SHEIKH'S SURPRISE BABY: A Sheikh Romance (74 page)

“Thought maybe you could use this.” Darlene was back. She set a vodka gimlet in front of Sophia. “So who was that?”

“My ex.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Cute, but no social skills, huh?”

Sophia sighed. “You could say that, I guess.”

“So, does he want to get back together again?”

She shrugged.

“You thinking about it?”

The question, though innocent, set Sophia off. “I would rather eat ground glass,” she said. “And now I’m going to stop talking about him.”

“Wow, okay, touchy much?”

“Look, if talking about Phil is the price of this drink, you can keep it.” She shoved the glass at Darlene. “He made my life miserable. I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Jeez, okay, okay. Just keep the drink.” She got up and wandered off.

No one there knew her story. She hadn’t talked much about her life with Phil with anyone from work because it was embarrassing and not their business even though Phil’s behavior in that last year started to make it their business. He would obsess about her work life and what was going on in her office.

Sometimes he’d show up unexpectedly, to take her to lunch, he’d say. Or to bring her something she’d left at home (something he’d taken out of her purse when she wasn’t looking, she was sure of it.) Then he’d hang around and watch the people nearby. When she got home, he would grill her about the men in her office.

“Who’s the guy in the next cubicle?” he’d ask her. “What was his name? Erik? Has he ever tried to touch you? What about your boss? He’s never made a pass at you, has he? Has he ever tried to touch you?”

The touching thing was weird. At first she assumed he was perhaps being over-protective. She told herself that perhaps he had family or a friend who had been molested and he was sensitive to that kind of thing. But she began to realize that he obsessed about men trying to touch her. He’d told men in clubs to keep their distance from her, and once in an elevator, he’d gotten into a fight with a man who, he said, had been deliberately standing too close to Sophia so he could touch her. Predictably the man took offense and it came to blows. The police were called and Phil got arrested, but not until one of the cops had asked Sophia what she’d done to provoke the fight.

The unfairness of men sometimes boggled her mind, especially since Phil blamed her too. “You were leading him on,” he’d accused on the way home from the police station.

“I got in an elevator with him. Should I have waited for an empty one?” she’d asked.

“I’d have preferred it, since you’re always coming on to other guys.”

That night was the beginning of the end. Phil’s possessiveness grew worse as Sophia’s tolerance stretched to the limit and then broke. The day she left, she’d met him at the door with her coat on and her packed bags ready.

“I’m going to stay with my folks for a while,” she told him. “I can’t stand dealing with your jealousy and control anymore.”

He’d been angrier than she’d ever seen him, but when he stepped toward her with his hand raised, she was ready. She pulled a can of pepper spray out of her pocket and aimed it at his eyes.

“I won’t hesitate,” she told him.

“I will take that away from you and make you eat it.”

Somehow his anger made her calmer. “Phil, you may be able to hurt me, but believe me when I tell you that I will hurt you too. I’m prepared to kill you if I have to. I’ve thought about that a lot, and I know I can do it. I even put a knife in my pocket in case you forced me into defending myself. So you make your choice. I walk out of here now, or we will both end up injured.”

The thing about Phil: He was a coward. Something in her voice must have convinced him because he backed off. He shouted insults at her from the window as she got into her cab, but he never lifted a finger to her again.

That didn’t stop him from showing up unexpectedly, phoning her at odd times to ask her what she was doing or who she was with. He kept just enough distance that she found it difficult to explain to anyone why it upset her. It wasn’t technically stalking, at least not according to the police, but it felt like it.

It was all too much. She took a couple of gulps of the gimlet and got up to join a group of women on the dance floor who were bouncing around to Holding Out for a Hero. That’s how she felt sometimes. She thought she should be able to get rid of Phil on her own and not look for some outside agency to help her, but what could she do? He stayed on the sidelines of her life, pushed at the boundaries, but never actually did anything illegal or dangerous. He was always vaguely scary, but never more than that.

Where was Captain America when you needed him?

She got out on the dance floor and let herself go, moving to the music, dancing all the anger and aggression she was feeling. She threw her head back and danced for her very life.

And then she felt Phil’s hand close around her arm. She tried to pull away but he held her tightly, and his eyes were filled with something that looked like hate. “You won’t stop acting like a slut, will you?” he shouted at her.

“Let go!” She yanked her arm away hard and his fingernails left bloody ridges on her arm. He lunged at her and nearly got his arms around her waist, but then he was gone. Sophia whipped around and found herself facing a broad leather-clad back.

Phil was shouting, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. The man between them said, “You need to calm down, man, and get off this dance floor.”

“Or what?”

“Or I will escort you off.”

The dancing had all but stopped even though the music was still throbbing around them. Phil’s face was contorted with anger.

“You get away from my girlfriend.”

“She doesn’t look like your girlfriend.”

“She’s my fiancée!” Phil insisted, upping the ante.

The guy in leather half turned to Sophia. “Is that true?”

“No it isn’t,” she said just as Phil tried to sucker punch the guy and got elbowed hard in the face. He went down like a bag of rocks.

“Good, then I don’t feel I have to apologize to you for hitting him like that.”

“Not at all.”

By then the bouncers had gotten to the dance floor. For a moment it looked like they were going to throw all three of them out but her leather-clad hero spoke to them for a few moments, and they picked Phil up and dragged him off.

The music stopped and the dancers faded away. Most of them were staring at Sophia as if what happened was her fault.

“You look a little unsteady. Why don’t you come and sit down?”

He escorted her back to her table, held her chair for her, and sat down beside her. “Do you need a drink?” he asked as he shucked his leather jacket and slung it over the back of his chair. It was hard to avoid noticing how handsome he was with his dark, curly hair, pale blue eyes rimmed with thick black lashes, and a mouth that was absolutely sinful. That she could think that way at all after what had just happened rattled her.

“No. I have one.” She reached for the gimlet but he stopped her.

“You don’t want to drink that. He was hanging around the table before he went onto the floor to bother you. I’m not saying he doctored it, but I can’t say for sure.”

It took a moment to sink in. Horrified, Sophia pushed the glass away. “I think I need to go home,” she murmured.

“Do you need a lift?”

“No!” As if she was going to trust a total stranger alone in his car, especially one who looked like a thug with his leather jacket, tattoos and beard stubble. Then she realized how ungrateful she sounded. “I mean—”

“From what I can see you have every right to be suspicious of men. I can call you a cab.”

“I can do it.” She pulled out her phone and used the taxi app to book a cab. “Fifteen or twenty minutes,” she said with a sigh. “Maybe I could use a drink. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Happy to,” he told her. “Be right back.”

As soon as he had faded into the crowd around the bar, Sophia grabbed her purse and fled. Even if he was completely harmless, the last thing she wanted was to deal with another man that night. She was less-than-thrilled about men in general just then.

She’d lied to him about the cab in order to get away. The estimate had been five minutes, and the cab was pulling up to the curb as she left the club. She got in and said “Go!” and the driver peeled away from the curb. Sophia looked out the back window a couple of times to make sure no one was following, and thought, Damn Phil for making me so paranoid.

She’d never been that way. Before Phil, Sophia had been placid, carefree. She’d had a pleasant suburban childhood, and her first love had, quite literally, been the boy next door. She and Greg had talked about marriage. They’d planned to marry right after high school, but then he got a scholarship to MIT and they decided to put it off until he graduated.

Over the years they’d grown apart, their relationship couldn’t withstand the distance between them. The break-up had been amicable, and they remained friendly, but there wasn’t much more than nostalgia to that friendship now. Greg had recently taken a job at a big tech company in one of the south suburbs, and they hadn’t even seen each other yet, though they had exchanged emails that said, “We have to get together soon.”

But now, every time she met a man she wondered if he was hiding any ugly secrets. She supposed she was angrier with Phil for making her feel that way than for anything else he’d ever done to her.

Once she was home, she took a long, hot shower and crawled into bed with a glass of brandy and her library book. Reading was one of the few things that took her mind off of her problems. She read herself to sleep, waking just before dawn to find her nightstand light still on and the book lying on her chest. Moments like that were always so satisfying.

The next morning she was making coffee when her doorbell rang.

“Yes?”

“Um, hi. It’s the guy from the club. The one you left holding a fresh drink?”

Sophia’s gut clenched. “What do you want?”

“I want to return your phone. You left it on the table.”

“Oh. Okay, thank you.” She buzzed him in, and opened the door, but left it on the chain.

In the cold light of day he was, if anything, even more handsome than he’d been at the club. Unnervingly so. He was standing in the hallway in a black tee shirt and worn jeans, looking like someone’s birthday cake. He held the phone out and she reached through the gap and took it.

“Thank you.”

“Two things,” he told her, “and then I’ll go. First, I put my name and number in there in case you ever need help. This isn’t a come-on, it’s genuine. My sister had a stalker and it shattered her peace of mind for years. If I can help, I will. Otherwise you can ignore it; no harm, no foul.”

She didn’t reply.

“Second. Please consider talking to someone. I also put the name and number of my sister’s counselor in there. Again, there’s nothing attached to it. But she helped Joanie.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He frowned and pitched his voice low. “Are you okay right now?” he asked. It took her a moment to get his meaning.

“You mean is he here? No, he’s not. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.” Sophia was embarrassed. “Just a minute.” She closed the door and unchained it. “I’m sorry. I’m still rattled about last night. I shouldn’t be; he still shows up where he’s not welcome. Would you like to come in?”

“No. I’m not going to intrude. That wasn’t my intention.”

“I just made a fresh pot of coffee. You’re welcome. Really.” She was so ashamed at having behaved as if this guy was the enemy when the truth was that he was the only person who had ever unreservedly stood between her and Phil. Everyone else, even her family, had been ambivalent about the situation at least occasionally.

“If you’re sure. I don’t want to be part of the problem.”

“You’re not. I don’t think I ever thanked you properly for what you did. You had no way of knowing how violent he might have been, but you stepped up. I really appreciated that. Please come in.”

“Thanks.” He followed her to the kitchen. “I’m Daniel, by the way. Daniel Buchanan.”

“Sophia Eklund. But you know that. Silly of me. Please sit down. I got up early and went to the bakery on the corner, so there’s a pecan coffee cake. I hope you like them.”

“Love ‘em,” he said.

She poured two cups of coffee and set the coffee cake on the table. There was an uncomfortable silence as they whitened their coffee and Sophia cut slices of coffee cake, but then they both started talking at once.

“I’m sorry. You first,” he said with a laugh.

“No, guests first.”

“I was going to ask if you’re comfortable talking about that guy. If not, it’s okay, that’s your business. But if you did…” He let the thought trail off.

Her first instinct was to say no, she wasn’t particularly comfortable. But again she was reminded that he had done for her what no one else had ever done. Maybe she owed him an explanation.

“I met him about four years ago,” she began. “He was a blind date. We hit it off, seemed to like the same things. But later I began to realize that he’d been lying about the things he liked just so we’d have things in common.”

Daniel was nodding as he listened. “And once you were hooked, he tried to make you change and like his stuff, right?”

“Yes! Oh my gosh, is that what happened to your sister?”

“Yeah. It’s a control thing, I guess. I don’t get it, really, but I gather it’s not uncommon.”

“He made me think that everything I liked was shit, that I had no taste, no intellect. Sometimes I’m no even sure what it is I do like anymore. I haven’t listened to music in months.”

“What did you listen to before you met him?”

“I liked oldies.”

“Like how old?”

“Forties, fifties, sixties.”

“Beatles?”

“Oh yeah!”

“Good. You need to listen to them again. They’ll remind you of who you are.”

“I got rid of all my CDs when we lived together. But I can buy some new ones. That’s a good idea,” she said, feeling more hopeful. “So what do you like to listen to?” she asked, figuring he’d say country rock, or metal, or maybe electronic music.”

“Mostly classical these days. You look surprised. Did you think I’d say ZZ Top or something?”