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He stared at her as though she was babbling in Swahili. He had never been spoken to with such disrespect.
“Forget about it,” she muttered. “I’ll make it up for you.” She stormed through the apartment, sweeping her handbag up as she passed. At first, she thought the lift might not appear. But it did. Almost immediately. She stepped into it gratefully, but didn’t exhale until the doors clicked shut.
The corridor on the floor below was mercilessly deserted. She walked through it quickly, and slipped into her room.
Only then, with her back to the door, did she let the tears that had been stinging her eyes fall.
The time on the clock showed it to be somewhere just before four o’clock in the morning. Olivia moved gingerly through the small hotel room, towards the bathroom. She showered, sponging her whole body as if that could remove the pain of what they’d shared.
It didn’t.
When she collapsed into her own bed shortly afterwards, she could still feel him on her skin. She could smell him. She could sense him.
She groaned and turned into her pillow.
Her phone began to ring, but for the first time since coming to work for Sheikh Zamir Fayez, she ignored it.
She wished she could ignore him so easily.
The following morning, having barely slept, Olivia was at a crossroads. She could quit. Not the agency, but at least this job. Johnny wouldn’t like it, but he valued her too much to fire her. It would be a mark against her, but not the end. Yes, she could quit. She could walk away from Zamir, and pretend none of this ever happened.
Or, she could stick it out.
She could carry on with her duties, and show him that she was stronger than he’d ever imagined.
Olivia barely needed to give it a moment’s thought.
Quitting had never been her style.
She dressed with care. It was imperative that she look as she always did, but Olivia hated to think that Zamir might assume she had wasted time trying to look attractive for him.
In the end, she settled on a pair of dark pants, and a top that had swirls of grey and black through the fabric. She pulled a black vest over the top. Her hair she assembled into her go-to style, then added only enough makeup to remove the vestiges of a sleepless night from her face.
She looked, Olivia decided, completely normal.
When Marook came to collect her, as he had every day since she began working for the Sheikh, she had almost convinced herself that she felt normal, too.
She rode down the elevator, steeling herself for her first sighting of Zamir.
But no amount of preparation could have been sufficient.
He didn’t look the same.
He looked better.
He was wearing a pair of jeans, low slung and faded, and a white button down shirt that drew attention to his flawless tan. A tan she now knew to be all over his body. His hair had just been washed, and it was still damp and curled around his nape. Despite the subterranean garage environment, she slipped her glasses on and averted her gaze.
Her heart, the heart she had lectured sternly to be strong and unaffected, began to rabbit disobediently in her chest.
“Are you ready, Miss Henderson?” He was addressing her with cool civility and it chilled the blood in her veins.
“Yes, sir,” she responded in kind, forcing her legs to carry her towards the car. He didn’t sit in the front passenger seat as he always had. Instead, he waited for her beside the car.
When she was close enough, he opened the door for her.
She didn’t meet his eyes, nor did she acknowledge the gesture. She settled herself in the seat and busied herself with buckling the seatbelt. She did anything she could to avoid having to interact with him.
On the drive to the clinic, she pulled her phone from her bag and emailed her sisters. She was prevented from relaying any of the important changes that were happening in her life, but she emailed them with snippets of what was happening in Vegas, and she read their replies with a sweet sense of normality. They were out there, and they loved her. Just the way she was.
