Mistress Of The Sheikh

“It may sound funny now, but if you’d been there—”

“I know how you must have felt,” Dawn said, her smile fading. “After he hauled me out of the Dean’s office, I thought he was going to have me shipped home and locked in the women’s quarters for the rest of my life.”

“If your brother remembers me from that night—”

“If he does, I’ll tell him he’s wrong. Oh, stop worrying. He won’t remember. It was the middle of the night. You didn’t have a drop of makeup on, your hair was long then and probably hanging in your face. Look, if it all goes bad and Nicky gets angry at anybody for this, it’ll be me.”

“I know. But still…”

Still, Amanda thought uneasily, she’d never forgotten her first, her only, meeting with Nicholas al Rashid.

Dawn had talked about him. And Amanda had read about him. The tabloids loved the sheikh: his incredible looks, his money, his power…his women.

Back then, Amanda didn’t usually read that kind of thing. Her literary aspirations were just that. Literary. She’d been an English major, writing and reading poetry nobody but other English majors understood, although she’d been starting to think about changing her major to architectural design.

Whichever, the tabloids were too smarmy to catch her interest. And yet she found herself reaching for those awful newspapers at the supermarket checkout whenever she saw a photo of Dawn’s brother on the front page.

Well, why wouldn’t she? The man was obviously full of himself. It was like driving past an automobile accident; you didn’t want to look but you just couldn’t keep from doing it.

Dawn thought he was wonderful. “Nicky’s a sweetheart,” she always said. “I can’t wait until you meet him.”

And, without warning, Amanda did.

It was the week before finals of their freshman year. Dawn was going to a frat party. She’d tried to convince Amanda to go, too, but Amanda had an exam in Renaissance design the next morning so she begged off, stayed in the dorm room they shared while Dawn partied.

Unfortunately, Dawn had one beer too many. She ended up sneaking into the bell tower at two in the morning along with half a dozen of the frat brothers, and they’d all decided it would be cool to play the carillon.

The campus police didn’t agree. They brought Dawn and the boys down, hustled them into the security office and phoned their respective families.

Amanda was blissfully unaware of any of it. She’d crawled into bed, pulled the blanket over her head and fallen into exhausted sleep just past midnight.

A few hours later, she awoke to the pounding of a fist on the door of her dorm room. She sprang up in bed, heart pounding as hard as the fist, switched on the bedside lamp and pushed the hair out of her eyes.

“Who’s there?”

“Open this door,” a male voice demanded.

Visions conjured up from every horror movie she’d ever seen raced through her head. Her eyes flashed to the door, and her heartbeat went from fast to supersonic. She hadn’t locked it, not with Dawn out—

“Open the door!”

Amanda scrambled from the bed, prayed her quaking knees would hold up long enough for her to fly across the room and throw the bolt—

The door burst open.

A thin, high shriek burst from her throat. A man dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt stood in the doorway, filling the space with his size, his rage, his very presence.

“I am Nicholas al Rashid,” he roared. “Where is my sister?”

It took a few seconds for the name to register. This broad-shouldered man in jeans, this guy with the silver eyes and the stubbled jaw, was Dawn’s brother?

She started to smile. He wasn’t a mad killer after all…but he might as well have been.

The sheikh strode across the room, grabbed her by the front of her oversize D is For Design T-shirt and hauled her toward him. “I asked you a question, woman,” Nicholas al Rashid said. “Where is my sister?”

To this day, it bothered Amanda that fear had nearly paralyzed her. She’d only been able to cower and stammer instead of bunching up her fist and slugging the bastard. A good right to the midsection was exactly what the tyrannical fool deserved.

But she was just eighteen, a girl who’d grown up in the sheltered world of exclusive boarding schools and summer camps. And the man standing over her was big, furious and terrifying.

So she’d swallowed a couple of times, trying to work up enough saliva so she could talk, and then she’d said that she didn’t know where Dawn was.

Obviously, that wasn’t the answer the sheikh wanted.

“You don’t know,” he said, his voice mocking hers. His hand tightened on her shirt and he hauled her even closer, close enough so she was nose to chest with him. “You don’t know?”

“Dawn is—she’s out.”

“She’s out,” he repeated with that same cold sarcasm that was meant, she knew, to reduce her to something with about as much size and power as a mouse.

It got to her then. That he’d broken into her room. That he was on her turf, not his. That he was behaving as if this little piece of America was, instead, his own desert kingdom.

“Yes,” she’d answered, lifting her chin as best she could, considering that his fist was wrapped in her shirt, forcing herself to meet his narrowed, silver eyes. “Yes, she’s out, and even if I knew where she was, I wouldn’t tell you, you—you two-bit dictator!”

She knew instantly she’d made a mistake. His face paled; a muscle knotted in his jaw and his mouth twisted in a way that made her blood run cold.

“What did you call me?” His voice was soft with the promise of malice.

“A two-bit dictator,” she said again, and waited for the world to end. When, instead, a thin smile curved his mouth, she went from angry to furious. “Does that amuse you, Mr. Rashid?”

“You will address me as Lord Rashid.” His smile tilted, so she could see the cruelty behind it. “And what amuses me is the realization that if we were in my country, I would have your tongue cut out for such insolence.”

A drop of sweat beaded on Amanda’s forehead. She had no doubt that he meant it but by then, she was beyond worrying about saying, or doing, the right thing. Never, not in all her life, had she despised anyone as she despised Nicholas al Rashid.

“This isn’t your country. It’s America. And I am an American citizen.”

“And you are a typical American female. You have no morals.”

“Oh, and you’d certainly know all about American females and morals, wouldn’t you?”

His eyes narrowed. “I take it that’s supposed to have some deep meaning.”

“Just let go of me,” Amanda said, grunting as she twisted against the hand still clutching her shirt. “Dammit, let go!”

He did. His fist opened, so quickly and unexpectedly that she stumbled backward. She stood staring at the man who’d invaded her room, her breasts heaving under the thin cotton shirt.

For the first time, he looked at her. Really looked at her. She could almost feel the touch of those silver eyes as they swept her from head to toe. He took in her sleep-tousled hair, her cotton shirt, the long length of her naked legs…

Amanda felt her face, then her body, start to burn under that arrogant scrutiny. She wanted to cover herself, put her arms over her breasts, but she sensed that to do so would give him even more of an advantage than he already had.

“Get out of my room,” she said, her voice trembling.

Instead, his eyes moved over her again, this time with almost agonizing slowness. “Just look at you,” he said very softly.

The words were coated with derision—derision, and something else. Amanda could hear it in his voice. She could read it in the way his eyes darkened. There was more to the message than the disparagement of American women and their morality. Despite her lack of experience, she knew that what he’d left unspoken was a statement of want and desire, raw and primitive and male.

It was three in the morning. She was alone in her room with a man twice her size, a man who wore his anger like a second skin…

A man more beautiful, and overwhelmingly masculine, than any she’d ever imagined or known in her entire life.

To her horror, she’d felt her body begin to quicken. A slow heat coiled low in her belly; her breasts lifted and her nipples began to harden so that she almost gasped at the feel of them thrusting against the thin cotton of her T-shirt.

He saw it, too.

His eyes went to her breasts, lingered, then lifted to her face. Amanda felt her heart leap into her throat as he took a step forward.

“Sire.”

He moved toward her, his eyes never leaving hers. The heat in her belly swept into her blood.

“Sire!”

Amanda blinked. A little man in a shiny black suit had come into the room. He scuttled toward the sheikh, laid his hand on the sheikh’s muscled forearm.

“My lord, I have located your sister.”

The sheikh turned to the man. “Where is she?”

The little man looked at his hand, lying against the sheikh’s tanned skin, and snatched it back. “Forgive me, sire. I did not mean to touch—”

“I asked you a question.”

Abdul dropped to his knees and lowered his head until his brow almost touched the floor. “She awaits your will, Lord Rashid, in the office of the Dean of Students.”

That had done it. The sight of the old man, kneeling in obeisance to a surly tyrant, the thought of Dawn, awaiting the bully’s will…

Amanda’s vision cleared.

“Get out,” she’d said fiercely, “before I have you thrown out. You’re nothing but a—a savage. And I pity Dawn, or any woman, who has anything to do with you.”

The sheikh’s mouth had twisted, the hard, handsome face taking on the look of a predator about to claim its prey.

“Sire,” the little man had whispered, and without another word, Nicholas al Rashid had spun on his heel and walked out of the room.

Amanda had never seen him again.

He’d taken Dawn out of school, enrolled her in a small women’s college. But the two of them had remained friends through Amanda’s change of careers, through her marriage and divorce.

Over the years, her encounter with the sheikh had faded from her memory.

Almost.

There were still times she awoke in the night with the feel of his eyes on her, the scent of him in her nostrils—

“Mandy,” Dawn said, “your face is like an open book.”

Amanda jerked her head up. Dawn grinned.

“You’re still mortified, thinking about how Nicky stormed into our room all those years ago, when he was trying to find me.”

Amanda cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, I am. And you know, the more I think about this, the more convinced I am it’s not going to work.”

“What’s not going to work? I told you, he won’t remember you. And even if he does—”

“Dawn,” Amanda said, reaching for the purse she’d dropped on one of the glass-topped tables on the enormous terrace, “I appreciate what you’ve tried to do for me. Honestly, I do. But—”

“But you don’t need this job.”

“Of course I need it. But—”

“You don’t,” Dawn said, striking a pose, “because you’re going to make your name in New York by waving a magic wand. ‘Hocus-pocus, I now pronounce me the decorator of the decade.’”

“Come on, Dawn,” Amanda said with a little smile.

“Not that it matters, because you’ve found a way to pay your rent without working.”

Amanda laughed.

“Well, what, then? Have you changed your mind about taking money from your mother?”

“Taking it from my stepfather, you mean.” Amanda grimaced. “I don’t want Jonas Baron’s money. It comes with too many strings attached.”

“Taking alimony from that ex of yours, then.”

“Even more strings,” Amanda said, and sighed. This was not a good idea. She could feel it in her bones—but only an idiot would walk away from an opportunity like this. “Okay,” she said before she could talk herself out of it again, “I’ll try.”

“Good girl.” Dawn looped her arm through Amanda’s. The women walked slowly from the terrace into the living room. “Mandy, you know this makes sense. Doing the interior design for Sheikh Nicholas al Rashid’s Fifth Avenue penthouse will splash your name everywhere it counts.”

“Still, even if your brother agrees—”

“He has to. You’re my birthday gift to him, remember?”

“Won’t he care that he’ll be my first client?”

“Your first New York client.”

“Well, yeah. But I didn’t really work when I lived in Dallas. You know how Paul felt about my having a career.”

“Once I tell Nick you designed for Jonas Baron, and for Tyler and Caitlin Kincaid, he’ll be sold.”

Amanda came to a dead stop. “Are you nuts? Me, decorate my stepfather’s house? Jonas would probably shoot anybody who tried to move a chair!”

“You did your mother’s sitting room, didn’t you?”

“Sure. But that was different. It was one room—”

“The room’s in the Baron house, right?”

“Dawn, come on. That’s hardly—”

“Well, what about the Kincaids?”

“All I did was rip out some of the froufrou, replace it with pieces Tyler had in his house in Atlanta and suggest a couple of new things. That’s hardly the same as redoing a fourteen-room penthouse.”

Dawn slapped her hands on her hips. “For heaven’s sake, Mandy, will you let me handle this? What do you want me to say? ‘Nick, this is Amanda. Remember her? The last time you met, you chewed her out for being a bad influence on me. Now she’s going to spend a big chunk of your money doing something you really don’t want done, and by the way, you’re her very first real client.”’

Amanda couldn’t help it. She laughed. “I guess it doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation.”

“No, it doesn’t. And I thought we both just agreed you need this job.”

“You’re right,” Amanda said glumly, “I do.”

“Darned right, you do. At least redo the suite Nicky lets me use whenever I’m in town. Did you ever see such awful kitsch?” Dawn gave Amanda a quick hug when she smiled. “That’s better. Just let me do the talking, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dawn quickened her pace as they started up the wide staircase that led to the second floor. “We’ll have to hurry. You put on that slinky red dress, fix your hair, spritz on some perfume and get ready to convince my brother he’d be crazy to turn up his regal nose at the chance to have this place done by the one, the only, the incredible Amanda Benning.”

“You ever think about going into PR?”

“You can put me on the payroll after the first time your name shows up in the—oh, damn! We never finished our tour. You haven’t seen Nick’s suite.”

“That’s all right.” Amanda patted the pocket of her silk trousers. “I’ll transfer my camera into my evening bag.”

“No, don’t do that.” Dawn shuddered dramatically as she opened the door to her rooms. “If Nick sees you taking pictures, he’ll figure you for a media spy and…” She grinned and sliced her hand across her throat. “How’s this? You shower first, get dressed, then grab a quick look. His rooms are at the other end of the hall.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Amanda said quickly. “What if the sheikh comes in while I’m poking around?”

“He won’t. Nicky promised he’d be on time, but he’s always late. He hates stuff like this. You know, public appearances, being the center of attention. The longer he can delay his entrance, the better he likes it.”

Amanda thought about the walking ego who’d shoved his way into her room, unasked and unannounced.

“I’ll bet,” she said, and softened the words with a smile. “But I’d still feel more comfortable if you were with me.”

“I promise I’ll join you just as soon as I turn myself into the gorgeous, desirable creature we both know I am. Okay?”

Amanda hesitated, told herself she was being an idiot, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Good.” Dawn kicked off her shoes. “In that case, the shower’s all yours.”

Twenty minutes later, Amanda paused outside the door to the sheikh’s rooms.

If anybody took her pulse right now, they’d probably enter the result in the record books. She could feel it galloping like a runaway horse, but why wouldn’t it?

It wasn’t every day she sneaked into a man’s bedroom to take pictures and make notes. Into the bedroom of a man who demanded people address him as “Lord”. A man to whom other men bowed.

Instinct told her to turn tail and run. Necessity told her to stop being a coward. She was wasting time, and there really wasn’t much to waste. Ten minutes, if Dawn was wrong and the sheikh showed up promptly.

She ran a nervous hand through the short, pale gold hair that framed her face, took the tiny digital camera from her evening purse and tapped at the door.

“Sheikh Rashid?”

There was no answer. The only sounds that carried through the vastness of the penthouse were snatches of baroque music from the quartet setting up in the library far below.

Amanda straightened her shoulders, opened the door and stepped inside the room.

It was clearly a man’s domain. Dawn had said her brother hadn’t changed any of the furnishings in the penthouse and Amanda could believe that—everywhere but here. This one room bore a stamp that she instantly knew was the sheikh’s.

She didn’t know why she would think it. Asked to describe a room Nicholas al Rashid would design for himself, she’d have come up with mahogany furniture. Dark crimson walls. Velvet drapes.

These walls were pale blue silk. The furniture was satin-finished rosewood, and the tall windows had been left unadorned to frame the view of Central Park. The carpet was Persian, she was sure, and old enough to date back to a century when that had been the name of the country in which it had been made.

A sleek portable computer sat open on a low table.

The room spoke of simplicity and elegance. It spoke, too, of a time older than memory that flowed into a time yet to come.

Amanda began taking photos. The room. The bed. The open windows and the view beyond. She worked quickly while images of the sheikh flashed through her mind. She could see him in this room, tall and leanly muscled, stiff with regal arrogance. He belonged here.

Then she saw the oil painting on the wall. She hesitated, then walked toward it, eyes lifted to the canvas.

The room was a sham. All the sophistication, the urbanity…a lie, all of it. This was the real man, the one she’d met that night, and never mind the jeans and T-shirt he’d worn then, and the nonsense about his half-American ancestry.

The painting was of Nicholas al Rashid dressed in desert robes of white trimmed with gold, seated on the back of a white horse that looked as wild as he did. One hand held the reins; the other lay on the pommel of the elaborate saddle.

And his eyes, those silver eyes, seemed to be staring straight at her.

Amanda took a step back.

She was wrong to have come here, wrong to have let Dawn convince her she could take this job, even if the sheikh permitted it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong—

“What in hell do you think you’re doing in my bedroom?”

The tiny camera fell from Amanda’s hand. She swung around, heart racing, and saw the Lion of the Desert, the Heir to the Imperial Throne of Quidar, standing in the doorway, just as he’d been doing that night in her dormitory room.

No jeans and T-shirt this time.

He wore a dark gray suit, a white-on-white shirt and a dark red tie. He was dressed the same as half the men in Manhattan—but it was easy to imagine him in his flowing robes and headdress, with the endless expanse of the desert behind him instead of the marble hall.

Maybe it had something to do with the way he stood, legs apart, hands planted on his hips, as if he owned the world. Maybe it was the look on his hard, handsome face that said he was emperor of the universe and she was nothing but an insignificant subject….

Get a grip, Amanda.

The man had caught her off guard that night, but it wouldn’t happen again. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, and she’d learned how to deal with hard men who thought they owned the world, men like her father, her stepfather, her ex-husband.

Whatever else they owned, they didn’t own her.

“Well? Are you deaf, woman? I asked you a question.”

Amanda bent down, retrieved her camera and tucked it into her beaded evening purse.

“I heard you,” she said politely. “It’s just that you startled me, Sheikh Rashid.” She took a breath, then held out her hand. “I’m Amanda Benning.”

“And?” he said, pointedly ignoring her outstretched hand.

“Didn’t your sister tell you about me?”

“No.”

No? Oh. Dawn? Dawn, where are you?

Amanda smiled politely. “Well, she, um, she invited me here tonight.”

“And that gives you the right to sneak into my bedroom?”

“I did not sneak,” she said, trying to hold the smile. “I was merely…” Merely what? Dawn was supposed to handle all this. It was her surprise.

“Yes?”

“I was, um, I was…” She hesitated. “I think it’s better if Dawn explains it.”

A chilly smile angled across his mouth. “I’d much rather hear your explanation, Ms. Benning.”

“Look, this is silly. I told you, your sister and I are friends. Why not simply ask her to—”

“My sister is young and impressionable. It would never occur to her that you’d use your so-called friendship for your own purposes.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The sheikh took a step forward. “Who sent you here?”

“Who sent me?” Amanda’s eyes narrowed. Nearly eight years had gone by, and he was as arrogant and overbearing as ever. Well, she wasn’t the naive child she’d been the last time they’d dealt with each other, and she wasn’t frightened of bullies. “No one sent me,” she said as she started past him. “And there’s not enough money in the world to convince me to—”

His hand closed on her wrist with just enough pressure to make her gasp.

“Give me the camera.”

She looked up at him. His eyes glittered like molten silver. She felt a lump of fear lodge just behind her breastbone, but she’d sooner have choked on the fear than let him know he’d been able to put it there.

“Let go of me,” she said quietly.

His grasp on her wrist tightened; he tugged her forward. Amanda stumbled on her high heels and threw out a hand to stop herself. Her palm flattened against his chest.

It was like touching a wall of steel. The cover photo from Gossip sprang into her head. Savage, the caption had called him, just as she had, that night.

“Or what?” His words were soft; his smile glittered. “You are in my home, Ms. Benning. To all intents and purposes, that means you stand on Quidaran soil. My word is law here.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true if I say it is.”

Amanda stared at him in disbelief. “Mr. Rashid—”

“You will address me as Lord Rashid,” he said, and she saw the sudden memory spark to life in his eyes. “We’ve met before.”

“No,” Amanda said, too quickly. “No, we haven’t.”

“We have. Something about you is familiar.”

“I have that kind of face. You know. Familiar.”

Nick frowned. She didn’t. The pale hair. The eyes that weren’t brown or green but something more like gold. The elegant cheekbones, the full, almost pouty lower lip…

“Let go of my wrist, Sheikh Rashid.”

“When you give me your camera.”

“Forget it! It’s my cam—Hey. Hey, you can’t…”

He could, though Nick had to admit, it wasn’t easy. The woman was twisting like a wildcat, trying to break free and keep him from opening her purse at the same time, but he hung on to her with one hand while he dug out her camera with the other.

She was still complaining, her voice rising as he thumbed from image to image. What he saw made him crazy. Photos of his home. The terrace. The living room. The library. The bathrooms, for God’s sake.

And his bedroom.

She had done more than invade his privacy. She had stolen it and would sell it to the highest bidder. He had no doubt of that.