The Sheikh’s Island Fling_Sheikh's Meddling Sisters_Book Two Page 2

  “Same old, same old,” she said, trying to brush off the waves of attraction threatening to draw her under. It was heartache, loneliness for Marcus, right? That had to be it. It had only been eight months since their break-up. She was still grieving, wasn’t she? If the pounding of her heart was any indication, maybe not.

  “I have a secret,” he said, flashing a small smile, his teeth even and white against his tanned skin. “Want to see?”

  “If that’s a pick-up line, it’s probably the worst ever.” Ani snorted. “Seriously. I think I see why you’re here now. You need help with your game.”

  Rehaj shook his head and reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “My game is fine, Miss Brightbridge. But if you’re nice, I might let you use this.”

  Ani glanced over to see him waggling a burner phone between his fingers. “Oh! Where did you get that?”

  “I’m a man of many talents.” Rehaj grinned and slid the phone back into his pocket. “Now we shall see if we can actually get any cell service out here in the middle of the ocean.”

  “We’re not that far out.”

  “True.” The shuttle emerged out onto the beach and drove a bit far down the sand to where a jumble of thatched roof huts were nestled amongst the foliage, some on stilts, some nearly at the water’s edge. Ani thought it was beautiful, but the man beside her was frowning. “This is not what I expected.”

  “What?” Ani asked as the shuttle pulled to a halt and they got out. The sand felt warm and squishy beneath her feet and she kicked off her sandals. “All the villas are adjoined. Each has a private entrance, but we’re all together. Mine’s the corner one over there on the left. Let me see your keycard.” He pulled it out and handed it to her. “Cool! We’re neighbors. Yours is right next door to mine. C’mon. I’ll help you get settled.”

  When he didn’t follow right away, she stopped to look back at him. “I promise I don’t bite. You act like all this is a huge shock. Didn’t you read the brochures before you came?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, Miss Brightbridge,” he said, tromping through the sand in his expensive handmade loafers.

  “Ani, please. It’s what everyone calls me.” She held her hand over her eyes to block the brilliant rays of the setting sun. “And touché. I didn’t read the brochures because my sister planned this trip for me. Thought it would do me good to get away.”

  “What a coincidence,” Rehaj said, stalking past her toward his villa. “Mine did the same for me.”

  2

  Rehaj let himself into his villa, thankful for a moment of silence at last. Not that he’d minded talking to Ani. Quite the contrary. He’d found her amusing and different. He was used to his sisters, who shared a mutual love of shopping and clothes and decorating, but were also pragmatic and as driven as Rehaj and his brothers to rebuild their country and improve Djeva’s standing in the world.

  Ani seemed smart, though he hadn’t gotten the same sense of overwhelming ambition from her like he did from his sisters. Even his youngest sibling, Razi, already had her future planned out. At fourteen, she was a wizard with all things tech and her goal was to revolutionize the technology infrastructure within Djeva to make it a global data-processing powerhouse.

  No. What he actually picked up on most from Ani was a sense of uncertainty and loss. Two things he was well acquainted with. The loss of his father had hit him hard and he still found himself struck by sorrow from time to time, though it had been well over a year now since his father’s passing. Then there had been young Ayesha. At seventeen, she’d been so young, so beautiful, so hopeful. Back then, Rehaj had been hopeful too. He’d imagined they would live happily ever after with Ayesha as his princess. The car accident had ended all of that forever.

  My fault. All my fault.

  Exhaling slowly, he shut the door to the villa behind him then switched on the lights. The sun had set now, leaving everything bathed in shadows. Across the room there were open doors that led to a veranda outside and the curtains billowed in the breeze. It really was a lovely resort, meant for lovers. His mind wandered back to all those couples he’d seen in the lobby and suddenly Rehaj felt far older than his thirty years.

  With a sigh, he set about unpacking his things, then shrugged out of his suit jacket and tie, unbuttoning the top button on his shirt and rolling up his sleeves. Starting tomorrow, he’d wear the sporty casual stuff he’d packed. This was a vacation, after all.

  A knock at the door had him turning to find a sheet of paper had been slipped beneath his door. He walked over to pick it up and found it was an itinerary for the next day. The words Recover Love Rehab were printed across the top and below them were hourly scheduled activities designed to get the island’s current residents mixing and mingling. Also beside each activity the name of another guest was listed—his partner, he supposed. To his shock and relief, Ani’s name was beside his for the entire day. She seemed nice enough, even if he wasn’t looking to get involved at this point. And yes, she seemed a little too high-strung and overdramatic for his tastes—he preferred women who knew the score and didn’t mind disappearing at the first whiff of media coverage—but they could make this work. From the schedule, the activities were set to start at eight sharp. That meant he could get up early and go for a nice long swim in the ocean before partnering up. Things were looking better already.

  He toed off his shoes and socks then strolled out onto his balcony overlooking the beach about a hundred feet away. The sound of the waves rolling against the shore soothed his ragged nerves and for the first time in a long time he wasn’t thinking about his next cabinet meeting or his big proposal—to lead his brother’s cabinet advisors—or the new rules and stipulations that his brother’s cabinet members should be releasing any time now.

  No. As he stood in the soft night breeze, the scent of jasmine and sea drifting around him and the stars twinkling down from the clear sky above, all he thought of was how lovely it was here on this secluded island.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a quiet voice came from somewhere to his left.

  Rehaj glanced over to see Ani sitting on the balcony of the villa beside his. She’d mentioned them being neighbors earlier, and from the looks of the fifty feet separating them, she hadn’t been kidding. He walked over to the chair at the furthest end of his veranda and plopped down, resting his feet on the railing in front of him. Normally, back at the palace he would never consider acting so informally around a virtual stranger, but here in the darkness it seemed as if a safe zone had been created. Ani was sprawled out herself, on a chaise lounge, that pale green silk dress of hers sliding up to reveal slim, toned, tanned thighs and those same cute pink toes.

  For an insane second, Rehaj wondered what it would be like to run his hands up said thighs, to feel those legs wrapped around him as he drove them both to ecstasy. To take each of her cute, pink-painted toes into his mouth and suck and kiss them until she begged him for mercy.

  Until she begged him to take her, again and again.

  He shifted slightly in his seat to remove the growing pressure off his groin. Damn. He’d barely met the woman and he was already fantasizing about her. Not good. Especially when they’d be spending the entire day together tomorrow. To divert his erotic thoughts, he tried to make small talk. “Did you see the itinerary?”

  “Recover Love Rehab?” Ani snorted. “Yes, I saw it. Looks like they partnered us up.”

  “Yes.” Rehaj stared out at the silver-tipped waves reflecting the moonlight. “When I first arrived it appeared that everyone in the lobby was a couple.”

  “That’s probably because they are.” Ani sighed. “This is a couples-only resort. I’m suspecting the only reason they let you and me on the island is so they’d have an even number. Guess you’re stuck with me for the duration.”

  “Hmm.” He should be mad. How dare his sisters foist this vacation upon him, knowing what they were setting him up for. And Rehaj had no doubt they knew exactly what they were doing.
For the last few months, since his younger brother’s marriage, their eldest sister Jessenia had taken a keen interest in Rehaj’s love life—or lack thereof. Seemed she’d declared herself family matchmaker and intended to see him paired up and walking down the aisle one way or another. As the last unmarried Nazari male, he almost felt it was his duty to hold out as long as possible. Well, that and the fact that he didn’t deserve a long and lasting love. Not after what had happened with Ayesha. He rubbed his face and stared up into the heavens. “And you are stuck with me. For better or worse.”

  * * *

  Ani got up before dawn the next morning and got ready in her yoga gear. She’d taken up the exercise shortly after her nasty breakup with Marcus, thinking it might help settle her and clear her mind. It had done both, though nothing seemed to help the aching hole left in her heart after the man she loved had betrayed her.

  She stretched and got a bottled water from her minibar then decided to roll her mat out on the balcony to enjoy the sunrise and greet the new day. It was cooler now than it had been last night, but by no means cold. They were in the tropics after all. A light breeze stirred the palm fronds above the balcony and the soft calls of birds in the trees signaled a new day was coming soon.

  As she went through her routine, starting in a seated mediation lotus pose before gradually working into Downward-Facing Dog and Plank. Some of the tension left over in her muscles from the day before eased as her body lengthened and relaxed.

  Perhaps, she conceded, her sister’s insane idea to send her here hadn’t been so crazy after all. Gwen, two years younger than Ani, had been watching her mope around for months now after Marcus had gone and maybe it was time to get back out there again, no matter how scary the idea.

  Ani stretched each leg up and behind her, trying to remember a time when she hadn’t been tied to someone else’s wants and needs and had a hard time imagining it. Before the Marcus years, there’d always been her mother. Smart, funny, accomplished—Diana Brightbridge was the figurehead and spokesperson for their family charity, The Brightbridge Foundation, which fought for women’s and children’s rights around the world. Funny then, that the one woman who should be so confident, so fearless in the face of adversity, was the most overwhelmed by it all.

  She could still picture the first time she witnessed her mother have one of her panic attacks. Young Ani had been only six and her mother had been about to give a speech to a large group of women donors to their cause. Ani had seen her mother swallowing pills before, but Diana had always assured her daughter that they were from the doctor to boost her confidence. But that day the pills had run out. In her dressing room before the speech, Diana had fallen to the floor, clutching her chest as if she couldn’t catch her breath. It was the scariest thing young Ani had ever seen. And it had left an indelible mark on her consciousness.

  These days Ani still lived by those long-ago beliefs. That confidence was something outside yourself, something you wrapped yourself in like armor or a cloak. Or in Marcus’s case, a diamond necklace he’d given to Ani for that purpose. Marcus had used a Ferari for his own armor. Either that or the closest available supermodel. Ugh. Confidence was a necessary evil. One Ani knew she needed more of for herself.

  Too bad she had no idea how to get it.

  Now the man she’d met yesterday, Rehaj? He had confidence in spades. She bet he could teach her a thing or two in that department.

  Probably in the bedroom too.

  Ani sighed and quickly shoved those thoughts aside as she pressed upward into a Forward Fold position. She wasn’t looking to get involved with anyone again, especially some rich playboy who was only looking for a good time until the next pretty young thing showed up. She’d had more than enough of that with Marcus Winters, thanks so much. And the soul-sucking loss had just about killed her in the end.

  To the impressionable, gullible seventeen-year-old Ani, Marcus had seemed like a hero from one of the romance novels she’d loved to read so much. They’d first met when working together at a mission’s clinic in Africa for her family’s charity. She’d been a senior in high school then and had hung on Marcus’s every word as if it were gold. He’d been kind and generous, donating a huge sum to build a permanent women’s clinic on the site, and he’d wished her well as she’d returned to the States to finish her senior year. Nothing untoward, nothing but platonic. But she’d developed a serious crush nonetheless on the dashing twenty-seven-year-old tycoon who hung the moon and stars, at least in her mind.

  They’d met again two years later. Ani had started college and was going for a marketing-slash-public-relations degree so she could someday follow in her mother’s footsteps. Marcus had come to the UCLA campus to speak to the MBA graduates and she’d immediately fallen right back under his spell. This time, Marcus had treated her as an adult, not as an eager puppy following him around. He’d wined and dined her and three weeks after they’d reunited, he’d taken her virginity. On her nineteenth birthday, she’d told her parents she was taking a year off to travel the world with Marcus. She never went back to UCLA, a move she still regretted.

  Nine years they’d spent together, nine years she’d turned a blind eye to his philandering and lies. Nine years she’d played the dutiful, doting, dumbass girlfriend of a man who couldn’t keep it in his pants if they’d had a padlock on them.

  Familiar anger and sadness squeezed her chest and she straightened into a final Namaste position to finish her routine. Marcus was gone and she’d been left to pick up the pieces after him. Marcus, who’d always needed consoling, always needed her affection to prove he was still attractive, always needed her constant emotions to show that she cared. Rehaj had called her dramatic yesterday. Was it any wonder after what she’d lived with for the past decade?

  The sun was starting to rise now in the east and the sky was shot through with lightening shades of pinks and golds and lavenders. Beautiful.

  Ani sighed and stared out at the sea, noticing movement just off shore. She squinted and realized it was a man, rising up out of the ocean. A very well-built, tanned, and toned man. Long, muscled legs, sculpted chest and abs, and that raven-black hair that she’d dreamed about running her fingers through last night.

  Rehaj.

  Instinctively, she took a step back, so that the foliage surrounding the front of her balcony hid her from view as she spied on him. God above, he was gorgeous. Marcus had been handsome too, but nothing like this man. Rehaj wore his masculinity with ease, all rangy, lithe sinew and chiseled strength. Water glistened off his smooth skin and Ani bit her lip, her tongue tingling with the urge to lick those droplets off him one by one.

  Her breath quickened and she scolded herself. This was silly. She’d seen half-naked men before. Hell, she and Marcus slept together for nearly ten years. To get this affected by a man she’d just met yesterday was stupid and wrong.

  She was still grieving over the loss of Marcus. She shouldn’t get involved again. It would only lead to more heartache and strife. Wouldn’t it?

  Staring out now at Rehaj in all his glory, Ani began to have her doubts.

  Truthfully, she didn’t know a thing about him. Not really. And maybe that was part of the draw. They were two strangers, stranded together on a tropical island for two weeks. He could be anyone she imagined him to be and the same with her. They’d been paired up together to for most of the activities, at least for today. She could get to know him better, if she wanted.

  Man, oh man. Did she want right now.

  Down on the beach, Rehaj had finished drying off and had wrapped the white towel around his waist. His hair was sticking up in adorable disarray around his head and he was walking toward the stairs leading up to his balcony beside hers. She needed to move fast or he’d catch her hiding in the bushes like some weird peeping Tom.

  To cover her nervousness, she set about rolling up her yoga mat then picked up her small hand mirror to check the light coat of makeup she’d applied before coming out here. Ani never went anywhere
without makeup. Another lesson learned from watching her mother. All part of that confidence shield she was trying so hard to build.

  Rehaj stopped halfway up to his villa and waved to her. “Good morning, partner.”

  “Morning,” she called, as casually as she could and did her best not to stare at all that fine male flesh on display. “You’re up early today.”

  “I usually am,” he said, his smile a bit tighter than she’d expected. There were shadows under his eyes as well and she couldn’t help wondering if he’d not slept well last night. She’d tossed and turned herself for a while, before falling into an uneasy sleep. Ani had put hers down to being in a new place, but with Rehaj she sensed there was more behind his lack of slumber. Before she could ask, he stepped up onto his balcony. “I’ll see you at breakfast then.”

  He gave her a quick head-to-toe appraisal that caused her insides to warm before he disappeared inside his villa and closed the door. Ani stood there a long moment, breathing deep to steady her racing pulse. One thing was certain. These next two weeks were going to be interesting.

  3

  Rehaj rushed through his shower then pulled on a pair of black board shorts and a black Nike T-shirt before slipping his feet into a pair of black flip flops. It felt strange not dressing in his regular suit and tie as he’d done every day since graduating college with his doctorate degree in Political Science, but then he was on vacation. He should dress like someone on holiday, or at least what he thought someone on holiday would wear. He honestly had no idea, since he never took time off.

  He’d thought a swim would help him clear his head, as it usually did back at the palace, but no such luck. All through the night he’d been tormented by images of the accident that had killed his poor, precious Ayesha and those agonizing final minutes as her life had drained away. As long as he lived he’d never forget the words she’d spoken to him—about her hopes and fears, her dreams and her plans—as the light in her eyes had slowly dimmed. There’d been nothing he could do to save her, nothing he could do to help her, trapped as he was in the wreckage himself.