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“She’s back,” Gadi blurted out. “Hyacinth, I mean. She’s here for—-”
“There’s no need to explain.” Rayyan was privately relieved to hear his voice steady and expressionless. “You may go.”
Gadi struggled with his confusion and disappointment at his employer’s lackluster response. “Nem, alshaykh.” Yes, sheikh.
Rayyan watched the younger man leave his office with drooped shoulders. Although he knew for a fact that Hyacinth had done her best to make everyone believe that her “infatuation” for the sheikh had died a natural death and that she was moving forward with her new life at university, he also knew that everyone hadn’t bought a word she said.
Apparently, the general consensus was that Hyacinth had been unable to forgive him for being seen taking his ex-mistress to dinner, and he had let them go on thinking so.
It was better they thought him an incurable philanderer than find out the truth, which was that no matter how fucking hard he wished it could be any other way...
He already belonged to someone else.
So just stop goddamn thinking about her.
But this turned out to be easier said than done.
One long-serving tradition in the finance department was for the sheikh to hand out New Year bonuses on the 26th of December, and when the sheikh strode into his office that day, he was only slightly taken aback by the overly festive atmosphere that greeted him.
Everyone was grinning like fools, and despite Rayyan’s frown, his staff appeared strangely immune, making him wonder if perhaps Gadi had taken advantage of his appalling lack of focus in recent times. Maybe a memorandum about a higher bonus percentage than usual and the sheikh had unknowingly signed his approval for it?
But as he drew nearer to his private office and his employees started to part like the fucking Nile River, his heart began to thud against his chest like a schoolboy having his first eyeful of the MILF living next door.
Don’t even goddamn think about it.
You don’t even fucking have the right to consider such a thing.
Don’t you fucking for one second –
And yet...
There she was.
Ah.
His steps crashed to a full stop, the pounding of his heart so damn loud he was just waiting for someone at the office to complain about the noise.
Jamila.
It meant ‘beautiful’ in Rami, and that was exactly what she was.
Every perfect inch of her was beautiful, and he couldn’t comprehend how he had remained fucking ignorant of this fact until now.
Maybe it was the painful length of her absence, the haunting emptiness she left ever since she walked out of his life – maybe it was just fate deciding it was time he stopped being blind, but it was like seeing her with new eyes.
Long dark tresses that he wanted to comb with his fingers, the gentle, elegant sculpture of her cheeks, the swan-like length of her neck, the sun-kissed skin, the pure, innocent fragrance of her ripe, slender figure –
Most of all, gazing at her reminded him of the night his lips had branded her his, and Rayyan had to drag breath into his lungs in an attempt to control the suddenly rampant urges of his body.
She was presently surrounded by staff, all of them visibly excited by her return and seemingly in competition with each other as to who could relay the most convincing story about how much the sheikh had helplessly pined away at her absence.
Salah swears on his grave that not once has the sheikh ever come into contact with Ms. Black since you left.
Rayyan stiffened. The way they were going, they’d have Hyacinth convinced her leaving him had made him impotent.
We see him with this faraway look on his face all the time...
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Did a man gazing outside his window have to automatically mean he was thinking of a woman? Why couldn’t it just be that – and he had something to look at outside his window?
And he never asks us about you. Ever. Doesn’t that say something?
Sure it fucking did. It meant he was a private person. That was all it was –
We really think he’s in love –
Rayyan coughed, and the circle around Hyacinth instantly broke apart. He watched her eyes widen with shock at seeing him standing there. How long have you been standing there?
His lip curled. Long enough to know I need to fire most of my staff for slander.
Her lips twitched, and then her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. But were they really lying? Her lips curved in a smile as sly as it was alluring. Or were you truly pining for me?
His heart slammed against his chest. God. It was almost like fucking magic, the way the days they had been apart ceasing to matter, and everything was suddenly back the way it was – the way it was meant to be.
Because this time, he was done lying, done forcing himself to do what was right, done trying to figure things out.
