The Sheikh's Secret Princess (6 page)

They held hands as they meandered around, and the nervousness that Anita had felt when they’d jumped the fence began to fade more and more, until it was all but nonexistent.

And then, with one call from a suspicious security guard, instantly it was back.

They ran, as fast as their feet would carry them, back to where they’d jumped the fence to get in. Anita was afraid, but she couldn’t stop herself from quietly giggling.

Hakim lifted her up and over the fence before she even had the chance to try for herself. She realized now how he had been letting her try before, only to make herself feel better. His strong arms raised her up as though it took no effort at all.

She slid along the tree branch that made entering possible, and then dropped down on the other side, watching Hakim as he did the same.

Then they stood, hearts beating hard in their chests, waiting to hear any sign that the guard had come after them.

When they heard nothing, Anita figured they’d gotten away clean. But the adrenaline of almost getting caught was still pumping through her system. She felt alive, in a way she never had before.

And then she felt Hakim’s arm, the one that had just lifted her so easily, slide around her back, and she felt him leaning into her, and she felt his strong, soft lips on hers.

She felt as though she was melting into him. She couldn’t feel anything in her body except for where she was touching him, and she couldn’t think of anything except for how she had longed for this moment her whole life without even knowing it.

When he drew back, she lay her head against his chest, listening to the way it rumbled when he spoke.

“Will you see me again?”

Her lips curled upward in a smile. “Does my prince command it?”

Her head bounced softly on his chest as he let out a quiet laugh. “Oh, he does. He absolutely does.”

EIGHT

Anita felt like she was floating. The whole next day, she kept thinking that any moment, her elation would begin to wane. But it just stayed the same. Every time she remembered some little detail of the magical night, she would get another little puff of joy, holding her aloft.

She couldn’t focus on anything. Anything she needed to do that needed more than just the most cursory of glances she put off indefinitely. She was on autopilot in her life, her mind absent. Her mind was with Hakim. It was in the past with him, or it was in wondering where he was or what he was doing.

It hardly helped that he was still texting her. He’d quite taken to emoji’s, but wasn’t getting any better at sending normal text messages. They still mostly read like little letters.

And Anita loved them. She loved them more than she wanted to admit to herself.

The only thing that could spoil her happiness was Fadi. He knew something was different in her. And she saw how it hurt him not to be included. He’d tried to ask her, in roundabout ways, but she hadn’t admitted to anything.

Perhaps what made it the hardest was that he didn’t seem to even suspect that it was Hakim that had brought about this change in her. He trusted her completely. He didn’t even seem to imagine that she hadn’t obeyed his commands.

She should tell him, she thought. Whatever it was that had made him distrust Hakim, it was absurd. He would see that, if they met. If she could just get the two of them in the same room together, that would be enough.

There would be an argument, of course, when Fadi found out that she had gone against his wishes. And if that were the case, Anita thought, then she figured she should get it over with sooner rather than later—if for no other reason than to put Fadi out of his misery.

She was thinking about how best she should go about bringing it up when she heard a rattle at the bedroom window. She looked over, wondering if she had imagined it.
Probably just a bird
, she thought, and tried to resume her train of thought. But then there was another sound from the window. Sharper, this time.

Anita smiled. She had recognized the sound as a pebble hitting the glass. It had to be.

She leaned out of the window and looked down over the fire escape. There, as she had hoped, was Hakim. He had a bouquet of flowers in one hand, and Anita recognized them, though she wasn’t quite sure where from.

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a loud whisper. She looked around the alley, half-expecting Fadi to be lurking in the shadows.

“I couldn’t wait to see you!”

“Keep your voice down! He’ll hear you!” She motioned with her hand, as though it weren’t perfectly clear what she was saying.

“What?” he said, at full volume. “Who?”

“Hakim!”

“If you want me to be quiet,” he kept on loudly, “you’re just going to have to come down here and shut me up.”

Anita hesitated. She had no excuse, today. And she had a shift at the restaurant that she was supposed to take later. This would be the first shift in all her years working there that she would miss without warning.

“Unless you don’t want to,” he said, his voice dropping slightly.

The idea that Hakim should think, even for a fraction of a second, that she didn’t want to be with him was harder for Anita to bear than the idea that she would be missed at the restaurant. She was hardly dressed for a date, but she didn’t care. She climbed out the window, blue jeans, T-shirt, sneakers and all, and half-climbed half-slid down the fire-escape.

She realized she was being ridiculous thinking that Hakim’s voice would sound suspicious outside. If anything, the clang of the fire-escape ladder would. But she didn’t care. The moment her feet hit the ground, she was back in his world. And in his world, there was no room for worry.

She reached up and put her hands around his neck, bringing his lips down to where she could kiss them. She kissed him hard at first, with all the desperation of the two days she’d spent doing little but fantasizing about the last time she had kissed him. And then the kiss softened, as she melted again into him.

“Come on,” he said, when they parted slightly. “I want to show you my home.”

He led her to an electric sports car, parked discreetly around the corner.

“I’ve never been in one of these before,” Anita said, and then a thought struck her. “Isn’t it a little bit ironic? You, the oil man, driving this car?”

He shrugged it off as he started the engine. “Honestly, I don’t tend to worry too much about what people have to say about it. This is the car I wanted. I might have a vested interest in the oil industry, but everything ends eventually.”

When they got going, the streets flew by in front of them. Hakim drove like a madman, speeding down the road and screeching to sharp stops, but Anita wasn’t scared. He was driving fast and recklessly, by some standards, but he also seemed so perfectly in control that it was difficult to be afraid.

It did pull her attention, though, so it took her a few seconds to really register what he had said.

“Wait, everything?” she asked, pulling her eyes from the road for a moment.

He corrected himself. “Well, most things. I mean, everything, eventually.”

Anita wanted to argue. She wanted to say that he was wrong. “But things still matter,” she said, pulling her eyes from the road to look at him, trying to gauge his reaction.

“Oh yes, certainly,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply… Look, that’s not what I meant to say. If anything, I think things matter more, because they end. You’ve got to hold onto them while you can.”

The look on his face kept her from looking back at the road for a good long minute. There was a tenderness there, and a kindness. She thought that she would very much like to be held by him.

In almost no time at all, they arrived at their destination.

“Where are we?” Anita asked, even as she looked up at the tall sleek building that could be nothing but apartments.

“Home. Well, home in Houston, anyway.”

Anita was still confused. This didn’t mesh with the idea that she’d had of him as a man who had just flitted in for a few days to see what his underlings had been doing with the business. But she realized, now, that for all the time that they had spent together, and the magic of the evening they had had a few days prior, she still knew very little about him. Their time together had felt too precious to get mired down in the details.

She was too overawed to ask now. She moved to get out of the car, but Hakim reached out a hand to stop her, gently taking hold of her hand and sending a thrill up her arm.

“No, I just wanted you to see if from outside. We’re not parking out here.”

There was just a touch of amusement in his voice, like her idea that they would park and walk inside was just a little bit funny. Anita felt a flash of embarrassment, but it didn’t hang around for long. There were things about her world that he hadn’t taken to naturally, and she’d laughed at him for it. It didn’t for one moment lessen her affection for him.

He clicked a button on a remote Anita hadn’t seen before, and a section of the wall that hadn’t looked like a door slid open.

Hakim drove slowly through the hidden entrance, and at first Anita was confused. This was no garage; there was no further way forward. But then there was a mechanical jolt, and the car started moving upwards.

“This is an elevator?” Anita said, cringing even as the too-obvious observation came out of her mouth. Hakim grinned and nodded.

Before long, the movement stopped, and the wall in front of them opened. Anita saw a single parking spot, and a large, ornate front door. A skylight above told her that they were on the penthouse floor.

She followed him inside, not sure what to expect. A bleak, businesslike space, maybe. Or a soulless, obvious rental.

But instead she saw somewhere homelike, and comfortable. There was the sleek glass she had been expecting, sure, and a commanding view out across the city. But there were also couches that looked built for comfort, and dozens of photos of Hakim with people she assumed were his friends and family.

“You have a lovely apartment,” Anita said. It was the kind of sentence normally said to be polite, but in this case she meant it.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve had this place for years. I was the first buyer in the building. Well, I was kind of involved in building it. Sort of. It’s complicated, and it was a long time ago.”

He dropped his keys on the coffee table, and took off his ever-present suit jacket. Anita followed him into the well-appointed kitchen where he draped it over the back of a barstool.

She felt like the was trespassing. The perfect, manicured space was as alien to her as the moon. Everything in her life had always been a little bit worn in, a little bit out of date. She’d seen pictures of kitchens like this in magazines, but she’d never lingered long on them. She didn’t like to think too much about things she could never have.

But then, wasn’t that what she was doing here? Lingering over her desire for a man it was becoming more and more clear she could never have?

“Please, sit down.”

Hakim’s voice interrupted her train of thought. He’d rolled up his sleeves and looked perfectly at home as he motioned to another barstool for her to sit in. 

She hesitated for a moment, like she thought she wasn’t supposed to, or that she shouldn’t. But she was his guest. He wanted her here. He had chosen her. There was no reason for her to feel ill at ease here except for her own insecurities.

Anita sat down on the barstool and leaned on the countertop.

For his part, Hakim didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. He was too busy digging through a collection of wooden crates that had been sitting on the kitchen island when they first came in.

“I hope you’re hungry,” he said.

“You’re cooking?”

Anita must have sounded as surprised as she felt, because he looked up from his investigation of the crates and smirked at her.

“Is that so surprising?”

“A little,” she admitted. “But at least one of us can cook. I’m useless.”

Now it was Hakim’s turn to be surprised. “After growing up in a restaurant?”

She shrugged. “Fadi has always done the cooking. I think at one point he wanted me to join in, but I just never enjoyed it the way he did.”

Hakim started taking items out of the crates and setting them on the countertop. He responded without looking up. “Has he always been a cook? From a family of cooks?”

“Well, we’ve had the restaurant since I was little.”

Hakim laughed. “Well, I guess I knew that from your name in a heart…”

Anita blushed—he’d seen the engraving after all.

“But before that, I mean. It’s a hard thing to do, to open a restaurant. I’ve looked into it from time to time. The financials are risky. Usually people can only really do it if they’re famous chefs, or have worked in restaurants for ages and know how they work, or if they’ve been successful enough in something else that they’ve got the money to spare.”

Anita was uncomfortable again, but this time for a very different reason. It wasn’t just that she didn’t know; that was embarrassing enough. Explaining to Hakim that she had somehow let Fadi shroud the whole of her early life in such mystery seemed like a bitter pill to swallow. More than that, she had the sense that as angry as Fadi would be to see her with Hakim, he would be that much
more
incensed to have her tell him anything about the life they had made together.

“It’s OK if you don’t want to talk about it,” Hakim was saying, noticing her hesitation. He was looking at her over the now unpacked contents of the crates, piled up on the kitchen island.