Page 1 of Sheltering You

CHAPTER ONE

His opportunity had finally arrived.

When word came from the cartel that ran this stretch of Mexico, Khalid Qasim gathered his things and trudged away from the crumbling hotel in the tiny town where he’d holed up.

The road was dusty and brown and ugly, but not empty. Hundreds of others were making their way north, and as they got nearer the border, those hundreds became thousands.

They spoke Spanish or Chinese or French or languages he didn’t even recognize. Some spoke Qasim’s native tongue, Arabic.

While the rest of the hopeful immigrants went in one direction, he and two Chinese men he’d not met before climbed onto the back of a truck, its driver a rough-looking Mexican who stank of sweat and last night’s tequila.

They drove for hours, then waited in the middle of the desert for even longer, sitting beneath the only tree in sight and sipping lukewarm water. The Chinese men spoke to each other, but Qasim and the driver remained silent.

It was dusk when the driver’s phone dinged. He read the text, then snapped, “In, in. It is time.”

“How can you be sure?” Qasim asked the question in English, hoping the driver understood. The man had said almost nothing all day.

He pointed north into the pale sky. “Drone.”

Qasim didn’t see it, but a drone would explain how the cartel knew what was happening north of the border.

“They go to crowd,” the driver said. “Here, nobody to see.”

That made sense.

After a short ride, Qasim and the others were directed to go down a hill, cross a shallow river, and walk up the other side. “America, there,” the driver said.

No fence, no guards. Nothing. Just a little bit of water.

The Chinese men were young. Before the driver stopped talking, they bolted.

Qasim was careful to watch where he put his feet on the rocky, uneven soil. He was in decent shape for a man of sixty-four, but he couldn’t afford to fall. A delay would cost him, and a hospital visit could thwart his plans.

He needed strength for what he had to do. And he needed to stay hidden.

Two months after his second wife’s escape, Khalid had finally gotten a whiff of her whereabouts. Somehow, she’d made her way to America, though where she’d landed in this vast country, he had no idea.

He’d find her. He had a plan, and she would walk right into his trap.

Qasim would return his second wife—his Hagar—to Iraq. And when she gave birth to his child—his little Ishmael—he would present the baby to Salwa, his treasured first wife, as the son she’d never been able to bear.

As for Yasamin…?

After running away from him, the little fool would suffer every pain she deserved.

CHAPTER TWO

There had to be a way out of the friend zone.

Derrick Wright had heard of this place, where women saw men as pals instead of prospects. He’d always thought it was the stuff of myths and legends. Nightmares, maybe. Because, really, how hard was it to just ask a woman out? Derrick had never had any trouble getting dates. The problems always came after the asking, when he had to suffer through the actual events, which usually included long-winded discussions about social media ad strategies, or the care and feeding of two-year-olds in a daycare, or—and this had been the worst—the step-by-step process of cleaning a dog’s abscessed tooth.

He’d hardly been able to finish his lunch, sitting across from the veterinarian who’d gotten less and less attractive with every word.

Suffice it to say, though getting first dates wasn’t a problem, Derrick hadn’t had a lot of second dates in his life.

Being a pilot was a plus in the whole attracting-women thing, and when they learned he owned his own jet, they were usually keen to at least give it a go. Not that he ever shared how, after years in business, he still had months when he struggled to make the payment on said jet. Good thing his brother had financed it, and Sam wouldn’t foreclose if Derrick missed a month. But Derrick sure didn’t plan to take advantage of his brother’s generosity.

Not only did Jasmine know Derrick was a pilot, but she’d ridden on his plane when he’d brought her and her sister to the US from Greece. It’d been a rescue mission. That should count for something, right?