ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance (66 page)

And, of course, there were calls about the marriage proposals—some sheik or other in some country or other wanted to marry some daughter or other to the Prince of Bahrain, even though he was last in line for the succession and had neither the interest in ruling, nor the ruthlessness for removing his brothers. Bashir sighed and covered his face with his hand, now, wondering why he had to be the last son. He was twenty-eight, and still his wishes to be left alone and not pestered with the idea of marrying strangers were routinely ignored.

“—and you must come back immediately,” his father was saying.

It’d been something about a marriage, and Bashir could feel his eyes rolling as he protested, “But I have a thesis draft due on Tuesday—”
I wonder which daughter of what sultan is up for offer now
, he thought.

“You always have something due,” his father snapped. “Now I am telling you to come home. And anyway, you are the only one of my children who has yet to meet your new mother.”

“My new—”
Did he say mother?
He had, Bashir realized. That was why he was calling. “Wait, when did you get engaged?”

“As I said, a lot has happened since you went to England. Come home, Bashir. Let’s talk.”

Bashir found himself agreeing to fly home as soon as possible. “What are you staring at?” he asked, as he handed the phone back to Misha. He felt bad right away—Misha, always the picture of decorum, hadn’t been staring—and there was no reason to lash out at the man like that, except out of his own peevishness about having his plans for the weekend thwarted. Not that they were very good plans—spend Saturday whoring, Sunday drinking, and fly back to England before classes on Monday—but they were his. Still, he supposed he could make an exception, this one time, for his father. “Change of plans,” he said. “We’re going back go Bahrain. Do you have a tuxedo?”

***

He was last in line for the throne, but the Prince of Bahrain still had some official duties to fulfill, and amongst them was welcoming his new stepmother to the family. It wasn’t until he was on the flight to Dubai that he got his first warning that something wasn’t right about this. He tried to call his brothers and sisters, but his eldest brother was in Jordan and not picking up his phone, his sisters were in Bahrain but ignoring his calls, and the one brother that answered professed to know nothing about the marriage.

If this is a scam
, he thought angrily, as he he collected his luggage and headed towards the smaller plane that would fly him home. It was too late now—the people he knew to be based in Dubai were all business types, and more often than not were out of the country, making their millions or billions. They were not the kinds of friends you called up five minutes before you arrived at their pristine, sparkling penthouses and asked to crash on their couch.

They got into a cab at the airport. “The Royal Palace,” Bashir said, quickly. He’d been too preoccupied on the way over to call the house ask them to send a car—and he’d found, while living in London, that he’d grown to like the quiet anonymity that taxis could give.

The driver smiled nervously and chuckled. “Only the royal family goes there,” he said.

“And who do you think I am?” asked Bashir, equal parts amused and irritated. Amused, because he could probably call the guard and have a literal army descend on this cab within minutes, and it would be funny to see the man piss himself. Irritated, because he’d rarely been disobeyed before.

“We have business with the royal family,” said Misha, before either of them could get snippy. “Security arrangements for the coming wedding.”

“Ah, yes—very important,” said the driver, as he drove off, chattering about the wedding of a second cousin’s seventh grandchild that he’d just attended. Bashir was too peeved to think of anything to say at all—and anyway he couldn’t decide whether to lash out at Misha for his impertinence or the driver for daring to disobey a prince. Which, he had to admit, was mostly his own fault. He’d been living in London since he was twenty, after all.

On the long drive to the Royal Palace he remembered why he’d only been back once in those eight years: for his mother’s funeral. She was a lovely woman, even as she neared sixty—time did not ravage her looks, they only softened her features. She had a beautiful smile, was always decorous and correct, and he could not ever remember having heard her yelling. His sisters used to joke that she’d given all of her beauty to him because Dr. Farsid made a mistake when they did the ultrasound and told her he was girl. She’d died three years ago; Dr. Farsid had told him it was most likely a heart attack, but autopsies were forbidden by Islamic law, and in any case there was no reason to suspect foul play.

Now that they were out of the glitzy high-rises of Manama the scenery turned into dreary-beige buildings in the midst of a dready, beige desert. He’d never understood why people said they loved the desert so much. It seemed ridiculous, to persist in living in a place that was trying to kill you all the time. Even now, despite the cab’s tinted windows, he was thankful he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses, because the sand outside was bright enough to burn his eyes.
Even the light is deadly
, Bashir groused silently.

In the distance, the Royal Palace—a surprisingly modern building, given how much the tourism board loved to boast about Bahrain’s long history of trade in the area—rose from the sands, a seemingly solid block of white marble at a distance. As they got closer, they could begin to make out the intricately-carved shutters that were drawn over the windows, and the subtle gilding of certain flowers. Bashir’s tutors had once tried to impress upon him the pattern the gilding followed, but his head had never been one for numbers.

It seemed to take forever to reach the front gate, though, and by the time the cab pulled over Bashir was more than ready to jump out. The cab driver had spent most of the ride reminiscing about how wonderful his children were, and Misha had surprised him by actually engaging the man in the conversation. It was a little strange, not to have to be the one to do all of the talking, for once, and as they got their bags Bahsir said, “I didn’t know you have a family.”

“I don’t have a family,” Misha said. “It’s my sister’s family I was talking about.”

“Oh. Do you want a family?”

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question, but Misha froze and gave him such a hard look that Bashir was actually a little frightened. He almost said, “I’m sorry,” but Misha said, “That time is past.”

What did he mean?
Misha wasn’t that old. But his bodyguard was approaching the main gate, where the guard instantly recognized him and Bashir, and moved to let them in. Not that there were many blond Russians who spoke Arabic on Bahrain.

“Forgive me, my Prince,” the guard stammered, as Bashir walked through the gate. “If we’d heard you were coming—”

“But you didn’t because I didn’t tell you,” Bashir said, dismissing the man’s professions of utmost regret and sorrow about having abandoned his duties and so on and so forth. He felt a little guilty about being so dismissive with the guard—it wasn’t the man’s fault that he’d been trained with all of the rules and regulations and decorum surrounding the job of guarding the royal house. At the same time, though, his time in London had made him impatient, with the overblown protocol and formalitiies.

Misha slowed to allow him to pass—in London or Amsterdam, it was perfectly all right by the both of them if Misha led the way. Here, though, things could get considerably more tricky for them both if either of them failed to follow protocol.

They entered the Royal Palace, into the main hall, a massive hall with panels of intricate, hand-carved tilework on the walls and floor. His father was waiting for him at the far end. Next to him stood a woman—and not just any woman, either.
Her
.

Now he understood why his brothers and sisters wanted nothing to do with their father’s new marriage. Alya al-Shahaad was a rich businesswoman, a designer of some clothing line or other. She was pretty enough, with her blond accents and intense gold eyes, and fantastically rich, even by the standards of the wealthy oil barons of the Arab world.
Money only gets you so far
, Bashir recalled now, in the voice of his mother. What she never had to specify was what it couldn’t buy:
happiness, class, grace, style
.

None of which this bitch has
, Bashir thought, now, trying to contain his temper and keep from spitting curses at his father. She at least did not try to act as if she didn’t know what she was doing. Alya stayed back, while the king, Salaman bin Nassir, came forth to greet his son.

Bashir hugged his father, and they exchanged the customary kisses—this much was automatic to him and he found that, despite having been away for so long, his body still remembered what to do. “My son,” the king said, smiling. “I am so happy that you are home. Now, I know what you’re going to say,” he said, before Bashir could launch into the thousand reasons why this wedding should not happen, “but I am still the sheik and it does not go against the laws of the country or Islam for a man to take another wife after his wife has passed.”

“A wife, yes—a whore?”

Some fifteen, maybe twenty years ago—when Bashir was still too young to know what an affair was—the king had had an affair with Alya. All he knew, though, was that his mother had cried for weeks, refused to eat, could hardly be moved from her room. At that time, he’d been having his own heartbreak—a girl he’d liked in school had moved away. He was old enough, by then, to realize that grown-ups sometimes lied, so to have his father lie to him about the affair wasn’t especially world-shattering. But to see Dr. Farsid hanging outside his mother’s rooms for weeks at a time—weeks when he wasn’t allowed in to see her, not even to give her a flower—was terrifying to his child’s mind, and somehow the affair with Alya became conflated with the near-loss of his mother. Even now, Bashir still felt a wave of sickness going through him when he thought of his father, bringing this woman into their house.

“You’ll not speak like that to my wife,” the king said, sternly.

“She’s not your wife yet.”

“She’ll be my wife longer than you’ll be my son if you don’t stop this childish pouting,” the king said.

Bashir wanted to protest:
What are you thinking? Do you not remember what happened the last time you slept with this woman?

“I know you love your mother, and so do I,” said the king, softly. “I was lucky for that. Not all arranged marriages are so seamless and easy. But Alya and I have been partners for far longer—”

“Partners,” Bashir spat, scowling at the woman and his father, wondering what they could have possibly partnered in besides breaking his mother’s heart. “She didn’t deserve that,” he said.

“And I shall have to answer for that,” the king said. “I give you my word, though—”

“Your words mean little and still less to me,” Bashir said, taking his bag and stalking off. Misha followed. He still remembered where his rooms were—or at least, where they would be, if
she
hadn’t changed everything around by now. That was usually what new wives did, at least according to all of the old story books. And at this point, given how his father had tricked and misled him, there was probably more truth in the stories than there as in the entire palace.

***

He dismissed Misha after they put their bags in his rooms—like his other siblings, he had his own small suite of rooms, and he asked one of the servants to make up a bed in his study for the bodyguard. “You can have the rest of our time in Bahrain off,” he said. He wanted to be alone, the better to contemplate his next moves before and after the wedding. There was no way he would have this stain on his name, and if it meant the end of a cushy trust-fund life, then so be it.

For perhaps the first time in his entire life the Russian frowned, confused. “Are you sure, sir?” he asked.

“Yes—I know, you signed a contract, but trust me, if anything gets past the miles of scorching desert, through the armed guards, and then through this rat hole of hallways and tunnels, I’ll be the first to let you know. So go—relax by our pool. Have a margarita. I know it’s a Muslim house, but someone here will know how to mix one.”

After his bodyguard left, Bashir reminded himself that he had to look up how Misha was being paid—whether the money was coming out of his trust money or if his father had included the bodyguard’s salary in his list of expenditures. His trust fund had paid for his apartment in London and gave him a budget of about 2000 dinar a month for spending as he liked, but if he was going to make a clean break with his father, then he would have to pay Misha himself. He’d never been a target of an assassination attempt, but he’d been roughed up by football hooligans in the Tube simply for being a well-dressed man. He didn’t want to think what would have happened if they’d known he was a prince.

There was, too, the risk that his father would decide to cut off his trust fund altogether, which wasn’t an immediate problem, but it would complicate matters immensely—he’d need to find a job. He was reasonably certain someone with a background like his—fluent in Arabic, French, and English, with a degree in international law—would be able to find something, but that would mean changing his visa, which would in turn mean more fine print and legalese that he just didn’t want to deal with. But he
could
deal with it—he
could
break away from his father and his trust fund and even Misha if it came to that.

But, he had to admit, life would be a lot easier if it didn’t.

There was a knock at his door. He looked up and saw his youngest sister standing at the door. “Bashir,” she said, grinning.

“Miriam,” he said.

They hugged. “You never come back anymore,” she said, pouting. She was the prettiest of his sisters—so he’d always maintained—but she always said he had a fool’s idea of beauty. He didn’t know what she meant—she had large, bright eyes, and her lips had a natural deep redness to them, and she had a natural elegance in her choice of abayas.

“I know, I’m a bad brother,” he said now.