Sheikh's Ex-Girlfriend (Khayyam Sheikh Series #1) (4 page)

She opened her mouth to speak, and then Nasim was bending over her, bringing his mouth down to hers, and all she could do was hold on to him. She had remembered him as a passionate man, but this took everything she had known and tore it to bits.

Ella drew in her breath at the first touch of his lips to hers, but after that, she couldn't bear to resist him. She opened her mouth to draw his tongue in, and when he brushed his lips against hers, she squirmed with the power of what they were to each other.

She felt his hand stroking through her hair, sending frissons of pleasure running down her scalp to her shoulders and back. She felt as if she were spinning, so she clung to the only thing in the universe that seemed stable. She could feel how powerful his frame was, she could feel the want tremble throughout his body.

 
Whatever he wants, I want to give it to him …

The thought was true, but the intensity of it shocked her. It made her pull back, and the moment she did, he released her. For a moment, looking at the glassy look in his eyes and the way his mouth was red from kissing her, she wanted to simply return to what felt right. Then she reminded herself that she wasn't the same raw girl she had been five years ago, and he definitely wasn't the same man. That was enough to make her push back.

“I … I can't do this,” she whispered.

For a moment, it looked like Nasim was going to argue with her, but instead, he nodded, pulling back.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, making her choke back a laugh.

“Not at all,” she whispered. “I just can't … It's been too long, we're so different.”

At her words, there was a brief glint in his eyes, and for some reason, that glint warmed her from the belly out. Instead of saying anything, however, he merely nodded.

“Thank you again for a wonderful evening,” he said gravely. “Will you allow me to call upon you again?”

There it was,
Ella thought. The words were kind, but there was a disinterested tone that told her she might never see him again. It both brought a stab of pain to her heart and a feeling of disappointment, but that was not important.

“Whenever you like,” she said. “But now I really need to go.”

She wasn't sure how she made it down to the waiting car. When the door closed behind her, she breathed a silent sigh of relief. Then, something told her to look back, and when she did, she saw that Nasim was still on the step, watching as she disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 4

“I do not think that you have your mind on the Asian embargoes, my friend.”

The teasing words made Nasim scowl, straightening the papers in front of him and glare at Marid.

Arana and Khayyam were partners in most things, and their interests in the east had run aground at precisely the same spot. Now they were meeting to figure out how best to deal with those problems, but if Nasim was being perfectly honest, his mind was not on Asia at all.

Instead, it and his heart were persisting in winding their way down to the Old Quarter, where he knew a slender blonde girl with hair like a bright dandelion was working on her manuscripts. He had spent innumerable afternoons with her when they were together in New York watching her edit. He had seen the way she concentrated, the way she focused her whole being on the stories in front of her. There was something so compelling about the way that she could lose herself in those stories. It was as if she went wandering in different worlds, only to come back to his side when he touched her hand or kissed her neck.

“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about,” he growled.

Still, instead of going back to his work, he got up to stalk over to the large window. When they worked, they often ended up in his building downtown, where he could look down on the rest of the city. Dalal was home to hundreds of thousands of people, but in all of that mass of humanity, there was only one person who could occupy his thoughts.

Marid laughed quietly. In the glass, he could see the reflection of his friend's mirth. Still, there was a note of care when Marid spoke next.

“You are fooling yourself, my friend, if you think that you are not thinking of her. Lie to me if you wish, but lying to yourself is only going to exhaust you and make you angry.”

Nasim opened his mouth to protest, but then it felt as if all of the air had been drained out of him.

“I don't know what to do,” he said finally. “She seems to think we are friends.”

“Are you?” asked Marid shrewdly.

Nasim shot him a dark look. “I'm friends with you. I'm friends with the man who sells good doner kebabs on the corner. I do not think about doing the things that I want to do with Ella with the two of you.”

“That is certainly fair. Well, now, love-lorn friend of mine, what exactly are you going to do?”

Nasim could have have snarled at Marid. “What do you think I can do?” he demanded. “She has made her position perfectly clear, and even if she had not … five years ago, I failed her. Do you even understand what that is like? She needed me to be a better man than I am, and I failed. How can she look at me and see anything else?”

“Was,” Marid said succinctly.

“What?”

“You needed to be a better man than you were five years ago. Now, I have to say that you
are
the better man that you needed to be back then. People change, my friend. If she will forgive you, if you can meet on new ground, perhaps there is more hope than you thought there was.”

Nasim told himself that he shouldn't respond to the stirring of hope in his chest. He told himself that there was no way that Ella would forgive the things that had happened between them. However, in light of what Marid was saying, and from the way that she had kissed him last night, his doubts were shrinking, shriveling in the heat of possibilities.

“I'm right,” Marid continued. “Don't be the man you were five years ago. You are someone else now. Be the man that you must be, and let her be who she is.”

Nasim didn't respond, and Marid let the subject go. However, even as they went back to the trade agreements, Nasim could feel something inside him shift and change. He wasn't the man he had been five years ago. He had wanted her fiercely, but now his need for her was like a flame.

Now that he had spent time with her, all he could think about was who she was, how she deserved to be protected.

That day, he made a decision, and so he began to plan.

***

 “A masked party?”

Ella blinked, and her assistant nodded. If it wasn’t for Amira, she wouldn't have gotten settled in Dalal so quickly, so if Amira said she had to attend a masked party, she would believe her.

“It's for the release of Yusef Bhandari's work. His new novel is centered around a masked ball, so for the new release, his publishers are throwing a party. You're invited, as much because you are part of the industry as because they want to check out who their new competitor is.”

Ella sighed, because if she had been in Dalal just a few months earlier, she would have had a shot at signing the man who was sure to be making waves in the Middle Eastern literary scene in just a few short months. As it was, she might as well go and make nice while making sure that the local publishers knew that she wasn't just going to tuck her tail between her legs and slink away.

“That sounds interesting. I don't suppose I can send you in my place?”

Amira shook her head with a grin. “Sorry, but if you’d like, I'll make sure that you're properly dressed for it.”

Amira had proven invaluable in more ways than one. The younger woman had taken it upon herself to help her employer get acclimatized to Dalal in all ways, and that included taking care of her wardrobe and setting her up with an account with a local grocery for food delivery. It looked as if going to the party was just going to be one more thing that Amira handled with aplomb and confidence.

I'm going to miss her when she transfers to New York,
Ella thought. She was under no illusions about why Amira was helping her so much. She knew that her assistant wanted badly to transfer overseas, and even if she didn't take such good care of Ella, Ella would have recommended her for a position anyway. Pointing that out had only made Amira frown, and no matter what Ella said, she couldn't make her stop. Finally, she had simply decided to give in and enjoy the care.

The evening of the masked party was dark and rainy. Khayyam was a desert state, but sometimes, dark storms rose up out of the desert like malevolent spirits, soaking the city hard. Ella wasn't looking forward to making the run from her apartment to the cab.

Amira had left her a package hanging from the door of her apartment, and when she pulled it open, she was pleased to see that her assistant's tastes were as sharp as ever.

Inside the bag was a subtle tunic and trousers in dull gold, stitched with a scatter of bright bugle beads. It was eye-catching without being over the top, and though it clung to her curves, it was cut high, giving her a rather severe look. The mask was a lovely domino that was made to match, though rimming the edges of the eyes were shining green pasteboard gems. When she glanced at herself in the mirror, she looked like a phoenix woman come to rest.

For a moment, she imagined a tall, dark man standing behind her, his hands pressing against her hips, leaning her against him. She shook it off. It had been almost a week since she had dined with Nasim, and every time she approached the topic, her mind shied away from how shameless she had been. She couldn't remember their kiss without a flush coming to her cheeks, and when her mind strayed, she thought of how it might have been if she hadn't stopped them, if she hadn't realized how foolish it was to continue on such a dangerous path.

You've been burned before. If you have to go through that again, you will char to a crisp.

She shook those dark thoughts from her mind. There was work ahead of her. Not only was it a social occasion, it was a professional one, and she should go in with her wits about her. To do otherwise was to court failure.

I'm ready for this,
Ella thought, heading downstairs to where the cab awaited.
This is what I'm here for.

***

In the penthouse he kept in the luxury hotel his family owned, Nasim took a deep breath. The tuxedo he wore was perfect down to the very last crease, and the black domino mask he wore concealed his identity perfectly. It would be a source of scandal if the sheikh came unannounced to a small release party, but as he had found out, the evening was meant to be a game as much as it was anything else, a minor pretense to celebrate a novel.

He tightened the mask around his face, glancing at himself one more time in the mirror.

It didn't matter how he looked. He knew very well who he was and what he wanted. Now he was going to go find Ella, and nothing would stand in his way.

***

The release party was being held at the Tamara Seif Library, one of the oldest libraries in the city. It was a gorgeous structure with a dome of cobalt glass arching over the receiving area where the guests were circulating. Ella made a private note to come back during the day, when she could see the library at its best.

The moment she arrived, she was swept up in a round of socialization and trade talk. Dalal was an international city in many ways, and in addition to the Arabic that she spoke well, she also had to find her rather rusty French and her rudimentary German. She startled more than one person who was surprised to hear a blonde white woman speaking so confidently in Arabic, and she thought she could see the beginning of the professional respect she needed from her peers.

This is going well,
she thought.
I feel a little less like the little match girl surrounded by all the wealthy people.

 She turned to make her way back to the banquet table when suddenly a hand was snaked around her elbow. She looked up at a man dressed in a tuxedo and wearing a black mask. His teeth were very white, and she blinked at the way he smiled at her.

“A drink?” he asked, offering her a flute of champagne.

She hesitated for a moment, and then took it with a smile. She was no drinker, but she didn't mind having a prop in her hands.

“It's turning into quite an incredible night, don't you think?” her companion asked. “Yusef's work is getting quite a reaction.”

“It is, and he deserves every bit of good press he can grab,” she said enthusiastically. “I finally made the time to read his book, and it's so incredibly layered, so very lovely. It's a triumph of language as well as plot, and I do not say that lightly.”

“Oh? Did you read it in Arabic or in English?”

“Both!” she said with a laugh. “I read them side by side, and not only is the translation exquisite, there are such nuances that it was well worth my time. I can't remember the last time that I enjoyed a work more …”

She was so excited to talk about the work of the new writer that she didn't realize that she was being guided to a darkened corner of the library, a small alcove between two tall shelves that rendered her and her companion nearly invisible to the rest of the room.

“… and I truly do think that he has a lot to offer an international community. I know that the publisher he is with is a small one without international distributing, but I am definitely looking to change that—”

“That's wonderful,” her companion interrupted, and she looked up, startled at the change in his tone. “But that's not what I'm looking to talk about right this moment.”

“Oh, really?” she asked. “What are you looking to talk about then?”

To her dismay, she noticed that she was backed against the far wall of the alcove. Over his shoulder she could see the rest of the party, but it looked astonishingly far away. Her sixth sense for danger started going off, and she licked her lips nervously.

“I simply wanted to tell you what a beautiful woman you are, and how brave, to come to an event all alone.”

Her laugh was bright and entirely false. “Call it my American pluck,” she said, “but really, I've been attending events alone for my entire professional career. I'm used to it. I'm pretty independent, and I really love getting to know new people.”