He emerged a few minutes later, looking like he stepped off the pages of a men’s magazine; all tailored suit and slicked-back hair.
“Let’s grab something to eat, and we can get down to business,” he said, adjusting his cufflinks. “Do you have a nickname, Evangeline?”
“A what?” I asked.
“A nickname. If you’re my girlfriend, it would make sense that I have a pet name for you. Any suggestions?”
“Oh, uh…” Unprepared for the question, my mind turned, looking for an answer. “Sometimes people call me Evie.”
“Evie, that’s perfect,” he said with a sweet smile. “Shall we, Evie?”
Following his lead, we left the penthouse and loaded into his divine-smelling town car. After a few minutes’ drive, we arrived at a bistro with a line of people waiting out the door, and were immediately led to a private patio dining area.
Judging by the way the tables were fewer and more spaced out, not to mention the way we immediately bypassed the line of hungry, waiting patrons, this was clearly an area for guests of Rafiq’s stature. He told me to order whatever I wanted, and so I let myself splurge on an indulgent seafood lunch. I went with sweet tea to drink, but Rafiq ordered whiskey without any self-consciousness or hesitation.
As we waited for our meals, Rafiq decided to get down to business.
“I suppose the best way to begin this is to lay out what my expectations are for this arrangement,” he said, placing his napkin over his lap. “And then you can ask any question I haven’t answered.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said.
Rafiq sighed. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve never done something like this before, so I truly don’t know how much information to give you about my personal life if we’re going to make this work. The long and short of it is that my father has a very different idea of what path my future should take than I do.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said. “What does he want you to be?”
“A businessman, like him,” said Rafiq, waving a hand. I couldn’t properly see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but his anger was clear regardless. “Or rather, like he’s pretended he is.”
“Pretended? He seems pretty successful to me.”
“He’s obscenely successful,” said Rafiq. “And that’s the problem. There’s no convincing him that another path might give my life value, not now. Not when this path has brought him and my entire extended family out of the desert dust and into the world’s most powerful circles. He’s convinced that business is the only way to build a foundation in today’s world. I don’t share his views, but he won’t accept that. It’s been a point of contention between us for a long time.”
“I’m not sure I can fully blame him,” I said with a shrug, sipping my water. “Doesn’t every father want his child to prosper?”
“Of course. It’s not his impulse to want me to be successful that bothers me; it’s that he won’t let me find my success my way; it’s that he demands I follow him instead of letting me blaze my own trail.”
“Your success?” I asked. Layers of Rafiq’s personality were starting to peel back, and I was interested to see what lay beneath the rough, playboy image he had cultivated. “What would you rather do with your life, if not carry on your family’s legacy?”
He stared at me a moment, silent, thinking. Clearly, there was an answer to my question on his mind, but he didn’t tell me what it was. Instead, he shook his head. “It’s not important. The point is, I don’t want to do the same thing that he does, and he isn’t willing to let me have room for that. So this is my only option.”
There was pain in his voice that I couldn’t place. Obviously, he wasn’t telling me the whole story.
Before he could continue, the waiter returned with our meals, and we spent a few minutes digging in. I almost moaned at the burst of flavor in my mouth. I don’t think I’d ever had a meal at a place this fancy and expensive, and the food was incredible. Rafiq looked bored as he cut up his rare steak, probably as used to this level of delicacy as I was to ramen noodles.
“So tell me how I come into all of this,” I asked, as my stomach started to feel full. “What does you having a girlfriend have to do with your father wanting you to take over the business?”
“It all comes back to tradition,” said Rafiq. “A businessman is a traditional, respected, stable career. And to go along with that, a good businessman should have a good woman by his side. Otherwise, I resemble those Wall Street frat boys your country is so fond of producing, who somehow manage to live as both businessmen and playboys. My father needs me to be a stable businessman, so that is how I must appear. In my culture—in his culture—these pretences are required for any amount of success. It’s the foundation to the castle, in other words.”
“And I’m supposed to help you look stable in front of your father.”
“Yes, that’s the point.”
“You understand that being an artist is about one of the most unstable lifestyle choices a person can make, right?” I let out a laugh as I cut up my fish. “I’m not so sure my life is going to inspire confidence in your father. I mean, if you hadn’t come along yesterday, I might not have been able to pay rent this month.”
“That won’t matter to him,” he said. “Because in his mind, you have me to support you and provide a safety net. That’s all it takes to turn you from a starving artist into a stable artist: a patron, just as the Romans used to provide. There’s a reason we still value their contributions to the arts. Whatever instability your life might offer you, my presence balances it. You’re not a liability, Evie, you’re all benefit.”
His words made me blush, and I had to nod. “That’s a pretty good point.”
What he was describing didn’t sound like the worst life for an artist, either, now that I was thinking about it. To have a supportive and successful partner making sure all the necessities of life were met, allowing me room to be creative, to breathe and be inspired? What more could an artist ask for?
Some part of me deeply wondered if this life could ever be real for anyone, let alone for me.
“What’s important to my father, Evie, is that I have a lovely, intelligent, and witty woman by my side to tether me to the earth, and make me behave well enough to deserve inheriting his massive business empire. I need to play the part of an obedient, competent heir, to calm down my father and those who deal in business with him. To do that, I need a beautiful, supportive partner. That’s the role I need you to play. That you are an artist will only sweeten the deal; my father enjoys passionate people.”
Something dawned on me. “Oh… so you’re hoping he’ll be too happy and distracted by what I do for a living to question where I come from, is that it? Since he couldn’t have known anything about me until recently?”
Rafiq gave me that wicked smile again. “There’s no hiding anything from you, is there? Yes, I would consider that a fringe benefit.”
I blushed downwardly and laughed without replying. Rafiq was definitely charming, and I was feeling much lighter now about this whole arrangement. Even though the tabloid searches Joel and I had done painted a picture of Rafiq as the arrogant jackass, clearly there was more to him. The man sitting across from me seemed quite unlike the man who had drunkenly ignored me at my gallery. He was softer, and sweeter. I wondered why Rafiq wasn’t like this all the time. What was he hiding from?
I swallowed hard against a tight throat. Was I getting a crush on Rafiq?
“So tell me about yourself,” said Rafiq. “How did you become an artist?”
Pulled from my thoughts, I stumbled. “Oh, uh, well… I started painting when I was pretty little, nothing serious. But classes in middle school made me start taking it seriously, and eventually my whole world became paints, easels and art shows… To be honest, it just feels like this is where I was always going to be. After college, I convinced Joel—that’s my friend, the assistant you met the other night—to move to the city with me so I could try and become a ‘real artist’. The first few years were pretty difficult, but eventually things picked up, and now I’m just doing everything I can to keep my little gallery afloat.”
Rafiq stopped cutting his steak and watched me curiously behind his sunglasses. “That’s beautiful. That must be a very comforting thing to feel—to be where you belong.”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “It doesn’t stop those days where you feel like a fraud, though. Sometimes I get this unshakable feeling that I accidentally sneaked into a place where I don’t belong, and any moment someone is going to discover me, kick me out, and make me move back to my home town to work at the local burger joint forever.” I laughed, like I often did when I was talking about upsetting feelings. “Then it’s easy to wish I ended up somewhere else, somewhere safer, where I didn’t have those thoughts so often. But it always passes in the end.”
“Safer,” repeated Rafiq. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the choice. People assume there are safe choices and so they give up on their dreams in exchange for it.”
I nodded sadly. “I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years because of it. I understand the impulse. I just… I don’t share it.” The memory made me sad.
As if he could sense it, Rafiq said, “Evie, you’re braver than any single person I’ve ever met. Don’t be ashamed because you don’t share that impulse. It’s people like you who make a difference in the world. You’re stronger than all of them, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. You refused to let your dreams die.”
I lowered my fork slowly, stunned and moved by his kind words. Something in me wanted to believe he was just messing with me, but nothing in his voice or expression suggested he was being anything less than sincere.
“Thank you,” I replied quietly. “I don’t feel that way a lot. It’s nice to hear.”
Rafiq nodded at me and smiled. “My father will love hearing about your artistic strength. You’ll be perfect for this.”
“When will I meet him?”
“He’s coming in from the Middle East on his jet sometime tomorrow. He’s a very busy man with a constantly fluctuating schedule, which is why it’s important for us to maintain the appearance that we live together. It’s just easier to do it than to fake it. He could show up at any time, but I know he has plans to return home at the end of the week.”
“So we only have to pull this off for a week?”
“Give or take,” said Rafiq. “And then you can return to your gallery a richer woman, and hopefully find some of that stability your creativity needs to flourish.”
I loved the sound of that, and smiled. “I think we can definitely do business, Rafiq.” I raised my water glass and he clinked his whiskey against it with a half-smile. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” he replied with a smile.
We were interrupted when the bistro’s social photographer arrived, beaming from ear to ear, and offering to take a photo of us to remember the occasion. I was surprised, but Rafiq seemed to expect it, and he scooted his chair over next to mine.
He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to his body, his head resting against mine. “Smile, darling,” he said to me. “This will be one for the scrapbook.”
I tried to ignore the sparks shooting through my skin when Rafiq touched me, and smiled at the camera, leaning against him as if he really was my lover. The photographer directed us with annoying little hand waves until he liked the way we were posing, and then rapidly clicked a few photos with his bright flash.
The photographer seemed pleased with the results, and Rafiq handed him a hundred-dollar bill, asking for a copy of the best photo. The photographer promised to have a print ready by the time we left, and came through on his offer, presenting Rafiq with a beautiful eight-by-ten copy of the portrait in a white envelope as we reached the doors.
“Can I see?” I asked, trying to slip the envelope from his grasp.
He pulled it away teasingly as he led me out the front door of the bistro. “Darling, I’m going to get it framed for you, don’t spoil the surprise.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “If you say so, darling,” I repeated. It had been a long time since I had used a pet name on anyone but Joel, but I figured I should start practicing now, before it really mattered.
Rafiq chuckled and offered me his arm, leading me back to the town car and helping me inside.
“The penthouse, please, Ahmed,” said Rafiq to his driver through the intercom. Ahmed didn’t reply, but pulled the car away from the curb and into traffic.
Rafiq sighed and threw an arm on the back of the seat. “Thank you for doing this for me, Evie,” he said. “You’re wonderful for it. I’m going to make sure all my rich, art-loving friends get familiar with your work.”
I blushed and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Well, wonderful and broke… I’m not totally selfless in helping you. It’s not like I’m a nun, here.” I laughed.
“No… no you’re not,” said Rafiq lowly.
Something in his voice sounded different, and when I looked over to meet his eyes, I saw lust blazing in them. His gaze wandered slowly and deliberately down my face and body, like he wanted me to feel it.
My heart stopped in my chest. Even though part of me hungered for his gaze, the moment was all wrong, and my stomach tied up in knots.
Rafiq reached over with his right hand and placed it firmly on my thigh, half-covered by the blue cloth of my dress. His touch sent electricity through my skin, and I gasped in surprise.
“Rafiq,” I panted, “what are you doing?”
His hand was sliding up my thigh. “I know you find me attractive,” he said, leaning his body over toward me. “And I certainly think the same of you…”
With my forearm, I pushed his chest back and tossed his hand off my thigh. He made a grunting noise as he fell back against the leather seats, blinking in surprise.
“Good God, are you kidding me?” I said angrily, pulling down the hem of my skirt. “I thought this was a business arrangement!”
Shock and confusion painted Rafiq’s face. “It is a business arrangement, but it doesn’t have to be limited to that. Why should it?”
“Actually, it does,” I said firmly, crossing my arms. I slid away from Rafiq on the bench seat, as close to the other door as I could get. “And you’ll do well to remember that, or this won’t be an arrangement at all. I have no problem going back to being a starving artist, Rafiq, I’ve done it for long enough. It’s your choice.”
Rafiq’s silence was filled with anger, and it made the interior of the town car tense. I was sure even Ahmed could feel it. Rafiq didn’t reply, he just twisted his mouth up and turned away from me to stare out the window. When we arrived at the penthouse, he didn’t get out of the car with me. Hell, he wouldn’t even look at me.
“I’m going to meet some friends in the city,” he said in a cold voice. “Don’t wait up.”
I scoffed. “Why would I?”
I slammed the car door before he could reply and headed into the building without looking back as the town car roared away behind me.
SEVEN