The Sheikh's Convenient Bride

And not a moment too soon.

CHAPTER THREE

MEGAN left work at six-thirty, almost an hour later than usual.

Since she’d expected to be quick-marched out of the building after her confrontation with the sheikh, leaving late wasn’t too bad.

To her surprise, Simpson hadn’t fired her. Either he’d believed her lawsuit threat or…

Or what?

She was glad she still had her job, but she couldn’t figure out the reason.

Megan sighed as she stepped from the elevator.

Actually she couldn’t figure out much of anything anymore, including why she’d never even imagined she could win a legal battle. Not that she regretted anything she’d said to either Simpson or Sheikh Qasim. It was just that nothing seemed quite as black and white as it had hours before.

Rain was beating against the glass lobby doors. Great. The weatherman had predicted overcast skies. How come those guys never got it right?

How come she hadn’t? Megan asked herself as she turned up her collar and stepped into the street.

Threatening to sue had sounded good. Telling the sheikh what she thought of him had felt good. Great…except, all she’d really done was commit professional suicide. Odds were she’d be digging through the employment ads by next week.

A gust of wind blew the chill rain into her face. Too bad something like that hadn’t happened hours earlier. She could have used an icy dousing around then.

Tremont, Burnside and Macomb was a prestigious firm. So what if her boss was an ass? That didn’t change the facts. She’d behaved stupidly, first with her boss, then with her client…

Except, the sheikh wasn’t her client, and that was probably a good thing because she never could have worked with him. How could you work with a man who was so obnoxious? So rude? So over-bearing and demanding and arrogant?

How could you work with a man who kissed you and turned your bones to jelly?

Megan reached the parking lot, unlocked her car and tossed her briefcase and purse on the passenger seat. She slid behind the wheel, started the engine and turned up the heat. She was drenched and her teeth were chattering.

There was no sense in lying to herself. Qasim had kissed her and she’d kissed him back. It had only been a kiss, but it had left her breathless. Who knew what might have happened if his aide hadn’t interrupted them?

She swallowed hard and stared through the rain-streaked windshield. The other cars were blurs of color.

That was how she’d felt when they’d kissed. As if the world had disappeared and only the colors of it remained.

Damn it.

She gave herself a little shake, turned on the windshield wipers and headed into the street.

She’d absolutely made a mess of things, from start to finish. Too much caffeine. Okay, too much caffeine and too little common sense. She shouldn’t have lost her temper and backed herself into a figurative corner.

And she shouldn’t have been such an easy target for a man who undoubtedly thought women were for only one thing.

The truth was that nothing would have happened if Hakim or Akim, whatever the Head Flunky’s name was, hadn’t shown up.

“Nothing at all,” she muttered, and pulled out into traffic, which was even more horrible than usual. Well, why not? An extra hour spent creeping home on slick roads would be the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Her life was starting to feel like a soap opera.

She hit every red light between the parking lot and the freeway entrance ramp. Okay, she thought, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. That gave her plenty of time to try and figure out why Simpson hadn’t dumped her.

Could he really have fallen for the lawsuit thing?

No. The Worm was a rat and if that was a mixed metaphor, so be it. The point was, rats were miserable creatures but they weren’t stupid. Her boss had seen through her threat.

He had to know that she wouldn’t go to the media, either. Any action she took that would tarnish the company and the sheikh would tarnish her.

Goodbye, career. Goodbye, all these years spent climbing the corporate ladder.

Simpson had to know she’d calm down and come to her senses.

But the sheikh had no way of knowing it. He’d fall for anything she said. Obviously he had. That was the reason he’d made that loathsome offer to buy her off.

Had he gone to Simpson? Told her boss not to worry, that he had things under control? Was that why Simpson hadn’t fired her, or even come near her for the balance of the day?

Maybe so.

Well, they were both in for a big surprise. Just let His Almightiness try and send her a check. Just let the Worm try to think she could be bought off. Just let…

“Stop,” Megan said firmly. “Just stop.” She was working herself up all over again, and for what? She’d already decided what to do with a check, if the sheikh sent one. As for Simpson…She wouldn’t let him buy her off, either. To hell with the big Hollywood client. To hell with the partnership. She’d polish up her résumé, call up a headhunter, find herself a new job…

And lose the chance to make partner. Simpson saw it as a bribe but she deserved it. She was a hard worker. An excellent financial analyst. Was she really going to let Simpson and the insufferable Qasim of Suliyam make her lose everything she’d striven for?

She was not.

If she could just come up with the reason for Simpson’s silence…

Her cell phone rang. Megan ignored it. She hated taking calls when she was driving, especially in heavy traffic made even worse by a steady rain. Whoever it was would call back. Or leave a message. Or—

Or be as persistent as an ant at a picnic. The phone rang again. And again. The fourth time, she kept her eyes on the wet road and dug the phone from her purse.

“This better be important,” she said, “because I am knee-deep in rain and traffic and—”

“Megan?”

“Yes?” she said cautiously. It was a male voice, familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

‘‘Thank God,’’ the voice said, and sighed with relief. ‘‘It’s Frank.’’

‘‘Who?’’

“Frank Fisher. From the office.”

“Frank?” Her mind buzzed with questions. Why was he calling her? And why did he sound so…panicked?

“Look, I hate to bother you, but—but, uh, I guess Mr. Simpson spoke to you about, uh, about things.”

Mr. Simpson? Her eyes narrowed. “If you mean, did he tell me that you’re stealing my work and claiming it as your own, yes. He spoke to me about, uh, things.”

“Hey. I didn’t steal anything. This wasn’t my idea, it was Mr. Simpson’s.”

Oh, hell. Frank was right, it wasn’t his fault. It would have been nice if he’d spoken up and told the Worm he wouldn’t take credit for something that wasn’t his, but Frank was spineless. Everyone in the office knew it. Intelligent, but spineless. Simpson had chosen him wisely.

“Forget it,” she said wearily.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

A horn bleated behind her. She looked in the mirror, saw, through the water racing down the rear window, a small, low, obscenely expensive sports car. Typically L.A., and no doubt driven by a typically L.A. jerk who thought the car would make him look more important than he really was. She couldn’t see the driver, thanks to the rain, but she didn’t have to. She knew the type.

“Yeah, well, it’s good of you to call, Frank. I mean, the apology doesn’t change anything, but—”

“The apology?” Frank cleared his throat. “Uh, right, right. I’m glad you understand but actually—actually, I called to ask you something.”

Megan frowned. “What?”

“Well,” Frank said, and paused. “Well, see, I was reading through your—through my—through the proposal—”

Megan felt the blood start to drum in her ears. “Get to it, Frank. What do you want?”

“There are a couple of things here I don’t quite follow…”

Frank began to babble. A couple of minutes later, it was clear there were lots of things he didn’t follow. Like, for instance, the entire purpose of her suggestions for the investments the sheikh was seeking.

“He’s rich, right?”

“Stinking rich,” Megan agreed.

“And they’ve already got oil coming out of the faucets in Suminan, right?”

“Suliyam. Yes, the oil’s pumping. But there’s more to be found, and there are minerals in the mountains…”

And what was she doing, giving Frank a quick education based on her research? The man was an idiot. Why should she help him? Damn it, the jerk behind her was beeping his horn again.

“What?” she snarled, shooting an angry look in the mirror. Did Mr. Impatient expect her to fly over the cars ahead of her?

“I need answers, Megan. That’s what.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Frank.”

“Yeah, but I need answers.” Frank’s voice cracked. “And soon. I’m meeting the sh—I’m meeting my client in less than an hour and, like I said, I just took a quick look at this proposal and—”

“And you’re in over your head,” Megan said sweetly, and hit the disconnect button so forcefully she thought she might have broken it.

The phone rang a second later. She ignored it. It rang again, and she grabbed the phone, shut it off and, for good measure, tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat.

This was why Simpson hadn’t fired her.

He needed her. All that crap about her staying in L.A. to assist Fisher was just that. Crap. She was going to stay here and force-feed everything to her replacement. Frank would get the scepter. She’d get the shaft.

“Forget it,” she snapped.

No way was she going to take that kind of treatment. What was with men, anyway? Three of them had tried to step on her today. Simpson. Fisher. And the sheikh.

“Don’t forget the sheikh, Megan,” she said out loud, but how could she possibly forget a man so despicable?

He’d kissed her. So what? It was a kiss. That was all, just a kiss. Okay, so he was good at it. Damned good, but why wouldn’t he be when he’d been with a zillion women? That was what he did. Made love to women, ordered his flunkies around, and sat on his butt the rest of the time, counting his money, figuring out ways to make it grow.

What else would a rich, incredibly good-looking Prince of the Desert do with his life?

To think that such a man believed he could buy her…

The idiot behind her hit his horn again. This time, it was a long, long blast that seemed to go on forever.

Megan looked in the mirror.

“Go on,” she snarled, “pass me if you can, you idiot!”

The horn blared again. Megan cursed, put down her window just enough so she could stick out her hand and make the universal sign of displeasure. She’d never done such a thing before in her life but oh, it felt good!

The driver behind her swung out, horn blasting in answer to her gesture. He cut in front of her, then put on the speed and zoomed away, in and out of the smallest possible breaks in traffic until he vanished from sight.

“Are you really in such an all-fired hurry to get to hell?” she yelled.

Then she put up her window, glared straight ahead and wished nothing but life’s worst on the Worm, the Sheikh, Frank Fisher, and the idiot driving the Lamborghini.

California drivers were not only fools, they were foolhardy.

The mood he was in, Caz had half a mind to force the VW onto the shoulder of the freeway, yank open the driver’s door and tell the cretin behind the wheel that making a crude gesture to a stranger wasn’t a good idea.

Luckily for the cretin, he was in a hurry.

The traffic had been bumper to bumper. When it finally loosened up, he’d waited for the guy ahead to start moving. He hadn’t. Or maybe she hadn’t. Caz had pretty much generated a picture of who was behind the VW’s wheel. A woman. Middle-aged, peering over the steering wheel with trepidation, nervous about the rain.

The finger-in-the-air thing had changed his mind.

No gray-haired Nervous Nellie would make such a gesture. She wouldn’t yap on a cell phone while she was driving, either. At least, he thought he’d seen the driver holding a cell phone to her ear. It was hard to tell much of anything because of the rain, and who was it who’d said it never rained in Southern California?

Hell.

He had to calm down.

Driving fast would help. It always did. It was what he did at the end of virtually every meeting with his advisors back home, take one of his cars out on the straight black road that went from one end of Suliyam to the other.

From no place to nowhere, his mother used to say.

Caz always thought of her when he was in California. She’d left his father and come here, where she’d been born, when he was ten. She died when he was twelve, and he’d only spent summers with her for the intervening two years.

“Won’t you come home with me, Mama?” he’d ask at the end of each summer. And she’d hug him tightly and say she’d come home soon…

But she never did.

He’d hated her for a little while, when he was thirteen or fourteen and Hakim let slip that she’d left his father and him because she’d despised living in Suliyam. He hadn’t known that. His father had always told him his mother had gone back to her beloved California for a holiday, that she’d taken ill and had to stay there to get the proper medical care.

It turned out only part of that was true. She’d gotten sick and died in California, all right, but she hadn’t gone for a holiday. She’d abandoned everything. Her husband, her adopted country…

Her son.

Caz frowned, saw an opening in the next lane and shot into it.

It had all happened more than twenty years ago. Water under the bridge, as the Americans said.

He had more important things to think about.

Caz sighed. He was wound up like a spring about tonight’s dinner appointment. He had to relax. That woman was to blame for his bad mood. What an aggressive female! A feminist, to the core.

Was that the genie in the bottle he’d be setting loose, once he began implementing his plans back home? Maybe, and maybe he’d regret it, but you couldn’t lead a nation into the twenty-first century without granting rights and privileges to all its citizens.

Even women.

Surely they wouldn’t all turn out like…

No. He wasn’t going to think about Megan O’Connell. He’d wasted too much time on her already. All in all, this day had been a mess.

First that abominable meeting this morning. He’d taken one look at the buffet table, the champagne, the people staring at him and he’d been tempted to turn and walk out. He hadn’t, of course. He was his nation’s emissary. Manners, protocol, were everything.

How come he’d forgotten that with the woman? He’d lost it with her and he knew it but, damn it, she’d deserved it. That temper. Those threats…

Those eyes, that mouth, the certainty that the body beneath the awful suit was meant for pleasure…

“Hell,” Caz said, and stepped harder on the gas.

Business. That was what he had to concentrate on tonight.

It was what he’d wanted to concentrate on this morning, but Simpson had screwed it up. Instead of serious discussion with the man who’d written that excellent proposal, he’d had to endure an eternity of all those people fawning over him.

Bad enough his own countrymen insisted on treating him as if he were Elvis risen from the dead. That, at least, was understandable. It was tradition, the same tradition, unchanged for centuries, that would make implementing his plans a rough sell. His advisors would look aghast at his determination to create a modern infrastructure in Suliyam by opening it to foreign investors. He intended to commit much of his own vast fortune to the plan, as well.

His people would balk, protest, tell him such things could not be done.

It was tradition.

And it was tradition, too, that said he could not possibly bring a woman into Suliyam as his financial advisor.

He had explained all of that to Simpson from the first. He knew there were bright, well-educated women in the west. Hadn’t his mother been one of them? But Suliyam wasn’t ready for such things. He supposed it was one of the reasons his parents’ marriage had fallen apart.

He hadn’t told that to Simpson, of course, but he’d made it clear he would not be able to work with anyone but a man.

‘‘No problem, your worship,’’ Simpson had said.

“I am not called by that title,” Caz had told him pleasantly. “Please, just address me as Sheikh Qasim.”

Hakim had given him a look that meant he didn’t approve. Caz had ignored him. Hakim was devoted and loyal, but he believed in the old ways and those days were coming to an end.

“I will assign my best person to write this proposal, your majesty,” Simpson had replied.

Caz put on his signal light and shot across three lanes of traffic to the exit ramp.

He’d given up correcting the little man. What did it matter how Simpson addressed him as long as he found the right man to get the job done?

He had. The proposal was everything Caz had hoped for and more. He’d searched hard for the right firm to handle the account, narrowed his choices to three and asked them to come up with written proposals for the best possible utilization of investment funds in Suliyam.

Three months later, each company had submitted a fine proposal. Still, making the final decision had been easy. The T S and M report stood head and shoulders above the others. Caz knew he’d found his man.

Simpson was an annoyance, but Frank Fisher, whose name was on the proposal, was brilliant. He was the right person for the job: logical, methodical, pragmatic.

All the things Megan O’Connell wasn’t.

The woman was a creature of temper and temperament, all blistering heat one moment and bone-chilling ice the next. Their encounter proved, as if proof were necessary, that she could not possibly have written the document in question.

It took no great genius to figure out that Simpson was right about her.

She’d accept the money Caz had offered and be grateful for it. The thought of paying her off infuriated him, but sometimes the old saying was right. Better to placate the occasional jackal than to lose the entire flock.

Caz glanced at his watch. Almost seven. He was meeting Fisher for dinner. He hadn’t intended to bother with such a meeting—Fisher was making the flight to Suliyam with him tomorrow, so there’d be plenty of time to talk—but Fisher hadn’t been present this morning. He was tying up loose ends on another account, Simpson said.

No problem, Caz had answered.

But he’d reconsidered. He really did want to meet Fisher as soon as possible. There was always the faint chance they wouldn’t hit it off. If Fisher were anything like Simpson, for instance. If Caz intimidated him simply by being there, they’d never be able to work together.

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