“I’m not here for an affair with you.”
“No?”
“A hundred times no. I came to meet with a state official about my brother Aslam’s case. I have spent two months dragging myself from one state office to the other, hoping someone would listen to me. He is in jail for—”
“Ah...so you’re a family of criminals, then?” His eyes were cold, flinty, his mouth a study in utter distaste. “Brother goes to jail, and sister inveigles herself into the palace under false pretenses. Is your father really a historian? Is anything you told me the truth?”
Amalia flinched. Her credibility was zero with him and she had no one but herself to blame. She softened her tone, hoping it would appeal to his good side. If he had one. “All I did was tell a white lie. No, I didn’t even do that. I just didn’t clear it up. I...couldn’t pass up the opportunity—”
“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. 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.”