Guests of the sheikh?
Passing a sun-dappled courtyard dotted with cool fountains and swaying palm trees on her left, she wondered why the women were being brought to the palace.
They could be applying to join the sheikh’s harem, the man having decided that he needed recreational variety closer to home now that his extracurricular activities had been exposed to the world’s media.
She snorted. Not even the playboy sheikh could justify a harem in this day and age. Could he?
What if he was building a strip club sort of thing here in the capital city of Sintar for his personal use and they were women from all over the world at the top of their career in pole dancing? A modern-day harem for one man—wasn’t that pretty much what a strip club was?
Not much of a leap, given that Celebrity Spy! had said the sheikh’s sexual appetites were voracious...
Or they could be princesses and queens and top-tier dignitaries from all over the world attending a banquet given by the royal family—hadn’t she read somewhere that his sister was to be married soon?—which meant the man who’d promised to see Amalia was probably busy with the details of the banquet and not coming for hours.
The second prospect sobered her spirits. But she couldn’t leave until she spoke to him about Aslam and the bogus drug charges built up against him while the real perpetrator was hiding in the lap of luxury.
The moment the palace official had agreed to see her, Amalia knew she’d been on the right path. Someone high up had to know they weren’t Aslam’s drugs.
She glanced behind her to the archway and realized she’d walked quite a way.
A heated conversation in the courtyard to her left lifted the hair on her neck. Alarmed, she opened the first door on her right and slipped inside.
Walking in from the bright light of the day momentarily blinded her vision. Faltering on her feet, she reached out with her hands and found a wall.
It took her a few seconds of blinking and focusing before she could see around the room. Her stomach quivered.
The room wasn’t completely dark as she’d thought first. A large skylight at the far side of the vast room cast a golden glow, showing a man sitting on a throne-like chair, complete with dark gold upholstery and clawlike feet. As if he was the king of everything he surveyed.
Shivers spewed over her spine, as if there was a predator in the room.
Light brown eyes first flicked to the pumps in her hand and then to her bare feet. “You are carrying your shoes instead of wearing them. Why?”
With a jerk, Amalia dropped the pumps and with them, plop went her heart.
Unlike the staff that had catered to her, the man spoke English with an aristocratic, upper-class accent. A deep baritone made the words fall over her like drops of ice-cold water over heated skin.
Without looking at him directly, she could feel the man’s intense gaze on her mouth. Her lips quivered. “I... I walked out into the courtyard and I was too hot.”
“I see that you are too hot.” The dry statement jerked her gaze up. Intelligent and imperious, his brown eyes were wide-spaced and hooded under the dark slashes of his eyebrows. And brimming with amusement. “Why did you walk into the courtyard?”
That made her tongue come unstuck from the roof of her mouth. “I got tired of waiting. If I had to sit on my behind any longer, I’m sure it would have been flattened under me, that’s how long—”
“I hope our furniture didn’t cause your...posterior any lasting harm.”
Her hand went to the particular section of her anatomy. “It’s hard enough to find clothes that fit my height within a budget, so yeah, a flattened backside is not good. And nope, it’s perfectly fine,” she quipped. And only after she spoke the words did she realize this whole line of conversation was ridiculous.
Embarrassment sent heat flooding up her neck, blocked her throat. And she wished she had a genie in hand, like in her father’s elaborate stories, to make herself disappear. Or at least, start over this whole conversation.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt...”
“Apology not required,” he said, and Amalia bit down on the retort that she hadn’t been offering one. “The process is taking longer than it should.” A hint of irritation peeked through that sentence. From anyone else, it could have been an apology. But Amalia was pretty sure he didn’t intend it to be one.
She pushed her feet into the pumps. One hand went to her stomach as if to shoo away the butterflies rioting in there, and one went to her hair. She expelled a sigh of relief when she realized her tight ponytail had stayed put. Once she made sure all of her person was intact—she needed that assurance—she raised her gaze.
Between one rushing heartbeat and the next, she became aware that the man’s utter dominance, over everything in the room, even over the very air she was struggling to breathe, was bred into his bones. His power clung to his skin, not his clothes or to this room or the throne.
It was centuries of legacy, she realized, a sheen of sweat covering her forehead now. He looked like a king because he was a bloody king. Or to use the right terminology, His Royal Highness, Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi of Khaleej. Brilliant statesman, inventive playboy that Celebrity Spy! claimed liked fast cars, fast technology and fast women.
Her first instinct was to mumble an apology and run from the room. The element of surprise was on her side and if she just went back through the unending corridor, back to the waiting area, she could lose herself and slither out of the palace.
Poised on the balls of her feet, Amalia forced herself to calm down and reconsider.
This was the sheikh, the man with all the power, the man who was responsible—fine, indirectly—for Aslam being wrongfully imprisoned. What were the chances that she would ever get an audience with him again?
No way could she tuck her tail between her legs and run away just because the man had to be the most dominating presence she’d ever felt.
Her breath seesawed through her chest as he stood up from the recliner, prowled the width of the room and then stood, leaning against an immense white oak desk. A sitting area to the right had a chaise longue.
Although lounging seemed like too still an activity for him.
The energy of the man, his sheer presence, filled the room and pressed at her from all sides, as if to demand acknowledgement and acquiescence.
A shining silver tea set on the side table made her aware of her parched throat.
As if she’d voiced her request out loud, he moved to the silver service, poured a drink—mint and lemon sherbet—into a tall silver tumbler and walked over to her.
That sense of being overwhelmingly pressed on a sensory level amplified. He had a sandalwood scent. And he gave off heat like there was a furnace inside him. Or was that she who was feeling the heat when really he was giving off none?
Sensations she didn’t like and couldn’t control continued to pour through her and Amalia just stood there, shuddering inwardly in the wake of them.
Where was the super-stalwart Amalia that Massi depended on? Where was the woman who’d been dubbed “the calm in the storm” by colleagues and coworkers?
“Drink. Strangers to the country forget that even when they do not sweat, the heat is still unrelenting.”
His command was supercilious, arrogant, exaggeratedly patient. Better if he thought her brain had short-circuited because of the heat than because of the sheer masculinity of the man.
“I’m not a stranger.”
His gaze swept over her. “You do not look like a woman from my country.”
She took the tumbler and drank the sherbet without pause. The liquid was a cool, refreshing breeze against her throat. Even her head felt better. Lowering the glass from her mouth, Amalia wondered if the man’s theory had credit.
Really, she’d been meandering for almost twenty minutes. Was it a stretch that she had lost her composure because of the heat? Armed with that defense, she extended the glass back to him. “Thanks, I needed that.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t take the glass she offered. He didn’t speak, either.
Slowly, Amalia raised her gaze and looked at him. Really looked at what had to be the most aggressively masculine specimen on the planet.
And promptly realized all her theories about heat and dehydration messing with her composure were just those: theories with a hefty dose of self-delusion.
Tall windows above and behind her cast just the right amount of golden light onto his face as if they, too, had been beat into submission by the will of this man.
A single brow rose imperiously, his gaze very much on her face. A gesture filled with a dark sarcasm. Was it because she had given the glass back to him, as if he was a servant? Was his sense of consequence so big that he was insulted by her innocent gesture?
He had short, thick, curving eyelashes that shaded his expression—a tactic she was sure he used to intimidate people. Light turned the brown of his eyes into a hundred golden hues, the eyes of a predatory cat.
Square jaw, rough with bristles, sat below high cheekbones and a straight nose that lent his features a hardness she didn’t like. His mouth was wide and thin-lipped. A mouth given to passion; the strange thought sent a shiver down her spine.
Amalia was tall, only two inches short of six feet. He topped over her easily by four or five inches. His neck was the same glistening tone as his face—a dark golden, as if he had been cast from one of those ancient metals that Khaleejians had used several centuries ago. Her father had had a small knife whose handle gleamed like his skin tone.