Back at the hotel, Willow was torn from her reverie as she spotted Amira waiting for them in the foyer. Quickly, Ibrahim gripped her hand, again putting on a show as they entered.

Amira wrapped her arms around Willow, hugging her close and whispering into her ear, “I just love the way you look together. You know, the entire city’s thrilled about it.”

Squeezing Willow’s upper arms, she stepped back, flashing her bright smile. “I saw no fewer than three newspapers on the stand this morning about the ‘Playboy Sheikh’ finally finding a wife. And, of course, there are photos of you, Willow. Someone snapped a few at the restaurant. Those paparazzi—they always know how to find my handsome son. And now, his stunning fiancée!”

“Mother, you’re embarrassing me,” Ibrahim said. He reached forward and kissed his mother on the cheek. “We didn’t expect to see you this afternoon. Would you like to go for afternoon tea?”

Amira rolled her eyes at her son, giving Willow a knowing look.

“As a woman, Willow, I know you understand this better than most. There’s always another task, when it comes to weddings. And now that the two of you are here, it’s time that we start planning in earnest.”

“Of course,” Willow said, feeling her stomach clench. Spreading her arms, she heard herself say, “We’re at your mercy. What can we do to help?”

“Perfect,” Amira said, smacking her hands together. “Willow, first off, I’ll need you to head off to the seamstress. I have a fitting scheduled for you in just an hour’s time, and a dozen dresses for you to try on.”

Willow hadn’t eaten anything since a small breakfast of fruit that morning. Holding her hand to her stomach, she scrunched her nose slightly, wanting to protest.

“Darling, don’t worry yourself. You don’t need to diet for the big day. You’re entirely slim enough,” Amira said. “Although, suffice to say, I wouldn’t head into the fitting with a big lunch in you…”

“Mother,” Ibrahim nearly groaned, “we haven’t eaten yet. Maybe we can push back the fitting to another day.”

“Nonsense,” Amira said.

Gripping her phone, she lifted it to her ear, waiting for an answer. In the silence, Willow glanced up at Ibrahim. Discomfort and anxiety seemed to fill the space between them. The romantic tension she’d felt back at the palace had dissipated entirely. Maybe it had never been true.

“Riyad, we’ll need the car back at the hotel as soon as you can get it here,” Amira instructed into the phone. “Willow’s just returned with Ibrahim, and I need her at the seamstress in an hour. Step on it.”

With that, Amira hung up and stared at them, her eyes focused.

“My driver’s coming to get you, Willow, and he knows I mean business. Ibrahim, you’ll have your fitting tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I need you to come with me to finalize the guest list. You’ll need to begin by writing to all the members of our extended family.”

“Mother,” Ibrahim began, his eyes widening. “I’ve been out of the country for years. I barely know them.”

“Come, now,” Amira said, clucking her tongue. “You knew them when you were a child. They were your cousins, your first friends. Don’t tell me that doesn’t mean anything to you anymore.”

Suddenly, Amira thrust her hand forward, snapping her fingers. With a nod toward the door, she said, “Willow, Riyad is here. Don’t keep him waiting.”

Willow gave a wide-eyed, frightened look to Ibrahim before rushing toward the door. This was to be her first outing in Rebai without him by her side. Within seconds, she was buckled into the backseat of a sleek black vehicle, driving through the chaos of the city.

She kept her eyes on the sidewalks, on the city’s people—their extravagant robes, their dark eyes and seemingly fiery personalities. Children and teenagers tore down the sidewalk on skateboards and scooters; street vendors filled pitas with spiced meat. The smell of spices filled the air, making Willow’s stomach stir with hunger.

“Do you think we could stop for a brief moment?” she asked the driver. “Hello?”

But she received no answer. Riyad seemed entirely centered upon his task, his hands gripping the steering wheel. The sunlight streamed in from the car’s skylight, bouncing against the quarter-sized bald spot on Riyad’s head. Willow stretched her arms over her stomach, sighing. Hunger, she supposed, was a bride-to-be’s reality. But she wasn’t even a bride.

* * *

Four hours later—after two hours at the seamstress’s, and another hour selecting china, cutlery, and tablecloths alongside Amira—Willow was finally allowed return to their hotel penthouse.

With her head nearly as heavy as her heart, she gazed up at Ibrahim, waiting to hear how his day went. But Ibrahim just poured them each a glass of wine, passing hers over silently. They clinked glasses, with Willow shaking her head slightly. She felt a smile creep over her lips.

“I had no idea being your bride would be so…involved,” she sighed.

“It’s chaotic, isn’t it?” Ibrahim laughed, running his fingers through his hair. “My mother refuses to pause for a moment. Wants it to be the most perfect day the country has ever seen. I think, somewhere in her heart, she thinks that if she can host this amazing wedding, it’ll convince us to move here. She wants me to have grandchildren and raise them here.”

“If only she knew the truth…” Willow heard herself murmur, shifting in the wicker balcony seat. “She’d know never to hope for that again.”

“But you have to admit, she’s having fun,” Ibrahim said, seemingly ignoring Willow’s comment. “She had, what? Fifteen sets of china for you to look at? She’s probably been scouring the royal storage rooms for weeks. She seems to know each pattern by heart.”

Willow had loved to see the look on Amira’s face, as she’d pressed china plates, bowls, and platters into Willow’s hands. “This design dates back to the 1700s,” she’d said, her eyes alight. “If you can believe it. Ibrahim’s fifth great grandfather used it in his wedding. I’ll have to show you the portrait later. He married a woman from the Netherlands, of all places—a stunning blonde. Like you, Willow.”

Willow’s heart stirred, thinking of the day she and Amira had shared. Growing closer to the woman she was conning hadn’t been something she’d planned.

“Don’t you think this is good for her?” Ibrahim asked, taking a seat across from Willow. “She’s been looking forward to this for years. She told me she can’t decide between a dozen different gowns for the occasion, if you can believe it. She said something about changing halfway through, for the different moods of the evening. I had to remind her she wasn’t the bride!”

“She might as well be,” Willow said, giving him a sad shrug. “This day is all for her.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time,” Ibrahim offered.

Willow shifted in her chair, feeling strange.

“I’d always imagined my wedding day to be…different. Not to say your mother’s taste isn’t absolutely perfect, because it is. I’ve never seen a more immaculately planned, artistic wedding. But when you were younger, didn't you imagine your wedding as this gorgeous day where you could do whatever you wanted, say what you felt…all because you had fallen in love?

“I used to believe falling in love was the single greatest thing human beings could ever do. It seems so improbable. We’re pitted against one another in every other capacity. At our jobs. In sports. In music, art…you name it, we’re always competing. But love isn’t meant to be like that…”

Willow trailed off, sensing she was getting carried away. Ibrahim’s eyebrows lowered as he took in her words. After a pause, he reached across the table and gripped her hand, surprising her.

“That’s the beauty of this wedding, for you,” Ibrahim said, not realizing he was saying the worst possible thing, given the hammering of Willow’s heart—a response to his touch. “You’re allowed to fall in love with whomever you please after this. If you want to. I just don’t think it’s possible for me.”

“You really think we’ll just turn away from this wedding and never see one another again?” Willow asked, her throat constricting. She swallowed several times, her eyes darting across his face. “You really think we can forget one another, just like that?”

“I forget things all the time,” Ibrahim said, avoiding her eyes. “We’ll go our separate ways. And my mother won’t ever have to know.”

Willow nodded slowly, stretching her arms above her head. Somewhere in the distance, a traffic jam was blaring honk after honk into the air, the city frenetic and wild in the lateness of the hour.

“Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Ibrahim said, unsubtly changing the subject. Standing and walking toward the kitchen area, he grabbed a menu and returned to the balcony, smacking it on the table between them. With a smile, he said, “If you don’t order everything you want on this menu, right now, then I’ll just have to order every single dish.”

Willow chuckled, loving the way he eased the mood. Forcing herself to push away thoughts of his seeming lack of care, she glanced through the menu, tracing her finger along the American options—chicken fingers and French fries— and then on to more local foods.

“Let’s order a mixed platter of our two cultures,” she said, gazing into Ibrahim’s eyes. “Unless you think I won’t fit into my wedding dress?”

Ibrahim laughed—a deep, guttural, truthful laugh. “Willow, for what I’m putting you through right now, you should be able to do and eat whatever you want. You’re changing my mother’s life for the better, and for that I’m eternally grateful.”

As they decided what to eat, bickering slightly over whether to order mozzarella sticks or onion rings, Willow found herself laughing outright. In the back of her mind, she questioned it: why couldn’t they have this much fun, together, as a real couple? Did Ibrahim actually have such chemistry with the women in his life back in Houston? She imagined him laughing alongside some model, at a billionaire’s party in some garden back home, and couldn’t picture what they might say to one another.

Everything between them seemed too, well, perfect. Perhaps that’s how fiction worked, Willow thought.

When the food arrived—platters of fried food and hummus and feta and olives and couscous, all steaming beneath the hanging lights of the penthouse apartment—the false couple busied themselves with clacking forks, fighting over the last bite of something or other, sipping wine, and silly conversation.

When they finally said good night, it was past midnight, and Willow wanted nothing more than to pass out in bed beside the Sheikh, her arm flung over his muscular chest. She visualized doing so in the silence of her bedroom, knowing that Ibrahim was only a five-second walk away.