The Sheikh's Secret Princess Read Online Free Page A

object within them, and break into a wide smile.
     
    “My ring!” he said when she reached him.
     
    Anita set the ring in his open palm. Her fingertips grazed his skin as she set it down, and her heart, that had begun to calm, started racing anew.
     
    This was no time for a crush, she thought. This was not the man to get awkward feelings for.
     
    But it certainly wasn’t helping that he stepped closer to her as he picked up his hand to get a closer look at the ring.
     
    “I fiddle with it sometimes,” he said, under his breath. If he hadn’t been standing so close, Anita doubted she would have heard him.
     
    “I’m glad I caught you in time,” she said. Her mouth was running away and talking without permission from her brain. “I can’t imagine what I would do if I lost mine.”
     
    “No…” he said, still apparently mesmerized by the ring he’d almost lost.
     
    And then, as if released from a spell, he slid it onto his finger. “You must let me thank you.”
     
    “What?”
     
    “I mean it,” he insisted. “You’ve saved me from losing something precious. Please, let me have your number. I’d like to take you out to dinner.”
     
    Take her out ? To dinner ?
     
    Ahmed was behind him. “Sir, we really must be on our way. They’ll be waiting.”
     
    “Yes, just a moment,” Hakim replied, then focused his attention back on Anita. “I’ve got to go. Let me have your number, so I can work out the details with you.”
     
    The flash of the anger in Fadi’s eyes flitted through Anita’s brain. But in the rush of it all, there was nothing else she felt like she could do.
     
    She spouted out her phone number, feeling ridiculous as soon as she did so—his phone wasn’t out, there wasn’t a pen, and she’d left her pad of paper inside.
     
    “You’ll forget…” she said, silently cursing herself for having put the pad away.
     
    “Never!” he said with a wink.
     
    Anita blushed as the Sheikh disappeared into the limo and sped off into the night, leaving her standing in its wake, unsure what exactly had just happened, but certain that whatever it was, it was something good.

 
     
    FOUR
     

It turned out that a good way of getting a second wind on a night that had been punishingly busy and stressful was to get asked out to dinner by a handsome sheikh.
     
    Or so Anita was finding. The exhaustion that had begun settling in when the Sheikh’s party had gotten up had left her completely.
     
    It had been a hard night, and there was no one left in the restaurant but her and Fadi. Fadi had sent the dishwashers home, not realizing that Anita had already sent the busboys home, leaving them with no one left to help them close up for the night.
     
    So they did it all themselves.
     
    Anita could tell that Fadi was still in a sour mood, it was just that it was hard to care when she was floating on a cloud the way she was. She turned up the music, which they would normally turn off during cleanup, and danced around him.
     
    She was determined to pull him out of whatever kind of funk he was in, but Fadi wasn’t having any of it. She couldn’t remember a time when he’d so stubbornly committed to being upset, so she tried harder, turning her enthusiasm up a notch, and putting on a song that she knew for a fact he liked, even if he would deny it if she ever told anyone.
     
    She sang in his ear. “Shake it off, ah ah ah, shake it off!”
     
    “Enough!” His voice was a half-growl, half-roar.
     
    It scared Anita. Fadi had never scared her. He’d made her anxious to please him, and sorry she’d disappointed him. But scared?
     
    “Turn that off,” he said, more quietly. “I need to talk to you.”
     
    Like a puppet on strings, Anita went to the sound system and turned off the music. The restaurant felt so cold and empty without it.
     
    She returned, and stood in front of him, waiting for whatever punishment was coming.
     
    “Now,” he said. “The waitresses said they saw you