Sarah jumped into Hamdan's arms as soon as he crossed the door. Despite Patrick's initial refusal, his daughter and wife managed to convince him to take Hamdan's offer to stay at his beach house while Sarah finished recovering.
"I missed you!" She squealed.
After spending the weekend in the UK for the Epsom Derby, Hamdan came straight to see her from the airport. He encircled his arms around her waist and closed his eyes. The entire time he was abroad he kept thinking how much she would have liked to be there. Next year, the Epsom and the upcoming Royal Ascot would be so much more fun with Sarah by his side.
She tilted back, her tanned skin showing she had spent some time at the beach or by the pool side, freckles popping out on her nose. The floral dress she was wearing, exposing the birthmark on her shoulder. His thumb made its way up to it and started drawing little circles around it.
"Hi." He beamed.
Sarah bit her lower lip. "Hi."
She took his cap off and put it on her head, backwards, to close the space between them and kiss him.
"Where are your parents?"
"You're so adorable." She chuckled. "They took Rooster out for a walk before dinner."
"Great!" He relieved, pulling her by the back of the neck to kiss her. He pushed her torso and she arched her back, the cap fell on the floor while her fingers caressed his cheek.
He pulled her up to a standing position again and gave her another peck on the lips.
"Is your dad still hating me?" He wondered.
"Ugh! We had a huge fight the other day."
His hopes of making some advances with Pat crushing down to the ground. "What happened?"
"Nothing!" She shrugged. "He's being stubborn."
Hamdan squinted his eyes. "That was you ninety percent of the time since we met."
"Hey! I was just being cautious." An accusatory index finger pointing his way. "Anyways, I told him he could be a part of our wedding or not."
"Sarah!" He scolded.
"What? I was angry!"
She spun around and he started following her to the back of the house. His eyes traveled down on her body, from her waves cascading down on her back, to the hypnotic movement of her hips, to her toned legs. It had been too long and her dress was too short for his own safety.
They went into the kitchen and Sarah opened one of the doors of the stainless steel fridge to get something, once he lost sight of her behind the door, he finally managed to continue the conversation.
"Are you telling me that you don't care if your dad is not there on your wedding day?"
She closed the door and pouted while twisting a bottle of water open.
"Then why would you say something like that to him?" He insisted.
"Because I'm frustrated with him!" She took a sip from the bottle. "I can choose who I marry! I can do whatever I want! I'm a good daughter, I never have given them any sort of trouble... why can't he give me this?"
"He's scared." Hamdan conceded.
"So, what? Should we not get married because he's scared?" She scoffed.
He went over to the island in the middle of the kitchen and rested his lower back against it. "No, but I don't want you and him fighting over this."
"Well, that's not happening anymore, because I'm done. I'm not fighting with him again, I'm not even telling him anything related to the wedding." She strolled up to him and put the bottle down by his side, lacing her arms around his neck. "Do you hear that?"
He thought about it for a second. "No."
"Exactly, we are alone. Not even Rooster is here and we haven't been alone in forever." She stood in the tip of her toes and started tracing his neck with small kisses.
His hands instinctively moved to the exposed skin below the rim of her dress. "I've missed you." He whispered in her ear.
Her hand combing the hair on the back of his head and her soft lips moving up to his ear, made his skin stand with goosebumps. His arm move up to wrap her waist, pulling her closer while his other hand kept traveling up the skirt of her dress. His mouth found hers and started to devour her lips.
He came to his senses for a moment and pulled back. "Won't your parents be back any minute?"
"Then we better hurry..." She teased with a mischievous smile and an irresistible husky voice.
He was left disarmed and forgot about his worries completely. With a quick motion, he turned her around, lifted her and sat her on the counter. Their lips crashed one more time while his hands moved to her knees to open her legs apart and then up on her thighs. The bottle of water hitting the floor.
She pulled his t-shirt up and threw it down. The skin of his chest and back sizzling with every touch of her hands. With urge and desire growing rapidly each passing second, he pulled down her dress from the stripes on her shoulders down to the waist.
He stopped to look at her. She flipped her hair to one side, beautiful hazel eyes looking down on him, her mouth half open, panting with swollen lips. Bikini tan lines visible over her strapless bra.
"You're so sexy." He said before he started to gently kiss the skin above her breasts.
She tilted her head back and his hands went to unhook her bra, underneath the curtain of her hair. The moment the piece of underwear snapped open he heard the front door close. Sarah clasped her hands over her breasts to keep her bra from falling. They both froze for a second and moved into action once they heard the voices.
"Oh my God!" She whispered.
Hamdan bent over to pick his shirt from the floor as Sarah jumped off the counter. He quickly put it on and went to help Sarah hook her bra again with shaky hands.
He's going to kill me. He's going to kill me! I'm so dead!
His racing mind and unsteady hands were keeping him from getting the tiny hooks into place.
"Hamdan!" Sarah pleaded over her shoulder grinding her teeth.
He paused, took a deep breath and successfully accomplished his task in one move. Sarah turned around pulling her dress up.
"Your t-shirt!" She mouthed, her eyes wide open.
"What?" He wondered looking down.
"It's backwards!"
She was right. He pulled the t-shirt up and off his body as Rooster made his way into the kitchen. Hamdan rearranged it and put it back on correctly. Sarah picked the bottle of water from the floor and ran to the other side of the island.
"You saw nothing!" He warned Rooster before standing next to Sarah, resting their elbows on the black granite counter top.
"Hi!" Bri grinned as she laid eyes on Hamdan. "We saw your car on the driveway." She said walking towards him with open arms.
He walked around the island to meet her halfway and get a warm squeeze as they exchanged greetings.
"How was the Derby?" Bri asked as they parted.
He was about to answer, when he was cut off by Sarah.
"It was so much fun! You should've seen him, mom, all chatty with the pretty girls handing out the trophies."
He glanced at Sarah, she was cupping her face with her hands and winked at him.
"Excuse me?" He questioned, completely blindsided by her statement.
"Jealousy. She got that from her dad." Bri cautioned and turned to her daughter. "Stop it Sarah, that's not pretty."
Pat walked into kitchen, Hamdan's F3 cap dangling from his index finger. "Is this yours?" Was his way of saying hi.
Hamdan cleared his throat and went to take the cap. "Yes, sir. Thank you."
Sarah's father turned around, plopped on one of the couches on the adjacent sitting room and turned on the TV.
Hamdan looked at Sarah again and she made a mock military salute with a frown and a pout. He sighed and put his cap on, before going back to her side.
Bri opened the fridge and got a bottle of water as well. "Hamdan, dear, anything to drink?"
"Thank you, but I'm fasting."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I completely forgot." Bri apologized.
Sarah started coughing and gave him a knowing look. "Yeah, I also forgot that."
She seemed to be feeling guilty for what they had started a moment before and Hamdan passed an arm around her to make her feel better, after all, he was just as responsible, if not even more, than her.
Sarah quickly recovered and grabbed an apple from the fruit basket to took a bite an inch away from him.
"Allah is watching you." Hamdan mumbled.
She giggled and kissed his cheek.
"Next year you won't be laughing." Bri warned.
Hamdan tighten his embrace. "You're going to suffer your first Ramadan."
"Sarah, are you converting?" Patrick asked from his place.
Sarah glanced at her mom and back to Hamdan before answering. "Yes, I am."
It felt as if everyone stopped breathing the moment she said the words. Patrick stared at his daughter with a blank expression and turned to the screen without saying anything else. They had a huge fight and she had not even mentioned the convertion to Islam to her dad.
Her mom was the one to break the silence. "Are you having Iftar with you family? You're welcome to stay for dinner." She offered. "We can make it halal."
"That would be nice. Thank you." Hamdan replied with a bow of the head.
They decided to eat out in the terrace, overlooking the ocean. By the time they were eating ice cream for dessert, the awkward atmosphere from the beginning had pretty much disappeared as Sarah was retelling how her meet with Hamdan's mom and sisters had gone. The women in his family made sure to tell her every embarrassing story about Hamdan and showed her every embarrassing picture too, and yes, Sarah took pics of her favorite ones with her cellphone and showed them to her parents.
"Well, I have some material for you to see when you come visit us in Texas, Hamdan." Bri smiled returning the phone to Sarah.
"Is that so?" Hamdan wondered looking at Sarah.
Sarah's jaw dropped. "No, you don't!"
Her mom sat back comfortably in her chair. "How about that video of you singing and dancing while wearing pink panties, boots and grandpa's cowboy hat?"
"Oh my God..." Sarah's hands went up to cover her face.
Hamdan laughed. "Video? I need a copy of that!"
Bri turned to her husband. "How old was she, Pat?"
"I want to recall five-years-old..." A spoonful of chocolate ice cream halfway to his mouth. "Yes! It was summer of '95. She had just turned five and had recently discover her passion for singing. She was singing all the time." Pat explained to Hamdan and the spoon finished its trip.
"I hope to visit your new home soon." Hamdan said.
Sarah shifted on her chair excitedly. "We should go before the--" She stopped and quietly added, "wedding."
Hamdan's heart clenched as her eyes fell on her empty bowl in front of her.
"Is everybody done?" Bri asked standing up. "Let me take these inside." She said while putting the empty dishes back on the tray she had brought them out in.
Hamdan invited Sarah to a walk on the beach once everything in the kitchen was back in place. Her mood had not bounced back from that moment at the end of dinner and she was quietly strolling next to him with their hands interlocked.
"So, I hadn't seen your jealous side until now..." He hinted, trying to brighten up the atmosphere.
"Me? I'm not jealous!"
He chuckled.
"It was merely an observation," she continued. "About how nice it was to see you on TV having so much fun."
"I don't even remember what I said to them." He acknowledge.
She gasped and let go of his hand to walk backwards in front of him. "Were you so blown away?"
He bit his lip and took one long step, getting a hold of her waist with his arm leaving no space between them. With his free hand he brushed the hair away from her face and started reciting.
Nothing can beat your beauty.
I like you,
I treasure you,
I respect you.
I compose you with longing and sing.
I leave anything in this life but not you,
And with you I built my ambitions and my hopes.
The cold longing warms in the embrace of your hands,
And the heat of missing you cools down when I imagine you.
I put my head on your lap,
And keep you away from people because you are my love and mine only.
My heart is deeply in love with you,
And your picture is always on my mind.
And if you blink with your long eyelashes,
I can see people who envy you die.
My heart said "Lucky you!"
And I answered "Lucky me."
He kissed her and rested his forehead against hers with eyes shut down.
"That's so unfair." She complained. "You're going to get away with anything if you keep doing that."
"You know what's not fair?" He asked before pulling his head back to look at her. "How we were interrupted earlier."
She laughed.
"As soon as your parents leave, I'm going to get here and we're going to finish what we started."
"Only one more week."
"That reminds me... I'm going back to the UK in two weeks for the Euston Ride and the Royal Ascot, and I happen to have a couple of free days in between those two and I was thinking that maybe we could spend some time together in Newmarket."
Sarah gasped loudly. "Lots of horses!"
Hamdan nod with a smile. "Yes, lots of horses. What do you think?"
"Of course!" She grinned.
"Perfect."
"That poem... " She frowned and angled her head. "Have I heard it before?"
Hamdan remembered very well. The single time he had recited it to her was during her stay in the Intensive Care Unit.
"I don't think so." He replied. "Why?"
"I had this like... déjà vu feeling, you know?" She shrugged.
Hamdan hugged her and kissed the top of her head.
It was getting late and he saw Sarah yawn two times, so he decided it was time to leave. He said good-bye to her parents while they watched the news and waited outside the front door for a few minutes, giving Sarah some time to get to her room like she said she would. He slowly opened the door and peeked inside, there was no sign of her.
He apologized when her parents seemed a bit startled to see him again. "I was wondering if I could have a word with you, sir?"
Bri took the hint and got up. "I'll leave you two alone."
"Have a seat." Sarah's father said turning the TV off. "And stop it with the sir, call me Patrick."
"I don't think I can." Hamdan recognized sitting down on the other side of the L-shaped couch.
Patrick was staring at him, again with the blank expression on his face. Hamdan felt he had one face for everything, at least with him. Not sure about how to start, he decided to go with his heart.
Hamdan cleared his throat before beginning. "I love your daughter, very much. As you know, we want to get married and I once made a promise to her, that if she ever did me the honor of spending the rest of her life by my side, I would spend every waking hour trying to making her feel the same way she makes me feel; like the luckiest man in the world."
He paused for a deep breath. "I want now, to make that same promise to you, because nothing would make me happier than you giving me her hand in marriage."
Pat sighed and rested his back against the beige cushions. With his heart pounding on his chest, Hamdan felt that was going to be the last chance to convince Patrick about their engagement. He desperately needed his approval, not only for him, mostly for Sarah. Hamdan knew how happy that would make her and he was willing to crawl and beg if he had to, anything to not leave the house without his blessing to marry his daughter.
"When I first saw my wife, I knew we would spend the rest of our lives together, the only thing was that she hated my guts." Pat chuckled at the memory.
"She was an art history student with a passion for the books, dreaming of seeing the world one day and I was a cocky football player with my head on the next game, loving all the attention us players got from the pretty girls on campus. But even though she kept rolling her eyes at me, ignoring and blowing me off... I knew she felt the same way. You know why?"
His gaze finally met Hamdan's. "Because of the way she looked at me, there was something there. So, I didn't give up and she eventually cave in."
The smile on his lips faded and his face turned serious. "I won't ask for you to take care of her, Sarah is perfectly capable of that. Just please, don't break her heart. The way she looks at you..." He trailed off shaking his head slightly. "I've never seen her looking at anyone like that."
***
Took me a little more than expected but here it is and it's a bit longer than usual.
Only two chapters left!
Lots of love!
XOXO,
Sophie.