Sheikh's Unlikely Desire (7 page)

She walked up to the front doors, ignoring the scattering of fashionable and attractive young people in the lobby. She could sense them eying her up and down and immediately dismissing her. She ignored them, focusing on the receptionist behind the desk.

“Good morning,” she said, her tone crisp and carrying. “My name is Leah Montgomery, and I'm here to see Peter Scholl.”

The receptionist looked at her, profoundly unimpressed. “Sorry,” he said. “If you haven't got an appointment, there's—”

“I don't need an appointment,” Leah said confidently. “If I leave here, I'm going to be coming back with an injunction a lot nastier than just a 'please.'”

 The receptionist still looked a little hesitant, so Leah smiled, showing her teeth. Her smile was nowhere near as sharp as Zayn's, but she thought that she did all right.

“To put it even more clearly, if you don't let me in to see Peter Scholl, I am going to make trouble for this entire place, and I'm going to do it with all the legal muscle that Hiller and Hiller can give me. Now, if you don't want to be responsible for that...”

The receptionist nodded jerkily, and Leah allowed herself a tight smile as he picked up the phone and turned away from her. She was aware of the starlets behind her muttering about what a bitch she was and how she shouldn't be allowed, but she ignored them. She had far bigger fish to fry.

“Mr. Scholl will see you now,” the receptionist offered.

She smiled at him. “I'm sure he will.”

Scholl's office didn't surprise her at all. From the bright lights of the rest of the building, she entered a long office that was deliberately dim. At the very end of the office was a row of windows, and in front of that window was a desk where a man sat in silhouette.

Pure theater,
Leah thought with disgust,
and it isn't even very good theater.

“And you must be from Hiller and Hiller,” he began, but Leah didn't wait.

She strode up to the desk, her heels clicking efficiently on the tile. Before she was even stopped, she threw a folder down on the desk in front of him.

“You have some nerve,” she said, “and on top of that, you must think that I'm a goddamn idiot.”

Peter Scholl leaned back in his chair and looked at her. He had a kind of thinness that looked better on an ascetic monk than a would-be media mogul, and his watery blue eyes flickered over her like the wings of a particularly loathsome gnat. She had never heard very much about Scholl one way or the other, but she was forming an impression with alarming quickness.

“Why don't you tell me what I'm supposed to have done to make such a pretty girl so mad?”

She didn't rise to the bait. Instead, she pointed at the folder. “So the moment we file a cease and desist against you, you make a move to cement your rights? Did you really think that if you just got things started fast enough that we might decide to let all of this slide?”

He shrugged one shoulder, never taking his eyes off of her body. She wasn't sure he had met her eyes once since she walked in the room.

“Hey, in this business, it is far better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

She laughed acidly. “Try that in a court of law and you'll have an assault charge or two waiting for you. I'm not here to argue with you. I'm here to let you know that whatever you are planning right now isn't going to work.”

He shook his head, looking irritatingly amused at her. “And what do you think I'm trying to do, sweetheart?”

Leah let some of the revulsion she felt at his words show on her face. To her grim amusement, it seemed to surprise him. She wondered if he had been making movies long enough that he was simply used to attractive young women falling over themselves to please him. Well, given how this meeting was going, he was going to fall into a world of surprises.

“I think that you are trying to take advantage of a country that welcomed you with open arms,” she said shortly. “I think that you are taking a matter of some cultural importance to an entire nation and running it through your cheese grater of a company until you have some kind of racist pap that you're going to try to sell.”

Scholl shook his head. “You're all worked up over Almira? Listen, you've gotta know that they're not even the game. Sure, they're rich, but most of their movies don't come from the US, right? What they don't know won't hurt them.”

“Are you serious? You're talking as if they're some kind of backwater with no access to the Internet or the greater world. Terzei, one of their biggest cities—”

To her fury, Scholl made a tsking sound, waving his hand for her silence. “Look, you might be all about the law, honey, but I know movies, and Almira, it's not a problem. No one cares about them, and they don't give a damn about the rest of the world.”

“And if that is what you have learned about coming to my country, then I am even more certain of my course here.”

Both Scholl and Leah wheeled around in shock. Standing in the doorway behind them was none other than Zayn himself. Today, he was dressed in a sharply cut black suit, as severe and sharp as a sword. A part of Leah purred at how good he looked, but she made herself focus on the task at hand.

“Sheik Zayn,” she said, hiding her surprise at his presence. “I didn't think you would be at this meeting.”

“I decided to come and see if my instincts and yours were correct,” he said, striding across the office to join her. He seemed to dwarf the space, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with her as they both faced Scholl.

“Instincts?” asked Scholl warily. For the first time since this meeting started, he looked apprehensive

“Yes. When I told my story to Ms. Montgomery, she confirmed that my suspicions were right. She told me that you have no right to a story about my family or my country, and that if you do not stop, the consequences for you could be quite dire.”

“Now, I'm sure that we can come to some kind of—”

“We cannot,” Leah said sharply. “This is not a negotiation. This is not something that you can purchase or bribe. You will stop production on this movie. Be grateful that you are stopping it at this early stage and that you didn't waste more money on it, because believe me, it would have been money wasted. This is over. Do you understand?”

She could see the defeat well up in Scholl's face, and along with it came an ugly anger.

“Why you little...”

She could take it. She had heard worse. She didn't even have to brace herself for whatever abuse he wanted to spew, because he knew he had lost.

However, even if Leah was used to a certain amount of abuse from her enemies, apparently Zayn was not.

In a flash, he was in front of her, and he had closed Scholl's arm in a tight fist. Leah could see that no matter how Scholl pulled, he was being held as still as if he were an errant schoolboy.

“No,” Zayn said, his tone iron. “This woman has done as I have asked her to do. She has represented me fairly, and she has spoken to you with far more courtesy than I see that you deserve. You are going to apologize to her, and then we are going to walk out of here. Do you understand?”

Scholl started to say something, but it obviously did not sound enough like an apology to Zayn. He gave the man's arm a vicious shake, making him cry out in shock. “Do you understand?”

“Yes. Yes! I'm sorry, all right? I'm sorry.”

It took Leah a moment to realize that she should respond to it.

“Apology accepted,” she said, trying to ignore what was going on in front of her. “If you continue to take this course of action, we will have no choice but to move forward with more dire means of stopping you. And believe me, you will be stopped.”

Zayn nodded, dropping Scholl easily, and turning to her. “Shall we go?”

“Yes.”

As she turned, however, she caught a look on Scholl's face that made her shiver. Before she had merely thwarted him. Right now, however, he looked absolutely murderous. That was a kind of hate that could have repercussions.

Once they were out of Ice Fields' building, she waited until she made it to her car to turn to Zayn. She didn't trust herself to speak for a moment, but then she found her center of calm.

“Where's Azim and the rest of your men?” she asked, leaning against her car.

Zayn shrugged, a slight smile on his face. “They are around, though perhaps they are being a little subtler than they need to be. They were worried about me, but not so worried that they would storm that place without my permission.”

“And how about you?” she asked. “What kind of permission did you need?”

She was gratified to see that Zayn looked a little startled at her tone.

“What do you mean?”

“I had that handled,” Leah replied hotly. “I had a plan going in, and then here you come, strutting up as if you own the world and everything in it.”

Zayn looked shocked, but she felt too angry to let up.

“Do you know how nasty that could have been?” she demanded. “What if he had decided to press charges on you for assault? What if he had found a way to piss you off enough that you did something that you regret?”

“I do not regret anything that I did in there,” Zayn responded coldly. When he wished to, he could look as foreboding as a granite cliff face.

“Really? Because seriously, what you did in there could be termed assault.”

“He was going to threaten you. He might have only done it with his words, but he might also have decided to do it with his fists. I decided that I wasn't going to take that risk.”

“I was willing to!” Leah cried, exasperated. “Do you think this is my first job? Do you think that clients have never gotten angry at me before?”

Zayn looked stunned. “Someone would try to strike you simply for doing your job?”

She bared her teeth at him in something that perhaps wanted to be a smile. “You have no idea what my job is like,” she said heatedly. “You have no idea what I do for my clients or what it takes to make some of these assholes see reason. I can defend myself, Zayn.”

“And do you do it by simply allowing them to strike you?” he demanded. “Is that your plan?”

 He was standing very close to her. If she had been just a hair less angry or if he had been standing just another few feet away, she likely wouldn't have done what she did next. Hell, she might not have done it if she had another few moments to think about it.

Leah wasn't very large, but she made up for it with quickness. As fast as a striking serpent, she lashed out and wrapped her fingers firmly around Zayn's wrist. She kept her right foot planted and she swung her left foot low, crashing into Zayn's knees. Her grip on his wrist prevented him from moving with her kick, and as a result, his legs were neatly swept out from underneath him.

Zayn made a strangled sound as he hit the ground. A part of her that stood apart from the rest approved of the way he landed. Obviously, he’d had some training when it came to defending himself. He wasn't entirely reliant on Azim and the other men in black. She glanced around them. To her surprise, Azim stood unobtrusively a few hundred yards away. She tensed to be knocked down herself or at least held, but to her surprise, the older man simply grinned, giving her a very American thumbs-up.

Zayn flowed to his feet, more graceful than a man his size had any right to be. He was a little flushed with surprise, but a great deal of the anger and stress had drained from his face.

“That's my plan,” she said as evenly as she could. “I keep telling you that I am far from helpless, Zayn. When are you going to believe me?”

“Not before I've been dumped on my ass apparently,” he said with a wry smile. “Do you truly expect me to stand by while you are threatened, however? No matter how good you are at taking care of yourself?”

 She should have had something tart and cutting to say, but what came out instead surprised her.

“Why should you care? I'm your lawyer. That doesn't mean I'm under your protection or that I'm... I'm...”

Someone important to you.
The words were right there, but she choked them back. To her relief, Zayn stepped in, and she didn't have to flounder with that particular humiliation.

“After what we did last night, I cannot think of you just as some hired gun from LA who's helping me. Surely you felt it, too. I know what you felt like when we were together. I remember the look in your eyes and the way you smiled. Perhaps here in the west you are separated from what you want and what you need, but I was raised differently. I know truth and desire and more when I see it.”

Something in Leah opened to those simple words, as if some starved part of her had been waiting to hear them her entire life. She had yearned to hear words like that, and now they were coming out of the mouth of the least likely, least suitable man in the world.

“You're mistaken,” she forced herself to say. “Things are very different here. I'm nothing more than your lawyer, the person representing you in this very personal, very important matter. You are important to me, and your case is one that I am not going to lose. However, that is all we are to each other.”

Zayn's green eyes sharpened. “I think that you're lying to yourself, and even worse, I think that you know it.”

Leah couldn't take any more. She really couldn't. She lurched backward and when Zayn reached for her again, she tore her arm away from him with a sound that was nearly a snarl.

“Damn you, can't you see?” she nearly shouted. “I'm not going to be your goddamn concubine!”

The words made Zayn rear back. She could see the shock and hurt and confusion on his face, but the important thing was that he pulled away from her. She hurriedly got into the car, closing the door behind her and shoving the key into the ignition. She caught a glimpse of Zayn standing beside the car still, and she peeled away from the curb.

She knew she could close this case. She hadn't lied to him. All she had to do was to keep her heart from doing something stupid. She had to lock it away.

Leah glanced into the rearview mirror. Zayn was standing right where she had left him, gazing after her car. She shook her head hard.

She had to stay on top. She couldn't falter.