A Sheikh for Christmas (All I want for Christmas is... 1)

“Right.” He put the pen down and continued eating his breakfast. Her stare nearly bored a hole through the side of his head as he took his time eating. Finally, he finished the last bite and pushed his empty plate away. “Given your lack of real world experience, I’d suggest you look for entry-level positions.”

Daveed got up to take his plate to the sink, ducking to avoid the wadded-up napkin she lobbed at his head.

“You think you’re so superior to me, don’t you?” She stood, leaving her food untouched on the breakfast bar. “I’ve got news for you, buddy. I will go out today and I will get a job. Bank on it.”

“I look forward to it,” he said, calmly rinsing his plate and putting it in the dishwasher before wrapping her food in plastic wrap and setting it in the fridge for later. He’d seen too many starving kids during his military service to ever waste good food. If she didn’t eat it later, he would. He set about cleaning up the mess they’d made then hung the dishtowel over the hook on the wall. “Now, I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, following him out of the kitchen and over to where his black boots sat near the wall by the door. “Can I come too?”

“No. You have a job to find, remember?” Daveed jammed his feet into his boots then grabbed his coat from the closet. “I’ll be back later this afternoon.”

“How am I supposed to get back in here if you’re gone?” Melody asked.

He rifled through the drawer of a side table and pulled out a key, handing it to her. “Here. If you lose it, you’ll answer to Heath. Understand?”

She nodded and he shoved his own keys and wallet into his pocket.

“Be careful,” Daveed said as he headed out the door. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

* * *

“I can’t believe she’d just go like that with nothing but a text telling me not to worry if I didn’t hear from her for a few months,” Murphy Coen said, scrubbing a hand through his short black hair as he stared at Daveed. Given his dark eyes and swarthy complexion, people thought he was Arabic like Daveed. He was an Irish Jew, but the coloring had come in handy during their two tours in the Middle East together. “It’s not like Aileen. And I’m sure as fuck worried.”

Daveed clapped his hand on his buddy’s shoulder in a show of solidarity. “We’ll find her.”

“Damn straight we will,” Heath said from across the room where he was searching through Aileen’s desk drawers. The apartment was a small and tidy sublet on Manhattan’s trendy Lower East Side. “I’ve got more contacts we can work too.”

“Yeah, but they’re all for foreign intelligence,” Murph said. “When we asked around the neighborhood earlier, no one had heard or seen anything from my sister in two weeks. The police won’t even file a missing person report on her because they said it doesn’t look to them like Aileen vanished.”

“What exactly did she say in her message again?” Daveed asked. “Besides the part about not to worry about not hearing from her.”

Murphy pulled out his phone and brought up the text again, holding it out so Daveed could see. “Nothing much, other than she’d be gone and that her rent was paid up for six months. It’s just weird, you know? And I really want to find her before I’m called back to active duty in the SEALs in January.”

“Yeah, I know.” Daveed joined Heath over near the desk, where he was now going through Aileen’s paperwork. A bookshelf was built into the wall beside it and Daveed started going through her books. There were some biographies, a few historical non-fiction titles, and a ton of romance novels. He grabbed one and pulled it out then winced at the cover. An Arab sheikh, his white shirt open and billowing in the breeze, holding a woman in a flowing purple ballgown to his tanned, toned chest. It was titled Captive Desire. Nose wrinkled, Daveed shoved it back onto the shelf and selected another book, this one sticking out farther than the rest, as though Aileen might’ve been reading it recently. This was a romantic suspense, or at least that was what he assumed based on the buff guy with the gun on the front protecting the cowering damsel in distress. He was about to put that one away too, when he saw something sticking out of the top. Carefully, he removed the slip of paper and saw writing scrawled atop it. “I found something.”

“Yeah?” Heath glanced over to see the note in Daveed’s hand. “Good luck deciphering that. It’s in code.”

“Shit,” Daveed said, squinting down at the gibberish. “You’re right.”

“Here.” Heath limped over, snatching the note away and shoved it into his pocket. Surprisingly, the limp came not from his five years in the military, but from a fall off one of his father’s polo ponies when he’d been young. Daveed and the other guys had given Heath all kinds of shit about that during their service together. “I’ll have some of my US contacts take a look at it and see what I can find out.”

Daveed would’ve objected to being bossed around by Heath, but considering he was going to have to kick the guy out of his own condo for the next few weeks because Melody would be staying there, he thought better of it. Besides, from the looks of him, Heath had a lot on his mind anyway. He looked even grungier than usual, with at least four days growth of beard on his face and his clothes wrinkled and a bit ill fitting. Hard to believe this guy had built his family’s dwindling oil and railroad legacy into one of the largest media and tech fortunes in the world. He was a year older than Daveed and way more intense, kind of like that actor Bradley Cooper on steroids. “Fine. Listen, you need to stay away from the condo for a while longer.”

“What?” Heath frowned. “Why?”

“Yeah. Why?” Murphy asked, joining them. “What are you hiding in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Now I know you’re lying.” Heath gave him a flat look. “It’s Melody, isn’t it?”

“Melody?” Murph’s dark eyes widened. “You mean as in Melody Hascall-Ebons, Heath’s ex?” He gave a slow chuckle. “Shit, dude. That’s major.”

“It’s nothing. She’s got nothing and no place to stay. I can’t throw her out on the street.”

“I can.” Heath took off for the door. “That woman ran off with another man and now she thinks she can just show up and mooch off me? No fucking way.”

“Wait!” Daveed grabbed Heath’s arm to stop him. “Listen, I know that you two weren’t exactly a match made in heaven. And I can’t condone her running off to Tahiti with another man, but she’s in serious trouble right now and could use a bit of kindness.”