All Chapters of A NIGHT WITH THE PRINCE OF DUBAI: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The tea shop was smaller than Mia expected, tucked behind a curtain of hanging lanterns, three plastic tables, and the smell of cardamom thick enough to taste. Rashid ordered without looking at a menu, said something to the old man behind the counter that made him laugh and glance at Mia with open curiosity."What did you tell him?" she asked."That you nearly drowned me and I'm making amends." He slid into the chair across from her, loosening nothing about his posture, though his eyes had softened considerably since the fountain. "He thinks I should ask for your number instead of tea.""Bold, for a man I met ninety seconds ago.""I've been told I make decisions quickly." Something crossed his face — amusement, maybe regret. "It isn't always a virtue."The tea arrived thick and sweet and impossibly good, and Mia found herself talking more than she meant to — about the lost hotel, the ruined afternoon, her sister's insistence that she needed this trip like a diagnosis. Rashid listened

The days folded into each other after that, each one an unspoken agreement neither of them named out loud. Breakfast in Al Fahidi, exactly as promised, sitting cross-legged on cushions while an old woman brought them regag bread and sweet tea. An afternoon lost in the Museum of the Future, arguing gently about whether humanity deserved the optimism of the exhibits. An evening on the rooftop he'd mentioned, facing away from the glittering towers, toward the older, quieter part of the city.Mia noticed things, the way you notice weather changing. The way people's postures shifted slightly when Rashid entered a room — a straightening, a deference, quickly smoothed over. The driver who appeared at certain corners like he'd been summoned, though Rashid never seemed to summon anyone. The hotel staff at her own modest hotel who began, inexplicably, upgrading her room and comping her breakfast, though she'd mentioned Rashid's name to no one.She asked him about it on the fourth evening, over

The room had a way of watching without seeming to, a hundred conversations continuing while a hundred pairs of eyes tracked the crown prince and the unknown foreign woman standing too close together near the fountain. Mia felt it like heat on her skin."Everyone here already knows," she said slowly, understanding arriving in pieces. "I'm the only one who didn't.""Everyone here knows who I am," Rashid corrected gently. "No one here knows who you are. That's different. That's — that's actually the point, Mia. For ten days, with you, I wasn't a title. I was just the man who nearly knocked you into a fountain.""And now?""Now I'm asking you to let me be both. Badly, probably, and all at once, in the worst possible setting, but—" He exhaled, and for a moment the careful composure cracked into something younger, more unguarded. "I didn't plan this either. I want you to know that. I didn't bring you here to perform some grand reveal. I brought you because I wanted you to see this part of m

He didn't argue with her about leaving, which she appreciated and resented in equal measure. He simply insisted on driving her himself, waving off the driver at the gate, and the two of them rode in a silence that felt less like anger and more like grief already arriving early."Say something," she said finally, somewhere past the Creek, city lights sliding gold across the windshield."I don't know what to say that won't sound like a man begging you not to leave a country you were always going to leave anyway." He kept his eyes on the road, knuckles pale on the wheel. "In three days you fly home. In three days, none of this — the match, my father, Farida's warnings — none of it would have mattered, because you'd have gone back to Portland with a good story and I'd have gone back to being exactly what I was before you fell into that fountain with me. Instead I told you the truth tonight, and now I've ruined the only thing about these ten days that was simple.""You didn't ruin it," she

Rashid met her at the marina that evening looking lighter than she'd seen him since the gala, a small, sleek boat waiting where the fishing dhow had been three days before — his own, this time, not borrowed, though he seemed almost embarrassed to admit it."My mother called you Miss Bennett," he said, helping her aboard. "That's practically an engagement announcement, by her standards.""She was terrifying. And kind. I didn't expect both at once.""She's had a great deal of practice holding contradictions." He guided the boat out past the harbor lights, city glittering gold and violet behind them as the sky slid into dusk. "She told you about Faisal.""She did." Mia watched him carefully, the flicker of old grief crossing his face like weather. "You never mentioned him.""I don't, usually." He cut the engine, let the boat drift the way he had that first morning, water going dark and glassy around them. "He was supposed to have this life. He wanted it — genuinely wanted it, in a way I