The Sheikh's Accidental Bride (3 page)

He nodded slowly, and Nadya congratulated herself. Quick recovery. A bit messy, but she seemed to have gotten away with it, for now at least.

Her mind turned back to what had shocked her so much in the first place. It was one thing knowing that he was going to be married, eventually, to other Nadya. But knowing that it was going to be so soon, her presence there felt even more wrong. She was eating into their precious time to get to know each other. They didn’t have long, and she was taking it.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said, with perfect sincerity.

The man nodded. “Honestly? Me either, some days.” He looked wistful, again, as he had when she’d come back out from the bathroom.

This was all wrong. He shouldn’t be sharing these doubts with her. She shouldn’t be the one he admits this to. If he did, she couldn’t trust herself not to try and talk him out of it, and then where would she be? She’d have done real, lasting damage, thanks to a misunderstanding that she’d let get out of hand.

“You were saying, Columbia?” she said, trying to draw the conversation back to safer territory. This time she would be the one to hold back, and keep them on the safe track.

The man looked back relieved to be back on the planned tour, as well. “Right. I studied finance. I came here ten years ago, actually. Studied at Columbia, and then did my postgrad in business. Went to Stanford for that.”

“California,” Nadya said, her voice betraying the memories she had there, maybe more than the meant it to. She had grandparents out there, and to her California would always mean beaches and long, lazy days.

“Yes,” the man said, noticing her tone. “You like California, then?”

He sounded surprised, and Nadya froze. She wasn’t sure – did other Nadya know California? Did she like it? Had she been there often?

“Only once,” she said. “Between flights. But it seemed nice.”

It seemed like the answer least likely to give her away, but the lie hurt her. She was lying about being his fiancée, but still… something about him and his openness with her made her want to only tell him the truth. At least, as much as she could without revealing herself.

He seemed to buy it, nodding sagely. “I wish I could say I had as fond of memories of it as you seem to. I studied, most of the time.”

Time was ticking away. She had so little time, and she was wasting it on small talk. Since they’d sat down, the whole conversation had felt like a dangerous shifting compromise. She missed the man that had been joking with her before they sat down to eat.
Oh, what the hell.

“So you’re a nerd, then?” she said, any pretense of trying to talk like a princess now dropped.

He almost choked on his wine, but the corners of his lips were turned up in a smile. “You know,” he said, “princes can’t actually
be
nerds.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Oh yes,” his said, his mock seriousness kicking in. “It’s a little known fact. We can only be wise or brave. True story.”

Here he was, again. No small talk, no brooding look. Just a quick joke and an easy smile.

“Those are your only options?”

He nodded gravely.

“So you picked ‘wise’, then? If you’re off studying instead of anything else…”

“Nadya, Nadya, Nadya… are you ever lucky. As it turns out, I’m actually both!”

Nadya laughed. “Brave
and
wise? Is that even possible?”

He shrugged, wineglass in hand as though he were toasting it. “It appears so. I’m quite shocked myself.”

Nadya picked up her own wine glass and settled back into her chair. Suddenly waiters were around them, whisking away their salad, and replacing it with what looked like lobster bisque, but she paid them no mind.

“I’m afraid I’m going to need proof. You studied, and succeeded, I take it. There’s your wisdom. But where’s your bravery?”

He looked around, as though amazed that she wasn’t seeing the obvious. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

She set down her glass and reached for her spoon; the bisque smelled far too delicious for her to be put off trying it any longer. “So, an arranged marriage is an act of bravery, is it?” she asked between bites.

He shrugged, and picked up his own spoon. His little play-act of cocky bravado was gone, but it only revealed the casual confidence of the man beneath. “Well, either that or after four years of pouring myself into my undergraduate studies, two years pouring myself into my MBA, and four years pouring myself into managing my family’s Stateside operations, somehow my father is surprised that I’m 28 and haven’t met anyone.

Nadya nodded, as though she could empathize.

“And then it begins,” he continued. “Every other week my mother is asking ‘Salman, have you met any women lately?’”

Salman. There it was, at last. Just when she’d gotten too caught up in the conversation to plot ways of getting him to say it, he’d come right out with it.

She’d never met a man named Salman before. He was the sole owner of the name for her. She liked the name. She liked the way he wore it.

“Yes, parents have a way of pressuring you into making decisions you aren’t ready to make, don’t they, Salman?”

She took the opportunity to say his name immediately, even though it may have given her away if he were already suspicious. She liked the way it felt on her lips.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t ready to make it,” Salman said, backtracking. They were already back on the unsteady ground they’d found themselves on earlier, only this time, they were just a bit more comfortable with each other. They stepped out onto it together.

“So this was your parents’ idea as well, was it?” he asked, innocently enough.

Nadya hurriedly said that it was, and her eagerness brought a little smile to his lips.

“And you came willingly? Or have you been sent against your will?” He bent down close to the table and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Shall I call for the police?”

Just the idea sent an involuntary shiver down her spine. Was this illegal? Was she committing fraud?

“I’m right when I want to be, thank you very much,” she said. And she meant it. “Anyway,” she carried on, trying to distance herself from the embarrassing moment of sincerity and the terrifying idea of the police, “don’t family always kind of have you captive?”

He frowned. “I love my family,” he said.

Nadya hurried to clarify. “Oh, I love mine, too,” she said. “But that’s beside the point. Even if they want to help you… I mean,
especially
if they want to help you… it can sometimes feel like a bit of a trap.”

His eyes narrowed, and Nadya wished she hadn’t gone down this line. But she couldn’t stop now. “It’s like, because they know you… or… no, that’s not what I mean.” She was flailing, unsure how to say what she meant. “Don’t you feel it?” she asked. “When you’re with them? Like they’re trying to suck you in, and they’ll never let you go.”

He tilted his head from side to side, like he was knocking the thought back and forth to see where it fit. “I suppose I know the feeling you mean. But I think you value too much being let go. Sometimes it’s nice to be held onto.”

Nadya went back to her wine.

“And I think you might not value it enough.” He looked at her for a long moment, before he followed her lead and went back to his wine, as well. “You surprise me, Nadya.”

She arched an eyebrow. “I do? Good. You know, a princess can be surprising, or agreeable.”

He smiled, seeing where she was going with this. “And let me guess… you just happen to be both?”

“Oh no,” she said, with gusto. “I’m just surprising.”

FOUR

The fear of Other Nadya’s arrival began to fade from Nadya’s mind as the dinner wore on. It seemed less and less likely that she was going to arrive if she hadn’t already.

“And what about you?” he asked her, over their third course. “What did you study?”

“Political Science. But I didn’t finish.” The truth burst out of her without her meaning it to.

“Where?” he asked, and she told him. “And why didn’t you finish?”

There was a trickier subject. It would have been difficult to answer even if she hadn’t been pretending to be someone else. But now she wasn’t sure what to say. How would a Middle-Eastern royal ever feel the way that she did? How would it play with Salman if she told him how she really felt?

Maybe it was the light of the night, with the stars beginning to peek out through the glowing sky above them that made her do it. Whatever the reason, she continued. “I just realized the reasons that I got into politics weren’t something that politics can really change. Not well, anyway. Everything’s just power-mongering, isn’t it? The rich and the powerful squabbling over what they have. The people who have nothing aren’t even in the game.”

She held her breath, the stillness between them punctuated by a car horn many stories below. She prepared for him to be offended, or to tell her that she couldn’t possibly be who she said she was. But to her surprise, Salman sighed.

“I feel the same. Take you, for example.”

“Me?”

“No, I don’t mean it in a bad way,” he reassured her, seeing her nervousness at the attention. “I mean take my family choosing you as a bride for me. It didn’t matter who you really were, just what family you were a part of. It’s all loyalties, and alliances. Even now, with everything we are so fortunate to have, and all the power that my family has... Still we give our lives to defend it.”

She liked the way that he looked when he was riled up. It made him seem less like he was the perfect model of a man, and more like he was an actual, living, breathing human.

He moved on quickly, not lingering in the point of pain. “And, of course, they picked you to make sure then don’t end up with grandchildren named Tim and Julie.”

Nadya giggled a little. She wasn’t prone to giggle. The wine must be going to her head, she thought. “You should name your kids Tim and Julie, anyway,” she said. “That’ll show them.”

Salman smiled, and corrected softly: “
Our
kids.”

The certainty of it all hit Nadya like a shot in the dark. Here she was, admiring and dreaming. But there were things that couldn’t be changed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve said something to upset you.”

“No… No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put a damper on the mood. You just reminded me of everything that’s happening.”

They were talking about it now, really and truly. There would be no turning back from it.

“You know, if you don’t want to do this, they can’t make you. And I’d understand. Really, I would.”

The temptation was there. It would be so easy. She could just tell him that she wanted to call it off, at least for now. Maybe she could say that she wanted to get to know him a little bit better, first – more than three days would allow. But what would that change, in the end? Maybe she would plant a seed of doubt in his mind. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe Salman’s declaration that the wedding was postponed would make its way back to the real Nadya’s family, and she would choose that point to show up.

The gears were going underneath the surface, but outwardly she only pursed her lips. “No,” she said. “I don’t mean that. It’s just a lot, very quickly.”

They moved on from there. They’d tackled the elephant in the room, so there was no longer any need to be afraid of it. With that, conversation became easier. They talked about movies. That seemed, to Nadya, like it would be a safe subject, and for a while, it was. And with every word, he seemed more and more human, and she felt, rightly or wrongly, like he was more and more hers.

Even there, their experiences differed. He asked her what she thought when she first saw the unedited movies from her childhood and her mind blanked.

“I mean the ones you saw in theaters back home… when was the first time you saw them over here and realized bits had been cut out of them the first time you saw them? All the kisses?”

She mumbled something about not really going to the movies much as a child, and he said that it was a shame. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t stick. He didn’t seem suspicious. But still, it reminded Nadya that this wasn’t her date, and that she’d better get going.

There was no graceful way out of it. There was no good way of saying that she’d been lying to him all evening, and that she didn’t’ know where his fiancée was, but that he should probably be worried, at this point.

Her best chance, Nadya thought, was to simply call it a night. Then she could go off to her room, find her bags, and sneak out when she thought that he was asleep and wouldn’t hear her. This suite had to be huge; breaking out shouldn’t be too hard.

Nadya started yawning. Subtly, at first, but then more and more often. She hoped he would catch on and comment, and luckily, he did. Just after they’d finished dessert and the dishes had been carried away by some waiter so discreet as to be invisible.

“You must be exhausted,” he said, as though thinking of it for the first time. “You know, I had a date planned for us. I thought I might take you to the theater. But all things considered…” He had a grin that could charm a Chihuahua out of yapping. “Do you want to stay up here? There are loungers up here, hidden behind the plants. I found them earlier. I’d like to look at the stars with you.”

“It’s hard to see the stars in New York City,” Nadya said, even as she could feel herself getting more and more carried away with the idea of laying on this rooftop by him, side by side.

“Then we’ll have to look carefully.”