The Sheikh's Accidental Bride (5 page)

The doors that swung open for them glimmered like they were carved all of one piece from some giant blue gemstone. It was some kind of technological trickery, Nadya guessed, though she’d never seen anything like it before. The playful part of her mind set about imagining how it would have been mining a gemstone that size.

She laughed, and her eyes darted to Salman, expecting him to ask her what she was laughing at. But his gaze was fixed at something behind the giant doors. She followed it, and what she saw took her breath away. Even though she’d seen from the air that the house had a courtyard to it, she had been expecting an entryway. Something in her mind had assumed that it would be a large room, full of hard surfaces, with cut flower arrangements in deceptively expensive vases littering every flat surface. Like the homes of old money New Yorkers, or the Beverly hills mega-producers ripping of their style in an attempt to gain credibility.

No, this house was Salman’s. It was his taste, and no one else’s.

They entered the wide courtyard. In a way, it almost reminded Nadya of the patio where they’d eaten the day before. But where the terrace had come with a certain feeling of exposure, this felt sheltered.

There were plants everywhere, and Nadya recognized some of them, although she realized with fascination that many of them she had only seen in movies.

“It’s a garden,” she said, mostly to herself, and saw Salman nod, out of the corner of her eye. “Who takes care of all this?” she asked, imagining one of the stone-faced grey-suited men wandering around with shears, pruning bushes and avoiding thorns in floral-patterned gardening gloves.

“There are three gardeners, actually,” he said. “I chose them myself, and they all live on site. This is the heart of the home, and my home is my heart, so I wanted to make sure it was well looked after.”

“You’d like them, I think,” he said as he took her hand, and brought her in. There was a winding path through planters, alive with bushes and towering, flowering trees. “They’re characters. I hear them arguing, when they don’t realize I’m nearby. One is an old woman, who seems like she’s always got a pie cooling somewhere. She’ll talk your ear off, if you’re not careful, about what works best in this climate and how things have ‘always’ been done.

“Another is a very scientific man. The head butler said that when he moved in, he brought with him a full collection of specimens, and they had to give him an extra room in the servants’ quarters just to store it all. The third one is just a boy. He can’t be more than nineteen, but he loves growing things, and he just seems to know how they grow best. So I took him on to sort of fill things out, as it were. I like to imagine he keeps the peace.”

“It’s alive,” Nadya said, as they walked. She meant the house. When she imagined huge mansions, she always imagined them as these empty caves, where the maids were only always dusting because the house itself were a relic, and nothing is used or wanted. Just empty halls, and a lingering feeling of decay. But there were people living here, already. The house had a life to it. It was a place to grow, not a place to decay.

“I should hope so,” he said, not quite catching her meaning. “You did hear the part where there are three gardeners?”

The path they were on looked to be made of slate tiles. They looked cool, and refreshing, so Nadya stopped and slipped her sandals off. She wanted to feel it beneath her feet.

“Some of these plants seem like they’ve been here a while,” she said, after they’d walked on a bit further. She was looking at some vines that had climbed their way up to a second story window. “When did you build this place? I can’t imagine it got like this quickly.”

They were coming around a corner now, towards the center of the garden, which was a great, wide open space with only a few low interspersed raised beds.

He didn’t answer right away. Something was bothering him. “The pavilion is set up,” he said to a stone-faced man nearby, whom Nadya hadn’t even noticed.

“Yes, sir. For the wedding, Your Highness.”

Perfect place for it. She could see it now, with the guests all sitting in chairs, distributed throughout the booths. There was room for an aisle just there, and the sound of the vows, and the applause at the kiss would echo beautifully off of the surrounding house.

“The wedding is to be held here,” Nadya observed, before she could stop herself.

“No,” he said. He shook his head, as though trying to clear some thought from it. “I mean, no, the garden didn’t get like this quickly. I first built this place years ago. But yes, this is where the wedding is planned to be.”

She’d gotten away with it, again – not knowing something that the other Nadya should really know. How could other Nadya have agreed to this, Nadya wondered, heading into an entire new life knowing nothing?

The pavilion was beautiful. It was white, with inlays that matched the big blue doors of the entryway. It must have been custom built. And it had been built recently. There were still some tools lying in one corner, that a red-faced craftsman was even now rushing over to retrieve before he was chastised for leaving clutter to be seen by the prince.

Nadya dropped Salman’s hand – that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding – and climbed the stairs up onto the pavilion. From here she could get a sense of the entire house. She marveled at the details. It was a perfect fusion of the delicacy of Middle-Eastern design and the comfort of a rustic Catskills getaway. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did, beautifully.

The sound of Salman’s footsteps drew her eyes to him.

“I designed it myself. It took years… I’m not really a design man. But I wanted the house to feel comfortable, and like it was exactly how I wanted it. No one else’s designs quite felt right. So I learned how to do it myself.”

Nadya felt her hand absentmindedly go to his arm, slipping through it with thoughtless ease. “It feels like you,” she said.

She saw his face light up, and he put his hand on hers.

“There are five sides to the building. Is that right?”

He nodded. “There are five of us, in my family. I mean, there’s my four sisters, and myself.” Nadya must have looked confused, and he rushed to explain. “When I first designed it, I was a bit younger. It was important to me that everything should
mean
something, you know. And family… family is what home is about.

“My parents wanted me back in Al-Ahradi, just after I finished my Masters. Or, they wanted me based there, at least. Two of my sisters are still there. So I had to pick, between being at home, where my family is, or being here, where I can get my garden to grow, where I can be outside without always feeling choked by the dust in the air, or driven out by the sun. I devised this house to remind me of my family. So I feel like they’re always with me.”

Nadya felt like she must be missing something. She gave everything a look over, trying to piece everything together herself, but found she couldn’t. “What do you mean, exactly?” she asked.

He talked quickly, the words slipping out of his mouth the way cool water slips over smooth stones in a babbling brook. “There’s one side for each of us. Five siblings, five sides. Like the pentagon, but not so much of the death and dying and war.”

Nadya grinned, and liked to see the chain reaction as he smiled as well, noticing her.

He continued. “My side is that one,” he said, pointing of behind them and to the right. “It’s got the master bedroom in it, and the best view. It also has my office, and the library.”

“Because you’re wiiiise,” she said, remembering their conversation the day before and leaning into him.

“And brave.” He said with a wink.

“All right,” she said. “So whose side is that?” She pointed at the big, gleaming blue front door.

“That’s my youngest sister’s. She’s a traveler. She’s been everywhere. I bet if you sat her down, and you asked her where she’d been in the last few weeks, she’d be sure to name at least two places you’ve never heard of. She first left home at sixteen, which is unheard of in our family. She convinced the pilot of the family jet that she was expected in China, somehow. Something about a school trip. Once she landed, she slipped her security escort, and we didn’t hear anything from her until three months later when we got a message from Nepal telling us not to worry, and that she was safe, and she’d send us pictures soon.”

Nadya was captivated. There were so many sides to him that she was growing to admire, and this one had to be one of her favorites. He loved his sister. But it was more than obligation. He admired her, and treasured her for who she was. No more, no less.

“Why blue?” she asked, as she’d been wondering since she first set eyes on the door.

“She has blue eyes. Bright, bright blue eyes. They’re quite rare. No one else in my family has them. She actually showed up here out of the blue – pardon the pun – one day. She loved what I’d done with the place.”

He was smiling. Of all his accomplishments, Nadya was beginning to realize, pleasing his family was perhaps the one he was proudest of. It was beginning to make more and more sense, why such a smart, intelligent man, would agree to tie himself forever to a woman he’d never met before.

“Ok, fair enough. And what about that one?” She nodded her head towards the door behind them and to the left, next to the one Salman said was his own.

“Ah, that’s my oldest sister. She’s a mother. Six children, if you can believe it. All adorable little terrors.”

“And what is in her wing?” Nadya asked, suspecting she knew the answer.

“The dining room,” he said at first, surprising her. “And the ballroom. She throws amazing dinner parties. And the children’s rooms, as well.”

“And that one?”

“Servants’ quarters. And kitchens. My sister, Amani, is very active back home in improving the treatment of migrant workers. It’s a big problem, as I’m sure you already know, but not so much in Al-Ahradi, anymore. And that’s down to her. She works with our neighboring countries, doing what she can.”

Nadya found herself thinking that she was looking forward to meeting Amani, before she caught herself with a pang of regret.

“And that one?” she pointed at the last remaining side. She had to move on.

He smiled. “Elham, the second eldest,” he said. Music and entertainment. The piano is in there. And the listening room. It’s set up beautifully. I’ve got a recording studio, there for her. She uses it when she comes to visit.”

“And,” he said, leaning into her conspiratorially, “the movie theater is in there.”

“We should watch something,” she said. “I’d like to see it. From the inside.”

He nodded, but didn’t move to walk. “Of course. But after breakfast, I think. We never did have breakfast, did we?”

With those words, Nadya suddenly realized how hungry she was. All the excitement – the plans for escape and the realization that she was standing in the place of Salman’s dreams – it had served to suppress her appetite without her realizing.

“I could use some coffee, as well, if you’re offering.”

He asked a staff member to bring them a table and chairs, and they ate right there on the podium. She would have felt exposed up, Nadya thought, except that the courtyard itself, large though it was, still felt intimate. It was protected – their own private world. It had the same feeling of privacy that the inside of their hotel in the city had.

“Is it always like this with you?” Nadya asked, settling back into her chair, sipping her coffee. She felt full and satisfied enough to muse.

“Like what?”

“Like nothing else matters. Like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

She hadn’t meant it to sound romantic. She meant it as a comment on his style, and his choices. But the words out loud made her blush with their implications.

“I’m glad you feel that way.”

She began to formulate a response, to try and make him understand that she was commenting on the architecture of his home, and his choice of hotel suite. But instead she let it stand. If she was supposed to be his fiancée, what was wrong with a little romance? She was pretending to be other Nadya, and other Nadya was supposed to fall in love with this man. If she let herself go a little bit down that road, what would be the harm?