by Ella Brooke
If she were being perfectly honest with herself, however, the truth was that it wouldn't have been funny at all. She would have seen it as a failure, and there was a chance that her employer would have seen it as specifically her failure. That was the last thing she could have afforded right now.
As she paced in the foyer of the tiny waiting room, Benny's phone rang again. Her heart in her mouth, she answered it, but when she saw who was calling, she smiled reflexively. She debated with herself whether she should answer the call, but even under the best of circumstances, she would have had a fair amount of time before the prince's plane landed.
"I can't talk long, Sandra," she said as soon as she answered the phone. "Is everything okay?"
Sandra, her voice tiny on the other end of the line, laughed a little. "My goodness, little sister. So bossy since you started your new job. I do believe all of that executive power is going to your head."
"Going straight to my nerves, more like," Benny retorted. "Honestly, if one more thing goes wrong tonight, I'm going to tear out my hair and run to live in a nunnery in France somewhere..."
"You would make a pretty good nun," Sandra jibed. "I mean, I think they call it celibacy rather than simply being too shy to date, but it comes out to the same thing at the end of the day, right?"
"Mean, that was completely mean," Benny said, making a face, but hearing from her big sister always made her feel a little better. She could feel her shoulders sinking from her ears, and she sighed deeply.
"I'm very sorry, Benny," said Sandra, sounding actually a little contrite. "I'll back off."
"Was there a reason you called me, other than making fun of my terminally awful love life? I mean, I know it's funny, but you've actually got enough money to go out and see movies and theater and things like that."
"Ah, right, yes, I did have a reason to call. Look, are we going to be seeing you when we come down to Chicago in two weeks?"
Benny made another face. She almost wished they could go back to speaking about her lack of a love life. It would be far better than telling the sister who had practically raised her that she would be unavailable.
"I really, really want to see you guys, but I don't know what's going to happen here," she hedged. "I don't know what the prince is going to want to do, and I'm not even sure I know where I'm going to be. Knowing this guy, he might decide that it's an amazing idea to light out across the United States on some kind of road trip or something."
"And he's going to want you riding shotgun?"
"Probably? He's old-school, he wants everything run through staff that he trusts, and here on the ground in the United States, that means me. Sandra, I'm really, really sorry. I promise, I'll be available the next time that you guys are down, or maybe after His Royal Highness goes back to Asrac, I can take the train up or something..."
There was a pause where Benny knew for a fact that her sister was wrestling with her disappointment. Sandra was one of the most easy-going people alive, but when she loved someone, she wanted to see them, to reassure herself that they were well and happy. This was the third time she had canceled on Sandra, and right now, Benny felt as low as a snake.
"All right," Sandra said with a sigh. "I know your job is important to you, but Benny, surely if things are that tough, you could take a little loan from us? Paul has said over and over again--"
"No," Benny said, her voice slightly sharp. "We've been over that, Sandra. Just no. Your money is your money, and now that you've got Jodie, you need to make sure it stays your money."
And Paul's darned parents will never let you forget it if you have to bail out your free-loading little sister, she thought grimly. How a pair of abusive, money-grubbing jerks could have produced a man as kind, good and patient as Paul Winthrop was beyond her, but there it was. She refused to be one more thing that they used to browbeat Paul and Sandra.
"All right, all right," Sandra said. "I don't want to have the same arguments over and over again. But please. Will you take a break when you can? Will you make sure that you are healthy and happy so Paul and I can relax about you? Jodie misses her aunt every day, you know."
"Please. Jodie is six months old and barely knows how to focus her eyes yet." Benny snorted. "But I will be careful, sis, I promise. And I'll come up and see you as soon as I can, okay? It'll be great."
"Good. You know I love you, right, sis? All joking aside, we think about you a lot up here."
"Yeah, I know," Benny said, swallowing an unexpected lump in her throat. "I think about you guys tons too. As soon as I can, I'll head up. I promise."
"Good. Love you."
"Love you, too."
Benny hung up the phone, and for one strange and dizzying moment, she wanted nothing more than to call her sister back and tell her no, that she would ditch the job and drive up to see them tonight. The only word she could come up with for the feeling was a kind of homesickness, though she had never lived in her sister's new home up in the north woods of Wisconsin.
I guess it's because a part of me still thinks of Sandra as home, she thought ruefully, and that was certainly true. Sandra was the only home she had, Sandra, Jodie and Paul, and even if she couldn't see them nearly as often as she wanted to, she was fiercely attached to them, and totally devoted. It only made her current absence sting more, but she told herself that it would all be worth it when she could meet them on her own terms, without depending on the support they wanted her to take.
That was what she clung to when she heard the announcement that the private flight was touching down on the dark, slick runway, and that the Prince of Asrac's arrival was imminent. She checked herself in the dark windows, making sure her dark suit was still sharp and her blonde hair hadn't started escaping the pins that she’d used to keep it carefully back in a bun.
If it's not good enough, it'll have to do, she thought, and when the plane touched down on the tarmac and she could see them wheeling out a tall staircase, she grabbed her umbrella and walked out into the storm.
***
I THINK I am going to call this a good omen, Prince Jinan al-Touma thought, gazing out into the lashing rain.
In his own homeland of Asrac, where rainfall was brief, bitter and shallow, this torrent might have been a blessing, but it would also quickly lead to flooding and panic as houses designed to withstand heat and sun buckled under the force of water.
It was another sign that he was no longer at home, and Jinan felt a mixed sense of grief and elation. There was no man in Asrac more devoted to its welfare than he, but he would be the first to say that Asrac was a country that had its flaws. Oil had made it rich, but some experts said it had made it too rich too fast. In his father's day, the wealth had led to corruption, and that corruption had led to a reputation that lasted far longer than his father's regime. Under Jinan's rule of the last seven years, things had improved, but there were too many people who equated the Asraci people with nothing more than violence and broken deals. He had changed things, and if heaven was willing, he would change things further on this trip. There were contacts to be made in Chicago, and after that, he could find out the lay of the land, whether it would be better to venture west to Los Angeles or east to New York City.
He knew he was doing good work for his country, but there was also something in him that was relieved to be away from home. In Asrac, there were expectations, even of a prince, even of a ruling monarch. In the West, things were very different, as he had learned for himself when he was a student at Oxford. His lips curled slightly at the memory of the women who had been fascinated by his dark good looks, his slight accent which had become even slighter over the years, and of course the money he’d had to spend. He tried to be realistic about such things; after all, money was a draw even when accent and looks weren't, but enough of those interactions had felt real that his feelings towards wild Western women were quite fond.
The pilot announced the jet landing, and all over again, he was relieved that he had found such a competent assistant i
n the United States. It was Elli back in Asrac who had hired Ben MacLeod, and though Jinan was not pleased to be without Elli’s competent calm in the United States, he had to admit that the man she’d hired to act in her stead was good at his job.
It was MacLeod who had suggested flying into a private air strip rather than the muddled and tumultuous O'Hare in Chicago, and it was MacLeod who had suggested staying in a small but luxurious townhouse in Evanston rather than in Chicago proper.
"After all," the message had read, "there is something to be said for the comforts of a real home, even if you have access to a penthouse off of Michigan Avenue."
MacLeod had been there every step of the way for the trip's preparation, and Jinan had a suspicion that they were going to get along quite well.
He waited impatiently for the plane to stop and the mobile staircase to be hooked up, and then, ignoring the rain, he stepped out. The sky above him was the color of a deep bruise, and the rain felt cold and good against his face. It was a storm that had foretold the birth of his family dynasty some three hundred years ago, and perhaps now it was telling him that he would conquer in America just as they had conquered in the desert.
He closed his eyes, letting the rain fall on his upturned face for a moment, and then he saw the figure at the base of the staircase, half-obscured by a large black umbrella.
Jinan was a little startled by how slight and short the man was. His words were supremely confident, sly and funny, perhaps a little old-fashioned. However, he had always thought it was a poor idea to judge a man on his looks, and so he descended the staircase, reaching out his hand to grasp his new assistant's.
He blinked with surprise when the hand that reached out to grasp his was slender, pale and distinctly female, and his gaze flew up to meet a pair of bright gray eyes over a charming and enthusiastic smile.
"Welcome to Illinois, Prince Jinan," the young woman said with a grin. "Come on under the umbrella before you soak yourself further. Though honestly, perhaps you should be the one taking the umbrella. If I carry it, you are just going to have to bend double, and that's probably worse than getting wet."
Bemused, he took the umbrella from her, and in doing so, he sheltered them both until they made it to the brightly lit interior of the tiny airport. Once they were inside, the young woman took the umbrella back from him with crisp efficiency and closed it before turning to him again.
"I hope you had a pleasant flight coming," she said. "Once you've caught your breath, we can make our way to the car..."
"Excuse me," he said, making her blink. "But exactly who are you?"
She blinked twice, quickly, giving her a faintly owlish look. She looked young to him, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, which made her some seven years younger than he was. There was something fresh about her, from her milky skin to the gray eyes that seemed to glimmer with fun. Even her blonde hair, scraped back into an unattractively strict bun, made her look more like a child playing in her mother's clothes than an adult.
"I'm Bernadette MacLeod," she said, tilting her head to one side as if it should have been obvious. Jinan scowled at that.
"Then Ben MacLeod is your father or your husband? And he sent you out tonight in his place?"
He would have thought better of Elli's hire than that, and he began to wonder if he would like the man so well after all.
The girl--because it was hard to think of such a slender and nymph-like thing as a full-grown woman--frowned at him.
"There's no Ben MacLeod," she said. "I've been the one corresponding with Elli al-Rayim. She calls me Ben sometimes as a joke, and while my friends and family do call me Benny, my legal name is Bernadette."
He must have still looked dubious because she continued hesitantly.
"If you doubt that I am who I say I am, perhaps you would like to see some ID? Or perhaps to contact Ms. al-Rayim?"
Jinan made a dismissive gesture and a face.
"No, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing she would do," he said, shaking his head. "Let us simply get to the car. It has been a very long flight."
He could imagine Elli laughing at him from her apartment thousands of miles away. She had always said that he underestimated women, and what a laugh it must have been for her to hear him praising "Ben" MacLeod to the skies. It was a good joke, though, and by the time they got to the limousine--a sleek, dark Cadillac that seemed made for the night, he noticed approvingly--he was chuckling slightly.
His laugh must have been a little off, because it made the girl--Benny, apparently--look at him a little oddly.
"Are you all right?" she asked, and there was a wariness to her expression that seemed all the funnier.
"Of course," he said, inclining his head slightly. "It is only that I do think that you are far too pretty to be a Benny. Do you never go by Bernadette?"
To his surprise and fascination, he saw a red blush spread over her cheeks. She looked like a blushing maiden from a ballad, and though his taste ran to experienced women who knew what they wanted, this was exotic enough to be intriguing.
"I don't really ever go by Bernadette," she said with a shrug. "When I was little, it always seemed like such a mouthful, and by the time I got old enough to appreciate it for the dignity, all everyone ever called me was Benny. So I kind of got stuck with it."
"And yet you introduced yourself as Bernadette," he observed, and she made a face like a kitten that was suddenly displeased with its milk.
"Well, I did have hopes for changing things with you a little," she said half-hopefully. "Maybe if I could get off the ground by having you call me Bernadette, it would be easier to convince other people to do so. Do you think you might?"
He laughed a little at her, shaking his head with marked regret.
"I am very sorry, Benny," he drawled. "I am afraid that the first impression has been made, and you are stuck. It will be Benny forever and ever after this."
He laughed at the face she made, and impulsively reached out to squeeze her hand.
"That's mean," she said reproachfully, and he shook his head, looking into those silvery gray eyes.
"I like it," he said softly. "You should like it too, if that's what your friends call you."
He had the pleasure of seeing her blush, something that was no less fascinating the second time, and then she muttered something about calling ahead to make sure the realtor was there to meet them.
As Benny busied herself on the phone, Jinan found himself smiling.
It looked like America was going to be even more exciting than he’d thought.
Chapter Two
Benny knew she was in trouble. She’d suspected it when he’d looked at her like a thundercloud as she introduced herself, and she knew it when he decided that she was Benny rather than Bernadette. But if she were honest with herself, she had known it far sooner than that.
Emblazoned on her mind was the figure of Jinan stepping out of the plane, his dark jacket slung over his shoulder and his charcoal shirt taking the brunt of the water from above. He had looked around casually, as if he were some kind of conquering lord assessing a land for his own needs, and then he had turned his face up to the sky, letting the water pour down over him.
Benny had known that Prince Jinan was attractive. It was impossible to research him without finding some list of most attractive nobles in the world, or records of his affairs with women from all over Europe. She had known plenty of attractive men before, and though she had felt the odd twinge once or twice, nothing in the world compared to what she felt when she saw Prince Jinan al-Touma standing in the rain. It had awakened a longing within her that she’d never thought herself capable of, a strange and sudden urge to reach for him, to touch him. The thought had been so odd that it had shocked her back to her senses, and by the time he made it down to the tarmac, she was mostly recovered.
You're being a silly little goose, as Sandra would say, she told herself. He's just a good looking man, and you have been single so long that your brains fina
lly got scrambled. There's nothing magical or mythical going on here, just your mind and body responding to someone who is very handsome.
Now that they had gotten the issue of the fact that she wasn’t a man out of the way, the prince was entirely cordial. Despite having been on a long flight out of Dubai, he was pleasant enough, if tired, and he followed her into the townhouse they had procured for him. The leasing agent gave him the tour that he had taken her on just a few weeks ago, pointing out the three spacious bedrooms, the enormous kitchen, and the sunken living room, where there was already a fire crackling cheerfully. After Jinan declared that he was pleased with all of it, the leasing agent nodded pleasantly.
"I hope the two of you have a good night," he said as he let himself out, and something about his statement stuck with Benny. There was something distinctly odd about it, and with a shock, she realized that he thought they were staying there together. Like they were a boyfriend and his girlfriend, she thought, but then she realized that the truth was likely much darker.
Like...like a rich man and his mistress!
She was happy that Jinan was too busy looking over the fire to notice her blush again. The worst part was that some of her got a hint of a thrill out of the idea. This did seem like the kind of place where a man as rich as Jinan might keep a lover, pleasant, fancy, rich without being ostentatious. It was accessible, which meant that whenever he came into the city, she would be there...waiting for him...
Oh dear god, you need to let Sandra set you up on one of those blind dates she is always threatening, she thought, shaking her head. She had obviously lost her mind.
"This is a good house," he said finally. "I like it. The neighborhood looks like a good one too, from what I could see through the rain."
She nodded, relieved to be back in her role as assistant and general information post. "Yes, and it's a quick drive into Chicago as well, mostly. The schedule has you resting and entertaining yourself for a day before your meetings in Chicago start, and you'll have a car of your own here by the morning. If you're so inclined, there's also the Metra, which will take you right into the heart of Chicago, if you are not interested in driving."
