ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance (100 page)

“Good, good,” his father said, sounding distracted as he reached for his computer mouse. “Keep me updated on your progress and, son?”

“Yes father?” Rahm asked, reaching for his own mouse to log off as well.

“This time make sure to do business with other men,” he said. “You’ll find it less… distracting.”

Rahm chuckled, more at his own humiliation than his father’s empty words. They logged off, as they did each week, without warmth or sincerity. In that moment, Rahm realized his father knew as much about women as he did technology, making him wonder how much he knew about the fairer sex as well.

A knock sounded at the door as he closed his laptop, as interested in researching another new tech company as he was hearing outdated misogyny from his own father. “Yes?” he asked, watching Ahmed walk through the door with a cocky grin.

“I’ll be sending a small team ahead of us to Vegas,” his head bodyguard assured him, looking casual and statuesque in an all white track suit. “I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on who to include.”

Rahm sighed, peering around him at the half-disassembled office full of packing boxes and shipping tape. “I trust your judgment,” he said, nodding back to the muscular giant taking up half the vacuous room. “Send who you think is best.”

Ahmed nodded dutifully, but lingered uncharacteristically. “Yes?” Rahm asked patiently of the hulking behemoth. “Is there anything else?”

Ahmed shook his head, all while inching deeper into the room. “No, boss, just… are you sure Vegas is the right place for you?”

“What do you mean?”

Ahmed bowed, deferentially, just as Rahm had during the weekly teleconference with his father. “Nothing much, sir, it’s just that… you always used to get excited about closing up shop and heading somewhere new. I mean, usually… you’d have had these boxes full and marked for shipping by now.”

Rahm nodded, smirking at his old friend and longtime employee. “I can’t explain it,” he confessed. “I’m just losing interest in chasing down one company to the next.”

Ahmed had come close enough to lean against Rahm’s modern, stainless steel desk. “But all the cities you wanted to explore?” he reminded Rahm. “All the wine, nightlife and song you wanted to experience? All the women you wanted to plunder? Aren’t those enough to excite you anymore?”

Rahm thought long and hard about the question, though he knew Ahmed had posed it in jest. All the same, he wasn’t sure how to answer. In a way, he supposed, his silence was the only honest reply. “If not,” Ahmed said, tapping a third computer monitor on his desk. “You might want to check your search alerts.”

“Whatever for?” he asked, hand itching to reach for the mouse all the same.

“Seems Carly is at it again, sniffing out a hot new tech tool in town.”

“And I should care… why?” Rahm murmured, already inching closer to his desk.

“No reason, boss,” Ahmed said knowingly, turning toward the door before pausing to smirk over his shoulder. “I just thought it might bring you some ‘closure’ before moving on to Vegas.”

“Closure,” Rahm muttered as the hulking bodyguard shut the door behind him, leaving his boss to click away at the flurry of alerts that must have come flooding in while he’d been on the teleconference with his father all morning. “What good will that do?”

And yet, scoff as he may, Rahm couldn’t ignore the bait, ramping up to speed on TalentScount. Anything, he realized desperately, if it meant the chance to “negotiate” with Carly Stanton one last time.

“Miss Stanton?” came the timid voice of the new doorman downstairs.

“Yes Reggie?” Carly asked via the intercom on her desk, recalling the slightly cute, if perpetually clumsy, college kid in the too big uniform from their brief interactions before and after work each day. “What is it?”

“I know it’s after hours,” Reggie squeaked. “But… there’s a Mr. Farzik here to see you?”

Carly literally sat up in her chair, finger suddenly trembling as it reached for the intercom button. “This late?” she asked, the office bathed in the dim blue glow of her computer monitor after burning the midnight oil once again. Outside her window the dark sky blazed a shimmering black, reminding her that the last time she’d looked up from her work, it had been a glorious sunset.

Unappreciated by Carly, but glorious just the same.

“Yes ma’am,” Reggie said nervously. “I explained our policies and procedures to him, but Mr. Farzik is surprisingly… persistent.”

“That he is,” Carly said, knowing her reply before she even uttered the words. “Send him up, Reggie.”

“Yes ma’am,” said the front desk clerk, sounding mightily relieved.

Carly stood abruptly, peering at her reflection in the floor to ceiling office window beside her and licking her lips to moisten them before flouncing her hair. She had time to reach for the jacket slung across the back of her chair but preferred to greet him on more casual terms – in just her pencil skirt and sleeveless blouse.

She couldn’t deny the heightened pulse that pounded just beneath her skin, nor the flush that rose to her face when she heard the elevator doors ding open in her outer reception area. By the time he rapped, surprisingly gently, on her office door, Carly was feverish with anticipation and self-loathing.

How?
she wondered in the half-second it took her to respond.
How could she be this excited to see a man who wanted her just to discard her after his needs were fulfilled?

“Come in,” she managed to utter in a voice both cold and curious, her negotiation skills still on point.

He did just that, pressing open the double doors dramatically and standing just inside her spacious office, as regal as he was unexpected. He wore a black suit, the kind that would take an extra five minutes for her to peel off, as polished and shimmering as his thick soled shoes.

“Thanks for seeing me on such notice,” he said, voice uncharacteristically soft and slow. “And at such a late hour.”

She smirked. “I’ve got to work twice as hard as the next guy if I don’t want to get outbid next time, now don’t I?”

He bowed deferentially, beaming when his eyes met hers. “I guess that’s why I’m here,” he said.

“To gloat?” she asked, pushing away slightly from her desk to cross her legs and lean back in her chair. With a hand, she waved at the wing chair across from her.

“No,” he said, sinking into it with a practiced ease. “To confess something.”

“What?” she sighed. “That you bought a tech company you didn’t really want just to get back at me for not sleeping with you?”

Carly enjoyed watching him recoil, his eyes widening, his fingers tensing on the arm rests of the comfortable leather chair. “How… how did you know?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I may have lost the SoundCloud account to you, Rahm, but I’m not stupid. Although, my only question is how you knew I was interested in the company in the first place.”

Suddenly it was Rahm’s turn to smirk. “The same way I bought SoundCloud out from under you, Carly: money.”

“Ah ha,” she said, waving a finger and surprisingly playful for someone who’d just lost an account she’d spent weeks studying. “So you admit you bought a tech company you didn’t really want just to get back at me for not sleeping with you?”

He shrugged, sinking back into his seat and seeming to enjoy her more playful side. “How else could I get you to see me again?” he asked, filling Carly’s heart with a surprisingly bubbly emotion. After all, he’d just admitted he’d spent nearly $30 million just to get her attention. A damn stupid waste of money, she thought, but effective – and romantic – all the same.”

“Why would you want to see me again?” she purred, sinking back even deeper into her chair. “All we ever seem to do is talk business?”

Rahm grew coy, squirming furtively in his expensively tailored suit. “I thought maybe if we went… somewhere… together, somewhere public and safe, we might talk about something other than business.”

She nearly snorted at his butchered come on. “Are you… asking me out? On a date?”

He nodded almost bashfully. “I suppose so,” he admitted. “I’ve never actually asked a woman out before.”

She smiled knowingly. “Never had to before, have you Mr. Farzik?”

“No, Carly, I haven’t,” he said, face – and voice – growing serious. “I’ve never had to before, but neither have I wanted to before. A man of my means doesn’t necessarily have to go looking for companionship, and yet the… companions… I’ve kept since coming to America have been of a sort. You understand?”

“You mean, the sort you meet in nightclubs?”

He nodded as if grateful he hadn’t had to say it himself. “Like we did?” she pressed, enjoying teasing him.

“Yes, well, not exactly. We met over business, you see. But neither the corporate nor the nightclub settings have done us any favors, have they?”

“No,” she admitted, growing serious – and flattered – as well. What she wouldn’t give to sit across the table from Rahm, somewhere quiet, simple… and public. “No they haven’t. So what do you suggest?”

“Something simple,” he said, “Don’t you think? I mean, it is our first date.”

“First?” she asked. “I’m not sure I follow your math seeing how many times we’ve seen each other recently.”

Their eyes met once more, her belly growing warm beneath its intensity. “I think I’d like us to… start over… if you don’t mind?”

“Us? Start over?” she teased, though inside she felt giddy with anticipation. “Keep talking like that, Rahm, and you’ll make us sound like an actual couple.”

He stood then, abruptly and yet gently, reaching down to her with one extended hand. “If you’d do me the honor, Carly Stanton, I would love nothing more.”

She took the hand, both of theirs trembling, and stood to join him. her heart pounded with the romantic sentiment, lips parting as she inched closer to him. Then, instead of kissing her, he backed away slightly, winking at her playfully.

“Sorry, Carly,” he chuckled, dragging her from the office so quickly she barely had time to reach for her jacket and purse. “But a gentleman never kisses on the first date!”

THE END

Zadir’s feet pounded,
left right left right left
, on the treadmill inside the palace gym. He was sick of running but going nowhere, yet the physical therapist assured him this would help him heal.
Heal
. What a joke. There was no healing from what he’d done and he knew it. He would be lucky if his father ever trusted him again. As it stood now, he could barely even look at him and found they had next to nothing to talk about.

Six months ago he’d smashed his car into a brick wall, well a brick home to be more specific about it. After surgery, a concussion and several broken ribs he was finally get back to normal. Physically. The other damage was harder to repair. Rashid had paid to fix the home he’d slammed into, even though no one had told him to. He scoffed as he ran, thinking about the day the family had shown up—with flowers—to thank him for repairing their home. The home
he’d
smashed into. Instead of looking like a callous jerk, he smiled and told them it was the least he could do. They’d been so grateful that long after they left, he’d felt guilty. If Rashid, the
good
brother, hadn’t seen to it they would have been left homeless because they couldn’t afford a lengthy hotel stay.

That was nothing compared to the cost he’d had to pay. His heart raced as his speed increased. He was on the final leg of his daily run and smiled when there wasn’t even a twinge of pain in his ribs. “Thank goodness.”

At least something was going right for him. His father, holding Alzari Holdings hostage, insisted he move back into the palace until his reputation has been suitably rehabilitated. If he chose to live elsewhere, he would forfeit his birthright as CEO of Alzari Holdings. He hated it, but damn he wanted that job. It was his. He’d been preparing for it his entire life. To get it, he would now have to please his babysitter when all he really wanted to do was
please
her.

Zadir shook his head, beads of sweat flinging from his now too long wavy black hair and slowed the treadmill to a stop. He reached for his towel, wincing at the pain that lanced through his midsection, and draped it over his face. The sound of heels, very tall heels, on the floor alerted him that he had a visitor. He smiled when Shala walked into the gym, looking out of place and twenty different kinds of sexy in a teal dress that left her arms bare and the black stilettos she wore gave her petite frame endless bronze legs, which he ogled mercilessly. “Shala, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

She sighed to rein in her temper. They both knew that her presence in his life was not a pleasure. “Are you ready for tonight?” She crossed her arms and looked up at him, trying to avoid staring at the way the muscles in his arms bunched with every move.

Zadir groaned at the mention of his twin brother’s engagement party. Tonight was the official party to announce the fact that the golden boy would soon be married. What Jovanbar and the rest of the world didn’t know, was that Rashid would soon be Sheikh. He had already withdrawn from Winchester because their father was sick and wished to step down and seek treatment in private. “Must I attend?”

Shala sighed and pasted a small smile on her face. “You know the answer to that Zadir. Rashid is your brother and Sabrina is your only friend, why wouldn’t you celebrate with them?”

He looked her over. Shala had turned into a beautiful woman with curves for days and all he thought about was how he could get her into bed. “You should be my date.”

After a beat, she finally answered. “I’ll be there in a professional capacity, so I’ll be there to keep an eye on you.”

He scowled. “I don’t want you to keep an eye on me, dammit! I want you on my arm.”

A small gasp escaped her cherry red mouth. “You can’t say things like that, Zadir. We have a strictly professional relationship and I think we should keep it that way.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, disbelief written all over his face. “Is that really what you want?” Her answer took too long to touch her lips and Zadir stepped off the treadmill and took the spot mere inches in front of her. His mossy green gaze was fixed on her, never moving not even when he removed his shirt to show off his newly sculpted body. It was the one good thing that came from the past six months. Zadir was now ripped after hours in the gym and seemingly endless physical therapy. He didn’t miss the flash of desire in Shala’s eyes, and a satisfied smile was his only response. Her eyes were on him as he walked way, he felt the way they bored into his back muscles and down his tapered waist to rest on his ass. It was a great ass. He stopped and turned, giving her a wink when he caught her staring. “I’ll pick you up at six thirty,” he called to her.