Married for the Sheikh's Duty(17)

If he’d forced her to confront her feelings, Amalia was sure she’d have thrown herself at him and sobbed. And the last thing she needed was to weaken, especially in front of a coldly calculating man like him. Fortunately, his answer had been a coolly delivered, “Of course.”

And just as she reached the door, he said, “You called me Zayn.” She heard his light footsteps on the carpet, felt the heat from his body stroke her back like an intimate caress. “But I have to admit, Amalia, never has my title sounded so good as when it falls from your impertinent mouth.”

Amalia didn’t turn around, an unexpected bashfulness rooting her to the floor. It seemed that the last and somehow stalwart barrier had been finally razed. He didn’t know it but she knew what it signified. She’d seen the man beneath the sheikh and as much as he tried to remove the real him from the man he needed to be, she had seen him. And worse, she was beginning to like the hell out of him.

That was about the only personal exchange they’d had in the whole week.

But as the first week merged into the second and Amalia was so thoroughly integrated into every aspect of his life, a different kind of strain began to descend on her. Like a thread of silk that was stretched too tight and too far.

What the endless number of teams and strategists and PR experts hadn’t taught Amalia was how to bear the little touches and intimate glances from the sheikh himself, how not to dissolve into a puddle at all the attention he showed her.

When his rock-hard thigh collided against hers, when his arm draped around her waist, becoming the center of attention for every cell in her, when he ran his shockingly abrasive fingers against her upper arm, almost without his knowledge it seemed, when she had replied to someone’s question about Sintar...it was a continual onslaught on her senses.

The boundaries she’d been so sure would come to her aid were already blurring under that dark, perceptive gaze. And yet, he seemed to be utterly unperturbed by the deluge of sensations that seemed to be drowning her.

After hours of perfectly synchronizing their acts, of playing the roles of affianced lovers a bit too well, they returned to their suite, and their masks fell away.

The easy camaraderie they shared through the day disappeared instantly.

Tension corkscrewed in the air around them, and more than once, Amalia had wondered desperately if it was only she who felt it. He ignored her so thoroughly in those moments that in contrast, thoughts of him and them began to consume Amalia.

She didn’t fit into his life, in any way, she kept reminding herself, but it didn’t stop her from imagining them as a couple.

His comments about her appearance were always polite, impersonal, just adequate. Which perversely made her pay even more attention to her outfit and her makeup and her hair. Only to be disappointed again and again at his changing behavior toward her in the last week.

While the little bits and pieces of information she hoarded about him made her own attraction to him more and more consuming.

That he was a ruthless boss but a fair one, too.

That beneath the cloak of power he wore for Khaleej, he was at heart still a dreamer.

“Why do you think I’m in such a hurry to beget sons?” he’d said, when she’d called on his fixation with an heir. “The moment they’re ready, I will pass on the mantle of Khaleej to their capable hands and then I’m going to start my career and live my dream.”

Amalia hadn’t had the heart to tell him that she couldn’t imagine Zayn ever chucking that duty away, that he’d probably serve Khaleej in one way or the other until his last breath. But then she’d caught a glimpse of a faraway look in his eyes, the hard curve to his mouth as he watched the young apprentice architect describe some building design and she’d realized that he knew.

That the duty-bound, coldly powerful sheikh always, always came first and far behind was Zayn the man himself.

That if, a big if, he had felt any attraction to her that first day they had met, he’d have effectively killed it by now because Amalia Christensen didn’t fit in to the life of Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi.

It had been a painfully vulnerable moment to witness—she was sure Zayn didn’t even realize how well she understood him now—a moment that defined her relationship with him for Amalia, the moment that had brought home pretty hard that at some point, Amalia had started believing in the powerful charade, that she’d passed from attraction to admiration to feeling something much more powerful and terrifying for Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi, the man who found her unsuitable for everything other than posing as his fake fiancée during the day and as his efficient PA at night.

The last night of their two-week itinerary, they were attending a charity fund-raiser gala. The charity named Hope supported young professionals who came from underprivileged backgrounds. Amalia had found it really interesting that four of its most important and generous patrons were the Dirty Four exposed in the Celebrity Spy! Article, including Zayn.

When she’d taunted him about how he would know anything about being underprivileged, he’d given her a scathing glance.

Yes, her remark had been irreverent but Amalia’s curiosity had been genuine. How could a man who had everything—power, good looks, intelligence—understand someone else? How could a mere woman hope to amount to something to a man like that?

Which was what she’d been doing. And yet, he had proved Amalia wrong.

From his discussion with the patroness to his highly detailed and involved questions about the candidate they’d chosen to receive the scholarship this year, she’d realized this wasn’t an impersonal event where he showed his face and disappeared.

Only when Amalia and Zayn had been introduced to a freshly graduated architect before the evening began had she realized the importance of the event and the charity itself to Zayn. This charity was Zayn’s project, not the sheikh’s.

When she’d asked the thrilled protégé what he was most excited about, his answer had been the project he’d been assigned to in Sintar. Amalia had seen the bittersweet smile in Zayn’s face, and for the first time, felt shame at how prejudiced she’d been. Zayn could’ve become bitter over what he was denied but he’d found a different way to find satisfaction.

Why hadn’t her mother done the same? For so many years after they had left Khaleej, Amalia had heard from her mother about all the things her father had forbidden her to do. And yet, she had only wasted her life, filled with that bitterness.

She could have pursued all the things she complained her father hadn’t let her do, she could have loved and cherished Amalia, she could have asked Aslam to visit them...instead, she had wallowed in that grief, given up interest on life.

How much of that bitterness had she passed on to Amalia herself?

She’d made so many assumptions about Zayn and he had proved her wrong every time. How many things in life had she denied herself because she had borne witness to her mother’s pain and her failures?

That evening she dressed in an ice-blue fitted shift dress that played hide-and-seek with her knees. The perfect cut made the most of the dip of her waist and the flare of her hip and her legs. It was both trendy and elegant, and Amalia never tired of that style.

Purple pumps had added a flash of color to her outfit. Her thick, wavy hair, had taken two hours to blow dry, straighten and then beat into submission into a chic chignon at the back of her head.

Unlike the last couple of weeks, she found pleasure in dressing up for the evening. Anticipation and excitement made her movements jumpy as she used the naked palettes and a black eyeliner, as the makeup artist had shown her to do, to achieve the kind of glamour she’d only seen on magazine covers before.

And when she had joined Zayn outside the banquet hall where the fund-raiser was being hosted, all of her breath had piled into her throat.

The black tux hugging his wide shoulders and tapering off, he looked like he belonged on the cover of GQ. Power and charm radiated from him. A frisson of knee-melting awareness snaked down her spine as he pushed off from the wall.

She was aware of a quiet hush descending around the guests that were already there. Her muscles shook all over, anticipation a bubble in her chest. Even though his gaze swept over her in a leisurely appraisal, all he said was, “You keep getting better and better at this.”

Swallowing her disappointment, Amalia stared back at him. It was a wonder she could speak at all. “At what?”

“At this touch-me-not ice-princess image you project. At making me believe that this is the real you.” There was a thread of something in his tone that Amalia couldn’t quite pin down. At his signal, his junior aide appeared, a box in his hand.

With that arrogance that seemed to be embedded in his very blood, Zayn waited while the man opened the velvet case and extended it toward him, all the while his brown eyes cataloged every small detail about her.

Heat she couldn’t fight flooded Amalia at this pointed, masculine appraisal. Her skin felt too tight, her nipples peaking to attention, and a low thrum began to beat in her lower belly. He was doing this on purpose, she realized with a horrified gasp; still, she couldn’t stop her reaction.

She would be damned if he let her use her attraction to him as some kind of weapon. Chin tilted, Amalia glared back at him. “If you tell me what I have done to—”