The Sheikh's First Christmas - A Warm and Cozy Christmas Romance (3 page)

I didn't look back as I hurried along the wet sidewalk, huddled against the chill.

THREE

I found my car where I'd left it. My hands shook as I turned the key in the ignition, and I drove home without stopping, adrenaline still flooding my body.

I half expected the police to be waiting for me, but they weren't. No one had followed me. No one had been called. I flicked on the living room light. My feet were wet in my sneakers, and I could still feel the night's cold in my bones. I wanted to go to my bedroom, get undressed, and take a shower, but something stopped me. I stood in the living room, staring at the stolen items which surrounded me.

While I sold most of what I took from the houses, sometimes I was unable to move an item and had to keep it. That's what happened with the broken clock that sat on my narrow, painted mantle over the fireplace. The yellow vase in the corner hadn't turned out to be worth as much as I’d expected, so, rather than risk fencing such a cheap item, I'd kept it. I hadn't noticed the silver money clip in the desk drawer was monogrammed until I'd gotten home with it, and it was far too risky to fence personalized items.

Those items, the ones I couldn't sell, were easy to justify keeping. But there were others, things I'd taken and kept for myself simply because I wanted them. The music box upstairs on my bedroom dresser. The silver soap dish in the bathroom. The tapestry in the hallway. Those things proved that I really was what the man had called me: a thief. There was no nobility in breaking into houses simply because you like pretty things. I'd never be the good guy in anyone's story.

I sighed and headed to the bathroom, tossing my backpack into my bedroom as I passed it on the way.

As I showered, I thought about what the man had said. I didn't know if I deserved a second chance, or even if I wanted one. I hadn't set out to become a thief, after all. My first job after dropping out of college had been waiting tables at a pizza place downtown. The money had been okay, but it was never enough to pay the household bills, let alone provide Marion with the things she needed. I took a second job cleaning office buildings and empty apartments, but still, month after month, I fell short. Marion graduated from high school, the summer began, and her first day of college loomed before me. I'd told her it was no problem—that she was going to Northwest, her first choice school, the one she'd worked so hard to get into. I planned the move with her, and even bought her a few things for her dorm move, just as if there weren't a $10,000 tuition bill that I had no idea how I was going to pay.

It was a week before the payment deadline when I was sitting outside the pizza place on my fifteen-minute break. I gazed at the people rushing by, but I didn't really see them. I was rehearsing, in my head, how to tell her that she couldn't go. I leaned against the brick wall of the restaurant, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. It was all too much.

That's how he found me, wearing that stained uniform, my eyes full of tears. His name was Derek, and we'd gone out for a few months in the summer after I'd graduated high school. It hadn't lasted, partly because of his mean temper and partly because of his wandering eye. I hadn't thought about him in years, and I certainly wasn't glad to see him again after so long.

He made a lazy pass at me, but it felt more like habit than genuine interest on his part. I expected him to leave after I'd shut him down, but he didn't. Instead, he asked me if I needed a job.

"I have a job," I said, pointing at my uniform before glancing at my watch. My break was almost over.

"Yeah, and you make what in a shift? Fifty bucks? A hundred?" He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

I shrugged. "What do you care?"

"My friends need help with something. The job pays five hundred dollars for two hours' work."

I made a face. "Go to hell, Derek. I'm not a hooker." I meant it, but still felt a flash of temptation at the thought of the money.

He laughed at me. "Don't flatter yourself, honey. You're good, but not five hundred dollars good."

I ignored his insult.

"What's the job, then?"

He shook a cigarette out and lit it. He put the pack away and glanced around, then came closer to me.

He explained that the job was a warehouse robbery, some place where one of his buddies worked. They were going to move out a bunch of electronics and needed someone to stand lookout. He assured me that the job was low-risk. If it went bad, I could just walk away and pretend I wasn't with them.

Five hundred wouldn't be enough to pay Marion's tuition, but the college might agree to make a payment plan if I had something to give them up front.

I bummed a cigarette from him as I thought about it. I rarely smoked, and the first drag made my head spin, adding to the absurdity of the moment.

"Five hundred isn't enough," I said.

He smiled.

We eventually settled on seven hundred, and the job was a simple as Derek had promised. He and his three friends left that day with over three hundred flat-screen televisions and five hundred laptop computers. The guys were giddy with the size of the haul and decided to make my cut an even thousand. They thought I was good luck.

I never went back to the pizza place.

The day after the warehouse job, I called Northwest and set up a payment plan. The day that I signed the installment agreement for Marion's tuition was the day that I truly became a thief. The payments were enormous; there wasn't a waitressing job in the world that would allow me to earn that amount.

It's amazing what you can make yourself do when you think you don’t have a choice. That's what I said to myself, over and over, whenever my conscience would rise up. I thought about Jean Valjean, the noble thief from
Les Misérables
. I told myself that I was brave, and that no one needed the things I took—at least, not as much as I did.

I'm still regularly flabbergasted by the unbelievable wealth of Seattle's upper class. In the houses I've broken into, I've found solid gold picture frames, dog collars studded with diamonds, toothbrushes with ivory handles. I've found cigar boxes full of cash and baggies of drugs stashed in sock drawers. I once found a child's piggy bank with over six thousand dollars stuffed inside, mostly in crumpled twenties and fifties.

Do they know that people a mile away from here are starving? That someone tonight will have their heat turned off because of an eighty dollar unpaid bill?

I almost hated them for their excesses, and that made it easier, too.

At first, all the money went to Marion's school. The payment arrangement I'd made with them made me uneasy, and I relaxed a little more when I'd paid her bill in full for that year. I'd planned to take a break from stealing after that, but found myself going out anyhow. I told myself that I needed to put money into savings for next year's tuition bill. I did save money, but I spent it, too. I replaced the battered living room furniture, I fixed the roof that leaked after bad storms, and the oven that didn't heat up. I bought clothes for myself and a computer for Marion. The joy on her face when she opened her gift that Christmas made me forget my guilt, at least for a few days. But then she went back to school, and I was alone again.

The house had been my mother’s, and her presence was still everywhere. She'd worked tirelessly to support the three of us. She'd done it alone, and she'd done it honestly. She hadn't raised us to lie or to steal. I knew she'd never approve of what I was doing. I imagined her sadness each time I returned from a job carrying things that did not belong to me. I rid the place of the things that had belonged to her, filling it with the things I'd stolen or bought with ill-gotten money, but I couldn't make that feeling go away. It would always be my mother's house.

I wondered what my mother would have thought about the man I'd met tonight, the one who'd given me a second chance.

You know damn well what she'd think. That you were lucky. That you need to wake up. That you won’t be able to help Marion or yourself if you end up in prison
.

By the time I stepped out of the shower, I felt more tired than ashamed. I toweled off my hair, smelling the boutique shampoo that I'd never been able to afford on a waitress's pay. I went to my bedroom, put on a soft t-shirt to sleep in, and slipped between sheets that belonged in a luxury resort, not a college dropout's tiny house in a low-rent suburb. I reached over and turned off an antique lamp I'd concealed in a baby carriage before I took it from a lake-front mansion six months ago.

Even in the darkness, I felt surrounded, suffocated by my sins. A lump rose in my throat as I wondered if I'd ever again feel like a good person, someone worthy of being loved by someone as amazing as my mother.

It's never too late to make things right
.

I heard her voice in my head, and even though I knew it was just my own thoughts, love for my mother swelled in my chest.

"I miss you," I whispered in the darkness. "I wish you were here, Mom. I've screwed up so badly and I don’t know what to do."

I love you anyway. You know that I do. I will always love you, no matter what you do
.

I let the tears come, half wishing I'd been raised by someone less wonderful; maybe then I wouldn't miss her so much.

By the time my tears dried, I knew what I had to do. I lay in the dark making a mental list of everything I'd taken that I still had in my house.

The clock, the tapestry, that scarf, the green ring, the music box...

I never forgot a house, and I never forgot an item. I couldn't do anything about the things that had already been sold, but it was in my power to return the things I still had. Maybe it wouldn't mean anything to the people I'd stolen from, but on the other hand, maybe the lamp was a family heirloom. Maybe the tapestry was a gift from a lost lover. Maybe I could undo a little of the damage I'd caused. And even if I couldn't, I'd still know that I'd done everything I could to make things right. I never again wanted to feel the fear I'd felt tonight when I'd thought the police were coming for me, and I never again wanted to wonder if my mother would still love me if she were here now.

The violin, the red shoes, the silver bracelet...

I began to drift off, feeling more peaceful than I had in months. Just as my eyes closed, though, they shot open again. I sat up straight in bed, then got out of it, fumbling in the dark for the backpack I'd tossed aside.

Sure enough, it was there. The room was too dark for me to see clearly, but there was no mistaking the cold weight of the watch I'd stolen from the sad, mysterious man in that dismal mansion—I never gave it back.

FOUR

I didn't sleep well that night. The watch, now on my bedside table, seemed to fill the whole room. I imagined the man finding it gone. Would he think that I'd played him for a fool? That I’d had no intention of taking advantage of the second chance he'd given me? I knew almost nothing about him, not even his name. It shouldn't have mattered what he thought about me, but somehow, it did.

I went to the kitchen to start some coffee, but stopped short when I glimpsed my front yard outside the window. The grass, the trees, my shabby little car—everything was blanketed in bright white.

"I'll be damned," I whispered.

It hadn't snowed in Seattle at Christmas in years, not since I'd been in high school. We always got snow after the New Year, when the temperature dropped further. But there was no mistaking the scene in my front yard; at least five inches had fallen overnight. Sunlight bounced off the surface of the snow and made the frosted tree branches sparkle against a bright blue sky.

It made me wish that Marion was coming home for the holiday this year. Her roommate, a sociology major from a wealthy family, had invited her to stay with them in Vancouver, though, and she'd accepted. It was a great opportunity to see a new place and strengthen that friendship, and I'd encouraged her to do it. I'd told myself that I was relieved not to have to pretend holiday cheer I didn't feel. Now, though, I only felt deeply sad that she wasn't here.

Marion would have freaked out over the snow. We'd have behaved like children, throwing snowballs and building a snowman. I'd have made hot chocolate for both of us. We'd have watched silly holiday movies, the ones we'd grown up watching every year with Mom. It would have been a lovely day.

I made the coffee and thought about how I'd spend the day. I needed to return the watch. A voice inside complained that I was giving away Marion's tuition money for next year, but I ignored it. I'd find another way to pay it, even if I didn't know what that was now. I couldn't be a thief anymore. I was done.

It was Christmas Eve, a day that I normally wouldn't expect someone to be home alone, but something told me that the owner of the watch would be. I ate a quick breakfast, showered, and dressed. A quick check outside told me that the snow hadn't been cleared off my street, but my car had front wheel drive. Getting out shouldn't be a problem, and the main roads should be fine. I had to dig in the back of my closet to find my only pair of snow boots. My red hat and scarf had been one of the last gifts I'd received from my mother, and I smiled as I put them on.

It was late morning by the time I knocked on the front door of the house I'd intended to rob only the night before. I waited, but no one came to the door. I knocked again.

I'd almost decided that I must have been wrong, that the man actually did have somewhere to be this Christmas Eve, when the handle of the door turned. It was the same man. He was casually dressed and his hair was wet, making me think that it was the shower that had kept him from coming to the door more quickly. He looked surprised to see me, and not entirely pleased.

"Congratulations, you're officially the most incompetent criminal I have ever known."

I felt my face flush.

"No, I'm not—" I stopped and started again. "I'm very sorry to bother you."

"And yet, here you stand."

I wasn't certain, but I thought I could hear amusement in his lightly accented words.

"I needed to give you this," I said. I dug in my purse and found the watch. His eyes widened when I held it out to him. I couldn't read his expression as he looked from the watch, to me, and back again.

He took the watch from me, his warm hand brushing against my cold one as he did. He looked at me and nodded. There was something different now in how he looked at me.

"You look like you’re freezing out there. Would you like to come in for a drink?" he asked.

It may have been eleven a.m. on Christmas Eve, but I couldn't think of a time when I'd felt more in need of a stiff drink. I suspected that this man understood the feeling better than most.

"Yes, I would like that."

There was an indescribable surreality in following him back into the mansion. I asked myself what the hell I was doing, following a strange man into his empty house. My reservations were half-hearted, though. If he'd wanted to hurt me, he could easily have done so last night.

The hallway to the first floor study was longer than I'd remembered it. Despite the sunny day, the room was nearly as dark as it had been the night before. Heavy drapes were drawn over the huge French windows, shutting out the light. The room smelled faintly of cigar smoke and whiskey.

"Bourbon?" he asked. "Or Scotch?"

"Bourbon is fine," I said, though I hadn't drunk it in years. He poured a few fingers of the golden liquid into a glass and handed it to me before pouring another for himself. He sat down in the same chair he'd been sitting in the night before. After a brief hesitation, I sat down on the couch opposite him. The silence grew tense as we sipped our drinks.

"Sadiq," he said, startling me.

"I'm sorry?"

"My name, it’s Sadiq." He leaned back in the chair, watching me. "May I know yours, little thief?"

I knew that I shouldn't tell him, that knowing who I was would mean he could send the police for me at any time. I was surprised when I heard myself answer him.

"Annabelle," I said. "Annabelle Christensen."

"Annabelle," he repeated, sounding thoughtful. "I don't think I've ever met someone with that name before."

"My mother was old-fashioned. I hated it when I was younger. I wanted to change my name to Brianna or Mackenzie."

"And now?"

"Now I treasure everything my mother gave me, name included."

"Your mother has passed," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, three years ago."

He sighed, and the corners of his mouth pulled back, making a hard line.

"You're very young to have suffered such a loss. But, then, so many are."

His words weren't the standard
I'm so sorry for your loss
, and I didn't know how to reply. He spoke again before I could.

"Why did you bring back the watch? You could have sold it. It's valuable."

"Oh, I know that," I blurted out without thinking. He laughed.

"So, you're an unlucky thief, but not an uninformed one. Why didn't you sell it?"

I took a long sip of my drink as I thought about his question. The liquor made a hot trail down my throat to my belly, and I felt myself begin to relax.

"I don't entirely know why," I said. "Maybe I'm just done. Maybe..." I looked into my drink as I spoke. "The world can be a lot of things. It can be hard, senseless. Last night, I saw that it could be merciful, too. I didn't want to turn my back on that. I'm worried that, if I do, if I go on like this, I might forget that there's mercy in the world. I might forget who I was before I started stealing. I don't want to forget."

I glanced up at him. He was still watching me. The intensity in his dark eyes made me shift in my seat. He started to speak, but the sound of a phone ringing from another room cut him off. It rang again, and again, but he didn't move.

"Don't you need to get that?" I asked.

"I suppose I should," he said. He sighed, rising. "Please excuse me."

While he was out of the room, I took a closer look at the room I was in. I took in the ornate furniture, the hand-carved fixtures, the bookshelves full of antique volumes. Despite myself, I found myself noticing what items were most valuable—the things I'd usually take. There was a particularly nice set of bookends, wrought in a scrolled leaf pattern, almost certainly real silver. And the books... I couldn't even guess at the price they'd bring. Collector’s items were riskier to sell, but it could be done...

"See anything you like?" Sadiq's voice from the doorway made me jump.

"No, of course not," I said. My face grew red. I got up from my seat, needing to move with the nervous energy I felt.

"Relax, Annabelle." He smiled, and his face lit up.

He should smile more often. It's wonderful.

"Another drink?" he offered.

"Please."

While he poured another round, I went to the windows and started to pull back the curtains.

"What are you doing?" he asked, turning around.

"I can hardly see you in this light," I said. "It's a lovely day out, haven't you noticed?"

I pulled, and the drapes slid open, flooding the room in sunlight. Tiny dust particles floated in the bright shafts of light. Squinting, Sadiq held up a hand to shade his eyes.

"I wish you hadn't done that," he said.

"Well, I apologize if the daylight interrupts your very important brooding-and-drinking-alone time." I took the drink he held out for me, reminding myself to slow down. I wasn't much of a drinker, and it didn't take much to get me tipsy. Already, I felt my verbal filter slipping away.

"We each spend the holidays our own way. You commit Class E felonies. I keep my liver from growing idle."

"But why?" I flopped back down onto the couch. "It's gorgeous outside. You're not an old man, Sadiq. You seem to be pretty healthy, and you're definitely rich. What reason do you have to spend Christmas like this?"

"And how would you expect me to spend Christmas?" He said, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, right. Where you're from, they don't—"

He laughed again as I covered my face with my hands, humiliated.

"Why are Americans so terrified of saying what they mean? You're not going to offend me, little thief. You can ask me whatever you like."

I lowered my hands and peeked at him. He looked amused, not annoyed. I put my hands in my lap.

"Well, you don't sound like you grew up in the United States."

"I didn't. I was born in Almarain." He must have seen the look on my face, because he added, "If you haven't heard of it, you're not alone. It's a small country, South of Jordan. We're too peaceful to make it onto American news coverage of the Middle East very often."

"That's good, though. Right?" He was right; everything I'd seen on television about the Middle East was about violence and war.

"It's very good. My country is blessed with rich oil reserves, and we sell to the U.S. and China. Our nearer neighbors don't need oil from us, and we send cash aid to countries who might otherwise find reason to quarrel with us."

"What is it like there?" I asked, thinking of clay houses, sun-baked streets, and bazaars full of merchants. It was hard to imagine Sadiq in such a setting, as he sat sipping whiskey, surrounded by luxury.

"Probably not how you think," he said. "Almarain is a prosperous nation. The capital, where I’m from, looks a lot like many American cities. The weather is different, of course—hot and dry most of the year—but life there is modern. People live in houses, not tents or huts. You can get McDonald's or Starbucks just as easily as you can here. There are more accountants there than shepherds."

"What did you do, when you were living there?"

"My family owns land. The land has oil. That is our business."

I had a hundred questions about that, but something about his expression told me that he'd said as much as he wanted to. I decided to shift the direction of the conversation.

"Are people in Almarain Muslim?"