by Tara Pammi
“Opportunity to do what? To get into the sheikh’s chamber? To present yourself as a temptation?”
He looked so threatening right then, Amalia could practically feel the power coming off him. Utterly different from the man who had kissed her so tenderly, even from the man who’d laughed so openly. “Of course not! I don’t want to kiss you much less want an affair with you. I have a successful career and do not need any favors from a man like you, whether given freely or in exchange for something else.”
She now realized how fooled she’d been by the Celebrity Spy! Article, too. Having read about the sheikh’s escapades and orgy fests, she’d decided in her head that he was someone she could persuade and plead with.
But the man who stared at her with those inscrutably brilliant eyes didn’t have a soft bone in his body. The last thing he looked like right now was a self-indulgent, reckless playboy the exposé had called him.
“I intended nothing like that. I was tired of waiting and I snuck in here out of pure panic. When I realized who you were, for a few minutes, I even completely forgot...” She flicked her eyes closed for a second. Not everything had to be revealed now, even if he knew what her reaction had been to him. Opening her eyes, she willed her tone to be matter-of-fact. “Aslam has been imprisoned unfairly for something he was only a marginal part of. He was angry at life and reckless and irresponsible.”
“How old are you, Ms. Christensen?”
Amalia couldn’t figure out what he was getting at. “That’s neither here nor there.”
“I can have your entire history in my hands in ten minutes.”
Domineering ass! “Twenty-six, Your Highness.”
“It’s a little late to be all deferential, yes?” He folded his hands and leaned against the table. The crossing of his ankles stretched the black trousers tight against the length of his thighs, and Amalia had to force herself to pull her gaze up.
When was her body going to move past the fact that the man was insanely, knee-meltingly gorgeous and a domineering, arrogant tyrant who thought every woman was out to ensnare him?
“So your brother is, too. You know what I was doing at that age, Ms. Christensen?”
Partying with your groupies, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue.
He smiled then, as if he was perfectly aware that she was biting down on her tongue. Hard. “For three decades, there have been constant skirmishes between Khaleej and our neighboring country. I was at a weeklong summit, working nights and days to sign a peace treaty that would end useless bloodshed. Once the treaty was signed, I partied, hard. Your brother is not a teenager. He has to face the consequences of his actions.”
“He doesn’t deserve to spend the next decade in jail when the actual perpetrator—”
“What is your twin in jail for?”
How she wished she could offer a different answer, to stop the guilty flush from climbing up her neck...“Possession of illegal substances, with intent to sell.”
Instant judgment pursed his mouth tight. Her heart sank. “There’s nothing I can do about it. Sentences for drug possession and distribution are meant to be harsh. He shouldn’t have been using if he doesn’t have the constitution for jail. And really, to send his sister to—”
Amalia covered his mouth with her hand, rage burning through her. And yet, seeing her white knuckles against his golden skin sent a shock through her, too. As did the warmth of his mouth searing through her palm. “I didn’t come here to sell myself just to save my brother.”
Long fingers gripped her wrist and pushed her away. “No?”
“I came hoping that your administration was a fair one. Even after I saw you and realized what you thought, I kept quiet because I thought you would be fair like you promised.”
Tears threatened and Amalia pushed them back. No way was she going to cry in front of the callous man. He was picking his own damn wife from a marriage mart, like he was picking an outfit for the next week. The minute she’d realized that, she should’ve known he was going to have no sympathy for her case. It was clear Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi had no heart. “I should’ve known when I spoke to your cousin that you’d be no better than him.
“Aslam is serving the sentence for what your cousin did. He took that package from him because he couldn’t refuse someone ‘so cool,’ in his words, and yes, because my brother is a reckless, foolish idiot who didn’t know who he was trusting. Your government is bloated with corruption and no wonder Celebrity Spy! exposed the truth of you like that.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire Al-Ghamdi family is a bunch of corrupt, drug-trafficking, womanizing men bloated with power.”
CHAPTER THREE
“THAT IS ENOUGH, Ms. Christensen,” Zayn retorted in a tone that would brook no more nonsense. “It is my family, the royal house of Al-Ghamdi that you speak of.”
“And you’re above law, is that it?”
“My family has its share of hangers-on and lazy fools, Ms. Christensen, like anyone else’s,” he added drily and had the satisfaction of seeing her flush.
He had always thought his cousin fell into that category.
A harmless one though...
No one in his entire life had spoken to Zayn like that. Even when he was learning to walk, he’d been the prince, the royal highness. Mirah had been born ten years later and though he shared an affectionate relationship with her, she’d never challenged him or provoked him.
Growing up, and even after he’d gone to university, Zayn had never really had a confidant. No one who had the guts to call him on his ego, or arrogance or his sense of importance.
Even his rivals, Xander, Benjamin and Dante, who were probably the only people on the planet who weren’t intimidated by his title and all it entailed, still addressed him as Sheikh.
Infuriated as he was, he couldn’t help notice one thing.
Ms. Christensen believed her brother to be innocent. And her loyalty to said foolish, imbecile brother seemed to be absolute.
Being dedicated to his own sister’s happiness, it was a trait Zayn had to admire in the woman, if nothing else.
Since his temper was dangerously close to tipping over, which was a rarity in itself, he decided he needed a breather from her. And from the annoyingly lingering taste of her.
Now that he was thinking rationally again, he realized there had been a certain lack of experience in her kiss. Dare he think that annoying innocence, that vulnerability in her glazed eyes as she looked up at him, was real?
His mind wanted to wander in too many distracting and interesting directions and Zayn curbed the urge.
A suitable wife who would fix his image in the people’s eyes, that was what he needed, not a conniving waif on a wrongfully guided rescue mission.
His gaze resting on her thoughtfully, he picked up the phone on the desk. In minutes, security would guard both the entrances to the office. He didn’t trust her to not escape or bamboozle some other unsuspecting man into helping her.
“You will stay in this room until I return, Ms. Christensen. If you try to leave, the guards will manhandle you to stop you and then you will cry brutality at the sheikh’s hands. I would like to really not add anything more to the headache you’re already causing me.” Truly, his head was beginning to pound in earnest.
Damn it, he should have never kissed her. He could not show even a small weakness, could not let her have any power in the strange dynamic between them.
The woman seemed extremely resourceful when it came to cunning.
To lose his head and kiss her was one thing. But to have not believed his own instincts that something was odd about her from the beginning, bordered on foolishness. Foolishness that could cost him another scandal that his image couldn’t risk and worse, Mirah’s happiness.
She sprang toward him with a jerk. Lila
cs, that was what she smelled of. Zayn took a deep breath before he could restrain the foolishly indulgent impulse. “Wait, you’re imprisoning me here and leaving?”
Deep satisfaction filled him at the panic in her eyes. Finally, another way to fluster Ms. Self-Sufficiency. “Nothing so dramatic, Ms. Christensen. I need to go deal capital punishment to the state official who kept you waiting and the guards who should have caught you before you snuck into my private office. Maybe I’ll fire the entire incompetent staff. In the meantime, I didn’t want you to escape. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to punish you.”
Her skin became a deathly white, her hands wringing each other. She blocked his path, her slender body radiating tension. “Capital punishment? That’s barbaric. They probably were busy escorting the contingent of women you ordered to be brought here, back and forth. You probably can’t see past your bloated ego but this palace is a maze and I’m sure they can’t be everywhere at once and...”
Her chest fell and rose, drawing his attention to her high, deliciously full breasts molded under the soft cotton T-shirt. Her scarf that she had used to wrap loosely around her neck and upper body was trailing from her left arm, exposing what she’d been hiding all this time. Narrow waist that he could probably span with one hand gave way to full hips that made her prim pencil skirt into something altogether provocative. Tall and yet curved, the woman had a model’s figure.
He waited, enjoying the gloriously outraged picture she presented.
“You tricked me!” she said in a voice full of outrage. “You purposely made me believe those men would be punished for something I did.”
He laughed, surprised at finding humor in the whole farce. “You’re not the only one with tricks up their sleeve, Ms. Christensen. Now stay put until I come back.”
* * *
It took him twenty minutes, fifteen minutes too long in his opinion, to surmise the situation.
One of the staff members who knew someone in the legal department had scheduled a meeting with Ms. Christensen. When Zayn had questioned how the woman, a stranger to Khaleej, had known to not only contact the said official but also to arrange for a meeting with him to obtain her brother’s release, his personnel had all frozen in terror.
Finally, the shaking man had come forward and said that the request for meeting had come from someone higher up in the department. Specifically on the recommendation of a Massimiliano Ricci.
It seemed at least that part of her story was true.
Zayn vaguely remembered meeting the Italian businessman, known for his cutthroat business tactics. That Amalia had gained a meeting through him did not surprise Zayn in the least.
Was she his girlfriend, then? Didn’t the man know what a menace the woman was to herself? Because if she were Zayn’s, he wouldn’t have let her roam Sintar alone for two months, even if she had been born here.
Nor would he have let her dog the steps of the unsavory crowd that her brother seemed to keep company with. What was her father thinking?
The next thing had been to have someone find him the case file on her twin brother. Which had taken a wasted ten minutes, which he couldn’t really blame on his staff. Lost in the beguiling scent of the blasted woman, he had forgotten to ask what her brother’s last name was.
Finally, he had her brother’s file and a staff member finding the identity of her father. The part about her father was true, too. Professor Hadid was very well known and respected in his circle.
Drug Possession. Intent to Sell. Waiting to be sentenced.
It wouldn’t be anything less than seven years, Zayn knew. He’d been one of the members on the committee who had asked for harsher sentences on drug trafficking in Khaleej.
When Zayn had tried to reach his cousin, however, he had been informed by his aunt in a vaguely roundabout way that he was out of the country. Which really didn’t tell Zayn much. His cousin Karim had never amounted to any good for all his life, but could he have let an innocent man take the fall for one of his activities? It was another headache he did not need right now.
Armed with a vague sense of discontent, Zayn returned to his office.
Amalia—he couldn’t refer to her as Ms. Christensen now that he knew how potent the taste of her mouth was—was standing at one of the tinted windows, looking out into the courtyard. The fading sunlight of the evening drew a provocative outline of her body.
Her shoulders were in a stiff line, her entire stance one of defense and alertness. Despite his preoccupations, Zayn couldn’t stop his gaze from running down her back this time. She was fully covered up, even though that custom had more or less been banned from being required in the last decade.
And yet the flare of her hips, the curve of her bottom, made the pencil skirt the most provocative thing he had ever seen on a woman.
He had met more beautiful women, more charming ones, women who knew how to be seductive and yet feminine at once.
She was none of those things and yet he hadn’t lost his mind over a woman like this in a...actually, never. He did not like anything random in his carefully controlled life and he didn’t like this strange reaction to her, either.
It made his voice harsh as he said, “I have looked at your brother’s file and I have spoken to the official you were supposed to meet.”
She turned around. Her hands wrapped around her midriff, under her breasts, unconsciously pushing them up. “And?”
Zayn forced himself to focus on the anxiety that pinched her features. “The evidence against him is pretty tight. And this is not the first time your brother has been in trouble with the law.”
“I know. But they were petty things.”
“Defaming public property, heading a strike at the university, unruly behavior in a mall...it seems like he was building his repertoire since he was fourteen. I even spoke to the detective who put together this particular case and he assured me that he was thorough.”
“I never said the evidence against Aslam wasn’t damning. I spent two months talking to everyone connected with that arrest. I...dogged every official who was connected with it in the lightest way. Aslam took a package from your cousin minutes before the police showed up. Which, apparently, your cousin knew of.”
“You talk as if you were there.”
“I believe my brother. And my research was thorough. I tracked down the third friend and then fourth. Their accounts of the incident were not the same but definitely suspicious. They seemed to want to help Aslam but when I asked them to come forward, they became slippery.” Frustration made her voice hard. “It’s obvious that they are afraid of your cousin’s connections.”
“Did you not think once if it would be unsafe to find and accost these men? What is your father doing in all this?”
“He is busy with his career and his family, not that I asked him for help. When I did ask him to talk to someone in the palace, he told me he believed in the justice system. And I took acquaintances with me every time I went into new places of the city and never at night.
“I’m independent, Sheikh, not foolish. You, like a lot of other members of your sex, seem to equate the two.”
“Give me the names of these men.”
She nodded, glad that finally she was getting somewhere. “If you tell me when you find them, I can persuade them to speak out maybe. They seemed receptive to my—”
“You will stay out of this investigation and will not continue it anymore, either.”
“I can help.”
“Even though your accusations have no basis, I will check with my cousin. But he is right now out of the country and there’s nothing more I can do about this for the moment.”
“Can’t you command him to return? You’re the sheikh, aren’t you?”
Zayn threw the file on the desk and walked toward her. “On the word of a woman who has told me
nothing but lies since I laid eyes on her? Who insists on insulting not only me and my title and my position, but even my government and my judgment?”
Every inch of her rose to attention at his compelling stance. “You’re not being fair. My behavior toward you should not affect Aslam’s case. Not if you were truly intent on seeing justice carried out.”
“That is true. But my hands are tied right now. Return to your job, or your country or wherever it is you came from. There is nothing more you can do for your brother.”
“I’m willing to apologize for my deception, if that would assuage the dent to your ego.”
“You offer to apologize in the same sentence as you insult me again. And there is no dent to my ego, Amalia. You are a nuisance in a very busy schedule. And now I will stop you from being one.”
“You’re forcing me, Your Highness.”
“Into what?” He frowned, not liking the determined glint in her eyes. “I’m making it easy on you. Despite my misgivings, I gave you what you asked for. Once he returns, I will talk to my cousin, although it might be several months.”
“But Aslam would have spent even more time in jail for something he didn’t do,” she repeated, her voice rising. Something like a growl escaped her mouth, and slowly, her breaths returned to calm. “Fine, so be it.
“But if I walk out of here, I’m going straight to the media. To a particularly nasty tabloid paper that is already very fond of you.”
“And what is it you think you can offer the tabloid? How it felt to have kissed me? Will you join the ranks of my groupies, in your words? Will you tell them you tried to seduce the sheikh and failed?”
She went pale. Zayn didn’t feel an ounce of regret. She was veering from nuisance to a bother now.
“No, I will tell them why I found the palace so particularly empty. I will tell them about your Ms. Young and her list of candidates.
“I will paint a very descriptive, colorful picture of what was going on here. That I saw women being brought to the palace, to be looked over by you and to be interviewed by you.