When she was halfway to her feet, he spoke again. “Reena, wait.”
Her butt fell back to the floor.
“Are you sitting on the floor?”
“Yes.”
She heard some movement from within his unit, a shuffling of fabric, then a hollow thump on the wall behind her.
“Sit against the door,” he said.
She shifted so her back was leaning against his door, which was being held from opening fully by the chain. She looked into his apartment and saw Nadim, his expression concerned and sad. He was also sitting on his floor, back leaning against the wall near the door.
They were inches apart now, but with a door chained closed between them, the opening just enough to see most of his face. Hair a little longer, though still firmly in the crew-cut category. Still clean-shaven; he’d given up on that douche-beard, thankfully. Without the beard, his one dimple lit her up every time he smiled. No smile now, though. Intense eyes searched hers, almost asking a question.
She took a deep breath, trying to call back the courage that had deserted her. “Maybe we should just talk now,” she said quietly.
“Do you want to come in?”
She looked around the tiny, empty hallway, and then back at the gap into his apartment. This would be easier with the door between them. She didn’t want to see his whole face, or his apartment…all packed up into boxes. This was her same old avoidance, but she allowed herself this one. “No. Let’s do it here.”
She wanted this to end on neutral grounds. Nothing was more neutral than the empty hallway between their apartments.
He shifted a bit. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk, Reena.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I’ll go first,” he said, his voice reverberating through the wall. “Jasmine and I are not engaged. We broke up a long time ago.”
She bit her lip. She was pretty sure she believed him. “In Egypt, right?”
“Yes. I’m really sorry, Reena. I should have told you about her. My father insisted I couldn’t disclose my past with Jasmine to you or your father. I never wanted you to get hurt.”
“What I don’t get is why after working for Salim Shah while engaged to his daughter, you immediately started working for his archenemy and agreed to marry his daughter? Were you some sort of corporate spy?”
“No, of course not. Honestly, until the shit hit the fan on Sunday I didn’t know your father even knew the Shahs. My father made me swear never to tell anyone I had worked with Salim because of all the negative attention the Shah hotel project was getting.”
“Nadim, tell me your side of the story. From the beginning.”
So, he told her the story. As she sat in the tiny hallway on the first floor of her father’s building, Nadim told her how hard he worked to please his father and how he usually fell short. He finally moved to London to distance himself and quickly got involved with Jasmine, the free-spirited woman whose purpose, he thought, was to teach him that life could be more than his father’s narrow definition.
“I got caught up in a world that didn’t really fit. And I knew it didn’t fit, but things just kind of got out of hand. Jasmine had these grandiose plans of being an influencer. The London hotel was her idea.”
“And the mismanagement?”
“I can’t pretend to be innocent there. I wasn’t really…invested. I didn’t care. I was partying, taking shortcuts, and justcoasting.”
“I saw pictures of you on a yacht.”
“There were many yachts. Jasmine wanted the best of everything. In the business, too. High-end fixtures, materials. She was inexperienced, and it was a disaster. I have so many regrets for how I handled things with that hotel.”
“Didn’t Jasmine care about her father’s company?”
He shrugged. “I know what you’re thinking. That she’s just a superficial, spoiled snob. But…Jasmine is a complicated person. You think you and I have difficult parents? Salim is a good businessman, but an awful father. Not just neglectful, but downright abusive. She honestly tried. She wanted to succeed—she cared about it more than I did. But she didn’t see the big picture and focused on insignificant details. I shouldn’t have let any of it, the business or the relationship, go so far.”
“And then you abandoned her in Egypt?”
He huffed a laugh. “No.Sheabandonedme. We were there on holiday and she decided we should open a hotel there, too. I knew we were in over our heads with the London one, and when I tried to dissuade her, we had a huge fight. I put my foot down and quit my position with Shah Enterprises on the spot, and she took off, leaving me alone in Cairo. She took my passport. Dad had to have an emergency one couriered to me so I could get back to Tanzania.”
