the US needed help, too. And he planned on doing what he could to make sure that they got it.
Ahmed shifted and brushed shoulders with a pretty woman crowding him on one side and a taller man, his arm protectively curved around the shoulders of a girl who looked enough like him to be his daughter. The crowd surged with excitement, a mixture of anger and determination, while Congressman Oliver Wilson spoke, his voice loud and moving, from the podium set up in front of City Hall.
Incredibly, reporters had followed Ahmed from the radio station, although it was in an entirely different state. The manic clicks of their cameras, the bursts of flash and their shouted questions grated on his nerves, irritating him more than usual. As always, Ahmed wanted to use his celebrity to draw attention to the things he cared about, but sometimes he wondered if his celebrity status was overshadowing the real work. Still, with the business of making money out of the way, there was nothing else that deserved his energy more than helping his community.
Nearly a thousand people flowed around them, a security nightmare for Sam, but he bore the trials Ahmed put him through with his nearly superhuman patience.
Ahmed didn’t need any security. Not really. Ever since his retirement from professional basketball nearly a year ago, the media’s interest in his life had died down. Without the team and the games, and the spotlight that came with it, the groupies had disappeared as had any danger Sam imagined. But Sam had been the only male cousin close to Ahmed’s age when they were growing up, so they’d become tight and maintained a brotherly bond. Even when Sam had gone off to fight in Afghanistan in tour after tour, they’d kept in touch through email and occasional Skype calls.
After a close encounter with an IED that left Sam with a Purple Heart and honorable discharge, it only made sense to Ahmed that he invite his cousin to live on his sprawling compound, which already housed Ahmed’s mother and two sisters. This time, Sam had come back from overseas even quieter than before, his eyes haunted by things only he could see. Offering and then insisting his cousin take the job as his head of security, and eventually solo bodyguard, gave Ahmed the chance to take care of the cousin who’d been there with him nearly his whole life.
The crowd exploded into applause, its roar of approval at the congressman’s words dragging Ahmed back to the present, and he winced. He hadn’t been paying attention at all.
Sam nudged him. “Your mind still on that Marshall woman?”
“No, but yours obviously is,” Ahmed said. Although it only took a few words to bring “that Marshall woman” squarely back to center stage in his mind.
Ahmed squirmed at how right it felt for her to be there. “She may be sexy, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s got stars in her eyes and lives in a world that doesn’t exist outside of a storybook.” He gestured around them to the other protestors and activists. “This is what’s important, not setting people up to have unrealistic expectations of each other.”
“I doubt she’s as naive as you think.”
“If you like her so much, why don’t you ask her out?” Ahmed muttered.
While on the radio hours before, he’d taken the call from the winner of Elle’s contest and been blindsided when the woman insisted on giving up the prize of her “perfect date” to him and Elle. Once the surprise wore off, irritation settled in its place, but he’d held his tongue during the phone call, bantering with the woman until the commercial break when he’d politely asked her to reconsider the so-called donation. The woman insisted, saying her husband laughed at the thought of cynical Ahmed Clark on a date with a fairy-tale princess named Elle.
Of course, Clive loved the idea. Ever the publicity hound, he even brought up the idea of filming the date if Elle agreed to it. Ahmed kept his instinctive response—hell no!—to himself. He had the feeling Elle would cut that bad idea off at the knees all by herself. She didn’t seem the type to punish herself by hanging around somebody she didn’t like, not even for publicity, or whatever Clive promised her.
“Right,” Sam muttered in response to Ahmed’s earlier comment about asking Elle out. “If I went anywhere near that woman, you’d crush my face.” Then he snorted, the corners of his eyes crinkling briefly in amusement. “Or at least try to. Hell, Stevie Wonder could see how you were looking at her. You should’ve just asked her out instead of yanking her pigtails like a damn kid.”
Squirming where he stood, Ahmed didn’t bother to acknowledge his cousin’s truth with a response.
He looked away from Sam and focused deliberately on the reason he was away from Atlanta and his home with his comfortable bed and the kitchen where his mother and sisters were no doubt worrying about his safety. Not that there was anything to be concerned about.
Ahmed settled his hands in his pockets and planted himself more firmly in the moment. He opened his ears and paid attention.
At the end of the rally, nearly three hours later, he was emotionally exhausted and ready to drop. The walk had been longer than any of them had planned. The police showed up but, maybe because of media attention, everyone kept a peaceful presence. Ahmed and Sam made it back to Atlanta in time for a late dinner.
In the kitchen, he stood at the stove sliding an omelet out of the pan and onto a plate when his phone vibrated with a text notification.
“Sam?” He passed his cousin the omelet and pulled his phone from his pocket.
She agreed, the text said. Come into the office before the weekend to talk specifics.
“What’s up?” Sam’s voice pulled him from his frowning contemplation of the phone. “You look like someone just kicked you in the throat.”
An odd feeling swirled in Ahmed’s gut. It took him a moment to realize it was disappointment. “Elle Marshall. She just agreed to go on the publicity date.”
“Don’t pretend that’s not something you want to do.” Sam poured himself a glass of milk and sat down on the other side of the breakfast bar in the gleaming chrome and black marble kitchen, his voice a rumbling calm that somehow did the opposite of settling Ahmed down. “She’s nice enough,” Sam said. “The idea of seeing her again doesn’t exactly make you sad.”
Not sad exactly, but something. He moved restlessly around the kitchen, picking up a glass then putting it back to grab something else until what he had in his hands was the clear highball glass he’d started with in the first place. He turned the glass over and over in his hand, grateful that Sam remained quiet—as Sam was apt to do—while his thoughts swirled in too many directions at once.
It wasn’t until he was on the verge of putting the glass down again that he pinpointed the feeling. And the cause. Ahmed had been, surprisingly, working his way toward asking Elle out. On the surface of things, it was to apologize for being so aggressive with her on the radio, maybe invite her to lunch or dinner to give himself the chance to prove he wasn’t as much of a jerk as she thought. Once the apology had been issued, though, he planned for his intentions to take a more lustful turn.
But not now.
Although he didn’t know it and probably wouldn’t care if he did actually know, Clive had basically cockedblocked Ahmed.
The thought of Elle going out with him because she wanted more for her business, instead of just wanting him, turned Ahmed all the way off. And made him a little sick. No matter what he’d said about naïveté, maybe he’d had a little bit of that, too. Enough that he’d wanted her and was willing to go against his instincts in order to get her.
“None of that matters now.” Ahmed put down the phone. “I’m meeting her and Clive at the station to iron out details.”
“Maybe you can ask her out for real then. Before any of this starts.”
“Yeah, right.” Once a woman saw profit near the end of her goal, anything else was off the table.
He sat across from his cousin with his own omelet and glass of orange juice. “This is all business now,” he said. “Besides, you know