She woke late the next morning, exhausted, a little hungover, and very glad she didn't have any plans today. She heard cartoons playing in the living room and, squinting at the twelve on her clock with grainy eyes, surmised Chloe must have come up from her grandmother's apartment on the floor below on her own when she’d gotten tired of waiting for her mother to come get her. Heather stumbled out into the living room, yawning, and headed straight for the kitchen to make herself a bowl of cereal.
"She lives!" Chloe called from the living room.
"Just in time! I'm making lunch!"
Heather groaned as, reaching the kitchen, she realized Nana Linda was already in it and cooking. Linda's culinary skills, while not nonexistent, didn't go far beyond the range of various casseroles and pasta salads.
"You must have had quite the evening!" Linda said, straining a pot of pasta. "I almost expected you not to be home at all."
"Yeah." Heather's voice was rough with sleep. "I don't know if Shania explained last night. I was invited to a second event, and—"
"And then you went to dinner with one of the most eligible bachelors in the city. Yes, I know," Linda said coolly, swanning across the kitchen with a jar of mayonnaise to grab a tabloid off the counter and toss it in Heather's direction. "I went to collect my stories from the paper stand this morning, and imagine my surprise to see you there!"
Heather's face heated to a vibrant scarlet as she looked down at the magazine. The front-page photo was of her hugging Altair outside the restaurant last night.
"Really, Heather, a sheikh?" Linda asked. "I never knew you had that kind of ambition."
"Are you dating him now, Mom?" Chloe called from the living room, hanging over the arm of the couch. "How long do you have to be dating him before I count as a princess?"
"They're calling you a 'mystery model.'" Linda leaned over the island counter to flip open the magazine, showing Heather the article. "No one knows where you came from! There's all this speculation about who you are and what your relationship is. It's all quite fascinating!"
Heather bent down to press her forehead to the cool tile and take a deep breath.
"I'm going back to bed," she declared, and she turned around to stumble back toward her room.
She fell facedown into her pillow. This was all too much. She'd barely had time to process what had happened last night, and now she was on the front of a magazine as a mystery model? That kind of thing just didn't happen. Not to her! What had last night even been? Her aching head was swimming with confusion.
She felt her mattress sink as Chloe climbed onto the bed and pressed a cold water bottle to her cheek. She groaned in passive complaint.
"You okay?" Chloe asked.
"Yeah," Heather muttered. "Just overwhelmed."
"Are you gonna see him again?"
Heather opened one eye to give Chloe a mildly annoyed look.
"What?" Chloe shrugged, pushing the water bottle at her again. "The whole city is dying to know! Nana said so."
Heather sighed and sat up, taking the water bottle and leaning back against the headboard.
"Maybe," she said. "Probably not. I mean, we didn't exchange numbers, and he still thinks I'm a model."
"But you want to?" Chloe leaned forward eagerly. Heather took a long swig from the water bottle.
"Yeah," she said with a sigh. "I do."
"Then you should do it!" Chloe insisted, grinning. "I bet Miss Shania knows how to get in contact with him!"
Heather groaned, putting a hand to her head.
"I can't, though!" she said. "He thinks I'm some kind of supermodel! I lied to him."
"It was a misunderstanding," Chloe said, leaning on her shoulder. "Just tell him the truth! He'll understand."
"Why do you want me to see him again so badly?" Heather asked. "You haven't even met him. He might be awful!"
"He's a prince," Chloe replied, rolling her eyes. "If you don't give a prince a chance but you'll waste a year on Craig, you really are hopeless!"
Heather laughed a little, still sipping her water. "Did you always hate Craig that much? I didn't think he was so bad at the beginning."
"Nah. He was fine until I started noticing how much he lied," Chloe said, sitting back against the headboard next to her mom. "He lied all the time, for, like, dumb stuff. And then he'd twist it around and make you think you were the one that was lying. I noticed it before you did, but you kept saying he'd get better, like he was sick or something. But being a jerk isn't being sick! Craig had an incurable case of jerk-itis."
Heather laughed again, shaking her head.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I still thought I could make it work with Craig right up till the end."
"You really liked him," Chloe said, patting Heather's knee sympathetically. "It's like when I thought I really, really liked buttered noodles and didn't want to eat anything else, and then I ate so much of it I got sick. I kept thinking if I ate more it would get good again! But it just got worse."
Heather remembered that. It had been a stressful few months before she'd grown sick of all those noodles.
"But the prince"—Chloe pulled the tabloid out of nowhere with a grin—"he is definitely not buttered noodles."
Heather groaned and resigned herself to hiding in her blankets again.
Chloe's words stuck with her, however. Did she want to see Altair again? Her heart said yes, definitely, but her brain balked at the concept. He wasn't going to stay interested when he found out she wasn't a model. And the idea of ending up in magazines on any a regular basis made her want to hide. She'd nearly had a heart attack going up on the catwalk last night, and she hadn't had to do anything then but walk. Becoming a figure of public scrutiny, her every action photographed and judged—it sounded terrifying. Was a brief flirtation that would probably go nowhere worth that risk?
She dragged herself out of bed after a while and enjoyed Nana Linda’s lackluster lunch, mentally evaluating everything she needed to get done today. She’d arranged her schedule to have today off. She liked to have some space to recover and restock after major events. But she still had errands that needed to be done. In particular, she needed to go back into town and pick up her van from the event hall. She needed to check in with Renee and Desmond as well to see how last night had gone and what they were running low on. She was sitting at the kitchen island as Linda fussed over cleaning up the lunch dishes, just getting ready to leave, when her phone chimed, surprising her. She expected it to be one of her crew, but instead it was a text from an unknown number.
"Hello, Heather," the text read. "This is Altair."
Her heart skipped a beat. Shock and delight made her nearly drop the phone.
"I hope you don't mind that I got your number from the event coordinator last night," Heather read on. "I told her I was looking to book you for further engagements, which is true, but I was also hoping to thank you for the wonderful evening. It's been a long time since I could talk to anyone like that. I would be honored if you would like to see me again sometime soon."
Butterflies swarmed in Heather’s stomach, and she had the sudden urge to swoon like a lady in a period film. He wanted to see her again! It wasn't just a one-time thing. He really liked her! It seemed so perfect and impossible that she hardly knew how to react. How did you respond when a sheikh asked you on a date?
"Heather?" Linda snapped her fingers in front of Heather's eyes, and Heather realized the other woman had been talking to her for several minutes as she’d spaced out, staring at the phone. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Heather said, blushing as she tried to bring herself back under control. "I just need to go, uh, make a call."
She hurried out of the apartment, gripping the phone excitedly, and down the hall to the shared terrace, which was blessedly empty at the moment. She sat down at the aluminum and glass patio table and dialed the sheikh's number with shaking hands.
"Heather?" he asked as he answered, sounding a little surprised.
"Sorry. Is it a good time?" she asked. "I thought it would be easier to just call you rather than texting."
"I have a few minutes," he said. She heard him excusing himself and moving somewhere private. She stood, wandering restlessly back and forth across the terrace.
"So I guess you've seen the tabloids this morning?" she asked when he was alone.
He chuckled, embarrassed. "I did. An unfortunate consequence of being wealthy and single in this city is constant speculation about your love life."
"It really surprised me," Heather said, leaning on the balcony railing. "I suppose it could have been worse. At least I was a 'beautiful, mystery woman' instead of, I don't know, 'big-nosed weirdo totally beneath your notice.'"
She laughed and heard him do the same.
"For the record," he said, "I think your nose is adorable."
Heather grinned, happiness a warm flutter in her stomach.
"Well," she said lightly, "let's hope the paparazzi continue to agree with you."
"Does it bother you?" Altair asked, concerned. "Technically, it's illegal for them to publish those photos without your permission. I can push to have them retracted if you want, and we'll be more discrete in the future—"
"It's fine," Heather said quickly. "Really. It's a little embarrassing, but it's not enough to stop me from wanting to see you again."
"That is a relief to hear," Altair said, his voice warm, "because I really would like to see you. Are you free Wednesday night?"
"I am," Heather said at once. "I would love that."
"I know a restaurant downtown I think you would absolutely love," Altair said, excitement in his voice. "They're doing some fascinating things with molecular gastronomy I think you would really appreciate."
"I've always wanted to see more of that kind of thing," Heather said, starting to get excited as well. "The most I've ever done is liquid nitrogen ice cream. Some of the cutting-edge stuff is so far out I can hardly wrap my head around it."
"Then we will both be lost together," Altair said with a small laugh. "I don't get any of it. I must confess, though I love a good meal, I know relatively little about the world of food beyond what I've picked up from friends and associates."
"Well, I'd be thrilled to be your guide," Heather said, smiling. "There's not much I'm more passionate about."
"I've noticed," Altair said. "I'm curious how you ended up in modeling when you clearly love cooking so much."
"Ah." Heather froze for a moment, wondering if she should explain the whole model thing now. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she stopped. Over the phone was too awkward. She'd tell him Wednesday night. "I just kind of...stumbled into it. A friend needed someone to fill in for an event, and I was available."
"Lucky for me," Altair said fondly. "I might never have met you if you hadn't been on that catwalk last night."
"I think I'm the lucky one," Heather said. "Models are a dime a dozen, but how often is there a sheikh in the audience?"
"Trust me, Heather," Altair said, a smile in his voice, "you're one of a kind."
Heather's heart felt light enough to soar out of her chest. She could fly off this terrace on the slightest breeze and go dancing among the clouds. It was only her grip on the railing that prevented her from floating away into the stratosphere.
She and Altair talked a while longer, flirting and exchanging details for the date until he needed to return to work. Heather returned to her apartment fairly floating a foot above the ground.
"What was that about?" Linda asked when Heather walked in. She'd found Heather’s wine stash and was halfway through a glass. She'd poured grape juice into a matching glass for Chloe, who was dramatically imitating Linda's delicate sips.
"It was Altair," she said, her head too far in the clouds to be self-conscious.
"The prince?" Chloe nearly spilled her juice in excitement.
"He wants to see me again," Heather said, grinning from ear to ear. "This Wednesday."
"Oh my goodness." Linda fanned herself in shock. "Heather, you're dating a sheikh!"
Chloe, jumping up and down with excitement, ran to hug her mother.
"I know," Heather said, dazed, only noticing Chloe colliding with her enough to pat her head absently. "And he's wonderful."