“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. Lilacs, 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.
“And maybe, I will conveniently forget to mention the fact that there was a fiancé mart going on over here.” She scrunched her face up, as if this was all a joke. “I don’t know. I can’t decide if it looks bad if I omit the fact and let them jump to all kinds of conclusions like I did or if it is worse that you are picking a wife from a list of eligible candidates.”
“What conclusions did your devious mind jump to?”
“That you were building your own personal harem.”
Zayn hadn’t been shocked in a while, if ever. There were very few surprises in life for him. One extremely unpleasant one had been the exposé by Celebrity Spy! and the domino-like disasters it had started toppling in his life.
This was the second time. Of all the things in the world, the slender, pale woman to threaten him... His anger came slowly even then, like a discordant note underneath the shock coursing through him. Slowly, that shock dissipated, too, and he was thinking rationally again.
Only one course of action was suddenly visible to him.
The woman looked like an angel—all innocent outrage and yet, she had the guts to go up against him for her brother. There was no doubt. Zayn had never met a woman like her before.
“What you’re saying constitutes blackmail. And the man you’re blackmailing is the Sheikh of Khaleej, the most powerful man in the country. If you tangle with me, even your lofty connections in high places cannot protect you from the consequences. I could whisper a word and ruin your career prospects forever, if you do really have a career. I could make sure your father is never employed again by any university in Khaleej.”
Her skin took on a pale cast, making her topaz eyes gleam like rare gems even more. “If I’m going down, I’ll take you with me. But I will not let my brother rot in jail while there is still something I could do about it. I will not leave him to your tender, inconsistent mercies.”
Zayn couldn’t take the risk of this woman being out in the world, armed with the knowledge she had in her grip now.
He had made a bluff and she had called him on it. And at the end of it all, Mirah’s wedding would be at stake, her future happiness at stake.
And there was only one way he could see out of this. He didn’t like the decision one bit. He would have to put his plans on hold for a while. He would have to make do with this stubborn, irreverent, brassy woman, at least until things calmed down. Maybe even until Mirah’s wedding took place and the furor about his image and his allegedly scandalous private life calmed down.
The woman had the balls to blackmail a sheikh. While she was still thoroughly unsuitable to be his mistress, much less his sheikha, she was at least equipped to carry out this pretense; she would survive in the fierce political wranglings of the palace.
“There is only one solution I see for the situation you have created, Amalia.”
“Oh, I’m Amalia again?”
Now that he had come to a decision, her adversarial tone amused Zayn. He didn’t trust the cunning minx one bit but he had to admit she was an entertaining diversion after the recent publicity fiasco. “Seeing that we are going to be closely involved over the next few months, maybe even years, it seems only appropriate that I call you Amalia.” He took her stiff hands in his and pressed a kiss to the back of one hand. Her hand was cold and smooth against his lips, the tremor in her fingers going a long way to smooth his ire.
She jerked her hand back as if burned. Her feet stumbled in her anxiety to get away from him and he caught her by the waist. A sudden, raw image of that indent of her waist bared naked to him came with such forceful mastery that he loosened his hold on her.
The rough rush of her breath only heightened his awareness of her, the soft but unyielding femininity in his hands. “Now who’s talking crazy, Your Highness?”
“I have to insist you call me Zayn. Or else it is going to look very suspicious. Whatever our differences in private, Amalia, we have to put on a good show for the public and the media. The chemistry I feel between us should help with that.”
This time she pushed away from him again, and took several steps more. He laughed and she glared at him. “And I insist that you tell me what the hell is going on in your twisted mind right now.”
He made a clucking sound with his tongue. “And here I thought your intelligence might become an insurmountable barrier in our relationship.”
“What relationship? And for God’s sake, if you’re calling me stupid, then just do it in plain words.”
“Noted for future. I am telling you that I have made my choice. You are going to be my future wife for—”
She pulled her wrap around her like a weapon and headed for the door. If Zayn wasn’t blocking the door, he had a feeling she would have disappeared like the morning mist against a rising sun. If it stopped there, Zayn would have gladly let her go.
But he knew, as surely as the fact that he was taking a huge risk with her, she would not simply give up on her brother because she was attracted to the sheikh. At least, keeping her close, he could mitigate the risk she presented to his plans.
“Like hell I am.”
“We will have to clean up your language, ya habibiti. Or no one will believe that it is a love match.”
“I’m not your dear or darling. You think the world is foolish enough to assume Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi is capable of falling in love?”
“I like that you’re able to understand me so well already. Since it will be impossible to convince anyone that marrying you is advantageous to me in any way, we have to resort to the instant-love, must-marry approach.”
She came toward him then. The anxiety and panic in her eyes went a long way toward pacifying Zayn. “I cannot marry you.”
“I’m not offering the option to you.” He let his upper lip curl in distaste. “I stand by my word. You’re thoroughly unsuitable to be my wife. But you have very cunningly made yourself into a liability for me. A liability I have to take care of, at all costs.
“If I let you loose in the world, I have no idea what that tart mouth of yours will do. If I keep you, a strange, unmarried female in the palace, there will be talk about it. So, this is the only solution that is acceptable.
“You will be my fiancée, for all intents and purposes, until I say otherwise. And you will do so with grace and sophistication, and you will do the Al-Ghamdi family and Khaleej proud. When I deem it wise to release you on the world again, you will leave Sintar and Khaleej.”
“I refuse to participate in this charade.”
“The other option is to imprison you, too. Maybe I can have a special cell built for you by your twin’s side. Believe me, Amalia, that idea fills me with immense pleasure.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“Quid pro quo.”
“I...no one will believe that you chose me. I might choke before the first week is up. And how do you know I won’t still go to the media, that I will trust you to do the right thing?”
“You won’t jeopardize his chances of release.” He still could not believe that his cousin would let an innocent man take the fall like this. “I know how strong the need to ensure your sibling’s happiness could be, especially if you are the stronger one.”
“Aslam is not weak. He...just, he never recovered from our parents’ split.”
“You were just as young.”
“I learned to manage.”
He laughed again. “Can respond with calm and reason in extreme situations,” he said, mimicking her earlier tone. “Think of it as a challenge in your job.”
“Fine, but only if you promise that you will look into Aslam’s matter. And not after months or years, but immediately. Order your cousin home. Have my brother put in a minimum-care facility.”
His face hardened. “If he is guilty, Amalia, I warn you now, nothing you do will make me help him.”
“I know that he is not guilty.”
Stubbornness could have been defined with this woman in mind. “Fine. I will look into it. But remember, one toe out of line in public or in front of anyone else, one small glimpse of that irreverent attitude toward me in front of anyone else, and I will make sure Aslam never sees sunlight again.
“No one should suspect that this is a farce that came about because you had the gall to blackmail the sheikh.”
Eyes wide in her expressive face, she nodded. Irritated beyond measure, Zayn left the office. Before he was tempted to either kiss or kill the woman.
Neither impulse was one he could give in to, at least in the near future.