by Holly Rayner
I yanked my thoughts back to the room around us, the golden shine of the walls, the plush carpet under our feet, anything. Because I was only going up to that room to get this freaking interview. Because I needed to pay my freaking bills, and those of my parents.
There was nothing else going on here, period.
I didn’t know what the kiss had been about. And my reaction to it? That heat-flooding, bone-melting, haze-inducing feeling that had made me want to lean right into the man, hands-first? That didn’t mean anything either. Because I certainly hadn’t asked for that kiss, and for all I knew, it was just a casual, meaningless thing.
Okay, sure, I’d seen his eyes actually glowing at me right before he leaned toward me, but that didn’t mean anything, either. Maybe he turned the glowing eyes on for any girl he was doing an interview with, just to make sure they wrote something nice about him.
Besides, thinking about the possibility of something else happening was going to do nothing but lead me right down a path I didn’t want to have to travel. I wasn’t in this to get involved with the guy.
I just wanted the story. Something I could sell, so I could get my parents out of the pickle they found themselves in.
Aziz hit the button for the elevator, which opened up immediately, and we strolled onto it, neither of us saying anything. Once the doors closed behind us, though, and the tension started to seep into the car, I decided it was time to actually talk.
We couldn’t just stand here not talking when the air was so thick between us that I almost couldn’t breathe. Do that, and it was going to start to get really awkward.
The good news: I’d had plenty of experience with situations that got awkward. I was a reporter, and that meant I was almost always asking questions that made people uncomfortable or defensive. I generally knew how to alleviate that sort of pressure.
Well. Let me revise that. I knew how to alleviate the pressure that came with me having asked questions that put the person I was interviewing off their game. I’d never been in this situation before—namely, one where I was standing in a very small elevator with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, who had not only randomly kissed me but was also looking at me like I was the next delicious treat he wanted to sample.
I felt a tingle deep down in my core at the thought, and bit my lip without meaning to.
Then I got myself under control and turned to him, forcing my mouth into a casual sort of smile rather than the open-mouthed kiss-me-please look I really wanted to put on.
“Leaving your own party early?” I said. “Isn’t there a rule against that or something?”
Aziz Al-Sharim turned to me, all upturned lips and sparkling eyes, and shrugged gracefully. “It’s not exactly going to be a popular move, I’ll admit. Officially, I’m supposed to stay there and talk to the investors. Answer questions, give them the big picture. Also, talk to reporters. Make sure they’re going to write good stories about the opening. But they’re not having me tracked, if that’s what you mean.”
I lifted my brows. “But what if they are? What if they’re watching you right now?”
He got very close to me, his eyes darting to my mouth and then back up to my eyes, his breath brushing gently across my face, bringing with it the scent of very expensive scotch.
“Easy,” he whispered. “I’ll just tell them that I had a very important interview with a very important reporter, and that I wanted to make sure we did that interview in a place where said reporter would be able to hear me easily. After all, I wouldn’t want her mistaking my meaning about anything. The story itself might come out wrong.”
“I find it hard to believe anyone would ever mistake your meaning about anything,” I replied, my voice low, every thought about not getting involved with this guy flying right out of my head.
Because at that moment, all I wanted to do was get involved. Preferably in a way that didn’t include clothes.
He tipped his head, though, indicating that he wasn’t so sure. “In a crowded ballroom full of people trying to get my attention? You just never know.”
“It must be a tough life,” I acknowledged. “All those people always trying to talk to you. Everyone wanting to be your wingman. Get in on the next gig.”
His face turned suddenly serious—so much so that I thought for a moment that I’d actually hit a nerve. Said the wrong thing. And all that sexual tension drained right out of the elevator car, like someone had pulled the plug on a hot bath.
I shivered, worried for a moment that I’d ruined everything. Maybe even blown my chance to get this interview done.
Instead of getting offended, though, Aziz seemed to relax somehow. Like he was letting himself take a breath that he didn’t often take.
“You have no idea how exhausting it all is,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re right about people always wanting something. Always wanting to be involved in the next project or invited to the next party or comped a hotel room if they think they’ve done me a favor. It makes it impossible to know who’s really your friend and who’s just using you, you know?”
Well. I hadn’t thought about it that way. It had never even occurred to me that he might have to question what motivated the people around him. But now that he said something, I started to get a much clearer picture of who this guy was. And what he’d had to deal with as an Al-Sharim.
I’d never been rich, so I’d never been around people who had ulterior motives for being my friend. It just hadn’t occurred to me to think about things like that. Now that it had, I was seeing his life in a whole different light.
“Bet you grew up with that, didn’t you?” I asked. “Never knowing what people wanted from you, or if they were even the real deal. When did it all start?”
The doors opened at that moment—on the penthouse level, I saw—and we stepped out into another hallway, this one done in all dark green and gold, everything looking just as expensive and classy up here as it had on the first floor.
“I see this isn’t one of those hotels that puts all its money into the ground floor,” I noted, thinking I’d give Aziz a chance to digest the other question I’d asked and decide on whether he even wanted to answer it or not.
“We’re all class, all the way,” he said proudly. “I picked all the fixtures myself, in fact. The wallpaper, the carpeting, even the paint colors. Had a hand in every last detail. So I can say that I know exactly what went into this resort. And we spared no expense. We want the people who stay here to have the best experience possible. Feel like royalty.”
I gave him the whistle I thought he was probably waiting for. “Did that come right from the brochure?” I asked, grinning.
He gave me a grin of his own. “Believe it or not, I thought of that all by myself. On the spot, even.”
I widened my eyes in mock amazement. “On the spot, wow. And here I thought you were just the face of the international arm of the company.”
“Turns out there’s a brain behind this face,” he said, stopping at a door and taking out a card key. “And I’d like to think it’s a pretty good one.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him about that. And as I stepped into the lavish suite, with its view of Dubai in all its glory, I wondered what other surprises hid behind that gorgeous face—and how much I was going to learn about him before our interview was over.
I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised when our interview turned into more of a game than an actual interview.
Aziz slid the bottle across the table at me, his eyes full of laughter and expectation.
“It’s easy,” he said, all casual grace. “Every time you ask a question that goes beyond what any normal reporter would ask, you take a drink of scotch.”
I looked from him to the bottle, and then back up to him again.
I could see about five million ways for that to go very, very wrong. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued.
“And who exactly is going to judge the questions?” I asked. I glanced around the r
oom, eyebrows lifted. “Is there an impartial judge hiding in here somewhere that I didn’t see?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be the judge. After all, you wouldn’t have any idea what other reporters might have asked me. In fact, let’s change it.”
I burst out with a giggle. “Wait, you’re changing the rules already? How on earth are we supposed to play this game if you change the rules at the drop of a hat? Are you going to change them again when you realize that you’re losing?”
He reached out, grabbed the bottle, and took a long swig, the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed.
I watched his neck, my eyes drifting down to his shoulders and then his chest, outlined as it was beneath the silk of his shirt. And my mouth suddenly felt so dry that I wanted to grab that bottle for myself.
See what all the fuss was about.
When he brought the bottle back to the table, he set it down a bit harder, the amber liquid sloshing around inside. Then he leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes sparking greenly. “We’re changing it to something more interesting,” he clarified. “Every time you ask a question that no reporter has ever asked me before, you take a drink.”
I reached out, grabbed the bottle myself, and picked it up. But I didn’t drink. Yet.
“And when are you going to drink?” I asked quietly, all suggestive flirting. “Because this sounds a whole lot like a game where I do all the drinking and you get to laugh at me.”
He reached up and planted a thumb right in the middle of my chin, using it to shift my face back and forth in something that felt both incredibly demanding and almost painfully gentle. “I would never,” he whispered. “Where’s the fun if you’re the only one getting to drink my expensive scotch?”
I pressed my chin into his thumb, wanting more of that pressure. Wanting more contact. “So when do you have to drink, then?” I asked, forcing some strength into my voice.
He gave me the cockiest of all cocky grins. “I drink,” he said, “when you ask a question I’ve already heard before.”
I snorted. “And you do realize that I could throw this game really easily by asking you questions I know you’ve answered for other people.”
He shrugged. “And I could throw the game by lying to you about what other people had asked me. So I guess we’ll just have to trust each other. Play by the honor code.”
I considered it for about three seconds. Then I put the bottle to my mouth and tipped it up, taking my first sip of scotch…
Chapter 8
Faye
The moment my eyes opened the next morning, I knew I’d done something so incredibly stupid that I might spend the rest of my life cringing every time I thought about it.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was going to enjoy remembering every hot second of what Aziz and I had done last night after we finished the bottle of scotch—and, theoretically, the interview. But I was also going to be embarrassed for the rest of my life that I’d been That Girl.
For the record, the room around me was freaking gorgeous—so I guessed I could at least answer that particular question for Roger, if he was still wondering.
That thought brought a quick smile to my lips, and I sat up out of the billion-thread-count sheets I’d been sleeping in and looked around.
Yep, the room was just as gorgeous as I remembered, though it looked completely different in the daytime. Bright and airy, with an entire wall of windows that looked down on—I stretched myself so I could see without getting up—the fountain itself, which was shooting water up into the air as if we weren’t sitting in the middle of a desert.
The rest of the room was done in sandy beiges and creams, making it seem even bigger, and the ceilings were taller than you would expect to see in a hotel. The effect was one of light and air, and the fixtures Aziz had used—because I remember his bragging that he’d had a hand in all of this—made the place feel expensive and luxurious. They had definitely gone all out when it came to treating their guests like royalty. It was an Al-Sharim trademark, and it looked like they’d played it up more in this resort than they had in any of the others.
A quick scan of my memory told me that there was a spa tub in the bathroom, too, and I felt a quick tinge of disappointment that I hadn’t gotten to use it. I never got to stay in hotels like this. Honestly, I never even got to stay in places that had bathtubs at all, rather than just the stand-up cubicle showers.
So to have something like that at my fingertips…
But no, I told myself firmly. I wouldn’t use it. No matter how tempting a bathtub big enough to swim in, full of hot water and bubbles, sounded. Because no matter how luxurious this space was, there were a few very important facts that led me to the simple conclusion that I needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. And one of them was lying in bed next to me.
I turned to stare down at Aziz, taking in the hair—even more tousled now, the dark curls spread out over the pillow like he was some sort of model—and the drool-worthy good looks. His eyes were shut, but still relaxed into a deep sleep, so that his eyelashes fanned out over his wide cheekbones. Those lashes were longer than I would have thought possible, and I knew a good few girls who would have killed for the cheekbones.
His lips, lush and full, were parted slightly, and I felt a flush—both on my cheeks and lower down—at the memory of how those lips had felt on my own. They’d been soft, but incredibly insistent, and we’d spent at least an hour just making out, getting the feel for each other and enjoying acting on the flirtation that had been building between us basically since we’d first set eyes on each other.
He had one arm stretched out above him, the other laying palm-down on his chest, and I had the sudden desire to reach out and take that hand. To lean over him and brush kisses all over his cheeks and nose and forehead, and then land on his lips to wake him up. To lie back down and cuddle into him just to feel the solid warmth of his body again. Just to feel the sense of safety—the sense of belonging—that he’d given me.
Because there were a lot of things in life that I didn’t feel sure of. I was more worried about things than I’d been in a long time, honestly, and I could provide a whole list of things that I wasn’t sure would work out. But this man wasn’t one of them. He’d made me feel whole and protected and like I was part of something more important than just myself. He was like a protective cocoon that had wrapped around me and made the entire world disappear, and that wasn’t just the scotch talking.
It was something I’d never felt before, and I wasn’t even sure how to feel it again. Wasn’t even sure I could really put a name to it.
Of course, that didn’t change the fact that I’d come to Dubai to write a story about his new resort, and had sort of accidentally slept with the man I’d wanted to write the story about while I was at it. It also didn’t change the fact that I knew my chances of ever seeing this man again were slim to none—and my chances of him thinking this was as special as I did were even worse.
I didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t date often. I didn’t believe him when he hinted that he didn’t bring girls up to his room often.
He’d been too smooth about it, too practiced, too easy for me to ever believe that. That little drinking game had come up too quickly, the rules too well-designed to make sure that we both got drunk quickly.
Yeah, he’d played that game with girls before. Probably under the exact same circumstances.
Besides, this guy was an honest-to-God prince—or a sheikh, at least, which was close to the same thing—and I was betting there was a lineup of at least one hundred women constantly vying for his attention.
If there wasn’t, his mom probably had a list of two hundred women she wanted to see him settle down with.
And I wasn’t on that list. I never would be. I was just a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants freelance journalist and sometimes-surfer from Southern California who had been in the right place at the right time, and had been good at flirting with the guy. I’d also had th
e secret and unintentional weapon of having not spoken to him before and speaking to his brothers and cousins instead. Which had made him jealous.
He’d been pretty clear on that point. And I was pretty clear on the idea that his jealousy was now assuaged.
God, was he even going to remember my name when he woke up? And how was I going to react if he didn’t? I’d never been one to keep my mouth shut on my opinions, and I didn’t think it would go over well if he woke up, didn’t remember my name, and then had to experience my extreme displeasure at him having forgotten it.
I had to get out of here. Like, now.
I slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb him, found my dress and pulled it on, and then located my shoes—and my clutch. I made a quick stop by the bathroom to wipe the mascara off from under my eyes and curse the bathtub sitting in the corner, which looked roughly the size of my entire bathroom at home, and then I tiptoed through the door and into the hallway.
There, I paused and looked back at the man in the bed, taking in every inch of him and putting it down to memory. Because I knew I’d want to remember this. I knew I’d want to remember him. It was just really too bad I wasn’t going to get to see him again.
Then I was moving down the hall, reaching into my clutch and grabbing my phone as I went. No calls, I saw with relief, though it was later than I wanted it to be—and that meant I had to hustle if I was going to make the flight I’d booked for today, bound for LA and home.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did get that interview. And yes, I already had the article half-written in my head. I just hoped I could get home and start pitching it before anyone else did.
I hoped I got enough for it to cover the amount my parents needed for their house payment. And I hoped I could come up with another great idea before the end of next month.