CHAPTER THREE
Aladdin had no plan for how long he was going to stay in New York or what he was going to do while he was there. At some point, his parents had banked their anger and started sending him the names of some of their Emirati contacts in New York. They were expatriates who were still fiercely loyal to the UAE, and they welcomed him with open arms.
As foreign as New York could be sometimes, the touch of home was pleasant. At the same time, he realized how much New York suited him. There was something about the chill in the air, even in late spring. It could always make him feel alive, and he found the orderly rows of the avenues and boulevards and the crush of people who saw him as nothing more special than the next man on the street to be enchanting.
Despite everything that New York had to offer, however, he soon realized that it was a haunted town for him, and the ghost was short, curvy, and had hair like bright sunshine.
Over the next three weeks, he started seeing her everywhere. They might exchange glances across a busy bar, or perhaps they would be at the same gallery opening. Once they were seated across from one another at a broad banquet table as a part of dinner for a charity drive. Another time, he caught sight of her hailing a cab across the street from him.
By the time that Saturday rolled around, he was frazzled and, above all, confused.
Was she following him? Was he somehow following her? It seemed unlikely in a city that large that they should keep running into one another.
When he mentioned this phenomenon to an older Emirati professor of languages that he was having tea with, the distinguished man chuckled drily. He had been in the United States for longer than Aladdin had been alive, but he retained a great deal of pride in where he was from.
"This city is smaller than you think," he said kindly. "There are simply more people packed into it. Think, though. When you have a spoonful of salt on a spoon, it doesn't matter how many grains of salt are there, a single grain of pepper will still catch your eye."
"I suppose that is true," Aladdin said dubiously. "But the question for me is why this person catches my eye. Why does this person draw my attention?"
"Well, I would think that your little pepper speck means something important to you. She has either done you a great wrong or done you a great right."
Aladdin started to respond, but then he frowned at the old man.
"I did not say that my pepper speck was a woman...."
The old man laughed softly.
"You did not need to," he said kindly. "You should go to her. You should speak with her. After all, the people who will stand out like that to you...well, there are only going to be a few of them in a lifetime. Do not waste time with wondering why. Instead, simply go, and learn, and talk. There is no harm to that."
The old man's words rang in Aladdin's ears, no matter how he tried to turn his mind to something else. At the end, he decided to leave it to fate. If he ran into her again, so be it. If he didn't...
Well, if he didn't run into her again, he didn't know what he would do. Her number was still on his phone, but calling her seemed to be the deepest violation of the rules that she had set forth.
Aladdin hoped he would run into her again, and this time, he wouldn't waste the opportunity.
As fate would have it, he didn't have to wait long.
* * *
Charlotte finally felt as if she could take a break. It had been something of a month from hell, with new clients who needed hand-holding and old clients who should have known better. She had been hopping from one spot to another, keeping just ahead of disaster, and through it all, she couldn't stop seeing Aladdin.
She wasn't surprised, in some ways. He looked like a stylish man, and her job took her all over the place, even if it didn't let her stay there long. She might run to as many as five or six hot spots over the course of a normal night. On a very busy night, she might hit as many as ten or twelve. As much as she might have wanted to stop and chat, she couldn't.
If she were honest with herself, it wasn't chatting that she wanted. Her encounters with Aladdin had left her feeling oddly unsure of herself, something that didn't really happen all that often.
Sometimes, she caught herself thinking about him off and on throughout the day, wondering what he was doing, whether he would have liked this book or that meal. She wondered what he did when he wasn't giving his one-night stands an excellent time, or what he liked to do when he was all alone.
Viviana had thought that she was being ridiculous. Her sister had backed off the idea of Aladdin being entirely dangerous, but she still felt that Charlotte had gotten exactly what she needed and now should move on.
"Seriously, you are in one of the most exciting cities in the world. Take advantage of it. Date. Don't date. Go walk some dogs. Learn a new language. Think about something else, or even if you don't, talk about something else, because this is getting pretty damned old."
Charlotte sighed, lying back in her bed. Her outfit for the night was laid out next to her, but the last thing that she wanted was to put it on.
"You're right, you're right," she said, finally admitting defeat. "I don't know if I'm cut out for the one-night stand lifestyle. I don't know if I'm ready to settle down yet, but yeah, I'm not going to go out and look for guys that I only keep for twelve hours. I get that now."
"Good," said Viviana in obvious relief. "I can't get back to New York for a little while, and honestly, I've been worried sick out here."
"Hey, I'm older, aren't I meant to be worrying about you?"
"You can worry about me if I don't get this next project out the door," Viviana said briskly. "Until then, be good, okay?"
Charlotte sighed, hanging up.
Tonight, she would go out, and she would do it without a plan. It didn't matter who she might see or what she might encounter; she was going to react to it naturally and easily. She would be herself, and she would listen to what she wanted.
A small part of her, one that she had gotten very used to silencing over the last few weeks, told her exactly who she wanted and that his phone number was on her contacts list. She pushed the thought away once more.
* * *
The Severen was one of Charlotte's favorite new nightspots. It was a place for intimate conversation, soothing old-fashioned decor, and drinks that were impressively creative. At the moment, it was still quiet and personal. In her professional opinion, it wouldn't stay that way for long, and she was happy to get some time with the place while it was just getting started.
It was a bit out of her way, as it was in Brooklyn rather than Manhattan, but sometimes, what she wanted was to make sure that she could do as she pleased without running into someone she knew.
She walked up to the bar, ordering one of the fruity mocktails that the Severen was famous for, and then she looked around. It was early enough in the evening that the bar was fairly quiet. Most of the people there, she suspected, were using it as their fairly tame launch spot before moving ahead for places with more serious drinks.
The door opened, and somehow, Charlotte was unsurprised to see Aladdin come in. He was dressed casually in slim-cut dark slacks that made his legs look miles long, and the dark green shirt under his well-tailored vest gave him a certain careless charm.
For a moment, Charlotte didn't know what to think. What were the rules in a situation like this? What was appropriate? As it turned out, she didn't have time to make any decisions at all, because now he was the one who was crossing the bar toward her. For a moment, she had a wild thought of simply taking him by the hand and leading him out of the place. She could take them back to her apartment, they could sink into her bed, and—
“Good evening, pretty Charlotte. Somehow I knew that I would be running into you here.”
There was a look on his face, one that was pleased but perhaps a little rueful, as well.
"And how did you know that?" she asked, tilting her head up to look at him.
"Because it hasn't stopped happening since that night at the art museum. Sometimes, I think that it's my punishment."
"Your punishment?"
The smile he gave her was wry and more than a little self-mocking.
"I wonder what I must have done to make a woman like you want so very little of me."
Charlotte laughed before she caught herself. She glimpsed a bit of hurt flickering across his face, and she couldn't take that.
"No, no, and no again," she said firmly, looping her arm through his. "That is not a thing that you are allowed to believe. As a matter of fact, I think I want you to come and sit with me for a while, and to ensure that you will, I will be buying you a drink."
Aladdin looked a little nonplussed.
"You...are going to be buying me a drink?"
"Yes, but before you get your hopes up, I am definitely not buying you anything as nice as that bottle that you caught for me. That was bought by Bennett, who has more money than God. I will be buying you a perfectly nice drink, but not one that has gold in it. What do you like?"
"You," he said with a laugh, but before she could respond to that, he was looking over the drink menu.
"All right. Italian sidecar."
As the bartender made up the drink, Charlotte couldn't resist peeking at Aladdin. It seemed that every time she glimpsed him, he was a little handsomer than before. There was something terribly attractive to her about his frame, the slight smile on his lips, the elegance of his fingers as he restlessly tapped them on the edge of the bar.
When the bartender gave him his drink, she escorted them to one of the more private booths in the back.
"I like this place a great deal," he said, looking around. "One of the professors that I was talking to a week ago recommended it, and it's taken me this long to come check it out."
There was something about the phrasing that told her that he wasn't a student. What, then, was he? Charlotte suddenly felt a pang at knowing so little about him. Then she reminded herself that this evening was all about acting on instinct and deciding what it was that she wanted, so she jumped in.
"What is it you do, Aladdin?" she asked, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
"Well, at the moment, I'm drinking something that has been purchased for me by a very beautiful woman."
She couldn't hide her disappointment.
"I guess that runs counter to the agreement we came up with, doesn't it?" she asked. "When I say that I want to keep things casual and limited, it doesn't really open the door to...more, I guess."
"I'm not going to go so far as to say that rules were made to be broken, but I do find that, in general, it is best to do away with agreements that cease to do any good. Shall we come up with a new one?"
Charlotte couldn't stop her smile.
"Yes," she said decisively. "Please, I would like that. I guess in the interests of fairness, you should be the one to determine the scope of the next bit here."
There was a devilish glint in his eye that reminded her of the fire that could spring up so easily between them, but he seemed to remember that they were in public and so pulled it back.
"I want to get to know you better," he said. "Can we just be honest with each other as long as we are here? If someone doesn't want to answer a question, they can stay silent, but otherwise...I just want to know more about you."
Charlotte found herself oddly touched by the request. There were so many things that he could have said, could have wanted, but this was what he desired at the moment.
"All right," she said, reaching out to touch his hand. "Since these are your rules, you should get to start."
"All right. First, why have I been seeing you everywhere? The professor called it fate, but after a while, I was beginning to think that you put a tracking device on my phone while I was sleeping or something."
Charlotte laughed, shaking her head.
"There are a few reasons for that. New York is not as small as it pretends to be sometimes, Manhattan especially. I run all over the place at night to make sure that my clients aren't doing dumb things, and I think you saw that. If I hadn't been working, I would have come over to say hi."
Aladdin blinked.
"You were working? You weren't...simply avoiding me?"
Charlotte stared at the handsome man who was seated across from her.
"Seriously? You thought I was avoiding you? Why would you think that?"
"I suppose I thought that you were out and enjoying yourself. I didn't think that you were working. That was singularly foolish of me."
"Not at all," Charlotte said. "I mean, part of my job is to make sure that everyone thinks that I'm having a great time, and across the board, usually I am. It just doesn't leave a lot of time for chitchat."
"What is it you do, anyway?"
"Publicist," she said crisply. "I work for Brooks, and we basically specialize in helping unknowns get more press and people who have messed up their public images. It's good work, and I love it, but I think it's my turn to ask a question now."
Aladdin nodded chivalrously.
"By all means, ask away."
"So...what is it you do? And don't give me some evasive answer including a compliment about how pretty I am. I want to know. I don't care if you're a janitor or a movie star or what. It feels strange not to know after all this time."
"Well, I'll be impressed if American janitors get to have as much free time as I do, but I'm not one. I'm...hmm, you know, I was never given etiquette lessons on how to introduce myself to people who didn't show up knowing who I am."
Charlotte laughed a little.
"So you're like a prince or something."
"Right," he said, nodding with something like relief. "There is an older word for what I am in Arabic, but yes. My father is the president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, and I am his firstborn son, the prince."
Charlotte waited for a punchline that never came. She stared at Aladdin's face, looking for any sign of deception or humor, but she found none.
"Come on, you're teasing me..."
"No, not at all. I am...visiting the United States for the moment, but I live in Abu Dhabi."
"Prove it," she said challengingly. “If you say that you are the prince, I want to see some credentials."
"What would you accept?" he asked.
Charlotte was beginning to get worried. She had thought that it was a joke of some sort, some kind of strange humor that she didn't get. Now, though, it didn't look anything like a joke.
"I don't know," she said distractedly. "A royal proclamation? I have no idea."
Aladdin thought for a moment, shaking his head.
"Well, that won't work. I seem to have left my royal proclamation in my other pants. However, perhaps this will do...."
He pulled out his phone, searching for a moment before placing it on the table in front of her. A video from one of the big news sites was cued up, and hesitantly, afraid that something was going to leap out and bite her, she pressed the play button.
It was just a short news piece, but it featured the royal family of Abu Dhabi. There was a man dressed all in black who looked a great deal like Aladdin, and by his side was an elegant woman in a loose headscarf and long, flowing robes.
For a moment, Charlotte wasn't sure what she was supposed to be seeing, but then the camera cut to a man sitting next to the sheikh. A man who was unmistakably Aladdin. Like his brother sitting next to him, he was dressed in Western-style clothing, wearing a tuxedo that had been tailored to fit his strong frame. A banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen when Aladdin took up the full frame, declaring him, "Aladdin ben-Arie, first prince of Abu Dhabi."
"Oh my god," Charlotte whispered. "That's you."
"Yes. I don't remember what that event was, but it was one that I had to be at and where I'm not embarrassing myself, so that's a plus. Does that prove my connections?"
"Yes, I should say it does. Wow. I'm not sure I've ever worked with royalty before."
"You still haven't," he said firmly. "After all, the last thing I have in mind is you working with me."
"It'd be the account of a lifetime," Charlotte joked. "I'm pretty sure that if I brought the royal family of Abu Dhabi onboard, I could basically write my own ticket at Brooks. However, you're right. I don't want to work with you."
"So what do you want to do with me then?"
The question was blunt, and she had to think for a moment before she could decide how she wanted to answer that. Then she remembered that an elegant answer wasn't necessarily the key. An honest answer was far more important.
"About a million different things flashed through my mind just then," she admitted. "Some of them were what you would expect from what we've done together, and um, I certainly wouldn't mind doing them again, but I realized that there are other things, as well."
"And what would those be?" he asked patiently.
"Well, okay, here's an example. I wound up at this art gallery just a few days ago for work, and it was...really dull. It was full of the kind of art that you get from people who are fresh out of art school and don't quite realize that all of their brilliant innovations are things that have been around for years, you know? I was kind of wandering through the gallery, bored, but then I ran into this piece that was...well, it was amazing. It was a green glass sculpture that was almost as tall as I was, and I just could not stop looking at it. It was beautiful in a way that is almost hard to describe."
"And I was involved in this somehow?"
"Yes. I kept wondering what you would have thought of it. Would we have disagreed? Would you have thought that it was just shiny junk no better than the rest of the art out there, or would you have been just as enchanted as I was? I didn't know, and I wanted to know."
She halted her rambling and was appalled by how much she had revealed. Aladdin reached his hand across the table and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"I would have liked to see it," he said warmly. "Perhaps, if the exhibit is still open, we should go."
Something in her opened up when he said that. As much as she wanted to take him to her place, lock the doors and not come out for a week, there was something warming about the idea of going to a gallery showing with him—something real.
"Maybe we can," she said, blushing a little. "Is it my turn yet?"
"Hmm, I think you have given me what it is I want to know. All right. Your turn now."
She thought for a moment, partly to consider what she wanted to know, partly to recover from exposing herself. In some ways, it was a difficult moment. She didn't know why she was so embarrassed to reveal that she had wanted to have Aladdin with her, but she was.
"All right," Charlotte said after a moment. "I have one. Why are you in the United States? I mean, if you're the prince of Abu Dhabi, then that must mean that you have opportunities for fun at home."
Aladdin looked a little embarrassed. It was a strange look on a man who was usually so confident and in control.
"There is plenty to do in Abu Dhabi," he agreed, "and when there's not, you can always hop a plane to Dubai, which is truly one of the great wonders of the world. New York is not like either of them, and I have spent enough time here to know that."
He looked at her hopefully, as if wondering whether that would be enough. For her own part, she merely raised an eyebrow at him.
"That would be enough if you weren't looking at me like that," she said with a grin. "Come on. You can take a pass if you want. I know you would offer me the same courtesy. But you know? Something about you is telling me that you don't want to keep this a secret, not really."
He eyed her with a little bit of asperity.
"You really are a little too perceptive for your own good, I hope you know that."
"It comes with the job," Charlotte responded briskly. "And while flattery will absolutely get you everywhere, right now it has absolutely no play with me."
Aladdin sighed, settling back into the booth. He gazed at his drink, as if wishing that it would fill up on its own again, and then shook his head.
"You're going to laugh, but the truth is that I'm running away."
Charlotte looked at him closely. He truly did expect her to make fun of him, but she couldn't really see anything funny about the situation.
"Whatever's made you run, it's got to be bad."
"Not bad, exactly, just inescapable. You see, my parents wanted a child for years before they got me. They're a bit older, and my father is thinking of stepping down to allow me to take on the mantle of sheikh. It is the way of things, and I accept that. I even look forward to it. It is what I have been trained for since I was a young boy."
"But?"
"But apparently, according to both my parents, there is more to being sheikh than ruling well. There is being the father of the country in more than just name. They want to see me married, and they truly wish to make sure that that match is a proper traditional one."
"What does that mean, exactly?" asked Charlotte, who was fascinated in spite of herself.
"My mother wants me to have a bridal promenade. Eligible young women would come from all over the country to arrange themselves nicely in the garden, and then it's my job, my privilege, if you believe my mother, to walk through the garden and choose my bride."
Charlotte could imagine it. She imagined a green garden filled with fruit trees and stone benches, and she imagined a dozen women, each more beautiful than the last sitting throughout it, their traditional robes as bright as flower blossoms in the morning light.
"And your objection?"
"It sounds barbaric," he spat. "The idea of walking through a grove of women, trying to choose the one who will bear my children, treating her as if she were a piece of fruit to come to my table...it's antiquated, to say the least."
Charlotte tapped her finger against her lower lip.
"What do the women get out of it?"
"Well, theoretically, one woman goes on to become my wife and bear my children."
"And the others?"
"Usually they're given a monetary gift for their troubles."
"There you go," Charlotte said, spreading her hands out as if it were self-explanatory.
"What?"
"If you need something to comfort you, remember that these women are getting paid. In some ways, it's no different from being a model. Maybe they wouldn't mind marrying you, but even if they can't, they don't go home empty-handed. See, that's not so bad."
Aladdin laughed a little.
"That's certainly a new perspective on it. Regardless, it's something that my mother wants very much. I'm fairly certain that as soon as I set foot on Abu Dhabi soil, my mother will have me whisked away to a bridal promenade before I've even made it home."
"She sounds like a strong-willed woman."
Aladdin smiled a little. Charlotte was warmed by the fondness in his voice.
"She is that. Very loving and very intelligent. It is only when she has decided a thing that she becomes stubborn, as well.
"But yes, that is what I am running from. I am not quite ready to be married yet. My parents disagreed, and now I am proving that they can do very little if I refuse to come home."
Charlotte shook her head.
"That's some story," she said admiringly. "It's your turn now. What do you need to know?"
"Why one-night stands?"
Charlotte winced but was determined to answer his question just as he had been to answer hers.
Shrugging, she replied, "The truth was that I was tired of the lies. I was tired of people telling me one thing while truly wanting another, and I was so tired of being the one who was just giving endlessly into a void. Right before I met you, I decided that I was going to be as blunt as I could about what I wanted, and that I wasn't going to apologize at all. I wanted what I wanted, and...at that moment, that was you."
She felt herself blush again at those bold words, but she felt a little better when he took her hand, holding it gently.
"I am so glad that you were honest with me," he said, his eyes dark and glowing. "I am happy beyond words that you decided that night to go out and get what you wanted."
Charlotte laughed a little self-consciously.
"Well, that's about as far from traditional as you can get, isn't it?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, essentially, you're running away from perfect traditional girls who will wait for you in an orchard to girls who step right up and tell you exactly what you can do for them. It's got to be a bit dizzying."
"A little," he admitted. "When it comes right down to it, marriage was what my parents wanted for me, and then...and then you offered another option."
Something inside Charlotte winced at that. She wondered if there really were some women who were for fun and others who were for marriage. She forcefully reminded herself that this was about her fun as much as his, and she buried the feeling as best she could.
"So now what?" she asked, sipping her mocktail absently. "What happens now?"
Aladdin raised an eyebrow, something that made him look very attractive to her in that moment.
"Well, you're the one who has always guided me on that," he said with a smile. "Isn't what happens whatever you want?"
Charlotte laughed a little.
"I want…so many things," she admitted. "I want you to come home with me, but for some reason, I'm a little reluctant to have that be all. I mean, it's been interesting enough running into you at all of the watering holes in Manhattan, but..."
"But there's something a little disconcerting about it, too. I understand," Aladdin said thoughtfully. "How about this. We spend time together when we are out. When we wish to sleep with each other, we will. I can make you welcome in the house where I am living. I would like to spend more time in your space, which is charming. And perhaps we can cook for each other sometimes."
The options that Aladdin was offering flew around her head like a deck of cards that had been thrown in the air. There was too much there, too much she wanted and had thought she would not be able to get. Through it all, her mind latched on to one thing.
"You cook?"
Aladdin smiled ruefully.
"I do, as a matter of fact. When I was very young, I became very insistent on learning. My parents were a bit taken aback by the idea of their young son learning such a thing, but they obliged. Over the course of a year, I learned to make most basic things, and a few fancy dishes. Then I lost interest, became much more fascinated with football and swimming, but the skill remains."
Charlotte laughed, shaking her head.
"I can make the basics, but once things get fancy, forget about it. I can scramble eggs, and I can make my world-famous call to the really good pizza place around the corner."
Aladdin laughed at her flippant tone, but there was a question in his eyes. She had to make her decision. She couldn't simply waffle about it and assume that it would go well. Instead, she had to say outright what she wanted, and somehow, that was scarier than anything else.
"Yes," she said finally. "I want all of that. With you."
In response, he slid into the booth beside her. There was something more pressing about the idea now. When he had been across the table from her, it was just something that they were talking about. Now, with his bulk looming over her, she could see how it would feel, how every nerve in her body seemed to wake up and cry for him.
Charlotte found herself holding her breath as he turned to her. His hands came up to cup her face, and as she looked deep into his eyes, she felt as if she were falling through space.
"You have no idea how precious you are," he said with something like awe. "You have no idea how amazing you are to me."
She started to respond with something light and flippant. It was as if he knew what she was going to say, because he stopped her by kissing her.
They had kissed before. Of course they had. There had been frantic kisses in bed, and wild kisses at the museum, but this one was different. This one was far slower, considered and gentle. It was one that explored her mouth, learning her rhythms of sighs and gasps. Her hands found their way to the fabric of his vest, desperately holding him close.
Finally, he pulled back, a soft smile on his face.
"Would you like to go back to my place?" he asked.
"Yes, I would like that very much."