His Hired Bride, Page 2

Two hours later and the hummus was gone. Despite my protests to keep everything as beautiful and perfect as it was when we set it all up, Joel couldn’t help himself, not after the first hour of aimless waiting. After all, he’d come straight from work without stopping for dinner, and I didn’t protest as he greedily scooped up the dip with leftover spiced pita chips straight from the bag.

  We had set up some of the plain black chairs on either side of the snack table once our feet started to hurt. I looked across at him as he finished it up, chin in my hands. Joel gave me a satisfied wink as he licked his lips.

  “I can’t believe this,” I mumbled. My heart felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. “Why can’t rich people value anyone’s time but their own?”

  “A question for the ages,” said Joel. “I wish I could say I was as surprised as you, but I’ve worked in too many high class restaurants to have any fantasies left about them.”

  “I’ve dealt with uptight jerks before, but I’ve never been stood up by someone who went out of his way to arranging a showing. It’s insanity.” With a sigh I checked my watch for what felt like the millionth time that night.

  Two hours, ten minutes past seven, and the Sheikh was a no-show. Neither my phone, nor the gallery’s landline had rung all night, and my two calls to the Sheikh had gone unanswered.

  “Maybe it was a prank call or something. I should have done some research to make sure he was for real, but he called so late in the day, all I could think about was getting the gallery ready,” I muttered.

  “This isn’t your fault, honey, even if it was a prank,” said Joel. He put the lid back on the empty hummus container and dropped it in the waste basket under the table. “It would have been worse if you hadn’t taken it seriously and he had shown up. There is no damage to your reputation tonight, at least. You did everything right. He’s the idiot here.”

  “Yeah, well, at least I could have been smart enough not to get my hopes up about the money,” I admitted. I’d been daydreaming not only about paying the bills, but about buying a fresh set of paints all day, a dream that was quickly evaporating like steam into the open air.

  We sat in silence for a few tense moments. The jazz music overhead wasn’t doing anything to calm my anger, like it usually did. Joel watched me from across the snack table with a sad, worried look in his big brown eyes.

  I hated quitting. Giving up felt like a tiny death. But there was no point hanging on to the night’s fantasies, not now. With a deep breath I got out of my chair and made a half-hearted gesture in the direction of the snack table. “Do you mind if I put all of this back in the fridge? At least I’ll have lunch for a—“

  The sound of the gallery door opening, the clear ring of the bell, interrupted me. Both Joel and I turned fast. Following it came the sound of sloppy high-heeled steps on the hardwood floor, accompanied by girlish giggling and squeals.

  Smoothing out my dress, I walked around the dividing wall with purposeful steps and a big smile, trying to swallow the anger that was bubbling in my gut. But that anger only got hotter at the view in front of me.

  The Sheikh, I could only presume, was a tall, young, attractive man with broad shoulders and a body that betrayed his hard work in the gym. His hair was even blacker than Joel’s, somehow; the color of a starless night sky. Chiseled and handsome, he wore a crisp beige linen suit and Italian leather shoes. From under his sleeves and collar, the edges of tattoos teased across his bronze skin.

  On each of his arms was a blonde woman—they might have been sisters, they looked so alike—in tight but expensive cocktail dresses that accentuated their ample curves. Purses swung precariously from their forearms as they clung onto the Sheikh with each drunken step they took into the gallery, laughing and pushing at each other over some joke I must have missed.

  The sight froze me. This was a new one. I gathered my composure and reset my smile. The art business was nothing if not customer service-oriented.

  “Good evening, Sheikh Rafiq Al-Zayn. I’m Evangeline Pryce. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

  I held out my hand to shake his, and the women looked at it as if I was trying to hand him a rotten egg. The Sheikh, who seemed to be having trouble focusing on my face, didn’t notice it at all.

  “Where is your drink service?” he asked in a loud voice. When a gross belch followed, both of the women fell into uproarious laughter.

  Stunned and only growing angrier, I made a gesture toward the table at the back. “I’m sure the food is cold by now, unfortunately” I said sharply.

  Joel came from around the back wall, hands held politely behind his back, but the Sheikh pointed and angrily said, “I thought I specifically asked for this to be a private exhibition.”

  I whirled around and exchanged a look with Joel.

  “This is my assistant, Joel Perez. He’s not here to view the art, sir.”

  The Sheikh only huffed and hooked his arms around the necks of each of the girls as he led them back through the gallery, toward the drinks. Joel smiled until the Sheikh passed, and then he turned to me with a bitter and twisted look on his face, like he smelled something nasty.

  Joel and I stood at a distance, trying not to crowd or rush the trio, as they poured glass after glass of champagne and drank them faster than anyone I’d ever seen. After ten minutes, it became clear they’d forgotten they were in an art gallery.

  Joel stealthily put his hand on my back, a gentle gesture I knew too well.

  He was trying to keep me calm, but I couldn’t help myself. Instead I asked in a loud and firm voice, “Can I answer any questions about the art for you?”

  None of them turned or even acknowledged I had spoken. Heat crept up my neck and face.

  The Sheikh tipped over the last of the champagne bottles, and it rolled across the table and hit the wooden floor with a loud crack. He looked around a moment, ducking to glance under the table by lifting the black cloth, and once he didn’t find anything else to drink, he pulled the blondes close by their tiny waists and whispered something in a deep timbre in each of their ears. Whatever it was made both of them blush and shiver.

  “Ay dios mío,” said Joel to himself. He shook his head and walked away from the scene.

  I couldn’t walk away. I was too furious. Like a car wreck, I couldn’t look away from the horrible mess this night had turned into.

  The drunken party headed back toward the door, breezing by me as if I were a ghost. The Sheikh said nothing to me, not even glancing at the paintings before he disappeared into the night with the two women.

  Dark realization came over me as it became apparent that the Sheikh had never intended to purchase any of my art. He didn’t care about me or my work at all; he only wanted to put on a show for his lady friends, to impress them into sleeping with him. He had wasted an entire day of my life just so he could get laid.

  That was the last straw. Heels pounding like a judge’s gavel on the hardwood, I marched through the gallery and out the front door to follow them. A shiny, intimidating black car sat idling on the curb, and the blondes were trying to fall inside without hurting themselves as the Sheikh and a well-dressed chauffer waited.

  “Hey!” I said, stalking up to him.

  The Sheikh turned at the sound, wobbling on his feet just a bit.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “You’re an inconsiderate asshole, you know that?”

  Suddenly the sound of the idling engine was all I could hear. The blondes had stopped wrestling with each other, and even the thin chauffer seemed to have frozen in surprise. The face of the Sheikh had lost all pretence of humor.

  “What did you say to me?” he asked in a deep voice.

  “I said you’re an inconsiderate asshole. You wasted my time and the time of my assistant tonight. I know the art world is just another playground for people like you, but this is my life. This is everything I am, and you just crumpled up all my work and threw it away like a piece of trash. You’re an asshole.”r />
  The Sheikh stared at me silently, his dark eyes piercing through mine. Before he could respond, I whirled on my heels and headed back inside, slamming the door behind me and locking it. By the time Joel and I cleaned up the gallery, the car was gone.

  THREE