Sheikh's Ex-Girlfriend (Khayyam Sheikh Series #1) (5 page)

His chuckle was dark and earthy, not altogether pleasant. “Really? You are interested in making new friends?”

“Yes, and as a matter of fact, I see some of them right over there, so if you'll excuse me …”

Before she could slip by him, he grasped her wrist, pulling her close with a gentle tug. She was so surprised by his assault that she couldn't stop herself before she fell heavily against his chest. Fear and anger warred in her chest, and she stared up at him.

“Hey, hands off,” Ella growled. “This is not my idea of a good party.”

“Oh, it doesn't need to be very long,” he assured her. “I just want to spend a little time with such a beautiful American woman. We don't see women like you here …”

He bent his head down, and if his lips landed on hers, Ella was committed to screaming. As it was, she raised her heel to stomp on his foot, but before she could do that, he was pulled away from her, plucked up as if he were an errant puppy.

“I think that you are needed elsewhere,” said an ice-cold voice. “Aren't you?”

The man who had been menacing her looked as if he were going to offer a protest, but then something about the newcomer made him turn on his heel and leave very sharply. The man who had just helped her out of a very bad situation turned to her.

“Are you all right?”

She started to say that of course she was, but then she started to shake, quite ruining her poise.

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” she tried to say, but the trembling wouldn't stop. With a soft curse, the man stepped into the alcove with her.

“Here, come here, sweetheart.”

She started to wonder why she trusted this man, why he comforted her and the other man had only panicked her, but then she recognized him. For a moment, she barely understood what was happening, and then she sank into his arms in relief.

“Oh, Nasim,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

He didn't say anything. Instead he only held her firmly until the shaking stopped and she was able to step back.

“Is that really you under there?”

He flashed a sharp white grin at her. Even in her heightened state, she could see how handsome he was. He had always been a confident man, but she had to say that spending time as the Sheikh of Khayyam had given him an air of control that was distinctly different.

“It is. I'm actually pretty startled. I showed up about twenty minutes ago, and so far no one's recognized me.”

She blinked. “Is it a problem that you're here?” She looked around. It was a slightly silly book release party. There was nothing really scandalous about it.

He shrugged. “Well, let's just say that a middling publishing house's release party is not really a place where you tend to find the royal family,” he said. “And if they learned that I came here only to pursue one woman, well, that would certainly give the gossip hounds far too much to chew on.”

Ella bit her lip, aware that she was likely getting lipstick on her teeth and not caring. She wondered who it was, whether it was the dark and dramatic literary agent she had chatted with earlier or perhaps the bright journalist who was covering the event.

“Oh. Well, good luck, and your secret is safe with me. I need something to take the taste of that last encounter out of my mouth, so I'm going to go grab some food. Good luck with the woman you're pursuing.”

She almost made it past him before he grasped her elbow gently and tugged her back. Startled, Ella looked up at him in surprise. “What?”

“Are you serious?”

She blinked. “What are you talking about?”

He made a frustrated sound that still managed to be quite attractive. At the very least, it sent chills through her body.

“Are you truly so unaware? I came looking for you, Ella.”

Her brain refused to understand what he was saying. “For … me?”

“Yes, Ella, I can't get you out of my mind.”

She was already shaking her head. “Nasim … we've tried this before, remember? We've already done this, and we've already gone through the heartbreak that goes with it. Or at least … I did. Maybe you didn't feel the same way?”

He recoiled as if she had slapped him. “Ella, my god, how could you believe that? When we broke up …”

“We didn't break up,” she said miserably. “We … we just sort of ended. That night with your family, do you know that I don't really remember the fight at the table? No, what I remember is what I felt right before. I remember feeling as if I were becoming a part of your world, as if you were letting me see a part of you that most didn't. It felt like I was becoming your family, and when I realized that was all a sham …”

“It wasn't, Ella—” he said urgently, but she cut him off with a sharp gesture. If she didn't get all of this out, a part of her might still think it was a good idea to be with him, to take him at his word and to do what every part of her seemed to scream at her to do.

“It was,” she said, making sure that her voice was low and steady. “It was. I left, and we exchanged a few more words, and after that, nothing. We didn't break up. We didn't even really end. What was left was ashes and wreckage, and after that, I had to sort everything out. It hurt, Nasim, more than anything.”

“Then let me make it up to you.”

His calm words struck her to the heart. The man she had known before might have given her an impassioned plea, or he might have been coldly rejecting. This was different. This was a Nasim who knew that he had done wrong, and now he was trying to make amends.

“What do you mean?”

“I am a different man now, Ella. I look back on the days before I was sheikh with a kind of distaste. I was very young, but I did many things that I would not do now. I never wanted my brothers to die, but they did, and the result was that I truly had to become a different man. When I look back on the days that came before, all I want to bring forward is the love that I had for you.”

“Not my love for you?”

He smiled a little wryly. “When a man has given such great offense, he can never ask for such a fine gift again. However, he might say that he would humbly welcome that gift if it should ever come again, and if it does, he will never again treat it so poorly.

“No, the only thing that I take pride in from those days is the love I had for you. It was love given to a woman who was everything, who was strong, and bright, and fierce. Loving you made me a better man, and it is something that I have regretted losing every day.”

“Every day?” Ella couldn't keep a touch of sharpness out of her tone. “It has been five years. It occurs to me that if you regretted it every day, that perhaps I might have heard about it.”

 Nasim's hand squeezed hers, a strangely poignant gesture.

“I was ashamed,” he said, his tone oddly naked. “I thought that I had driven you from this region that you loved so well. I thought my world would bring you nothing but pain. Imagine my surprise when you appeared again.”

 Ella knew that she should let go of Nasim's hand, step back, leave, but she found that she couldn't.

“You couldn't destroy my love for this region,” she said softly. “I have always loved the literature of Khayyam, the UAE, this entire place. I want nothing more than to bring it to the rest of the world, and that means being in Dalal for the time being.”

 Nasim's smile was brilliant. “That is what I have always adored about you. When you love, you love with all your heart.”

“Nasim, …”

“Hear me out. Come with me, stay on my arm, let me keep foul suitors away. Let me put my world at your disposal, and let me show you the Dalal that only I know. I want you with me, but I know that at the moment, you see nothing that you want.”

That's far from right,
Ella thought, but she let it go. There was no need for him to know that she wanted him, his arms, his mouth, his body rising over hers again …

“I have brought you pain, but perhaps I can soothe it. I do not expect you to come back to my arms, but I know that you are an intelligent woman. You want to know every inch of Dalal. Let me show it to you, and in return—well, in return, I get the joy of showing you my home.”

 “Nasim, I don't want to hurt you …”

“Trust me when I say that hurt is the last thing that I am thinking about right this moment,” he said firmly. “Let me give this to you. At worst, I promise you a Dalal that you will never see otherwise. At best … well, at best, perhaps we learn each other all over again.”

Ella felt frozen. She wondered if Eve felt like this, the bright red apple in front of her, the promise of a world she could never imagine hers for the taking. She knew that she should shake her head, back away. She was in Dalal on business, but more than that, she was in the Middle East for herself, for her dreams. If she allowed Nasim to be a part of it, she might lose it all.

She started to say no, but then she felt Nasim's hand around hers. She felt the way he held it, as if it were something precious to him. She could feel the tension that ran through him, and though she knew that he would withdraw if she told him no, it would do something terrible to him.

In the end, that was not something that she could deal with.

 “All right,” she said softly. “All right.”

He broke into a wide grin. For a moment, it looked as if he was going to kiss her, but then he squeezed her hand instead.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice deep with emotion. “I swear, you will not regret this.”

She smiled at him instinctively. Her whole life, she had always felt that being true to herself was important, essential to her way of life. Sometimes, she could tell that she was not being true to herself. With a faint surprise, she realized that holding herself back from Nasim felt unnatural. Smiling at him, accepting him, felt like the most natural thing in the world. She wondered if she should be worried about that, but at the moment, it felt more right simply to smile.

“All right, that's enough time back here,” she said. “I need to get back to the party and mingle before they think that I've retreated to lick my wounds over not signing Yusef. Do—will it be all right for you to come join me?”

He waved dismissively before offering her his arm. “One thing I have found about being in this position is that no one expects to see me, so they don't. I will simply be your mysterious companion.”

She was relieved that the man who had imposed upon her was nowhere to be seen, and once she relaxed about someone recognizing Nasim, she found herself actually enjoying the party. When she wasn't actively engaging with her peers on the state of literary progress in the world and in Khayyam, she was murmuring with Nasim regarding what she had learned since coming to Dalal.

There was something deeply familiar about it, but there was more to it than that, Ella realized. It wasn't just the passage of time. Nasim was serious in a way she had never seen before, and with a faint flutter of excitement and nervousness, she found herself deeply looking forward to seeing what came next.

He offered her a ride home, which she gratefully accepted. The storm had died down to a steady patter of rain, and as they navigated the dark streets, Ella found herself thoughtful.

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if …” Ella trailed off, not sure how to continue, but Nasim knew.

“If we hadn't parted ways five years ago? I'm afraid I do. I imagine that you would have continued to be a bright, bold, and passionate woman, and eventually, I would have driven you away with my selfishness and my demanding nature.”

“Nasim?”

He laughed. There was a self-knowledge there, and it had been hard-won.

“No, this is something I now know about myself. Five years ago, I was content to simply let things happen, assuming that they would go right. When I introduced you to my family, that was the first time that things hadn't simply fallen into place for me, and it was stunning. It taught me a hard lesson, one I kept on learning when my brothers died and I took the mantle of sheikh.

“Now … well, now I do not look to the past. I look to the future, and I hope you are in it.”

Silently, they pulled up to her apartment. Ella realized with a small amount of surprise that they had been holding hands the entire time.

“Thank you,” she said, and she knew it wasn't just for the ride.

The kiss he gave her was gentle, just a sweet brush of his lips over hers, but for some reason, it made her tremble. There was a promise there, and for the first time, she wondered if he could keep it.

***

Five Years Ago

 The cab had dropped them off a block away from her apartment. There were simply so many people swarming the streets that it made no sense to take the cab farther. Ella and Nasim stepped into the wintery night, the first of January, and all around them, the city of New York was alive with promise. There was a sense of wild abandon in the air; people were ridding themselves of the burden of the old year before embracing the new.

Underneath her thick coat, Ella was wearing a long white dress, sparkling with sequins. Nasim was resplendent in his tuxedo, and when he offered her his arm, they began the walk back to her apartment. She had enjoyed a few drinks, but instead of being drunk, she was only bubbly. The strangest things were funny, and all she wanted to do was to cling to Nasim.

“You don't mind staying at my place tonight?” she asked again. He had his own room at one of the hotels up in Manhattan, but he hadn't been willing to let her take the train down to Boston after the party. Instead, he had sprung for the cab and guided her away when the party had started to die down. Her co-workers at Quill Publishing had been wild enough, but that was nothing compared to what New York could trot out in the first hours of the New Year.

“I like your place,” Nasim said, gamely putting his body between Ella and the pair of drunken men who reeled down the street. “It's yours, and that makes it far better than my hotel room.”

“Yeah, but your hotel room always has fresh sheets, and room service, and … and a view.”

 “Is that why you are with me? For the fresh sheets and the room service?” he asked teasingly.

She laughed, shaking her head. “No … no there are so many more reasons for you to be with me, my love,” he softly continued.