That night, Salman took me to dinner at a French restaurant in the heart of Jubal, perhaps wanting to rekindle the spirit of our first night together. Over a candlelit dinner of onion soup followed by coq au vin, he told stories of his first days in business and punctuated the air with jokes designed to lift my mood. He could clearly sense the uneasiness creeping in around my eyes and thus, hoped he could rescue me with wine and whimsy.

I appreciated the effort, though I couldn’t bring myself to talk about the things that were really upsetting me: the fear that I was leading him on and the memory of Icarus’s veiled threat.

I had kept a lookout for anyone suspicious who might be following us. And I was careful not to text or email our exact location to anyone. The security at Salman’s palace was excellent, so I wasn’t concerned about any harm coming to him there. But we were extremely exposed, going out to dinner in the busiest part of the city. I tried to stay alert while putting the danger to the back of my mind.

After a second glass of wine, my mood began to lighten a little. I could feel myself opening up to Salman, tipsy on the night and the smile in his eyes.

“I assumed someone like you would have had a lot of girlfriends,” I said, “but you don’t seem the playboy type. I guess because you’re so busy working? It’s refreshing, in a way.”

“Is it really?” Salman smiled indulgently, but I could sense that he didn’t particularly want to talk about it. “Have you dated much?”

“Not especially. And it never ended well, or I don’t suppose I would be sitting here.”

“I still sometimes find myself wishing things had worked out between me and my college girlfriend,” Salman said quietly. “We were at Oxford together, but ended up breaking up because I wanted to move back to Qia to claim my inheritance and she was moving to New York. We spent a few months dating long-distance before calling it quits.”

I tried to imagine what might have happened if their lives hadn’t pulled them in different directions. Would they still be together today? Would Salman just be the creditor who had taken my book and my father’s estate, and would I have no hope of ever getting it back?

“What about you?” Salman poured the last of the wine bottle into my glass. “Did you have any good experiences of dating, or was it all bad?”

I scratched at the back of my neck. “I always felt like I had the worst luck with romance, but in retrospect, I suppose it could have been worse. I hear other people’s stories and feel grateful to have escaped my teenage years unscathed.”

“You didn’t date at all as a teenager?” Salman asked.

“Well, there was one guy. I still have this very vivid memory of being sixteen and him taking me to the pool. And when we got out there, he tore off his shirt and motioned for me to follow him into the water.”

“And did you?”

“He wanted me to. But I made it to the edge of the pool before I realized, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ I stood there frozen, wanting to keep all my clothes on. He laughed at me, and I was so humiliated, I burst into tears.” I shrugged at the memory. “We broke up not long after that.”

“God, I’m so glad I’m not a teenager anymore,” said Salman with a shake of his head.

“I know! I can’t believe that was half a lifetime ago.”

He started telling a story and the conversation moved on to other topics, but my mind kept reverting back to that scene by the pool. The memory of the bikini incident had stirred something in my conscience, a hesitation that I wouldn’t have dared to voice aloud. I wondered if I was repeating the same mistake I had made then, hurting myself by trying to give a man what I thought he wanted.

But as yet, Salman had been gentler and more respectful than that old boyfriend had ever been, and he hadn’t pressured me into doing anything I hadn’t wanted. There was something reassuring in the thought of dating a grown man who knew how to treat a woman.

The main course having ended, the waiter removed our plates and brought back a selection of madeleines, eclairs, and rhubarb clafoutis, which we summarily dispatched while admitting that we had never made it more than a few pages into Remembrance of Things Past. “I read up to the part with the madeleines,” he said, “and then I bailed.”

Perhaps it was the wine—we had started our second bottle—or perhaps it was the satisfaction of a large meal and a full belly, but everything he said seemed somehow sweeter and warmer and funnier than usual as if he had been polished down to his essence. When he rested his chin in his hands and smirked at me from across the table, my heart gave a little flutter like a hummingbird in flight.

“What’s the nicest compliment you’ve ever gotten?” he asked me as we sat in the back of the limo, the street lights flashing over the curtains like an office scanner.

“Gosh, I don’t know,” I said slowly. “One time, this guy told me I was ‘warm and comfortable, like an old pair of shoes.’”

“What on earth did that mean?”

“Beats me,” I said with a shrug. “I’m a shoe, apparently. Maybe I have a good soul. Get it?” I laughed. “That’s what passes for flattery in my life.”

“Sounds to me like you need a better kind of man in your life.” Leaning forward, Salman brushed his fingers against the side of my neck. “One that knows how to compliment a lady.”

“Aisha gives me the best compliments of anyone,” I said, “and if I ever meet a man who can do better, I’ll marry him. She once told me that I had the seductive heart of a flapper in the body and brain of a librarian.”

“How accurate,” said Salman, impressed. “I feel like that description perfectly captures your essence.”

“Careful, now,” I said warningly. “Most girls don’t consider it flattering when a man calls them a librarian type. Aisha can get away with it because it’s just true.”

“I don’t see what’s insulting about it.” Reaching up, he began to run his hands through my hair. I shivered pleasurably. “Librarians are guardians of knowledge and lovers of learning. I’d be thrilled if a woman accused me of being a librarian.”

“You don’t have the librarian look, though,” I told him, “which I think is what Aisha was talking about. You look like someone who was genetically engineered in a lab to sell colognes and fancy shaving cream.”

“I’ll take my compliments where I can get them,” said Salman, leaning forward and kissing me just above—but not quite on—the lips. I blushed shyly, feeling the warmth and satisfaction of having his full attention.

“I think it’s time you had somebody who smothered you with affection,” he said softly. “Someone other than your aunt or your best friend.”

“I’m still taking applications,” I replied.

“I’d like to apply.” He turned to face me straight-on, and at the same instant, began running his eager hands along the sides of my body. “You have the look of a woman who hasn’t been loved nearly enough.”

“Thanks…I think?”

It was hard to tell whether that was intended as a compliment or not. It was hard to think much of anything at all, because his body was pressing against mine and my brain was suddenly foggy and opaque.

“I wish I could take you back to my high school so you could say that to me then.”

“We could kiss in the halls until we were thrown out of school,” said Salman, hungrily brushing his cheek against mine. “I can just picture us making out in the principal’s office.”

“Gosh, yes.” Somehow, Salman had intuited my long-standing desire to make love to someone after-hours in a forbidden place. “They’d give us detention because they were so jealous.”

“Then we’d continue kissing in detention,” said Salman, and I stifled a laugh.

* * *

The rest of the way back to the palace, he kissed and caressed me and told me what he thought of me in words that were somehow precise and sentimental without being vapid. How he loved the way I twisted my hand around when I was making a point, the old-fashioned look of how I pinned my hair up with a pen. Gone was the fear that he had ever wanted me just for my body; he reminded me of a sculptor who sculpted the same image over and over again because he took so much delight in it.

My thoughts drifted back to the meeting with Gage in the park a few days before. It was hard to remember, but there had been a moment when his flatteries had seemed enticing. Now, they were shrunken, disheveled, like a tomato plant that had been left out too long in the New Mexico sun. Salman had a way of expressing love that dispelled all pretenders.

For a few minutes, I was able to shut my eyes and imagine that I actually mattered to someone.

“I sometimes wish I had the gifts of a poet,” said Salman. He was turning me over and over with his eyes, a pool player examining the table in front of him for the perfect shot. “Especially now.”

“Why now?”

“Because my own words are so inadequate. You’re like the white light that all the colors of the rainbow are trying to become.”

My stomach gave a tumultuous flip-flop; it was like he was making love to me with his words instead of just his body. “I mean, that sounded pretty good to me,” I replied.

Salman shrugged modestly. “I used to make fun of poets who would see a woman standing on a busy street corner and pine away from longing, but I think I get it, now. What would we do if we hadn’t met? Or had met briefly and then you disappeared into the Paris streets before I could get your number?”

“Or what if I had given you the wrong number?” I added. “But then, I guess we would have met, anyway—the next morning.”

“Yes, it turned out to be rather fortuitous that you walked into my office. If your father hadn’t passed—”

“Then I’d have had no reason to come to Paris in the first place. We’d be a couple of ions that never bonded.”

“How boring my life would be,” said Salman. “Sitting in my office like a caged bird.”

“Maybe that would have been for the best.”

“Wait, what?”

Right away, I wished I could reach into the air and pluck out the words I had just spoken, remove them from Salman’s hearing and memory, but it was too late.

“Salman, listen.” I rested a hand on his knee, and he pulled it away. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you all day, and it’s not about you—you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Since I could see I couldn’t avoid the issue any longer, I told him about my trip to New Mexico a few days earlier and my unwelcome reunion with David Icarus. Salman listened with confusion and curiosity as I explained how my camera was taken from me, how I was asked to leave the property, and how he had been threatened.

“But, of course, he couldn’t have been talking about me,” Salman said when I had finished. “How would he even know about me?”

“If we were talking about anything other than Fire Cloud, I’d think you were right. But they basically control half the internet. For all I know, they could be reading my emails, maybe even my text messages—and they probably are, given how furious they were when I published my exposé.”

Salman’s eyes flashed concern and appreciation. Up to now, I had been the mostly passive recipient of his affections, but now, my feelings had been made manifest. “You almost canceled your trip, didn’t you?”

I nodded, tears welling up in my eyes. “I must have picked up the phone to call you a dozen times, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t just the book—I wanted to see you, but I also didn’t want you to be hurt on my account.”

“That sounds excruciating,” said Salman with transfiguring perceptiveness. “No wonder you’ve been so stiff and scared all day.”

“Have I really?” It was goosebumps-inducing, knowing someone could see me like this.

“Well, most of the day. Not that I loved spending time with you any less for it. I just worried that I had done something wrong.”

“No, you didn’t do anything. I just knew I would be placing you in danger if we went out in public. I don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“I appreciate your concern, really, but I can look after myself. Besides,” he added, leaning forward and kissing me on the top of the head, “being with you is more than worth a little danger.”

“How are you so perfect?” I demanded—then flung a hand over my mouth, embarrassed at my own forthrightness.

* * *

It wasn’t the first of that night’s embarrassments, nor would it be the last. When we reached the palace, it was nearly eleven p.m., and I steeled myself, feeling sure that Salman was about to invite me up to his bedroom. Despite the fact that I had been given a week’s warning, I still didn’t know if I was ready. And I was exhausted from the long flight and little sleep.

So, it came as a relief when he led me up a long flight of stairs to the rooftop, from the ledge of which we had a perfect view of the city to the east, with its palm tree-lined boulevards and rickshaw-crowded streets. There, in the shadow of the doorway, lay a magnificent hot tub large enough to seat the entire staff of the Hornpipe.

Salman slipped fluidly out of his suit and waded slowly into the dark, foamy water, his boxer shorts billowing up around him. I was in shock for a full minute—both at his incredible body and the confidence he had in just getting almost completely naked, like it was no big deal.

Turning to me with an eager smile, he motioned for me to join him. “Come on in,” he said, “the water’s lovely.”

I stood at the edge of the tub, hesitant. “Are you sure it’s not too cold?” I asked shyly. “I’m already chilly.”

“It’s a hot tub,” said Salman, as though this should have been obvious. As if to underline the point, he playfully stirred the water, sending drops in all directions. He had the confidence and grace of a professional athlete, only the sport at which he excelled was showing off himself.

I dipped a toe into the water; it was as warm as he had said it would be. “If you’d told me we would be swimming, I’d have brought my bathing suit.”

“Next time, I’ll send you a checklist of items to bring,” Salman said with a smile. “Like we’re having a sleepover or going camping.”

“I suppose it is like a sleepover, in a way.”

Was there really going to be a next time? He had brought it up so casually, as if the date was already planned. But the whole night, I had been operating under the assumption that this was our last night together.

Tomorrow, I would go home and begin the long business of forgetting about him.

“I thought you’d enjoy swimming,” he added. “You seemed like the type.”

“What type is that?”

“I just mean…you seem frustrated. People are always telling you what you can and can’t do.” He turned over on his back and began lazily stroking backward. “But there are no rules in the water. You don’t have to answer to anyone. You can be as free as you want to be.”

“Salman, how do you know these things about me?” I asked with an uneasy feeling.

“Am I right?” he asked, laughing.

“Yes, and it’s a little freaky.”

If this were a romantic comedy, he would have been the high-spirited love interest who revives the heroine’s stagnant heart and pulls her out of herself. I wished it were that simple. I wished I could banish the lingering sense that he was too good for me.

Swimming slowly forward, he came up to the ledge and offered me his hand. The world seemed to slow to a crawl as I stood there, becoming just a series of still images. I hadn’t brought a swimsuit, and I didn’t want to humiliate myself by taking off my clothes in front of him. It would inevitably become one of those snapshots from the night that I could never get out of my mind.

“Are you not going to take off your clothes?” Salman asked with a laugh.

“Maybe later,” I said as I waded in up to my ankles, the cuffs of my pants ballooning around them. “Right now, I just need to get in.”

“I could have one of the staff bring us some dry robes to change into.”

“I’d like that.” Bubbles were already forming around me in the foamy water. “I don’t want to catch a cold because I was too stubborn to take off my clothes before I waded into a hot tub.”

“Too stubborn or too scared?” he asked with characteristic bluntness.

“Well, both.”

I drifted deeper into the water, beginning to lift a little off the bottom. I shut my eyes and tried to focus on the feel of the jets against my skin. Maybe, in two or three weeks, things would look different. Maybe I’d want to be back here, sitting in this hot tub with Salman doing laps around me like a merman. Maybe some strange alchemy would cast a halo of magic around the night, and I’d forget how scared I felt.

“You’re not swimming,” said Salman, not unkindly. “You’re just bobbing like a cork in the water.”

“For some of us, that’s the best we can manage,” I replied.

I didn’t want to tell him about the pressure I was feeling, the pressure to be what he wanted me to be. It was hard for me to tell how much of that was him, and how much was just me pressuring myself.

“I wish the night didn’t have to end,” Salman was saying, though his voice sounded faint and far away. “I wish we could stay here, just like this.”

I was silent, not wanting to say what I was really thinking—that as much as I had enjoyed the food and the wine and the feel of the foamy water against my skin, I was exhausted, and ready for the night to be over.

Sensing that we were both getting tired, Salman called for one of his staff and had towels and robes brought out to us. Once we’d dried off a little, he opened the door leading into the stairway, and I followed him with a dreamy feeling through the maze of corridors to the floor containing the guest bedrooms. He paused at the door to my room. I waited with heart racing, half-expecting him to push past me and lead me inside.

“Thank you for a wonderful evening,” said Salman with unceremonious abruptness, and leaning in he gave me a quick, chaste kiss on the mouth. “Goodnight, Cassie.”

And before I could react, before I even really understood what was happening, he turned and took off down the hall, leaving me alone in the darkness and more confused than ever.