by Lynn, Sophia
“For a little while,” she agreed.
She would rest for a little. Then she would get up and go home. She would only rest for a little while...
Inside of ten minutes, however, she was asleep, her breathing soft and easy. Sometime in the night, she turned so that her head was buried under Zayn's chin, and her arm was thrown over his body as if they had always slept together.
CHAPTER FOUR
Waking up was strange. Leah was at first certain that she had no idea where she was, and before that knowledge could even catch up with her, she thought that she had never been happier to be right where she was.
“Oh hell...”
Her whispered curse seemed to have gone unnoticed. At the very least, Zayn's arm draped over her hip was still heavy, and his breathing was undisturbed. She didn't say another word, but the swearing continued in her mind.
Oh god, I slept with a client. I slept with Zayn. Oh god, I might have cost myself the case, I'm terrible, I'm never going to recover from this...
At the end of the day, however, Leah was a practical woman. The first thing that she needed to do was damage control, and that meant regrouping.
She inched her way out from under Zayn's arm, feeling a strange stab of sadness when he made a discontented noise, but turned over in his sleep.
What did you expect? Leah mocked herself savagely. Did you think that this was something that might last? Did you think you might be staying?
She had never thought she would, and now she tiptoed around the room, picking up her clothes. She flinched a little when she found the dress. It was beautiful, but there would be no doubts about what she was doing when she wore it home at 6 AM.
She had put herself together as well as she might, but she simply couldn't find her underwear. She tracked back and forth as carefully as she could, but for the life of her, she could not locate the little scrap of silk.
Guess I'll have to go without. Seems about appropriate.
Her hand was literally on the doorknob when a voice stopped her.
“And where do you think you're going?”
The words were playful, but there was a note of absolute command to them that made Leah freeze. With her heart beating hard in her chest, she turned around to see Zayn sitting up in the enormous bed. Fresh from a night's sleep, his dark hair had a slight curl to it, and it stuck up in ways that were surprisingly adorable.
However, no amount of bedhead or sleepiness could hide the sheik's wide shoulders, broad chest or powerful arms. He leveled a serious look at her. “Care to tell me what you're doing?”
Despite not having done a single thing wrong, Leah blushed. “I... I was going home,” she said, hating the stutter in her voice. “I thought that I would... get a good start on... Look, you don't expect me to stay, do you?”
He quirked a dark eyebrow at her. “Why shouldn't I?”
“Because I'm your lawyer,” she said, trying to instill a certain amount of surety and confidence in her voice. She was lucky she had never felt this nervous while she was in court; she would have been eaten alive.
“You are small, sweet, a redhead and a fan of Japanese food,” he observed, “and all of those have as little to do with anything. You're my lawyer. Fine. I trust you will do a fine job. That has nothing to do with what we have done here, and with what we are going to do in the future.”
Leah stared at him. “You can't possibly be so blind. Do you not know what I've gone through to get to where I am? Do you know what they say about female lawyers who sleep with their clients? This is not something that can happen. This is not something that can be a part of who we are.”
Zayn stood up from the bed, crossing the space between them with just a few strides. He was a big man, and he towered over her. For some reason, it didn't make her feel intimidated. Instead, it made her feel a renewed surge of longing for him that she pressed down hard.
“What is between us has already started,” he said, his voice a low rumble of thunder. “This is something that cannot be denied. I felt it the moment I saw you at the airport. I know that you felt something the moment that you saw me.”
Leah could feel something in her relent, but she pushed it away hard. She had worked too long and too hard to give in to his words, especially as she knew them for what they really were. A less experienced woman might have been taken in by his sweet words, but she knew better. They were a salve for her ego, a pleasant fantasy, and if she believed them, she would quickly find herself in a world of trouble.
“I did feel something,” she said, her voice soft.
Zayn had been expecting her to push back. Her gentle response surprised him.
“I felt an instant attraction to you,” she said. “My heart... my heart beat faster, and I knew that it was as if I recognized you somehow...”
“We were tuned in to each other,” he supplied. “Our hearts were beating in the same rhythm.”
She nodded. When she took a step back this time, he let her.
“This can't be,” she said. “You said you loved my fire. The thing that you need to remember is that fire isn't just for show. It is something that I put into your service. I swore to do that last night, remember? And if you are distracting me, if you are pulling me away from my duties, I cannot serve you as well as I should. That... that would destroy me.”
Zayn's face had shifted from impatience to sadness. “You are serious. You truly believe that you cannot do your job if we are lovers.”
Leah flinched a little at that intimate word, but she nodded. “You must let me do what I need to do,” she murmured. “You must.”
Zayn nodded, but there was a darkness to his green eyes that hadn't been there before.
“You will do what you need to do,” he agreed, “And I will do what I need to do.”
She thought that he was going to let her go then and there, but instead, he dragged her into his arms. It had been just a few hours since he had brought her to the heights of ecstasy that she had never seen before. If she had been asked if she could light on fire again so quickly, she would have said no.
She would have been wrong.
The moment he pulled her against his body, she could feel herself waken. She could feel her body rise up and long for him, like there was a spirit of pure fire in her, and it needed Zayn like fire needed air.
His mouth slanted down across hers, and the kiss that he pressed to her lips was a pure and open claiming. There was nothing shy or gentle about it. Instead, this was something raw and primal. This kiss said that she belonged to him, and that was the way it would be forever, as if he were marking her.
The last thought made her tear away from him.
“No!” she cried. She knew she sounded as if the heart were being ripped from her chest, but she didn't care. “You will not do this to me! I have come too far and worked too hard...”
“You have worked so hard to deny the woman who cries for passion at the core of you?” demanded Zayn. “You have worked so hard to bury the fire that lives at your heart?”
“I don't care,” she said hotly. “This is not who I am. I am not a woman who can live with being loved and cast aside, don't you see? Are you truly so rich and powerful that you never see the people who grovel at your feet?”
“Grovel-”
She wasn't sure what he would have said after that because her phone rang. The electronic tones were almost obscene in the charged air of their fight, the call of a bird from another country. Leah cursed and dove for her small purse, pulling her phone out with a quick motion. Anyone would have been a welcome distraction from the strange grief of what was happening to her right this moment, but when she saw the name, her eyes widened.
“Grant? It's—”
“It's not even seven, I know. Believe me, I'm not so happy with this myself. Listen, you need to get ready.”
“What do I need to get ready for?”
Grant laughed, and she could hear a ragged note to it as well. Whatever had happened, it had woke
n him up from a dead sleep. “You stepped on some toes last night, Montgomery. Ice Fields is roused up, and they just came up swinging. They're trying to file for creative rights to their story, and if you want to stop them, you're going to be ready to meet them at eight sharp.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. You need to be at their offices to touch base with them, or I'm pretty sure they're going to roll right out.”
Leah cursed, making Grant laugh again.
“Are they looking to negotiate?”
“Hard to say. You want my take on it? They want to get a look at you and see how serious you are. Batter up, Montgomery, they came for you and you better be ready.”
“I am,” Leah said grimly. “If they're going to pull this kind of nasty crap now, I have plenty of things I can do. I'll be over there at eight sharp, and I'm not looking to take prisoners.”
“I knew you had it in you. Let me know how it goes.”
She ended the call, turning decisively to Zayn. “Did you hear that?” she asked softly.
“I did,” he said, unable to keep a note of admiration out of his voice. “When you said that you would serve, you meant it.”
“Damn straight I meant it,” Leah said. “I have work to do. For the love of everything that you hold dear, please don't stop me from doing it.”
He studied her, taking her measure from head to foot. She knew that she was wearing ridiculous heels and a silly party dress, but despite that, she could see that he found worth in her, something to respect, a weapon.
“I would never stop you,” he said softly, “but neither will I allow such passion to pass me by. Go get ready for your battle, Leah Montgomery, and I will get ready for mine.”
She wondered what he meant by that last part, but she didn't have time to think about it. If she moved fast, she could run back to her apartment for a quick change and shower, collect some materials that she needed for the day, and be out to the Ice Field offices with plenty of time to spare.
She wanted to touch Zayn again. She wanted to tell him that she would do everything she could to take his parents' story away from Ice Fields. She wanted to tell him that she would treasure the things they had done together.
She did none of those things.
Instead, Leah marched out the door with her head held high, and when she was alone in the elevator, she only felt a little like collapsing.
The staff of the Marseilles was too discreet to give her rumpled clothing a second look, but still she felt more secure when she was safe in her car again.
I'm me. I'm not who I was when I writhed in bed with him, when he made me feel like I did. I am me. I am a lawyer, and I have a fight ahead of me.
If she said those words often enough, perhaps she would even believe them. She nosed her car onto the freeway, and she knew that it was going to be a long day ahead.
CHAPTER FIVE
A little more than an hour later, Leah was showered and dressed in her most severe silk suit. It was a trick she had learned early in her stay in LA, which was a very West Coast town, perhaps the West Coast town. Everyone, from network execs to producers to lawyers dressed down a bit, as if to bow to the wilting heat and the laid-back atmosphere.
She might have been a willing LA transplant, but she had done a lot of work on the East Coast, where a single button out of place could raise the ire of a conservative judge. Though she could have worn more casual clothes, Leah had a tendency to choose severe black when she was out dealing with clients... or with those who wanted to harm her clients.
Ice Fields was a smaller production company located well away from some of the bigger names. However, that didn't mean much when small production companies might be backed by enormous names. The moment she pulled her car up to the Ice Fields lot, Leah felt a shiver of distaste run through her. She wasn't sure whether it was because of what she knew about them or whether it was because of something else, but she braced herself.
She walked up to the front doors, ignoring the scattering of fashionable and attractive young people in the lobby. She could sense them eying her up and down and immediately dismissing her. She ignored them, focusing on the receptionist behind the desk.
“Good morning,” she said, her tone crisp and carrying. “My name is Leah Montgomery, and I'm here to see Peter Scholl.”
The receptionist looked at her, profoundly unimpressed. “Sorry,” he said. “If you haven't got an appointment, there's—”
“I don't need an appointment,” Leah said confidently. “If I leave here, I'm going to be coming back with an injunction a lot nastier than just a 'please.'”
The receptionist still looked a little hesitant, so Leah smiled, showing her teeth. Her smile was nowhere near as sharp as Zayn's, but she thought that she did all right.
“To put it even more clearly, if you don't let me in to see Peter Scholl, I am going to make trouble for this entire place, and I'm going to do it with all the legal muscle that Hiller and Hiller can give me. Now, if you don't want to be responsible for that...”
The receptionist nodded jerkily, and Leah allowed herself a tight smile as he picked up the phone and turned away from her. She was aware of the starlets behind her muttering about what a bitch she was and how she shouldn't be allowed, but she ignored them. She had far bigger fish to fry.
“Mr. Scholl will see you now,” the receptionist offered.
She smiled at him. “I'm sure he will.”
Scholl's office didn't surprise her at all. From the bright lights of the rest of the building, she entered a long office that was deliberately dim. At the very end of the office was a row of windows, and in front of that window was a desk where a man sat in silhouette.
Pure theater, Leah thought with disgust, and it isn't even very good theater.
“And you must be from Hiller and Hiller,” he began, but Leah didn't wait.
She strode up to the desk, her heels clicking efficiently on the tile. Before she was even stopped, she threw a folder down on the desk in front of him.
“You have some nerve,” she said, “and on top of that, you must think that I'm a goddamn idiot.”
Peter Scholl leaned back in his chair and looked at her. He had a kind of thinness that looked better on an ascetic monk than a would-be media mogul, and his watery blue eyes flickered over her like the wings of a particularly loathsome gnat. She had never heard very much about Scholl one way or the other, but she was forming an impression with alarming quickness.
“Why don't you tell me what I'm supposed to have done to make such a pretty girl so mad?”
She didn't rise to the bait. Instead, she pointed at the folder. “So the moment we file a cease and desist against you, you make a move to cement your rights? Did you really think that if you just got things started fast enough that we might decide to let all of this slide?”
He shrugged one shoulder, never taking his eyes off of her body. She wasn't sure he had met her eyes once since she walked in the room.
“Hey, in this business, it is far better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
She laughed acidly. “Try that in a court of law and you'll have an assault charge or two waiting for you. I'm not here to argue with you. I'm here to let you know that whatever you are planning right now isn't going to work.”
He shook his head, looking irritatingly amused at her. “And what do you think I'm trying to do, sweetheart?”
Leah let some of the revulsion she felt at his words show on her face. To her grim amusement, it seemed to surprise him. She wondered if he had been making movies long enough that he was simply used to attractive young women falling over themselves to please him. Well, given how this meeting was going, he was going to fall into a world of surprises.
“I think that you are trying to take advantage of a country that welcomed you with open arms,” she said shortly. “I think that you are taking a matter of some cultural importance to an entire nation and running it through your cheese grater of a company until yo
u have some kind of racist pap that you're going to try to sell.”
Scholl shook his head. “You're all worked up over Almira? Listen, you've gotta know that they're not even the game. Sure, they're rich, but most of their movies don't come from the US, right? What they don't know won't hurt them.”
“Are you serious? You're talking as if they're some kind of backwater with no access to the Internet or the greater world. Terzei, one of their biggest cities—”
To her fury, Scholl made a tsking sound, waving his hand for her silence. “Look, you might be all about the law, honey, but I know movies, and Almira, it's not a problem. No one cares about them, and they don't give a damn about the rest of the world.”
“And if that is what you have learned about coming to my country, then I am even more certain of my course here.”
Both Scholl and Leah wheeled around in shock. Standing in the doorway behind them was none other than Zayn himself. Today, he was dressed in a sharply cut black suit, as severe and sharp as a sword. A part of Leah purred at how good he looked, but she made herself focus on the task at hand.
“Sheik Zayn,” she said, hiding her surprise at his presence. “I didn't think you would be at this meeting.”
“I decided to come and see if my instincts and yours were correct,” he said, striding across the office to join her. He seemed to dwarf the space, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with her as they both faced Scholl.
“Instincts?” asked Scholl warily. For the first time since this meeting started, he looked apprehensive
“Yes. When I told my story to Ms. Montgomery, she confirmed that my suspicions were right. She told me that you have no right to a story about my family or my country, and that if you do not stop, the consequences for you could be quite dire.”
“Now, I'm sure that we can come to some kind of—”
“We cannot,” Leah said sharply. “This is not a negotiation. This is not something that you can purchase or bribe. You will stop production on this movie. Be grateful that you are stopping it at this early stage and that you didn't waste more money on it, because believe me, it would have been money wasted. This is over. Do you understand?”