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***
Norah opened the door with the same look in her eyes as Jay. Sloan took a deep breath as Norah moved to let her in.
“It was me,” Sloan said without hesitation. “I had you followed, I planted the news story.”
Norah stared at her for a long time. “Why?” She said eventually, her voice low and scratchy.
Sloan’s expression softened. “I was jealous. I was jealous that it wasn’t me he fell in love with. I’ve never seen him like this, Norah. I’m so sorry, so very sorry. Instead of doing this, I should have been the friend he thinks I am. I should have been a friend to you. Let me try and fix this.”
She turned and grabbed the remote to Norah’s tiny television. She flicked on and then Jay was there, on screen. Sloan saw Norah slump, her eyes fill with tears. Jay had a haunted look on his face as he spoke.
“So there you have it, the JWM channel. We’re hoping to bring original dramas, insightful documentaries, breaking news…I’m sorry.” Jay looked down. “I can’t stand here and pretend that the news stories over the past week haven’t affected me, especially not when I myself am launching a network which will report on people’s lives. One thing I can tell you — we will never resort to the kind of gutter-press antics displayed by some of our compatriots.
Norah Quinn is a highly accomplished Harvard graduate who was recruited to our company on the strengths of her resume. Without her, we wouldn’t be here today. Her mother is at one of the state’s top facilities, something which the press have conveniently overlooked. Norah herself visits her mother frequently and pays for her care herself.
My personal relationship with Norah is this: she is, without a doubt, the love of my life. Norah doesn’t care about money except when it comes to providing the best care for her mother, whom she loves very much. Norah loves without condition and I was lucky, for the best few months of my life, to have that love. I pray your disgraceful, repellent gossip hasn’t wrecked my chance to be with the woman I love.” Jay stepped off the podium to a stunned silence then people started to clap and cheer.
***
Jay moved through the guests, making small talk but feeling dead inside. The anger that had rippled through him on the podium had gone and now he wanted just to be alone.
He didn’t see Norah until he noticed the crowd parting and then all of the breath in his body left him. She was gazing at him with those beautiful, big brown eyes. He felt a rush of adrenalin and was at her side and gathering her up in his arms, not caring about the people around them. He kissed her, tasting the salty tears pouring down both their faces. When eventually they broke off, gasping for air, for a long moment, they just stared at each other, ignoring the melee of press surrounding them.
Finally, Jay, smoothing the hair away from her lovely face, smiled down at her and said two simple words. “Marry me.”
“Yes.” Her answer rang out true and clear and as the people around them began to clap and cheer, Jay kissed her again and knew he’d be kissing her for a very, very long time…
THE END
Prince of Bahrain
He was trying to decide which brothel to try this time when Misha, his assistant-bodyguard, who followed him like a shadow, got the call. “Bashir,” Misha said, after a moment on the phone, “you’ll have to take this.”
Bashir sighed and scowled. He’d just caught the eye of a blonde woman, covered only in pasties, svelte yet tantalizingly curved in all the right ways, arching her back over a chair. Amsterdam’s Red Light District wasn’t really as glamorous and decadent as it was said to be, but Bashir had always liked the free-wheeling sense of giddy no-holds-barred freedom that he had when he came to visit. He was aware, though, that if anybody recognized an Armani suit and bespoke shoes from a distance, it would be the Dutch, and the girls that were on display now were probably chosen specifically to cater to his tastes. He’d acquired somewhat of a reputation by now, for being generous with his tips as long as the house was generous with the girls.
The problem with Amsterdam, though, was that the Dutch were substantially taller than he was. He was five feet, ten inches—eleven if his shoes had a lift—which put him right on the average with the British, but here he was flat-out short. But he did have large, liquid-gray eyes and thick black hair that he kept neatly trimmed, both of them working to his advantage, especially with the women. Mention of his doctorate studies in International Law from Oxford, with his mild and vaguely-French accent, drove all but the most adamantly lesbian of women into his arms.
But it was too easy to fall into bed with a stranger, and much harder to extricate himself from the misunderstanding that invariably ensued: he wanted sex, she wanted love—though the reverse was just as true, just as frequently. Still, it’d happened often enough that when he discovered that Amsterdam was just a short flight from London and tickets were cheap and the euro-pound exchange rates were in his favor, weekend jaunts to the city of narrow houses and murky canals became a regular thing for him. Misha had taken to having a bag packed every Friday after his meeting with Professor Parker, his adviser. He sometimes wondered what Misha must think of these visits to the brothels—he’d offered to pay for a girl or two for him—but Misha always declined.
Bashir took the phone, glaring at Misha. His bodyguard—tall, blonde, with steely blue eyes and a catlike grace when he moved—maintained the same inscrutable blank look he always had. Misha was so coldly professional there were times when Bashir wondered if he had a pulse, but on the other hand he’d also had his share of bodyguards who tried too hard to be chummy and only made things awkward. There was no awkwardness with Misha, at least—he was just a job to the guy, which was both a blessing and a curse sometimes. “Hello?” he said.
It was his father. At first Bashir was annoyed—when the semester began he’d told his father that he would not be flying back to Bahrain for every official ceremony, but the King still called every now and then, asking him if he wanted to do the meet-and-greets for the King of Saudi Arabia, or the Ayatollah of Iran. They were largely frivolous affairs, fun in their own way if smiling for cameras and kissing hands and having you hands kissed was your idea of fun, but Bashir had been doing it since he was four, and while the thrill of meeting foreign dignitaries was still there, the wonder was gone. They were, after all, merely men—old men, dour men, who thought that they could rule their people like sultans of days past—and he’d met enough of them to know that he preferred women. His idea of fun these days was getting high on Ecstasy (purchased in bulk from his dealer here, concealed amongst the legitimate lactase pills he carried so that he could eat at finer establishments without suffering diarrhea later) and clubbing the night away, but even that had gotten old recently.
And, of course, there were calls about the marriage proposals—some sheik or other in some country or other wanted to marry some daughter or other to the Prince of Bahrain, even though he was last in line for the succession and had neither the interest in ruling, nor the ruthlessness for removing his brothers. Bashir sighed and covered his face with his hand, now, wondering why he had to be the last son. He was twenty-eight, and still his wishes to be left alone and not pestered with the idea of marrying strangers were routinely ignored.
“—and you must come back immediately,” his father was saying.
It’d been something about a marriage, and Bashir could feel his eyes rolling as he protested, “But I have a thesis draft due on Tuesday—” I wonder which daughter of what sultan is up for offer now, he thought.
“You always have something due,” his father snapped. “Now I am telling you to come home. And anyway, you are the only one of my children who has yet to meet your new mother.”
“My new—” Did he say mother? He had, Bashir realized. That was why he was calling. “Wait, when did you get engaged?”
“As I said, a lot has happened since you went to England. Come home, Bashir. Let’s talk.”
Bashir found himself agreeing to fly home as soon as possible. “What are you staring at?” he asked, as he handed the phone back to Misha. He felt bad right away—Misha, always the picture of decorum, hadn’t been staring—and there was no reason to lash out at the man like that, except out of his own peevishness about having his plans for the weekend thwarted. Not that they were very good plans—spend Saturday whoring, Sunday drinking, and fly back to England before classes on Monday—but they were his. Still, he supposed he could make an exception, this one time, for his father. “Change of plans,” he said. “We’re going back go Bahrain. Do you have a tuxedo?”
***
