SHEIKH'S SURPRISE BABY: A Sheikh Romance (70 page)

Aimee walked down the line of tables in the diner she worked, a half-filled pot of coffee in either hand. One handle was black, the other orange. She smiled to each group of people at the tables, offering to refill any coffee cups she found.

She was well known in this place, and people were always happy when she came around. Big smiles, big hellos. It didn’t surprise her. She’d gotten used to such welcomes after having worked in this place for so long.

She grew up in this small town. Hah! Town. If one could call it that. It was a pit-stop on this particular stretch of highway. They had a grocery store, and a mechanic, and a bank, in addition to a few other things, but that was about it. There were RV hookups and mobile home parks around the area off a few side streets, but that was about it. Everyone in this place knew one another. It was like a shared nightmare, and one that Aimee knew from very early on that she’d never escape from it.

The smile on her face was plastic, the grit from the desert outside stuck to her teeth. Every time she closed her mouth, she crunched on small flecks of dirt from the air. After helping all of those that she could, she replaced the coffee pots back on their burners and picked up her water that she kept under the counter. A quick sip washed the grit from her mouth. The cool water quenched her throat, the cold washing down and splashing into her stomach, spreading out for a moment. It was so hot that the sensation was fleeting at best.

A car pulled in. It was nice, black, a sedan. The rims damn near sparkled. It was a city car if she ever saw one. The city wasn’t more than fifty miles away, but for Aimee, it may as well have been five-thousand. She’d never been in her life, and didn’t suspect she’d ever get the chance to. She’d been born in this armpit of a town, and as far as she was concerned, she was going to die here. She put on that plastic smile again and grabbed up a few menus.

“Two of you?” she asked the couple.

The man and woman smiled at her, the man holding up two fingers to confirm her guess. She held the smile as she guided them to a table.

Going through the specials were rote. They never changed. There was nothing special about the specials. The roar of a motorcycle pulled her eyes up almost against her will. The beast of a machine billowed black smoke like something out of a hellish novel. Riding atop was the very picture of manly beauty. She’d never had the reaction physically that he gave her. Just looking at him made her heart beat, her head swim, her stomach tighten up.

She verbally stumbled over the specials as her mind struggled to stay on topic. On a though — any thought! Aimee closed her eyes and shook her head for a second to try and get a clear hold on her thoughts.

The woman at the table made a disgusted rasping noise in the back of her throat. “I hate those things. Nothing but noise pollution.”

“And actual pollution, look at that thing. That can’t be legal.”

Aimee swallowed, trying to regain some semblance of conscious thought, and she pointed across the street with the tip of her pencil. “He’s pulling into the mechanic’s place. Must be something wrong with it.”

“Well what’s wrong with it is that it’s a motorcycle.”

The man laughed. “No fixing that.”

“No there is not.”

Aimee blew right by the conversation altogether, knowing that she couldn’t believably agree, and disagreeing with them would mess with her tip. “So can I start you off with something to drink?”

About twenty to thirty minutes went by. The snobby couple had eaten and left. Aimee was back to her water, now a fresh cup, and sipping it gratefully. The leather clad Greek god left the mechanic’s and stopped on the sidewalk. He looked up the street one way, then back down the other.

“No, don’t come in here,” she said to him, knowing full well no one could hear her. The diner was empty, and she was the only waitress working. If she had to talk to him…

He smacked his thigh with his skullcap then looked forward at the diner.

“No,” she breathed. Then, as he crossed the street toward her, she just kept repeating, “No, no, no, no, no, hi there! One today?”

He wrinkled his nose and looked around, taking in his surroundings before answering her. It was clear from the look on his face that he was less than pleased.

“Yeah, one,” he said absently.

When his eyes finally landed on her he stopped and smiled. “Just me,” he added, as though that were necessary.

Was he looking at her? Like, was he really looking at her? Even just the threat of the possibility made her giggle and she had to hide it by picking up a menu and walking ahead of him.

Aimee was a larger girl, always had been. It wasn’t something that bothered her. It’s how she was made. Besides, in this middle of this desert there really weren’t many options for jazzercising. To have someone as gorgeous as Mr. Motorcycle even look twice at her was the highlight of her day. Hell, her week.

After giving him the rundown on the specials, he ordered pie and a coffee. Even though she should’ve left him to eat after dropping off the pie, she couldn’t just let him go that easily. She was never going to see him again, that much was obvious. She’d be damned if she’d just let him walk out of there.

“Saw you pull up,” she said. “Your bike was spewing quite the cloud there.”

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “Blew something a few miles back. Just riding along, then
bang
! I think the mechanic is trying to weasel a bunch of money out of me, but I don’t care. As long as he gets it fixed.”

“Jimmy? Oh, no, he’s no weasel. We don’t get a lot of repeat business around here, as you might imagine, which makes his reputation even more important.” She laughed. “He’s probably the most honest person in town.”

Mr. Motorcycle smiled up at her as he sipped his coffee. “That right?” “Well,” she said bashfully, but couldn’t think of anything to say as a follow-up. Suddenly she realized she had no idea what to say next, and the embarrassment was mounting by the half-second.

“Enjoy your pie,” she said in an attempt to escape the horror of what she’d just done to herself, but he reached out and stopped her.

All he did was place his index and middle fingers on her wrist, but just his touch was enough to stop her dead in her tracks.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She smiled at him, and there wasn’t an ounce of plastic in it. “Aimee,” she said. “It’s on the nametag.”

“I know,” he said, “I saw. I just wanted to hear you say it. I’m Xavier.”

“Wow,” she whispered, then laughed and shook her head. “I mean, that’s cool.”

“It was nice meeting you, Aimee. Fate, maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, bashfully tucking a bit of hair behind her ear.

Turning, she walked back to the kitchens to hide her face. She touched her fingers to her cheeks and felt the heat despite the ovens and stoves going off back there.

What just happened?

Xavier shuffled papers around on his desk. It was an idle motion and one he had no thought or emotion in. These papers could all just go up in flames for all he cared. He had a business to run, but all he could think about was the adorable waitress from that café.

Everything about her made him feel alive. He was no stranger to women and the effects they have on a man. Hell, he’d been in plenty of relationships before. Some long, some short. Some really short. Never, though, had a woman made him feel quite like this. It had been such a short conversation with her, but talking to her, hearing her voice, it had made everything settle inside of him.

He’d never been quite so taken by surprise by a person before. It was alarming, but beautiful. In his experience, women were always interested in him just for his money. Sometimes they found him attractive physically as well, which was always nice, but nine times out of ten, when they found out he was a billionaire, that’s when the hot jets flared on. A woman was only unsure about a man until she found out her life would be secure with him, then there go the fires!

At least that was how it always felt.

As he always had to do before, Xavier stopped what he was doing and froze his thoughts. That wasn’t fair. He couldn’t compare every woman in the world to one another just because he’d had some bad experience. He was sure, somewhere out there where normal people lived, there were beautiful well-rounded women that accepted a man for who he was regardless of his bank account. Those women existed, he had to insist to himself, regardless if they didn’t exactly exist in his world. It sure would be nice to meet one of them, though.

Xavier leaned back in his office chair and drummed his fingers along his desk as he stared out the window at the city he basically owned. What if. Those two words were a dangerous thing, but to a business man like him, they were often the spark that ignited great thoughts.

What if this girl, this Aimee were one of these rare specimens? Perhaps that would explain why everything felt so natural and joyful around this girl? Because she was a natural and joyful person instead of a soul-sucking lifeless demoness from the bowels of…

No, there he was doing it again. Not every woman was like that.

He anxiously tapped his thumb against his desk twice before pushing himself up to stand and stare at the window. Maybe she wasn’t like that, but it didn’t hurt to play it carefully, did it? He could take it easy in the beginning and reveal to her who and what he really was later, once he was sure she accepted him for who he was first.

Of course, that begged the question: who was he? If he wasn’t the business tycoon the upscale denizens of the city knew him as, then who would he be? That stumped him. It was a shameful thing. He should’ve been more imaginative than this. His parent company owned nearly every major corporation working out of the city, yet here he stood completely lacking in ideas of who he would be to this woman.

After five minutes of blankness as he stared into the sun kissed distance, he just rubbed his forehead with his thumb and decided to go for a ride later to think about it. That was when he hit his forehead against the window. Of course! The bike. She knew him as a biker already. All he had to do was maintain the persona. It wasn’t entirely a lie, anyway. He did enjoy a good ride and their meeting had been a very genuine one. All he had to do was omit the fact that he could buy and sell her little café a dozen times with just his pocket money. Easy. He was a fantastic liar. How much easier it would be to simply not tell the truth, instead?

That very day he left work early to go home and change into his riding leathers. Then, firing up the ol’ hog, he set off on the highway toward the little township. When he arrived, he pulled up in the little parking area out in the front of the café and killed the engine.

Xavier was an admittedly impatient man, and when he set his mind to something he wanted it done right then and there. So when he walked into the café and didn’t see her, his heart sank a bit.

“Just have a seat anywhere,” the cook called from the back.

“Is she working today? Uh, Aimee. Is she working?”

“Aimee?” the cook asked. “Yeah, she’s here. She’s out back on break. She’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Great, thanks.” Xavier went and picked the same booth he’d been sitting in when they first met. He sat there for all of two minutes before getting up and leaving to go find her.

Impatience wasn’t necessarily an attractive trait to have, but it was him to a very defined point. He just couldn’t wait to talk to her.

That thought made him stop and laugh. He really couldn’t wait to talk to her. Remarkable.

As he rounded the corner of the small building, he saw her. She stood there in the arms of another man. He was large, much taller than her and looked to be made of equal parts fat and muscle. A force to be reckoned with if he ever saw one. The man was kissing and pawing at her, and she didn’t look exactly like she was unwelcoming towards it. Though she smiled up at the big man, when he moved to kiss her neck, the smile would fade immediately, her eyes glazing over as she went to another place.

Xavier pulled back and went inside once more to wait for her. It was another ten minutes before she came back inside.

“Hey, you came back,” she said as she approached his table.

Xavier did his best to smile up at her. “I did indeed. Never pass up a place with excellent service.”

She giggled at him. “What can I get you?”

“I don’t want to seem weird, so I apologize if this creeps you out. I saw you back there just now.”

“What?” Her arm holding the notepad dropped.

Xavier pointed back toward the cook. “He said you were on break and I was hoping to catch you so we could chat a little, but I saw you were with…?”

“John. He’s my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend. Got it.” Xavier nodded and drummed his fingers on the table. “Anyway, I didn’t want to interrupt, so I came back inside. Should I go, then?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You’re the one with the boyfriend.”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes lighting up as it dawned on her what they were talking about. “Well I don’t know. I guess that’s up to you.”

“I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.”

“You’re not unwanted… exactly.”

“Good enough,” he said with a smile. “Good enough for me.”

Things were a bit more complicated than he originally thought. Good, he liked a challenge.

To Aimee’s surprise, that hot biker came back. And back. And back again! Over the course of two weeks he must’ve come in just short of every other day. He requested her table every time, and ordered a cup of coffee. Sometimes he had a cake or pie, but it was usually just the coffee.

She was pretty sure that after their little talk when he’d seen her with John would’ve scared him off. She wouldn’t have blamed him. John was a big guy and intimidated just about everyone in their town. It was part of the reason she was with him. Not only did being John’s girl afford her a bit of security, since no one would mess with anyone in John’s circle, but it was also better to willingly be at his side than forcibly so. John wasn’t known for his gentle side.

Yet, Xavier kept coming back. Sure he said it was just for the coffee, but he found a way to chat her up every time he was around. If she was being honest with herself, she was glad for the attention. She knew he wasn’t from around here, so the fact that this guy — whoever he was — came all this way just to talk to her was flattering beyond anything she’d ever experienced. The least she could do was talk to him, right? There wasn’t any harm in that.