an elderly chaperone, one who didn’t care to drink, couldn’t dance, and was a simple, stolid, awkward lump in the middle of all the carousing.

  Danielle simply would have made her excuses and left, but Katie had trapped her in a booth and parked John right next to her. Getting through would have meant pushing past John and another coworker on his other side, and right now, she wasn’t quite up to that yet.

  “So no one really knows much about you,” John said softly, and she started to brush him off with a light comment, but he continued.

  “—but I bet I do.”

  Danielle looked up at him, startled. Was there any way he knew about her Faris?

  “You want everyone to think that you’re such a good girl, but I bet you’re not,” he said, and she noticed that he was already slurring his words. One beer wasn’t enough to make a man slur like that, and with a bit of distaste, she realized that he had likely started his drinking early.

  “Well, that’s an interesting thing to say,” she said, getting ready to stand up and push by, no matter how rude it was.

  “I’ll bet you know all about interesting,” he leered. “I mean, come on, babe, we’re in Amsterdam, city of sin. How about we go find one of those classy rooms they rent here, and you can show me how wild you really are?”

  Danielle had had enough. She might be quiet, but she was no one’s pushover, not anymore. She supposed she had Faris to thank for that. With a growl, she pushed John away, and in surprise he moved, bumping out their other seatmate as well.

  “Hey, what did I say?” he protested. “I was just having some fun.”

  “Have some fun with someone else,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m leaving.”

  She could hear Katie calling her back, but she kept going. Suddenly the world felt too raw and too ugly. Even if it was a lie, she longed for the soft colors and romance of Paris again.

  As Danielle walked back to her flat, however, she knew that it was not Paris she missed, but instead what she had had with Faris. She supposed that at some point, she would need to learn to love again, to find someone she could care about, but whenever she thought about it, she shied away.

  Danielle tried to tell herself that she was simply recovering from her tumultuous time with Faris, but at the end of the day, she knew that at best, that was a half-truth. The reality of it was that she was still hoping that somehow, he might recover from the madness that had driven them apart. That somehow, he might return to her.

  Her hope was a powerful thing, but day by day, it guttered, and she knew that one day, she would look up and it would be entirely gone.

  *

  The secretary ran crying from the office, and Faris ran all ten fingers through his hair, breathing hard. Now that the initial tide of rage was over, he could feel the guilt set in. If he were being honest with himself, he had acted like a monster, and he knew it.

  Ahmed poked his head into Faris’s office, a quizzical expression on his face.

  “Did you seriously lose another one?” he asked, and Faris had to nod.

  He slumped down into his desk chair as his friend entered, closing the door behind him.

  “I came by to offer you some shwarma that I picked up, but I’m not sure a man who somehow manages to lose six secretaries in three months really deserves it.”

  Faris growled halfheartedly at his friend, but he wasn’t sure he was wrong.

  “She didn’t hire a sign-language interpreter for the children’s theater performance that the trust fund organizes,” he said by way of explanation.

  Ahmed looked at him skeptically.

  “Did you tell her to?”

  “When she burst into tears and fled the scene, I realized that the answer is no, I did not. No matter. I’ll make sure that she gets the same payout that the others do and have the agency send another one this afternoon.”

  Ahmed sighed and despite his words pulled out the wax paper packets of rich carved meat served on thick fluffy rounds of grilled bread. The smell alone was tantalizing, but when it was open in front of him, Faris didn’t have the heart to do more than to take a few bites. Ahmed eyed him with concern, and Faris ignored him. He had suffered through more than a few of these talks in the last month and he was in no mood to listen to another. However, when Ahmed spoke, Faris didn’t expect it at all.

  “So is it worth it?”

  Faris glared at him.

  “Is what worth it?” he snapped.

  “Is her betrayal, as you put it, worth the amount of grief you are going through right now?”

  “I am not grieving, I am furious,” Faris retorted. “She betrayed my trust, she went behind my back, she lied to me…”

  Ahmed waved his diatribe away. After all, he had heard it before.

  “All right. So she did. Now what? Are you simply going to rage about it the rest of your life, turning into a hermit high up in your office?”

  “She acted in a reprehensible manner…”

  “Of course she did. Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did she act like that? It sounded like you two were well matched. Why would she throw that away?”

  “Because she is a con artist who lives off fleecing others. She thought she had a good thing with me, and then she realizes that Seif could pay her off as well.”

  “Hmm. You told me that she was smart, really smart. If she has a good thing going with you, wouldn’t she protect it?”

  “I know what you are trying to do,” Faris snarled. “It isn’t going to work…”

  Ahmed shrugged.

  “Believe me, I have been your friend for years, and I know how stubborn you are. However, now that you have thoroughly pushed that food around on your plate without enjoying any of it, I need to take my leave. I do want to leave you with one thought, though: if she acted terribly, why did she feel the need to do so? Can you forgive her?”

  Ahmed slipped out the door, which was likely a good thing, because if he had stayed, there was a chance that F
aris would have lost his temper with his friend completely.

  After Ahmed left, he knew that he should get back to work, but instead he simply sat at his desk, staring off into space. He had been doing that a lot lately, to the point where he had started to wonder if there was something wrong with him physically. A visit from his physician had proved that there was not. The man gently suggested psychiatric help, but Faris had ordered him out.

  When he got right down to the brass tacks of it, he knew what was wrong; more importantly, he knew what was missing. Whenever he turned around, he expected to see her, with her long flowing black hair, her wide gray eyes, and her slow and stunning smile.

  At this point, he was almost ready to take her back no matter what she had done if she could only remove the grief that lived in his heart.

  Of course, the problem was that even if he got her back, even if he found a way to overlook what came before, there would always be a weight that sat on his chest when he looked at her. He would always know that she had betrayed him, and that grief would continue.

  At the beginning, Faris had tried to go out, to meet other women. Some of them caught his attention for a few moments, most did not, but even with women who were absurdly beautiful, sharp as swords, and incredibly charismatic, he could muster up no more than a brief moment of conversation. Inevitably, he would start thinking of a pair of wide gray eyes again, and then it would be done.

  “I need to get on with my life,” Faris said out loud.

  Perhaps it was time to get married. He was certainly old enough; the gossip magazines had been speculating on it for quite some time. He could find some suitable girl who wanted to be sheikha. Perhaps children would be enough of a distraction that he could forget her.

  Though he might have wished to stay at the office all night, everyone else was leaving, and soon enough, even the people he needed to speak to would be on their way out. He sighed, looking grimly at another night on his own, but just as he was getting out the door, his phone rang.

  With a sense of relief at the idea that he could put off filling his evening with thoughts of Danielle for at least a little longer, he answered the phone.

  “This is Sheikh Faris…”

  “Sheikh Faris, I am pleased to catch you. I understand that it is quite late in Aswar.”

  It took Faris a moment to place the voice.

  “Marais?” he asked in disbelief. The man’s voice sounded much looser and easier than it had the last time they had spoken.

  “Yes, I am flattered you remember me. Do you have a moment to speak with me?”

  Faris almost said no. He could have asked the man what he wanted after he had chosen Kamul as the site for the resort. Instead, curiosity got the better of him.

  “Make it fast,” he said.

  “I will do my best,” said Marais, a slight smile in his tone. “To make a very long story shorter but really no less ugly, one of the prime investors was being blackmailed by the sheikh of Kamul.”

  Faris blinked.

  “You’re telling me that Seif was blackmailing one of your investors?

  “Yes. It finally all came out after that investor had a nervous breakdown in the middle of one of the first board meetings. He has been pushed from the concern as well, and the other investors decided unanimously to drop negotiations with Kamul and to return to the original plans to build in Aswar, that is, if you are still willing.”

  “So… Aswar’s bid was not outclassed by Kamul’s bid?”

  Marais made a noise that was surely too polite to be a snort.

  “If it tells you anything, Sheikh Faris, Kamul was never invited to actually make a bid at all. You can imagine how much I enjoyed calling you to turn down the bid they had all initially loved.”

  Faris’s mind spun. If that was true, then it meant that Danielle was completely innocent. She had never turned any documents over to Seif at all. All of the things he had said to her…

  He shook his head, finally realizing that Marais was still speaking.

  “And of course, if you could meet with the investors as soon as possible, there are contracts to sign, and if possible, building to start immediately…”

  “I am going to need a few days,” Faris said bluntly.

  “Really?” Marais asked, for the first time shocked. “Sheikh Faris, this is an enormous deal…”

  “And if Aswar really is the best choice, then the investors will allow me three days to get my affairs in order after allowing one in their number to be blackmailed by an idiot.”

  “I will relay your command to the investors,” Marais said. “But just for my own curiosity, what in the world do you need to do?”

  Faris was already moving, shoving his jacket on and racing down to the elevator. He needed to mobilize a private investigator, speak to some state departments, and contact Interpol if need be.

  “I am going to fix this mess that I created,” he said and hung up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Things had been a little tense at work after her outburst at John. John was going around like a puppy with his tail tucked between his legs, and Katie had stopped coming by Danielle’s desk at all. On one hand, Danielle was relieved. She didn’t really want to talk to much of anyone right this moment, and the idea of going out to another loud bar night was terrible.

  On the other hand, the incident had revealed to her exactly how lonely she was and how very vulnerable she was to the whims of a group at large.

  She had finished another pile of work, receiving praise from her supervisor, but Danielle could see the animosity from her coworkers. She was too good at her job to be ignored, and since she was so aloof during office hours, she had won no allies.

  Maybe it’s time for me to get moving, she thought. Maybe I need a new language, a new place, a new challenge.

  Even as she thought about it, however, she wondered if it would simply be exactly the same. Would she spend the rest of her life hopping from job to job, unable to make friends and always looking backward? The excitement at another city simply made her feel tired, and sighing softly, she decided to shelve the idea. Right now, Amsterdam wasn’t terrible at all. She could do worse than to spend a few more months there.

  Danielle was just getting ready to dive back into her work when her supervisor came and tapped her on the shoulder. When she looked up, she noticed with some alarm that the man had a worried look on his face.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, and he shook off her concern irritably.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said dismissively. “But I have what might be a very strange job for you.”

  “I translate foreign court documents for you, Mr. Jannsen. I doubt I could do much with a job that you consider strange…”

  He shook his head.

  “I know you know your job better than I do, certainly, but you are the only person for this request.”

  For some reason, alarm bells were beginning to go off in her head, and she turned to face him fully.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, and he sighed.

  “One of our foreign investors has checked into Amsterdam for the first time in ages,” he said. “They had some questions about the work that you do for us, and they want you to come translate a piece of something or other for them at their hotel. They were rather unclear.”

  “Do… do they think I do not do an adequate job?” she asked in disbelief. “Is this some kind of test?”

  Her manager looked a little startled.

  “Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. I think they are very impressed with what you had to offer them, and they want you to translate something especially for them. At least, that was what I gathered from the situation.

  “I see,” she said. There was something suspicious about the whole affair, but Mr. Jannsen was already moving.

  “Come on, power down your workstation and come with me. There is a company car to take you where you need to go.”

  Blushing a little, Danielle could feel the eyes
of her coworkers on her. There would be plenty in the gossip mill already, and there would be more if she decided to make a bigger scene.

  “Of course,” she said reluctantly, and she started to gather her things.

  *

  The company car took her to a tall and elegant hotel, one that she knew had once been the residence of a Renaissance nobleman. It was a gorgeous building, and despite her trepidation, she couldn’t resist looking at the stained glass and mosaic stone floors with awe.

  Maybe this means I am getting a little better, she thought wryly.

  The front desk had a bellboy escort her up to the fourth floor, where the mystery client had apparently taken up residence.

  At the door, as she was poised to knock, the bellboy handed her an old-fashioned key.

  “This is for you, miss,” he said politely. “Our guest said for you to go in and to make yourself comfortable.”

  She frowned.

  “I’m here to do some translation work,” she said, and the bellboy nodded politely. She remembered belatedly that she was in Amsterdam, and there was a chance that the bellboy believed she was the mystery client’s paid entertainment.

  She blushed a little at that but straightened her shoulders. She knew that she was nothing of the sort, at least, and if the client thought any different, she would have to teach him otherwise.

  She let herself into the apartment, letting the door click locked behind her, and she looked around in curiosity.

  The room she entered was decorated in Renaissance splendor, the mullioned windows catching the last of the day’s sunlight, the rugs rich and thick under her feet and classical paintings on the walls. There was a small table next to the windows with a sheaf of paper on it, and Danielle wondered if that was what she was here for. She drifted closer to it, but before she could actually look to see what it said, a door opened behind her.

  “Hello, Danielle,” Faris said softly.

  Gasping, she spun on her heel, and if her ears didn’t believe themselves, her eyes barely could either. This was the man that had haunted her dreams for almost a quarter of a year, the man who had somehow ripped out her heart and left her bleeding. He entered the room quietly, and despite the desperate surge of emotions in her, she couldn’t help but long for him.