Suite Dubai (Arriving) by Callista Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

problems?”

    “Of course I have problems,” she said, “I have so many problems right now I can’t even list them.”  

    He stood up again. “Sorry,” he said. “I am bothering you.”  

    “Hamid, I’m sorry. I’m trying to do a budget and all I have is a list of prices. I have no idea what things cost here. I don’t even know the days of the week.” She put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry. I was rude. And I’m not even royalty.”  

    “You’re working on a budget?” he asked. “You have it in a spreadsheet?”

    She told him she didn’t. “Just a list.”  

    “When do you need it? Wait, let me guess. Right away?”

    “25 Minutes,” she told him.

    “So I can help you,” he said coming around her desk. He bent down over her keyboard, close enough that she could smell his aftershave. He showed her how to open a new spreadsheet, how to make columns and rows, how to put in categories and numbers and how, once set up, it made the calculations for her.  

    “How many people are coming?” he asked.

    “I don’t know,” she confessed. “How many do you think?”

    “Let’s do a column for one, two, three and four hundred guests. Just to make this look good.” He added a column for each possibility and showed her how the costs could be broken down per guest. “See, you are ready for your meeting with his highness.” He said the last part with a bit of sarcasm.

    She was so grateful she leaned over and hugged him.  

    ***

    They rode the elevator facing forward, not saying a word. Samantha clearly didn’t like her. In the meeting, she’d seen a different look on Samantha’s face when Kritika talked about playing the cello, when Hamid said he worked for the UN, when Anaton said he’d skated in the Olympics. Her face softened. She seemed almost pleased. When Rachel spoke, however, Samantha looked at her with something like pity. As the floors passed and they got closer to the top floor, Rachel felt a sense of dread.  

    She’d felt dread like this after the phone call from Truman. She tried to dispel the creeping feeling in the car, on the way to his apartment, by turning up the radio, twice and singing along to “I’m Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. It was one of the first warm days in April but despite the sunshine, she did not feel good.  

    “Can we talk?” He'd asked over the phone. That’s how it started, or ended really, with Truman. So cliché. So pathetic. A formal invitation to talk, something they had been doing quite naturally on their own until he'd began to avoid her. For two days he didn’t return her calls and now he wanted to talk? She needed an appointment?  

    She was careful with her tone when she answered him. “Sure,” she said, but even then she couldn’t breath. The circuitry in her arms and legs seemed to be misfiring. She put her hand to her forehead to check for a fever. “Do you want me to grab something to drink, some wine?” It was their little ritual, that when she came over she brought a bottle of wine.

    Truman had been a decent boyfriend, her first serious boyfriend out of high school. They met in botany class and began to study together, equations for turning sunlight into sugar, the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees, that kind of thing. Studying turned into eating popcorn and watching movies. Then one night she stayed over. She didn’t even mean to date him. It was something that just happened. Then he met a guy named Brian and everything changed. They played Frisbee golf together, a sport Truman had once proclaimed was for losers.  

      “It’s just something to do,” he told her when she brought it up. Soon he’d started skipping classes, skipping movie night, skipping all nonBrian activities. He went instead to Brian’s apartment and which is where he must’ve met Brian’s cousin Kristi. Truman never told her that. Two months after they broke up, Emily had seen them leaving the local