Sheikh Without a Heart

i,” she’d told her. “You hear me? One of us in going to graduate!”

In August, Rachel had moved the two of them to a bigger furnished room in a safer neighborhood. She’d used her Walmart discount for Suki’s school supplies and bought their clothes at Goodwill.

Suki wouldn’t wear them.

“Holy crap, how can you wear somebody’s old stuff?” she’d demanded. “And you’re wasting your money, buying me school stuff. I’m not going to go no more.”

When the first snow fell they got a card from Mama. She was in Hollywood. She knew someone who knew someone who was making a movie. She was going to get a part in it.

And then I’ll send for my girls!

More exclamation marks. More lies. They’d never heard from her again.

Or maybe they had. There was no way to know because by January Idaho was nothing but a memory.

Suki had taken off. No goodbyes, no explanations. Just a note.

See you, it said.

Just like Mama, except Mama had left those twenties. Suki had emptied the sugar bowl of the fifty bucks Rachel had kept in it.

Rachel moved to Bismarck, North Dakota. Took a job as a waitress. Moved to Minneapolis. Took another job wait-ressing. A couple more stops and she’d ended up in a Little Rock, Arkansas, diner.

Bad food, grungy customers, lousy tips.

“There’s got to be somewhere better than this,” she’d muttered one night, after a guy walked out without paying his bill, much less leaving a tip.

“Dallas is lots better,” the other girl working the night shift had said.

Right, Rachel thought now, swallowing a bitter laugh. And after Dallas came Albuquerque, and after that Phoenix.

Rachel had seen more than her share of the West.

Then Suki had called. Told her about Las Vegas.

In some ways Vegas had been an improvement. When customers were happy because they’d won at the slots they left decent tips. And once she’d swallowed her pride and taken the job she had now the tips had got even better.

She’d started taking classes at the university, planned a better life for herself, and then for herself and Ethan …

What time was it, anyway?

She wasn’t sure what time they’d left Las Vegas. Ten, eleven o’clock—something around there. They were moving fast but there was no feeling of motion, no sense that they were miles above the earth, going from one time zone to another.

Could that be disorienting? Could it explain …

No. There’d been no plane, no soaring through the sky that first time the Sheikh had kissed her.

Nothing but the man himself. The taste of him. The feel of him. The heat and hardness of his body.