Aurora watched as Jon looked at his two thugs, and then looked at the collection of men that Khaleel had brought with him. The Sheikh stood facing him, looking as unaffected and coolly confident as if he had been the king of the city, instead of a businessman. “If you don’t walk away in the next thirty seconds, we’re going to have a problem.”
Jon needed no further prompting; he nodded to the two men he’d brought with him, handed the watch to Aurora and hurried away, barely even glancing in her direction as he beat his retreat.
As soon as the loan shark disappeared around the corner of the building, Aurora turned her attention back onto Khaleel. He smiled slightly, glancing around him as if the situation were nothing more than a prank.
“Who are those guys?” she asked Khaleel, gesturing to the men who stood behind him. “How did you know I was even here? And—and why did you come?”
“First,” Khaleel said, reaching out to take the watch from her numb hand, “I came to retrieve my possession.” Aurora blushed, wondering if he had set her up the way he had when he’d called her into his room and told her about the “initial evaluation.” “I tracked you using the GPS embedded in the watch.” Khaleel’s voice rippled with amusement. “One of my favorite anti-theft features.” He slipped the watch into his pocket and gestured to the men hanging around the alley. “These guys are just some desk jockeys at the Miami office of my company. They wanted to earn some extra money, and I thought they looked impressive enough.” In spite of the cool arrogance of his demeanor, Aurora couldn’t suppress the rush of gratitude and relief that she felt at his appearance.
“Thank you,” she said. On impulse, she strode forward, throwing her arms around Khaleel’s shoulders, burying her face against his chest. She trembled in the aftermath of her adrenaline rush, so happy at the fate that she had avoided thanks to his interference. She wanted to cry, that she wanted to curl up at his feet and sob until she’d exhausted the last nervous energy in her body.
Aurora shuddered, fighting back the tears that welled up in her eyes. “Thank you, Khaleel. I don’t know how I can ever repay you for this.”
The Sheikh took her shoulders in his hand and carefully pulled her away from him, looking down into her face. “For now, I’d say you can repay me by coming with me,” he said, smiling slightly. “This is no place for you to be hanging out right now.”
He glanced at the other men he’d brought with him. “Gentlemen, our mission is accomplished. I’ll be taking Miss Evans with me; the rest of you are excused to go back to the office. The overtime will be in your accounts in forty-eight hours.”
The men started to move towards one of the SUVs and Aurora let Khaleel claim her hand in his own. She was so relieved, so grateful, and so overwhelmed by the way he had arrived, that she followed him without even a moment’s hesitation.
Khaleel opened the back door of the SUV and helped her climb up into the seat, giving her a moment to settle herself before he climbed in after her.
Aurora took one final look around the alleyway and shook her head at the sheer volume of luck that she had experienced. All of this happened because I decided to try to stow away on a private yacht, she thought as Khaleel gave the order for the driver to pull onto the street and take them to “the apartment.”
FIFTEEN
Aurora had seen the huge, glittering building Khaleel’s driver stopped in front of at least a dozen times since she moving to Miami, but she had never once thought she would get to go inside it.
Khaleel got out of the SUV first, and offered her his hand to help her climb down from the seat. She saw that the other SUV was gone; its occupants were doubtless on their way home. Khaleel held onto her hand and gently tugged Aurora towards the entrance of the building, giving her a quick reassuring glance.
She followed him into the building and looked around, taking in the marble and brass that decorated the lobby, as they both walked towards the elevators.
“Hello, Lucy,” Khaleel called out to the woman at the front desk.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Al-Mohammedi,” the woman called back. If Aurora hadn’t seen Khaleel’s yacht, if she hadn’t already been exposed to the almost absurd level of wealth in his life, she thought she would have been staggered by the grandeur of the apartment building’s interior. Khaleel stopped at the elevators and gave her hand a squeeze.
“Almost there,” Khaleel told her lowly.
Aurora couldn’t help but wonder; at what Khaleel wanted with her, what he was going to tell her, why he had helped her. He had been all but silent on the drive from Vagabond, making small talk with the driver, commenting on the always-horrific Miami traffic.
“You look pale, Aurora. Under the tan, at least.”
Aurora smiled wryly, peering around the lobby as they waited for the elevator to arrive. “I think I’m still pretty high on adrenaline,” she admitted.
The elevator chimed, and when the doors opened, Aurora’s wide eyes took in the subdued splendor of the car: wood paneling, gleaming brass rail, and marble floor tiles in an intricate mosaic. She stepped into the elevator car, still holding Khaleel’s hand, and watched as he selected the Penthouse floor. A soft, feminine voice asked for his access code, and Khaleel slid a panel aside to enter it quickly.
Moments later they were walking down a short hallway, and then Khaleel was unlocking and opening a door, and they stepped into his apartment.
Aurora kicked off her shoes, pushing them with her foot towards a spot that bore an engraved chrome sign saying “shoes here.” She looked around, and realized after a moment of taking in the plush couches, thick rugs, and wood floors, that the penthouse was decorated in a similar way to the yacht.
The penthouse was more luxurious than Aurora could have imagined an apartment ever being. It was, she thought, possibly as large as her parents’ actual house; certainly the living room seemed to be larger than her entire apartment.
Khaleel told her to take a seat and strode in his socks into the open kitchen at the other end of the space. “Let me make you something to drink—you look like you need it,” he said.
Aurora sat down on one of the couches in the living room and took in the details of the room; she recognized the subtly Arabic theme that Khaleel had incorporated into the space with the patterns on the rug, a few scattered pieces of artwork.
Her nerves tingled, her skin going hot and cold as she waited for Khaleel to reappear in the living room. She could hear his movements in the kitchen, and occasionally caught glances of him walking around, reaching for something in a cabinet. She couldn’t quite escape a feeling of being an interloper, of being the country bumpkin in the big city—a feeling she hadn’t had in Miami since her first week of med school classes.
Finally, Khaleel emerged, holding a small tray with an ornate teapot and a low, squat bottle, along with two delicate-looking cups. “You could use something warm to drink, am I right?”
Aurora smiled and nodded. “I could, definitely,” she agreed.
Khaleel poured tea into one of the cups, and added a shot of amber-colored liquid from the bottle, handing it to Aurora before sitting down. Aurora took a sip and sighed with appreciation; the tea was sweet and spicy, full of flavors she couldn’t quite identify. The secondary heat of the alcohol made something in her stomach relax.
“You’re looking better already,” Khaleel said, pouring his own drink and sitting down in a chair close by.
Aurora smiled. “There’s something I’ve been wondering, ever since you showed up. You didn’t actually answer my question from before: why did you help me?”
Khaleel chuckled, his gaze on her face warm as he drank a sip of his own tea. “You made me realize something, Aurora,” he said slowly, setting his cup down. “Nobody can do it on their own; all of us need a little bit of help.”
Aurora considered that for a moment, then smiled in realization. “You did put the watch in the jacket on purpose, didn’t you?”
Khaleel laughed out loud. “Of co
urse I did!” he said, shaking his head. “If you hadn’t needed a jacket, I'd have found some other way to get it to you. I wanted to be able to track you, so I could help you take care of the silly problem you got handed. I knew you'd turn me down if I offered to help you directly, but I hope you'll forgive me for helping via surreptitious means.”
She smiled and took another sip of her tea; whatever it was made of, it restored something in her, and the alcohol fuzzed the edges of her adrenaline high. She relaxed more and more, thinking about the problem that Khaleel had just solved for her; Aurora wasn’t sure that Jon would let himself go unpaid, but as long as she was in Khaleel’s company, she was certain it wouldn’t matter. “At least I won some time to get the debt off my plate,” she said.
Khaleel shook his head. “No,” he told her. “Your days of worrying about that debt are over. I don’t intend that Jon will ever have the opportunity to get you alone again,” Khaleel said. “And whatever belief he has about you owing him is not really my concern.” Khaleel smiled slightly. “Besides, I'm fairly certain that he’s too scared to come after you again, after he ran he away like that.”
Aurora laughed, shaking her head, thinking of their previous conversation about running away from things. She finished off her tea and realized that there was another thing in her life that she had been running from, for much longer than she’d been avoiding the loan shark.
“Can you excuse me for a minute or two? I need to make a phone call,” Aurora said.
Khaleel looked at her intently for a moment, as if trying to divine whom it was she needed to talk to so urgently. “I have something I want to talk to you about,” Khaleel said with a grin. “Hurry back soon.”
“I will,” Aurora promised, standing. She eyed a sliding glass door leading out to the balcony and gave Khaleel a quick smile before leaving the room, phone in hand.
She took a deep breath, swallowing down her misgivings as she unlocked the screen and scrolled to her parents’ home phone number. Aurora tapped ‘call’ and brought the phone to her ear. She listened as it rang—once, twice—and then connected.
“Hello?”
“Mom? It’s Aurora.” Aurora smiled slightly to herself as she heard her mother call out for her father to come into the room.
“I’m going to put you on speaker, okay honey?”
“Sure, Mom,” Aurora replied. She walked further out on the broad balcony and looked out on the city. The view was amazing; she could see the marina, glittering with the streetlights and the moon, down below.
“Are you okay, sweetie? Your father and I have been so worried about you.” Aurora felt a lurch of guilt, remembering that she had gotten a text from her father a few days before.
“I’m okay,” she said. “More than okay, in fact. But there are some things I need to tell you.”
“All right,” her father said after a moment’s silence. “Go ahead, sweetie.”
“Well you know I sort of…dropped the ball on med school a while back,” Aurora started. “I left the school when the semester ended, on good terms, but…” she sighed. “I had already decided by that point that I wasn’t going to go back.”
“We started to think that might be the case when you ran off to Asia,” her mother said. “We’ve been hoping you would get back to us with some kind of alternate plan, or that you might get it out of your system and go back later on.”
“I’m not going back,” Aurora said quickly. “In fact, I’m not going to get a post-grad degree. I’m done with school.”
“That sounds very decisive,” Aurora’s father said.
“It is,” Aurora said. “I realized I was only ever doing med school because I knew that it was what you both wanted for me. I know—I know you’ve both got my best interests in mind, but that just isn’t reason enough. You both love your jobs; I never loved studying medicine.”
“So what have you decided to do, then?”
Aurora smiled, glancing at the door leading back into the penthouse.“I have something else lined up,” she said slowly. “I have…I’m going to be trying this adventure. I met a guy, actually.”
“A guy?” Her father’s voice sounded uncertain.
“He’s a great guy, and he’s definitely in a position to help me do what I really love: travel.” Aurora’s smile grew as she thought about it. “I don’t have a whole lot of details for you yet, but I hope you can both trust me to know what I want to do with my life, and to know how to keep myself safe.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and the silence threatened to deafen Aurora for a moment.
“If this is what you think is going to make you happy, sweetie, then I support you,” her mother said finally. “You sound so much more excited about this than you have about anything else you’ve done.”
“If you feel strongly enough about it to actually tell us,” her father added, “then we have to trust that it’s something you’re doing what's right for you.”
“Thank you both,” Aurora said. “I just…I was kind of at a loss for a while. Ran into some troubles. I’m sure you’ve both suspected that I