Page 29 of Hired Husband

CHAPTER 12

JASMINE

My suitcase lay open on my bed, stuffed with swimwear, sandals, a few comfortable sundresses, and some loose-fitting T-shirts. Of all the many places I’d been, Sharm El-Sheikh would forever remain one of my favorites.

Maybe part of my fondness for it was because my grandmother still lived there and a great deal of our family history had played out in the house she still occupied, but it was also just such a stunning place that I could never get enough.

My mind was already brimming with ideas of things I wanted to show Isaac, from snorkeling the stunning but lesser visited reefs in the Red Sea to a true Bedouin dinner in the Sinai desert. I was dying to take him to the hidden alleys of the Old Market backstreets and this little rooftop lounge I loved that the tourists hadn’t discovered yet.

It wasn’t often I got to nerd out over the hidden gems and the trips that took a person off the beaten track, and I was genuinely excited for it. Isaac had opened himself up to a different kind of sightseeing when he’d admitted his original plan for the night of the gala had been to get lost in Old Town.

I stood in the middle of my walk-in closet, searching for one very specific pair of cream leather sandals I refused to leave home without. I knew they were in here somewhere, but I’d managed to pull half my wardrobe onto the floor while I’d been packing, and frankly, in the rush of the last few weeks, it had also been a bit of a mess to begin with.

A worry for when I get back.

For now, I bent over to dig between some hat boxes, lifting a sweater that had somehow slid in behind them. As the material slid up, something else slid to the side. I stumbled back, knocking over one of the hat boxes in the process.

Right as it toppled over, a pair of tiny, pitch-black eyes rose up, attached to the long, thin, sandy brown body of a snake. It hissed at me, clearly as unhappy about seeing me as I was about seeing it. My eyes widened, and the next thing I knew, my blood-curdling scream was echoing through the closet.

Scooting back as fast as I could, I slammed the doors shut behind me and finally managed to stop screaming. Shit. I have to burn it down. That room belongs to the snake now. Hell, it can have the whole building.

Racing over to my nightstand, I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and called down to Hassan. The doorman answered with laughter in his voice after a few short rings, but it still felt like an eternity. “Yes, Miss Saad?”

“There’s a snake in my closet!” I cried into the phone, panic winding its way through my insides. I glanced over my shoulder, suddenly worried that it might grow opposable thumbs and open the door.

“A snake?” he asked, sounding puzzled.

Only vaguely aware of Isaac’s voice suddenly in the background, I backed out of my bedroom and shut that door too. Just in case it either learned how to free itself or, God forbid, had brought his friends. “Hurry, Hassan. I think it can sense my fear.”

I hung up, keeping a very close eye on the floor as I picked my way across the apartment toward the front door. A few seconds later, a frantic knock sounded against it, startling me. I jerked it open, and Isaac stood on the other side, slightly out of breath with his blond hair a lot messier than usual.

His gaze swept over me like he was checking for injury. “Are you okay? Where is it?”

“I am absolutely not okay, but it didn’t bite me,” I said quickly, pointing a finger toward the hallway that led to my bedroom. “It’s in there.”

My heart fluttered when I realized he looked genuinely alarmed, like he’d run all the way up here as soon as he’d overheard what was going on. Heat crept into my cheeks, but Isaac didn’t seem to notice, simply exhaling a heavy breath when he seemed satisfied I was uninjured.

“Okay. Good. You closed the door to wherever there is, right?”

“Of course.” I squinted up at him. “I’m not that stupid.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t say you were, but panic generally tends to make even the smartest people do dumb things.”

Hassan finally appeared behind Isaac in the doorway, carrying a broom and a worried frown. “What kind of snake is it?”

“I don’t know.” I stepped aside to let them in, not even caring that the apartment looked like a bomb had hit it. “Just… make it go away.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, disappearing down the hall with the broom held in front of him like a sword.

I didn’t quite know how he thought that would help him, but I was too grateful for his presence to ask any questions. Isaac shot me a sheepish smile. “Did you scream? I’m pretty sure I heard a scream.”

I blinked hard. “Is that why you ran?”

“Well, yeah,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I was just coming back inside from a walk and I was actually on my way up to come see you, but then I heard a scream and you called down to the front desk. I nearly had a stroke.”

He admitted it like it was nothing, like he didn’t consider it a big deal at all, but my heart did more than just flutter this time. It skipped a beat, then missed another when I realized the fact that he’d beat Hassan up here meant he’d just dropped everything and sprinted.

“I’ll go help Hassan.” He flashed me a smile before brushing past me into the apartment, not shy about looking around as he went.