“I appreciate you giving it back so readily,” Khaleel said, his expression carefully neutral. “Of course, it’s likely you did originally intend to give it back to me, but then again, you could have been planning to just…walk off the boat with it later, sell it for cash.”
Aurora cringed; while she hadn’t entirely settled on the possibility of selling the watch, she couldn’t exactly deny the accusation.
“I hadn’t really decided,” she admitted. “But my first impulse was to put it back in your room, hopefully while you were away, so I wouldn’t risk being found out.” Khaleel laughed, and Aurora felt some of the tension coiling around her stomach begin to ease.
“Honesty—that is very refreshing,” he said, his laughter fading from his voice. “I’m not going to take you back to shore, Aurora. Even if I wanted to, this yacht is on a planned route, and we’re already too far for me to justify turning back. You’re stuck on board for a little while longer, I’m afraid.”
Aurora’s eyes widened as she thought about the prospect of being far away from home, with no clothes or possessions, and no knowledge of her ETA or where she was going. It was exciting and horrifying all at the same time.
Khaleel cleared his throat. “The good news is that you will be on the yacht as my guest—no need to continue to pretend to be my maid. You’ll have your own quarters, and I believe there are probably some clothes available in your size, in case your impulsive scheme didn’t cover for that particular issue.”
Aurora’s blush deepened and she fought the urge to scowl at the sleekly confident man. “Okay,” she said, keeping her voice as meek as possible. “I appreciate your generosity.”
Khaleel chuckled again. “My generosity means very little,” he said, shrugging once more. “I have the facilities, and it’s easier to do this than it would be to turn you over to the authorities. There’s probably somewhere on board that I could convert into a brig, but the idea of arranging that—or asking my staff to do so—tires me. Easier by far to accommodate you as a guest.” He looked at her for another moment and smiled slightly. “You may be excused. Make yourself at home.”
Aurora stared at him for a moment in shock, and then got to her feet, feeling oddly numb and tingling at the same time.
She turned her back to him, her skin crawling with apprehension that at any moment he might change his mind; certainly the Sheikh seemed to have a whimsical streak. Aurora’s relief at not being immediately handed over to the authorities, and her desire to get as far away from her unintentional host as quickly as possible, got her out of the room almost before she knew what she was doing.
Aurora closed the double doors behind her and shook her head, still in shock at the strange developments of the day. It was only noon and already she had been more terrified and more exhilarated than she could remember feeling in weeks.
FIVE
As she walked through the corridor, away from the stateroom, Aurora’s shock began to dissipate. Her relief at not hearing that she would be handed over to the police evaporated as she thought about how high-handed Khaleel’s particular method of dealing with her was.
His words took on a mocking tone in her mind; he had known she wasn't part of the staff all along, and instead of simply confronting her about it when he called her into his room, he’d played with her, pretending to believe her story.
“If I hadn’t confronted him about that ridiculous ‘initial evaluation,’ he would have let me completely re-clean his entire room,” Aurora muttered to herself, realizing the truth of the situation. “He was going to let me spend hours cleaning a room that was already spotless, all the while laughing to himself about what an idiot I was for doing whatever it took to maintain my cover.”
Aurora shook her head and began to walk faster, her feet falling on the hardwood and carpeting of the winding corridors until she reached the exit onto the sun deck.
The crew members were mostly at their stations, some of them hard at work while others were waiting for their real work to start. Aurora looked out over the sun deck and saw that the bar on the other side of the pool was staffed. One man was doing prep work: cutting up fruit, while another member of the crew filled the shelves and bins.
Off to the side of the bar, in the shade, someone had set up a short buffet table with snacks, and Aurora felt the lurch in her stomach and the gnawing of hunger that reminded her that she hadn’t eaten that day. “Well, if I’m supposed to be his ‘guest’ then I might as well act like it,” she said bitterly.
She walked across the deck and browsed at the buffet table for a few moments, picking up a plate and loading it with whatever caught her fancy: pieces of melon, a few figs, some walnuts and pistachios, grilled meat and vegetables, and some warm, soft wedges of flatbread.
Aurora watched the crew members at work as she sat down at a table under an umbrella, eating the delicious food slowly, savoring the tastes of each item. Salt, spice, sweet, and sour danced across her tongue, and Aurora wondered if the Sheikh kept a constant supply of food around at all times, or if he had prodded someone to provide it as a service to the crew—including his new, fake maid.
It might not actually be all that bad to be a member of this crew, Aurora thought as she watched someone stop at the table to serve themselves a few bites to eat. She cleaned her plate and touched a napkin to her lips, feeling slightly better about her situation than she had when the full import of Khaleel’s scheme had become clear in her mind.
“Want a drink?” someone called out, and Aurora glanced in the direction of the bar to see the bartender looking at her. “Kind of bored over here; I could use the work.”
Aurora smiled and got to her feet, moving over to the bar and sitting down on one of the stools. “You definitely seem well-stocked,” she said, looking around at the bottles of top shelf alcohol that dominated the shelves.
“Always,” the man said, nodding. “What can I get for you?”
“That is a very good question,” Aurora said. “I have no idea what I want.”
The bartender chuckled. He was dressed in the crew uniform, but with the addition of a black vest over his white shirt, marking him out as different from the others.
“Well, I do have a menu for when the Sheikh entertains,” the bartender said. He reached underneath the bar and rummaged around for a moment before producing a flat, thin, leather-bound book of maybe three pages. He handed it to Aurora and she smiled, thanking him before opening the cover.
Her gaze moved over the words and she took in each of the descriptions, trying to imagine the flavors of the finished drinks. There were some combinations that she would never have considered, but after a few moments, she decided on the most complicated cocktail, which had the added benefit of being one of the strongest that the menu boasted. “I’ll take a Zombie,” Aurora told the bartender, and he grinned, nodding his acceptance of the challenge.
Aurora watched as he assembled the drink, pouring in the three kinds of rum, lime juice, grenadine, some kind of mix. The man picked up and poured bottles into a shaker with practiced coordination until Aurora thought that she had seen at least half of the bottles behind the bar add their contents to the shaker—though the bartender was moving too quickly and deftly for her to be sure.
“You be careful with this,” the man said, putting a lid on the shaker and making sure it sealed. “More than three of these and you’re apt to decide to take a swan dive into the great big tropical sea.”
Aurora chuckled, watching as he shook the cocktail together vigorously, broke the seal, and poured it into a glass. “What’s your name?” she asked. She wished that she had something to tip him with, but her bag was still in the closet where she’d stowed it.
“Chris,” the man said. He slid the glass across the table to her, cloudy and delicious-looking, and gave her a quick smile. “Thanks for the work. When you finish that one, come and see me again.”
“Thank you,” Aurora said, meeting his gaze and smiling gratefully. “It’s been
a hell of a day and it’s only barely the afternoon.”
The bartender chuckled. “Don’t I know it.” He smiled again and turned away to begin cleaning the bar down.