Sold To The Sheikh: His Indecent Proposal (An Interracial Sheikh Romance Novel) by Holly Rayner Page B

walked
towards her car. Almost as soon as she had the driver’s side door
closed behind her, a sob rolled up through her chest, and as Mia
turned the key in the ignition, the tears began to flow once again.
She had always worked hard, always studied and done her best. Mia
had almost never, in her entire life, failed at something that she
had worked to accomplish. The fact that she couldn’t manage to get
pregnant—something she had seen dozens of women who were less
intelligent, less educated, less determined than her accomplish
easily—felt like the most elementary failure of her entire
life.
     
    Mia drove away from the
doctor’s office without any idea of where she wanted to go. She
didn’t want to go to her mother’s house—she didn’t want to burden
Amie with the news. Although she had told Rami that she wanted to
be alone, she couldn’t imagine going back to her own, tiny house;
she thought the silence there might drive her insane. Mia turned in
the opposite direction from the roads that would take her back to
her house and drove aimlessly for what seemed like an hour. She had
a full tank of gas, and plenty of money to refill if she somehow
managed to empty it. Mia was almost tempted to get on the highway
and just keep going until she had somehow outrun her
sadness.
     
    Instead, as the album
she’d blindly put on the stereo came to an end, she turned in at a
strip mall that seemed oddly familiar. There was a grocery store, a
few chain shops that sold cheap, fast-fashion clothing, a liquor
store, and at the end, crumbling in its decay, a low, hunkered-down
bar called “Jake’s Place.” The name stirred something in Mia’s mind
and she tried to place it. As she pulled into a parking spot, she
remembered she’d been there once before, in better times, before
her mother’s health had declined so sharply. It was one of the
favored spots of some of the teachers she’d worked at the school
with.
     
    Mia shut off her car and
got out, walking quickly towards the worn entrance of the bar. It
was mid-afternoon and she didn’t think there was any risk of
running into anyone she knew. The front door squeaked loudly on its
hinges as Mia opened it, and the few people gathered at the dimly
lit bar looked up. The place reeked of old cigarettes, though Mia
didn’t see anyone smoking inside, along with stale beer and the
sharp tang of spilled liquor.
     
    She took a deep breath and
walked hazily towards the bar. She felt guilty; she knew that the
last thing she needed right now—on a physical level—was alcohol.
She was trying to get pregnant, after all. It would be
better—healthier—for her to go home and just cry into her pillow.
At worst, she could have a glass of wine. Mia sat down on one of
the empty stools as the sound system played a warbling, slightly
distorted folk song about “the best-ever death metal band out of
Denton.”
     
    A female bartender, her
face greasy, eyeliner smudged, looking as though she’d gotten out
of bed maybe an hour before, approached, and Mia gave the woman a
little smile. “I need a shot of tequila,” Mia said.
     
    “You look like you do at
that,” the woman said, sweeping her bleach-blonde hair back and
binding it with an elastic. The bartender reached behind her and
plucked a squat, clear bottle labeled Patron from the front of the
top shelf. Mia glanced down at her outfit; obviously the bartender
was more alert than she seemed if she could determine from Mia’s
clothing that she had the kind of money to spend on top-shelf
alcohol. Mia watched as the woman deftly poured a shot, moving a
salt shaker from the staging area to a spot next to Mia’s hand and
taking a couple of slices of lime from a caddy and placing them on
a little plate.
     
    “Oh God, thank you,” Mia
said, taking her wallet out. She barely ever dealt in cash anymore;
she only had her card.
     
    “Do you want to keep it
open? We have a two-shot minimum.” Mia bit her bottom lip; she knew
she