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.”
Her skin became a deathly white, her hands wringing each other. She blocked his path, her slender body radiating tension. “Capital punishment? That’s barbaric. They probably were busy escorting the contingent of women you ordered to be brought here, back and forth. You probably can’t see past your bloated ego but this palace is a maze and I’m sure they can’t be everywhere at once and...”
Her chest fell and rose, drawing his attention to her high, deliciously full breasts molded under the soft cotton T-shirt. Her scarf that she had used to wrap loosely around her neck and upper body was trailing from her left arm, exposing what she’d been hiding all this time. Narrow waist that he could probably span with one hand gave way to full hips that made her prim pencil skirt into something altogether provocative. Tall and yet curved, the woman had a model’s figure.
He waited, enjoying the gloriously outraged picture she presented.
“You tricked me!” she said in a voice full of outrage. “You purposely made me believe those men would be punished for something I did.”
He laughed, surprised at finding humor in the whole farce. “You’re not the only one with tricks up their sleeve, Ms. Christensen. Now stay put until I come back.”
* * *
It took him twenty minutes, fifteen minutes too long in his opinion, to surmise the situation.
One of the staff members who knew someone in the legal department had scheduled a meeting with Ms. Christensen. When Zayn had questioned how the woman, a stranger to Khaleej, had known to not only contact the said official but also to arrange for a meeting with him to obtain her brother’s release, his personnel had all frozen in terror.
Finally, the shaking man had come forward and said that the request for meeting had come from someone higher up in the department. Specifically on the recommendation of a Massimiliano Ricci.
It seemed at least that part of her story was true.
Zayn vaguely remembered meeting the Italian businessman, known for his cutthroat business tactics. That Amalia had gained a meeting through him did not surprise Zayn in the least.
Was she his girlfriend, then? Didn’t the man know what a menace the woman was to herself? Because if she were Zayn’s, he wouldn’t have let her roam Sintar alone for two months, even if she had been born here.
Nor would he have let her dog the steps of the unsavory crowd that her brother seemed to keep company with. What was her father thinking?
The next thing had been to have someone find him the case file on her twin brother. Which had taken a wasted ten minutes, which he couldn’t really blame on his staff. Lost in the beguiling scent of the blasted woman, he had forgotten to ask what her brother’s last name was.
Finally, he had her brother’s file and a staff member finding the identity of her father. The part about her father was true, too. Professor Hadid was very well known and respected in his circle.
Drug Possession. Intent to Sell. Waiting to be sentenced.
It wouldn’t be anything less than seven years, Zayn knew. He’d been one of the members on the committee who had asked for harsher sentences on drug trafficking in Khaleej.
When Zayn had tried to reach his cousin, however, he had been informed by his aunt in a vaguely roundabout way that he was out of the country. Which really didn’t tell Zayn much. His cousin Karim had never amounted to any good for all his life, but could he have let an innocent man take the fall for one of his activities? It was another headache he did not need right now.
Armed with a vague sense of discontent, Zayn returned to his office.
Amalia—he couldn’t refer to her as Ms. Christensen now that he knew how potent the taste of her mouth was—was standing at one of the tinted windows, looking out into the courtyard. The fading sunlight of the evening drew a provocative outline of her body.
Her shoulders were in a stiff line, her entire stance one of defense and alertness. Despite his preoccupations, Zayn couldn’t stop his gaze from running down her back this time. She was fully covered up, even though that custom had more or less been banned from being required in the last decade.
And yet the flare of her hips, the curve of her bottom, made the pencil skirt the most provocative thing he had ever seen on a woman.
He had met more beautiful women, more charming ones, women who knew how to be seductive and yet feminine at once.
She was none of those things and yet he hadn’t lost his mind over a woman like this in a...actually, never. He did not like anything random in his carefully controlled life and he didn’t like this strange reaction to her, either.
It made his voice harsh as he said, “I have looked at your brother’s file and I have spoken to the official you were supposed to meet.”
She turned around. Her hands wrapped around her midriff, under her breasts, unconsciously pushing them up. “And?”
Zayn forced himself to focus on the anxiety that pinched her features. “The evidence against him is pretty tight. And this is not the first time your brother has been in trouble with the law.”
“I know. But they were petty things.”
“Defaming public property, heading a strike at the university, unruly behavior in a mall...it seems like he was building his repertoire since he was fourteen.