On the highest floor of the downtown Houston high-rise, Sheikh Ibrahim sat on his balcony, his legs stretched out and his white button-up splayed open, revealing his six-pack abdomen. The early morning sun beat down upon his brown skin, glinting on his two-thousand-dollar sunglasses.

He sipped his coffee slowly, savoring the intense flavor. He’d had the coffee beans shipped in from South America—a tiny beanery in rural Argentina, which he’d discovered on vacation three years before. It was important to him to have things in life that no one else knew about.

Money wasn’t everything, no. But the niche things he could buy with it? Perhaps they were the “everything” that life was truly about.

Back inside the penthouse apartment, Eva Brooks-Hernandez was destroying his bedroom, trying to find the last of her things. She tore at the closet doors, reaching inside and muddling his shirts as she brought the last of her dresses from their hangers. She was sobbing loudly, a sound that gave Ibrahim chills.

He knew that Eva didn’t care about him. He knew this was all an act, one meant to draw him back to her. One meant to reignite their “engagement.” Ibrahim couldn’t allow himself to fall for it.

Eva appeared in the doorway to the balcony, wearing only a robe that fluttered around her expensive bra and underwear. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and her lower lip bounced up and down, making her look like a petulant child. She held a suitcase in her hand, gripping it tight.

“That’s it, then,” she said, her voice hard and angry. “I’ve collected my things. And, now, I will ask you again. Are you really going to end what we have, all because—”

“Eva. Eva, Eva,” Ibrahim sighed, standing up from his balcony chair. He flashed his white teeth in a sad smile at her. “You know as well as I do that you never loved me.”

Eva pressed her lips together tightly, scowling at him.

“Darling, that’s simply not true.”

“You mean that after we’d slept together only once, and I asked you to marry me to solve the issue of my mother’s meddling in my life, you actually decided to fall in love with me?” Ibrahim asked, pausing to take a sip of his coffee.

Eva had no answer to that.

Ibrahim shrugged, continuing. “Or did you decide to fall in love with me after you demanded that I pay you four million dollars in return for marrying you? And I agreed to it, like an idiot?”

Eva slammed her suitcase to the ground, looking haughty.

“Why would I have married you for free?” she demanded. “You’re not even in line for the throne.”

“Ah. So it comes down to that, does it?” Ibrahim asked. He felt almost like laughing, but wanted to proceed delicately. The woman was clearly a loose cannon. One he had been foolish enough to trust.

“And yet, when I asked you to keep our engagement to yourself, at least for the time being, you were unable to. You call the newspapers, airing our apparent love to the world…”

It was true. He’d heard her just the day before, whispering conspiratorially with a journalist when she’d thought he couldn’t hear.

Rage had flown through him, along with a realization that he’d bungled up this chance. His plan—to fool his mother that he was getting married, and then part ways with Eva forever—was officially scuppered. Eva wanted more than just the four million dollars. She wanted the fame and recognition that went with being his bride.

“What will you do without me, huh?” Eva asked, sniffing. She tossed her head, making her long, dark locks fall over her scantily-clad breasts. “What are you going to tell your mother when you arrive in Rebai without a bride? Isn’t she preparing everything for your big, fancy wedding? Bet you didn’t think of that, did you?”

Ibrahim had thought of this. It angered him to the core, knowing that his plan couldn’t go through. But he placed his hand lightly on Eva’s bony shoulder, tilting his head calmly.

“Eva. Baby. Please.”

“What is it?” Eva asked, blinking wildly.

The Sheikh sensed that her gold-digging mind was attempting to patch up the pieces of her mistake. She yearned to be his fiancée again, in any sense. If only for the tabloids. If only so people would never forget her name.

“Please, get out of my house,” Ibrahim said coldly. “I don’t want to hear from you again.”

Eva stormed from the balcony doorway, taking her suitcase with her. Without bothering to don a shirt, dress, or even a pair of pants, she shoved the stilettos she’d left by the door onto her feet.

“You’re going to be alone forever, Ibrahim,” she yelled from the doorway. “Don’t think for a minute that anyone will ever marry you, if not for your cash. You’re a cold, arrogant jerk. And you never meant a thing to me!”

Even after the door slammed, Ibrahim remained at the center of his apartment, his arms crossed over his chest. After a pause, the elevator dinged in the hallway, sending Eva off into the ether, and Ibrahim took a deep breath, consigning his one-time fiancée to a bad memory.

“You’re going to be alone forever!” The words echoed through his mind.

But that wasn’t true, now, was it? Ibrahim hadn’t been alone since he’d been a teenager. Women had chased after him for years, spellbound by his good looks, his royal title, his muscles, and—especially now that he’d built up a hotel empire in the United States—his money.

In fact, the very reason he hadn’t wanted news of his engagement to leak was to ensure that his playboy lifestyle could continue, even after the “marriage” had gone through back home. He would marry because that’s what his mother wanted for him, and because he would do almost anything to make her happy. But he wasn’t prepared to give up on a life he loved. The women. The raucous parties. The fact that he was the most eligible bachelor in all of Texas.

But this had created a serious issue. Eva had been correct in this assumption. His mother expected him to bring his bride home in only a month: in time to marry before his thirtieth birthday. Already, she’d begun the preparations for the wedding, sending him a list of the many, many guests she’d already invited, along with ideas for flowers, menus, and the very best seamstresses who could produce the wedding dress.

Ibrahim couldn’t imagine something less appealing than telling his entire country that the marriage was being called off. Slipping his fingers through his thick black hair, he stared down at his phone on the countertop, knowing that a phone call to his mother was a necessity.

“It just didn’t work out,” he tried out, speaking aloud. “She and I just couldn’t see eye to eye, Mother. You know? Sometimes these things just don’t pan out the way we think…”

But the thought of letting her down like that sent a stabbing pain through his heart. Pacing back toward his balcony, he stared out over Houston, taking stock of the streets, the skyline.

Someone, somewhere must be willing to take my money, marry me, and then keep her pretty mouth shut… he thought. Perhaps an actress. Someone prime and ready for her breakout role as “wife of the Sheikh.” He’d teach her the right things to say. He’d inform her about his customs, ensure that she got along well with his mother. In many respects, this would be far better than bringing that airhead model back. Like sculpting a bride from thin air…

As if on cue, his phone began to buzz on the counter. Ibrahim reached for it and noted that his mother, Amira, was dialing from across the ocean. At ten hours ahead, it was already six in the evening in Rebai.

Probably, Amira had been itching all day to call him about one particular of the wedding or another. Flowers, maybe, or how many cousins she would demand to be in his wedding party. Out of the twenty-eight cousins he had, he was sure she would include at least ten.

“Mother!” Ibrahim said into the phone, sounding lighthearted and alive: very unlike the man who’d just kicked his potential fiancée out the door. “What a lovely surprise, so early in the morning.”

“Early? Darling, you must work on waking up at a reasonable hour,” Amira said. “If you’re going to be a married man, you can’t very well laze about all day. Especially when you have children…”

“Mom, you know we’re not just going to rush out and get pregnant the minute we’re married,” Ibrahim said, scrunching up his nose. Already, he was beginning to chicken out on telling her the truth.

“You know, darling. I didn’t imagine that I would see my future daughter-in-law’s photo in the newspaper before I actually got to meet her in person. My, what a beauty she is,” Amira said, sighing into the phone.

Ibrahim concealed a shocked gasp with a coughing fit. Bolting upright, he moved toward his laptop, his fingers flicking nervously against the keys. “Oh? What have you seen?”

“Just the gossip section of the Houston Star, darling. We didn’t speak for so long, I was reduced to checking what the papers were saying about you.”

“I didn’t realize you were stalking me so religiously, Mother,” Ibrahim said, his heartbeat speeding in his chest.

“The gossip column, Ibrahim. I didn’t imagine one of my sons would ever wind up there. Although, I suppose, in America, you must be something of a celebrity. Certainly a self-made man, in your own right. Is that not so?”

Ibrahim couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t comprehend the stupidity of it: that already, hours after Eva had blurted out the news of their “engagement,” the local paper had run a story on it. Soon, the entire world would know the truth.

Once one paper got a hold of the story, it would spread like wildfire. “Ibrahim, the ‘Playboy Sheikh,’ engaged!” the world’s press would cry out. And, slowly, surely, his playboy name—and life—would die out.

He shuddered, typing his own name into the search engine and seeing page after page of headlines spring up. “Sheikh Ibrahim Engaged to Model.” Shoot.

“I suppose the gossip column will write about anything,” Ibrahim sighed, his nostrils flaring. Inwardly, he was growing more and more horrified. Life as he knew it was slipping through his fingers. “You know how they love to exaggerate—and how a juicy story trumps anything based on fact.”

“Well, I should hope that the ‘playboy’ stuff is a bit overdone,” Amira replied. “But I’ll come back to that later. You didn’t tell me your fiancée was a beautiful blonde—we’ll have to totally rethink the color scheme!”

Blonde?

Ibrahim blinked several times, wondering if he’d heard his mother correctly. Eva was a dark brunette, with cat-like eyes and a severe expression.

But, after a few clicks on the website of the Houston Star, the Sheikh found himself staring at a bright-eyed blonde posing awkwardly in running gear, the Houston skyline glinting behind her.

“Um. Mother?” Ibrahim said, confusion filling him. “You’ve actually caught me at a bad time. Do you mind if I call you back?”

“No time is a good time for you, is it?” his mother teased. “Not when you’re falling in love with someone. All right. Call me later on, but not too late. Remember, I’m ten hours ahead.”

“I’ve never forgotten, Mother,” Ibrahim said calmly. “And I never will.”

Moments later, he was steaming, reading the article in the Houston Star and trying to comprehend the switch-up. The information in the article was technically true. At least, it was the information Eva had given them, just last night. And the name and details about Eva were true, as well—the underwear model, whom he’d met only a few months before. All that checked out.

But the photograph?

Curious, he began to click through to the other articles in the Star. He scanned articles regarding the local baseball team, the upcoming NFL cheerleader tryouts (where his eyes lingered, if only briefly), and the local fairground’s refurbishing, before finally finding Eva’s photograph. It was a shot from her modeling portfolio: her poised at the bar, clinging to the cocktail with that fiery expression.

The photo highlighted the sharpness of her body, the angular nature of her elbows, something Ibrahim remembered from their few nights lying together. Everything about her was prickly, spiked.

Beside the photograph was an article about something called Jayne’s syndrome, and a young woman who’d raised over a hundred thousand dollars to combat it.

Ibrahim skimmed the article, feeling a familiar pang of sadness as he read about the death of the woman’s brother, and realized—with a jolt—that the blond woman he’d been pictured beside was the very subject of this article. Willow Hart was her name. The “beautiful blonde,” as his mother had called her.

Slowly, his brain began to swirl with a plan. This woman. This Willow Hart—she wanted nothing more than to raise funds for charity. And what on this earth did Ibrahim have, that most people didn’t?

Funds. Mountains and mountains of funds.

Feeling oddly giddy, he dove into the article with the energy of a researcher. With a pen, he began to underline the important facts: when the race began (the next morning! He didn’t have much time), where the route would take the runners, and where it ended. He learned that Willow was aiming to complete the marathon in about four hours (impressive, he thought), and that she would therefore finish the race somewhere around midday.

He’d be there, at the finish line, holding a granola bar and a banana. She’d need the fuel to hear out his plot. And, hopefully, if she was as committed to her cause with as much gumption as he guessed, she’d agree to a swap: he’d help her, if only she’d help him.

How fortuitous. I’ll play the part of Prince Charming as long as she can fake being a princess for a bit, Ibrahim thought as he closed his laptop.

Stripping down as he walked through his apartment, he entered his sauna naked and sat down, his head leaning back and the air filling with steam around him. Somewhere, in the dismal heat of downtown Houston, Willow Hart didn’t know her life was about to change forever. And, towering above her, in a multi-million-dollar penthouse suite, her knight in shining armor was busy dreaming up all the ways his life would return to normal once he returned to Houston after the wedding.

He’d fall back to his playboy ways, slipping the ring off his finger. His mother would be happy and none the wiser. And, he’d even engage in a little philanthropy at the same time. Talk about two birds with one stone!