The Sheikh's Accidental Bride (4 page)

FIVE

What she’d remember about that night, far and beyond everything else, was how precious every moment felt. It was all impossible; everything she was experiencing wasn’t hers. She was in this invisible bubble that would burst any moment, but until a bubble bursts, is there anything more peaceful?

They lay on the sun loungers, looking up at the night sky. Summer in the city is miserable on the streets, but up on the roof…

Nadya thought she could get used to the sound of his laugh. It was unique – and after only an hour she thought she could recognize that rising and falling pattern anywhere.

And maybe she would, she thought. Maybe she’d hear it one day, from the other side of some barrier. Maybe she’d hear it floating up from the seats by the stage up to where she was seated in the nosebleeds.

“What’s the matter, Nadya? You’ve gotten sad all of a sudden.”

He touched her hand for the first time, grounding her in the present moment. The one where they were happy, and together. Nadya thought she’d best enjoy it while she could.

“Nothing is the matter. Absolutely nothing at all.”

“I’m glad,” he said. She’d spoken softly, and so did he. The quiet volume held them close to each other, though they were just far away enough so as not to be touching except for his hand on hers.

“Do you really think that?” he asked, as though expecting her to read his mind and know what he meant. The expectation of that closeness – so close that she should know the very thoughts in his mind – delighted her.

“Do I really think what?” She kept her voice low, so it could barely be heard over the distant din of the city, dampened by their dizzying height.

“Do you really think this isn’t brave?”

She turned her head, that had been directed towards him, and looked upwards instead at the stars. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve never been able to decide whether it’s brave or stupid marrying anyone at all. I guess whichever one it is, marrying them without having met them is just more so.”

“Foolish?” he asked. It wasn’t harsh, only questioning. But she didn’t answer, so he continued. “I suppose it’s all back to the same thing,” he said. “They’d never let go of you.”

Again, he didn’t say it harshly, but Nadya still felt the sting of it.

“I suppose you’re older,” she said. “Everyone you know is married. But there’s still hope for most of my friends.”

Her attempt at humor felt hollow. Salman didn’t laugh, and she didn’t either.

“Do you know many people that aren’t married?” she asked. She turned her face back towards him, and saw that he had never looked away.

“One of my sisters isn’t,” he said. “But most of them are.”

“And are they happy?” Nadya asked, not realizing until the words were out of her mouth that what she really wanted to know was if her own sister was happy. It was a question she’d never asked herself.

“The ones that are, or the one that isn’t? Oh, I guess the answer is the same with either. They don’t tell me how they feel.”

He seemed sad as he said it, and Nadya felt a stab of guilt, though she couldn’t put her finger on why.

They turned the conversation to lighter topics. She asked him about his sisters, and he went on and on about them. He wasn’t a shy man with his emotions, she realized. It was refreshing, after the last man she’d dated, and of course, she made the mistake of telling Salman that, after which he wouldn’t let the subject go.

“So then, I shouldn’t be jealous?” he asked, the tone in his voice making it clear that jealousy was the furthest thing from his mind.

Nadya felt like she was being teased, but she wasn’t sure quite why. “He was a perfectly nice man,” she said, defensively.

“Was?” he asked. “Did you kill him?”

“Is!” she said. “Is! Well… probably is. I’m not exactly sure, but I heard from someone that he’s a bit more bitter, now.”

“Oh!” he said, crowing as though he’d made a great discovery. “You ruined him! How does it feel, to know that a man is forever damaged because of you?”

She was blushing. “Oh, stop!” she said, raising her voice over his gleeful one. “Let’s be real, he was probably a little damaged anyway.”

“Well, I mean, everyone’s a little bit damaged, aren’t they?” he said. The wine seemed to be going to his head.

“Yes, that’s very deep,” she said, teasing.

“Oh, shut up.”

Nadya smiled outwardly, though his words, said jokingly, stuck with her. The other Nadya had never come. But she would.

Had she actually ruined everything?

They talked and talked, making less and less sense with every hour, the way these things often go. The flight and the excitement of the day began to catch up to Nadya. Her eyelids began to droop, and real yawns, rather than put-on ones, began overtaking her.

For Salman’s part, he didn’t look tired at all. It seemed to be more the wine and the spirit of the night taking his sense from him than the late hour. When she asked him about it he feigned shame.

“Ah, well, I was afraid you would find this out about me sooner or later. I am, and always have been, a night owl.”

Nadya laughed the little giggle that only the very tired or the very drunk can manage. All tight, high knots in her chest coming unraveled one after the other and shaking her as they went.

“Do you think you can possibly still marry me? Even knowing this? Even knowing that
this
is the life you’d be in for?”

“Yes,” Nadya said, quietly and mostly to herself.

They could see each other quite well in the light from the stars and the light from the city.

“Good to know,” he said.

They talked more about silly, inconsequential things. It was the kind of talk where one subject just spirals into another, and the lines between them get blurred to the point that what they’d discussed wouldn’t make any sense in the morning, but in the moment it all seemed brilliant. Nadya felt herself slipping away.

She awoke in his arms. She’d hit her foot on a chair as she passed it, and while it didn’t hurt, it had roused her just enough to feel him carrying her to her room. She didn’t let on, though. She didn’t want to walk. She could feel his heartbeat, and she didn’t want to lose it.

He brought her through the hallways that had been golden earlier. They were silver, now, from the moonlight coming through the skylights. Her room itself was in a suite of its own, within the penthouse suite, separated by a pair of grand double-doors that he had trouble getting open while still carrying her. They were huge, carved wooden monstrosities. Detailed enough that they had to be antiques from somewhere. Reclaimed, and refinished, removed from some doomed church or crumbling mansion and hidden away here for the ultra-rich to cherish. They were valuable, in every sense. But Nadya would be sealed behind them, away from him, and she resented them for it.

She smiled at the effort it took him to try and get them open, and then smiled at him pretending not to notice that she had woken up. She tried to keep her eyes closed as he brought her into her suite-within-a-suite, but it was hard to resist. She felt like a child on Christmas eve, trying to resist looking at the corner of a present where the wrapping paper had ripped off. She peeked glances, and saw the same high ceilings, the same reclaimed wood floors. The same skylights above.

The windows looked frosted over, though it was hard to tell from just small glances. What she
could
tell about them was that they were huge – it was like this room was a peninsula out into the street. There were windows on three sides, and the somewhat dulled lights of the city flew across everything.

The bed was another antique. A four-poster affair. It must have belonged to someone famous or influential, Nadya suspected. This place was like that. He laid her down gently, and then paused for a moment. He knew she was awake. He must have. It felt like he was hovering, resisting the temptation to break the shared illusion they found themselves in and kiss her.

But then he slipped away. He paused again by the door, she saw out the thin slit of her barely open eye. Then he tapped something on the wall, and the lights of the silver moon and the city coming through the window were all instantly gone.

The darkness was unnerving. Good for sleeping, she supposed, but unnerving all the same. When she heard his footsteps departing, she slid out of the bed and carefully maneuvered in the dark towards the place she’d seen him tap.

It looked like a touchpad on a laptop, built into the wall. She hit it once, and suddenly all of the glass was completely clear. She could see the building across from her windows in perfect relief – she could even make out a woman watching TV in her apartment.

She touched the pad again, and the room was once more pitch black. She needed somewhere in the middle. She moved her fingertips lightly across the touchpad, and was glad to get the desired result. Customizable. This was what it was to be rich. It wasn’t just about having everything you wanted, it was about having everything you wanted, exactly how you wanted it.

She picked a setting that seemed best, and looked around the room in the dim light. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until her eyes ran across it. Then there it was – her luggage. Her things had been unpacked and put away. She could see the dress she’d brought along for her sister’s anniversary party hanging there on the door to the closet, as though it were on display.

It didn’t belong here. It wasn’t stylish enough, or grand enough, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a wonder that whatever helpers, or servants, or whatever Salman called them, had unpacked the dress, hadn’t gone right ahead to their employer and told him she was just a commoner who had somehow slipped into their world and was pretending that she belonged there. It wasn’t just the dress;
she
didn’t belong here either.

Nadya could feel the bubble that she and the prince had been in bursting. And as it did, she remembered her sister. She’d probably be worried sick by now.

She slid back into her bed, feeling too defeated even to undress. He clothes were uncomfortable against the sumptuous softness of the mattress. She dug her phone out of her pocket and turned it on. The screen lit up the room with a phony artificial light that felt as much like it didn’t belong here as she did.

The device took a long time to boot up – a symptom of its age – but when it did, the number of notifications by the phone and messaging apps was intimidatingly large.

They would be from her sister, probably. And her parents. She didn’t want to look at them. She’d thought, only moments before, that she wanted to see them, but now that she only needed to tap a button, they didn’t seem quite so necessary.

Nadya turned the phone off and set in on the night stand. She wouldn’t need to answer the messages if she didn’t go home tonight. And what would be the harm, she figured, of sleeping here for just one night? If Salman was a night owl, it made sense that she’d be able to wake up before him in the morning. She’d be gone before he woke, so what did it matter if she was here while he slept?

The defeat she’d felt a moment before was lifting. She had a plan. It would be all right.

The bed really did feel like a cloud, and the sheets had to be felt to be believed. She shimmied out of her clothes, still under the covers, and settled in. This was the night of her life. She might as well enjoy it.

SIX

It was the sun that woke Nadya, filtering through the skylight above. She was confused at first, trying to get her bearings. Everything felt light and bright, soft and warm. Everything felt still, and right.

And yet, everything was wrong. Panic shot through her. Whatever magic the dinner, the conversation, the stars and the moonlight might have had her under, the morning had released her. She knew where she was, and where she was, was in trouble.

She scurried about the room, thinking she was lucky that she hadn’t packed that much for the trip. She only got the one bag, and the airline she’d picked had a strict weight limit for their checked baggage. Nadya almost laughed out loud remembering. The idea of caring so much about an extra $25 when she was surrounded by so much luxury struck her as funny.

But she didn’t have time to laugh. She had to go. She didn’t want to turn her phone on. At least, not until she was out of the building. There would be frantic messages waiting for her, and she didn’t have the wherewithal to face them yet. One problem at a time.

She put on the same clothes as she had been wearing last night. They were her traveling clothes – functional and comfortable. They’d have to do for now.

She headed out to the hallway, and was immediately confused. Which way had she come, last night, nestled against his chest, safe in his arms? She’d been too sleepy to notice.

But then she saw the double-doors, and she knew. She would head through them, hang a right, and then the elevator would be on her left. She opened the door and—

Crash.

She’d opened the door not knowing someone was on the other side, carrying a loaded breakfast tray. There were breaking dishes and glasses, and the sounds of the tray settling to the ground, crashing like a cymbal.

And there, in the middle of it all, with orange juice down the front of his silk pajamas, was Salman.

“You’re awake!” he said, his first proper words after all of the “oh”s they’d both uttered.

Nadya tossed her bag, as stealthily as she could, behind the other door where he wouldn’t see or ask her about it.

“You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday?” he asked, looking at her puzzled.

“You know, you’re right. I am. I hadn’t realized.” It was a thin excuse, so she kept him from dwelling on it. “Was that my breakfast?”

He looked down at the food all over the floor. Servants had appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to clean it, but it was still everywhere.

“I wanted to bring it to you myself,” he said, sheepishly.

“Well it’s turned out
really
well,” she said, wiping off a little smear of egg-yolk that had somehow gotten onto his ear in the confusion.

“That may or may not be entirely my fault,” he said. “Anyway, I have a very important question to ask you,” he continued in mock seriousness. “It’s the thought that counts, true or false?”

Nadya made a great show of deliberating. “Mmm. True,” she said at last.

“Ok, good. Then, on the occasion of this breakfast, I have a favor to ask you.” She gave him an encouraging look, and he continued. “I know you probably have a million things to verify and take care of for the wedding today. But could you, just for me, skip all of it and spend the day with me?”

The question was a bit of theater. It was half a joke, half teasing. She was supposed to say “yes”, and quickly. Or she could tease him a little, and pretend to consider.

But for Nadya, it was a serious question. She tried to find a way out of it. Her clean exit strategy would be ruined if she spent any longer around this fascinating man. Who knew where they would go, and how she would get out it? Where would they be when it all came crashing down?

Unless…

Her bag sat where she had left it, perched at an odd angle born of expediency up against the wall. She glanced at it. Was anything in there really that important? If she brought her wallet, and her phone and her keys with her, was there any reason she couldn’t just leave her bag behind? With any luck, she would be able to slip away at some point in the day. Maybe leave a note. Maybe.

“Sure,” she said, putting him out of his misery.

“I thought for sure for a second you were going to say no.” He seemed puzzled. Hurt, even. Like he knew that there was something about the exchange that he was missing, but he didn’t know what.

“Oh, Salman. I was afraid you were going to find this out. I am, and have always been, not even the slightest bit a morning person.”

He smiled, the tension broken as he recognized his words from last night.

“Do you think you can still marry me,” she continued, “knowing that this is the life you’d be in for?”

“Yes,” he said, enthusiastically.

It was a little game they were playing. An inside joke, based on a new memory that they’d made together. Even though it was based in deceit, and she knew that his
yes
was not really for her, she still got goosebumps when she heard it.

“Good to know,” she said, quietly. Then she cleared her throat. “I’m going to go change. I’m guessing you will, too?”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said, already walking backwards. “I may go like this.” Then he turned, and walked away, casting just one glance over his shoulder before he rounded the corner to his side of the suite.

The door slid closed silently. Nadya grabbed her bag and hauled it off to her room. It was time to focus. Could she really do this? Was there nothing in her luggage that wasn’t disposable?

As she sorted through everything, the answer turned out to be no. She’d miss her traveling clothes and her Chuck Taylors, but they’d probably needed to be replaced for a few months already.

She donned the dress she had meant to wear for her sister’s anniversary party. Jasmine had planned a day party, luckily, so the dress would hopefully be appropriate for whatever Salman was going to throw at her. She got herself together as quickly as she could and headed to the elevator. And waited.

Traditionally, Nadya thought, it was supposed to be the woman who took longer to get ready. She considered, for a moment, just leaving right there and then; getting into the elevator and running, as she’d planned not long before. But the chances that someone would see her in the lobby, or that his security in the lobby below would catch her, was just too high. The whole machine was too settled in here to make a clear getaway. She saw that now.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you think we were taking the elevator?”

Salman’s voice came from the living room, in the direction of the patio and the dinner they had had the night before, when she’d let herself get lost in it all.

He walked into view… He was awash in sunlight, and she lifted her hands to shield her eyes in an attempt to see him better. She could make out the movement of his hand, motioning for her to come out to the terrace. She hesitated, looking at the door to the elevator; the exit from this world back into the one she knew, where he family was waiting for her, where she wouldn’t be pulled further into this mess.

But that world didn’t have any mystery to it. It didn’t have the sun. If didn’t have
him.
She turned, and walked to towards where Salman was standing.

She felt overdressed when she saw him. She’d assumed that he was taking her somewhere fancy and expensive, and that they would need to dress to impress the people around them. But he was in a polo and shorts, and looked more comfortable in the warming day than she was.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “Come see the other reason I picked this place.”

He led her around the plants of the terrace to a staircase leading up. The guardrails were made out of Plexiglas, and it gave Nadya the heady sensation of climbing a staircase at the top of the word.

The stairs led to a platform, up above the penthouse. And there, in the middle, waited a helicopter.

Salman grinned like a little boy watching the look on her face. “New York traffic is terrible. I try to avoid it.”

They headed north, over the city. First the high-rises disappeared, and then the city. Then there were only towns smattered about. And then the towns grew less and less frequent, and there were only odd houses nestled amongst the forests and hills.

As they flew, Nadya grew more and more certain that her plan was useless. They were going too far. They’d passed Hastings-On-Hudson quite some time ago, and they were still moving quickly. Out here, cabs would be too rare to count on getting one quickly, before Salman and his people realized she was gone. And there was little to no public transport, so even though she wasn’t that much further physically from where her sister was, she might as well be back in Seattle for how much she’d be able to reach her.

She saw their destination before Salman pointed it out to her. That had to be it. It was less of a house and more of an estate. From up here, it was hard to tell much about it, other than that it was large, and the architecture appeared to be somewhere in between Western and Middle Eastern.

“Why would they build a hotel all the way out here?” Nadya asked, struggling to be heard over the headset.

Salman shot her a confused glance, and she thought he hadn’t heard her, but when she tried to repeat herself, he shook his head. “Wait until we’re on the ground,” he said, although she understood it more from reading his lips than from being able to distinguish his words over the beating of the rotors.

They landed out front, in the middle of a circular driveway. There were no cars, nor, as far as Nadya could tell, were there any other guests. Just the same usual milling about of people who she knew were intended to help in some ill-defined way.

“Where are we?” she asked, though it wasn’t the biggest question on her mind.

“The Catskills,” he said. “You know, I love the mountains. Back home in Al-Ahradi, we don’t have any. It’s a really flat country. As soon as I saw this place…” His voice trailed off, looking at the front facade of the house. There was real affection there, Nadya realized. Not pride, or anything so base. He was happy here.

“This is
yours
?” she said in awe, drawing his attention to her.

He took her hands in his. “I was hoping it could be
ours
,” he said. “If you like it.”

His accent came out more when he was speaking from the heart, she noticed again. She’d seen it last night, when they’d been talking about what they most missed from growing up. Nadya had had to talk in abstract, talking about the feelings and safety of childhood. But Salman had talked about his home, and the concrete things he missed.

She saw many of those things now, in the way he’d chosen to build his house. She took it in. There was a grandness to it. The steps leading up to the front facade were marble, and reminded Nadya of the steps to a courthouse, or some great institution. They went all across the whole front face of the building, and gleamed in the sunlight.

The building possessed an unmistakable sense of gravitas. That was one thing newly-built houses never had, and it set it apart. It felt like the house was rooted in the earth – like the great entranceway staircase continued on down beneath their feet the way islands that are just the tops of undersea mountains continue beneath the water.

“Have you ever lived here?” she asked, as they slowly climbed the stairs, flanked by servants.

“It depends what you mean by ‘lived’. My things have been here for some time. Most of them, anyway. But for the last few years I’ve mostly been travelling.”

Nadya must have seemed like this worried her, because he quickly added and addendum.

“Because I’ve been a single man. I don’t have a family, so I get sent around on assignment. It won’t be the same once I’m settled.”

Nadya felt a sense of relief, and realized that the reassurance had been warranted after all. “Are you looking forward to it?” she asked, as they crossed the threshold. though the answer seemed fairly obvious.