The Sheikh's Virgin Bride(83)

When I got to her place, Leona made me wait an extra fifteen minutes, but that was just a show, to punish me. I hadn’t called enough, she’d found out about Kailey or Cassie, she missed me. Nevertheless, when she slid into my car with a put-on pout, there was no denying it: she was excited to see me.

As I drove, however, the line of interrogation began.

“It’s been a while. What have you been up to?”

“Oh, you know, work, play.”

“I heard you got a new personal assistant.”

“Sure did.”

“What happened to the old one?”

“Who knows. My father has his peculiarities; I have mine.”

She sighed and pulled a face. Her arms had remained crossed for the whole ride so far.

I pulled over to the side of the road.

“Leona, baby. I’m happy to see you, but I can’t do this, okay? Just tell me—why are you upset? What’s up?”

Her eyes were like searchlights, scanning my face for the answer of what she hadn’t even asked yet.

“I know.”

“Oh?”

I took her hand and squeezed it. She wrenched it away.

“I know, okay, Khabib? I know.”

I transferred my gaze to the window.

“You know what?”

“About the other women. About Sharon, your old personal assistant. I know, okay?”

I kept my gaze on the window, on the cars zooming past.

“Ah.”

“What, that’s it? No slick denial, no apology, nothing?”

I turned to face her. Her face looked even more harried than her voice had sounded, all one connected system of clenches and bulges.

“What do you want me to say?”

A slap was her answer.

“You jerk. I want you to apologize for leading me on, for having me think that we were ever anything serious, like you actually cared.”

“Leona, honey, I am sorry. I mean, some part of you had to know, though. Seeing each other once a week, if that…hazy future prospects, at best. I mean, I may have been a bit misleading, but you can’t say that you’re entirely surprised.”

Now, Leona looked like she was about to kill me, so I changed tactics.

“Leona. Please. I’m sorry.”

Her sneer only grew.

“Say it like you mean it.”

I turned away and she laughed, a terrible crackling sound.

“God, you really can’t, can you?”

My quiet only spurned her on more.

“You can’t even feel anything at all, can you? You never cared for me, because you haven’t cared for anyone, not in a long time, or ever.”

Her car door opened and I turned around to face her again.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving. I’ll walk.”

“Leona—”

“Goodbye, Khabib. I would tell you to go to hell, but by the looks of it, you’re already there.”

And then, she was gone, leaving her words resounding in the car. I exhaled and yet, I felt tenser than when she’d been in there with me.

Leona was wrong; she had to be. I still cared about things—my family, the business, Bruno. Just because I didn’t care about her didn’t mean that I couldn’t. No, she was completely wrong. Yet, as I sped down the freeway in my car, the queasiness in my stomach suggested something else.

Halfway home, I pulled over into a fast food parking lot and called up Gina. She was surprised to hear from me.

“A date, right now?” she replied to my spur-of-the-moment question.

“Yes. I thought of you, and I couldn’t wait.”

A pause, then, “Okay!”

“Great. I’ll pick you up in 15.”

Gina was less than five minutes away, but I needed to sort my head out first. Leona had really put me in a bad mood, the dramatic prima donna. Sure, we might have been on different pages on what we’d wanted, but that was no reason to throw a ridiculous temper tantrum and accuse me of being some kind of sociopath. So what if certain things like girls and nights and drinks had started blurring together? That didn’t mean she was right.

Once I picked Gina up, I started feeling a bit better. She was a nice distraction, laughing at my jokes and delighting in the rooftop bar I took us to. Before I knew it we were back at my place. I almost couldn’t wait, had to have her there and then, release this stupid tension that was all coiled up in me. Bruno eyed her warily as I tossed her onto my bed. He was used to this by now.

Afterwards, as I lay in bed with the Spanish beauty sleeping beside me, I stared into the dark.

I couldn’t sleep. All I could hear were Leona’s words resounding in my head, over and over again: “I would tell you to go to hell, but by the looks of it, you’re already there.”

No matter how I tossed and turned, I couldn’t shoo the phrase from my thoughts. Leona was wrong, clearly. And yet, when I turned to look at Gina beside me, as I swept the chestnut wave of hair off the face of the girl who’d gushed about how much she’d missed me a mere hour ago, I felt nothing.

No, even as I did a mental scan of the women I’d been with these past few months, face after face slipped by inconsequentially. They were all part of a pointless reel, a swapping of one girl I didn’t care about for another. Sure, they were fun, pretty, enjoyable to be with. Yet, the longer I thought about it, the more it hit me—I didn’t really care for any of them.