Three days later, Qadir was standing in the doorway of his bedroom with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Aimee was chatting up a storm—in fluent Arabic—with Dr. Fuah and the two nurses. Her face was still pale, and she was still coughing, but her eyes held the sparkle of mischief he had become accustomed to.
“You should rest,” Dr. Fuah was saying.
Aimee waved her hand. “I’ll be sitting at the desk taking messages and pushing papers. Stanley needs help. It isn’t like I’ll be busting my board.”
“What is going on?” he demanded.
“I was advising Ms. Wheels—" Dr. Fuah began.
“I was just telling the Doc that I’m fine, and I’m grateful for all their wonderful care,” Aimee said.
“In perfect Arabic,” Qadir observed with a raised eyebrow.
Aimee grinned and shrugged. “It’s amazing what you can learn living on the streets.”
“You will not be going back to work,” Qadir stated. “You need your rest. Three days ago, you were on death’s door.”
Aimee wiggled her nose at him but wisely kept her mouth shut.
He turned his attention to Dr. Fuah, who was eyeing him and Aimee with a small bemused smile. He motioned for Dr. Fuah to follow him.
Once they were in his living room, he turned to his personal physician with a raised eyebrow. Dr. Fuah smiled again and shook his head. He could tell the man was struggling to form the words he wanted to say. Qadir sighed and raised his hand.
“I find it easier when dealing with Aimee if you just say whatever you have to say.”
Dr. Fuah chuckled and nodded. “She is a very unusual woman, sire. She has reacted well to the antibiotics and your care. Technically, she is well enough to do some light duties, but I fear she… might push that definition.”
“Is she well enough to travel?” he asked.
Dr. Fuah frowned. “I would be cautious of that. Traveling can be very exhausting, even if done in luxury. I would feel better if her lungs had a few more days to heal.”
“Why am I not surprised that fate seems to be against me protecting her? Exactly how long before you recommend that it is safe for her to travel?”
“A week, sire,” Dr. Fuah replied.
“A week it will be.” He paused and hesitantly asked, “Is there any… Are there other restrictions that I should be concerned about?”
Dr. Fuah tried not to smile. “All I can recommend is rest. The more she gets, sire, the more quickly she will heal.”
“Your advice is noted, Dr. Fuah,” Qadir dryly replied. “Please express my gratitude to Celine and Lara for their excellent care of Aimee. I will take over now.”
“Very well, sire. Until you need my services again,” Dr. Fuah said with an amused expression.
“Don’t jinx me, please.”
Dr. Fuah’s chuckle faded as he and Aimee’s two nurses left. Qadir went back to his bedroom. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the empty bed. A quick scan of the room showed that Aimee was not here. He was reaching for his phone when the muted sounds of water running and Aimee singing pierced the loud thunder of blood rushing through his head.
Qadir closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply to calm his racing heart. He chuckled when Aimee hit a bad note, stopped, and tried again. He began unbuttoning his shirt.
Qadir watched with a frown as Aimee came out of the bedroom the next morning dressed in a pair of her tattered jeans and one of his black cashmere sweaters. She was carrying her dark brown courier bag in one hand and her skateboard in the other.
On the phone, his younger brother by five years asked, “Qadir, did you hear what I said?”
“There must have been a bad connection, Junayd. Can you repeat what you said?”
He twisted around, his eyes following Aimee as she poured herself a cup of coffee and grabbed a Danish. She took a bite, moaned, and grabbed two more pastries from the tray, wrapping them in one of the cloth napkins. He felt pure dread when she tucked her prize into her bag. She peered under the lids of the covered dishes, grabbed a plate, and began filling the fine china with eggs, biscuits, and fresh fruit.
“Let me call you back,” he growled. He hung up.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She gave him an innocent, wide-eyed stare. “Getting breakfast. I’m starving!”
“I meant, why are you dressed?”
She stopped and licked her fingers. He followed the movement with his eyes while the lower half of his body responded to each, delicate lick of her tongue. The memories of what she could do with that tongue weren’t helping. When he finally noticed the mischievous expression in her eyes, he almost groaned out loud. She knew exactly what she was doing to him—and she was enjoying every second.
He scowled at her, which just made her expression more devious. She curled the tip of her tongue and made a sucking noise. The groan he was suppressing broke free.
“You are not going out,” he said in a strained voice.
“Yes, I am,” she laughed.
“No, you are not.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Yes, I am. I promised Stanley that I would sort out the paperwork for the deliveries next week. It’s Sunday, so no one will be there but me. I won’t be out in the cold or running around. I’ll be in a nice warm office all by my lonesome.”
“You are supposed to be resting,” he argued, folding his arms across his chest.
Aimee rolled her eyes. “I might have been in bed, but I don’t think there was much resting going on. It was more like non-stop—“
Qadir captured her words in a kiss. He knew he should feel guilty, but it was hard to feel such a negative emotion when his body was humming with contentment. She hungrily returned his kiss. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and they were startled into separating.
He retrieved it and lifted it to his ear. “I told you I would call you back.”
“This is too important,” Tarek replied in a terse tone.
Qadir frowned. “I thought you were Junayd. What’s wrong?”
“There is new information on the two men who attacked you. We need to meet at the Harris Building.”
“When?” he asked, looking at Aimee.
“As soon as you can get here—and expect the press. This isn’t going to be good.”
“I’ll be there within the hour,” he promised, ending the call.
“Trouble?” Aimee asked, looking up at him.
“The two men who attempted to assassinate me—we have learned more about them,” he replied.
Aimee hesitated, then nodded. “That’s good. How about you drop me off at Stanley’s place and pick me up when you’re done?”
He opened his mouth to tell her no, but realized that it would be pointless. She would go anyway. At least if he took her, he knew where she would be. He looked at his watch and sighed.
“Can you be ready to leave in—”
“Now,” she said, quickly finishing the last of the eggs on her plate even as she rose from her seat.
He chuckled. “I have never met a woman like you,” he confessed.
She wiggled her nose at him. “I know,” she said with a laugh.
A quick call to his security staff had the limo waiting for them in the circular drive out front. He followed her to the foyer door of the mansion, pausing to help her with her long coat and to pull on his outer coat. Qadir rubbed Aimee’s back as they descended the steps. Frigid air greeted them. The day was another dreary one, and he looked forward to returning to the sun and warmth of his homeland.
He pulled her closer to him. He would give her today to finish her obligations to Stanley. Tarek should have the paperwork for her passport completed by the end of the week. Once he had the documents, he could finally whisk Aimee away to Jawahir and introduce her to his parents.
Aimee slid her hand into his and smiled up at him. His heart swelled with love, and he kissed her before ushering her into the limo. Tonight he would ask her to be his wife.
Aimee studied the dreary streets and thought about how to tell Qadir that his ‘new information’ was actually just the fall guy Anderson Coldhouse had set up. The trouble was that Aimee didn’t want to give away Biggy as her source.
Aimee had grown up with Biggy. They had stayed close after his brother was killed in a power dispute and Biggy took his brother’s place as the leader of most of the gangs in Harlem.
She might question the lifestyle her friend had chosen, but she never judged. They each made their choice, and they lived by a different set of rules than most of society. She chose to help those less fortunate when she could. Biggy did the same in his own way. Unfortunately, his method of financing his charity projects tended to be illegal, not to mention painful for anyone who didn’t follow his rules.
Instead of voicing her thoughts, Aimee asked, “Who is Junayd?”
Qadir turned to her, and she smiled. Sometimes it was nice to pretend that they were just two people in love and everything was simple. As much as she needed to talk about wannabe gangster pawns and corrupt cops, it probably wouldn’t hurt to stall just a little.
“My younger brother,” he answered.
She looked down at their joined hands. “I didn’t realize you had another brother. I thought it was just you and Tarek.”
“There is much we still need to learn about each other. I also have twin younger brothers, Junayd and Jameel. They are twenty-five. Junayd is a doctor. Jameel’s love is computer engineering.”
“What did you study? And Tarek?”
He shrugged. “My degrees were in learning how to run a country. For fun, I studied International Business and spent ten years in the military. Tarek spent the same time in the military. His degrees are in Political Science and Counter Terrorism.”
Aimee looked at him with a startled expression. “How old are you? You don’t look old enough to have spent ten years in the military!”
He chuckled. “Thirty,” he replied.
“I hope I age as well as you do,” she said with a sigh.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “You’ll grow more beautiful the longer my eyes behold you, ‘amirati alkhayalia,” he promised.
The limo pulled up in front of Becker’s Courier Service, and Aimee bit her lip. One of Qadir’s bodyguards opened the door for her. She turned and kissed Qadir, gazing into his eyes as she pulled back.
“Tell Tarek to dig deeper. Andrew Carthmen isn’t the kind of guy to be the brains of an assassination attempt. There’s something else going on.”
He gripped her hand, preventing her from slipping all the way out of the limo. His eyes narrowed and he studied her face.
“How do you know about Andrew Carthmen?”
“The streets talk if you know how to listen. Tarek isn’t the only one who wants to keep you safe,” she said with a smile, pulling free of his grasp. “Let me know what you find out.”
Qadir glowered. “Keep your cell phone on. I will call you when I’m able to return.”
Aimee held her disposable phone up and grinned as she walked away. She could feel Qadir’s eyes on her until she rounded the building to the employee entrance.
She breathed in the chilled air. If she finished in time, she could go see the Yangs and visit her old home. There was a special box she’d kept hidden that she wanted to retrieve.
After pressing the code into the keypad, she slipped inside, moved the box for drop-offs with her foot, and closed the door behind her.