Margery frowned back at her, her brown eyes concerned behind the thick rims of her nerd chic glasses. “It’s not that bad.”
“I’m being shipped off to the middle of nowhere. I’m gone, removed from the hustle and bustle of both DC and the Metro.”
“You’re being melodramatic. It’s just six months! Considering you rushed to press before he gave the final go-ahead, you’re really lucky that’s all you got,” Margery continued, sipping at her Long Island iced tea.
“I’m not even talking about being sent to Abu Dhabi. I know that’s at least a bustling tourist destination. I mean they sent me back to Life and Style. I’m going to be covering the opening of a casino, and then? What? Am I going to cover the start of a waterpark in Shanghai? Maybe a new roller coaster in Berlin? This is demeaning. I’m a reporter, not a glorified puff-piece press agent.”
“And you’re still a reporter. You can lay low for a few months.”
She narrowed her eyes at her friend. “Six is not ‘a few.’ Six is half a year.” Amanda heaved a heavy sigh and gestured to the waitress. “Can I get a Sex on the Beach?”
“You might want to pace yourself. You’re going to have to pack quickly if you’re going to be there in time for the Ali Babba Casino unveiling next week,” her friend suggested.
Amanda didn’t care. She almost had that bastard nailed dead to rights. But now? Now she’d be going half a world away to a ridiculously named hotel, just to ask an assistant about the executive chef at its sushi restaurant or the seating capacity in the stage show theater. The fact she’d be doing it in one hundred and twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit each day just added insult to injury.
“I think I need another drink. I’ll try and forgive myself tomorrow. I just…you know how important that story was to me. You should have met the families I talked to, the people who have been ruined by the cartels and then fled here. It’s not even just them. The few ex-aides I was able to get to talk by offering protection?”
Margery nodded and leaned in closer. “Yes?”
“They were scared. They were always shaking when I talked to them. This man is beyond dangerous, and people keep saying he’s going to run for president in the next cycle. He needs to be brought to justice. Instead, I’m going to let down all those people who trusted me. They told me their stories so they’d get out, so maybe one day they’d be safe. They didn’t do it so I could ask someone in Abu Dhabi about their blackjack tables.”
Margery patted her hand. “But you sometimes have to live to fight another day. If you reach out to even more contacts while you’re in the Middle East, maybe then you can get a mountain of evidence even Jackson’s lawyers can’t bury.”
“My mom wouldn’t run,” Amanda lamented, gratefully pausing to sip the drink the waitress had brought. It was her third mixed drink in an hour, and she’d be regretting it in the morning, but right now she just needed the oblivion. She needed not to care. “She was never scared of anything.”
Margery swallowed and seemed unsure of what to say next. “You know that…”
“What? My mom put everything she had into her job at the Post. She was one of their most decorated reporters, and she helped find things that got a vice president impeached and imprisoned.”
“She also died under less than normal circumstances,” Margery pointed out. “You’ve said yourself a million times, what happened to her in the garage when you were nine never made any sense.”
“I know,” she said, her throat constricting at how much she missed her mother. Some things didn’t stop hurting even after sixteen years. They said her mom had committed suicide, but she knew for a fact her mom hadn’t been depressed and that people had been following both of them. A strange man had come up to her at the playground twice the week before. “But she did what was right. I know she’d be disappointed if I just nodded my head like a good girl and fled to Arabian wonders.”
“No one talks like that,” Margery said, chuckling. “It’s not retreating or running away. It’s just regrouping. You can get Jackson, but you have to be smarter about it. Look, if Harris didn’t believe in you and didn’t eventually want this scumbag to go down, then you really would be planning out your day tomorrow at the unemployment office. He didn’t do that. You just have to be smart.”
“Are you saying my mom wasn’t?”
“I didn’t know your mom. But no matter how good a reporter she was, she clearly made some enemies and she left you alone too.”
“Not because she wanted to,” Amanda objected.
“True. But intentional or not, the effects come out all the same,” Margery said. “You miss her and maybe…”
“What?”
“Maybe sometimes being smart is better than being right.”
“I owe those people, Margie. They told me all their stories, all their fears, and I swore on my honor I’d take Jackson down. Now they’re going to see that nothing got published and I’m on what looks like an all-expenses-paid vacation to the hottest resort in the world. It’s not just demeaning, but it’s frustrating as hell.”
“Or,” she said, sipping down the last of her drink, “you could give yourself a few weeks to take a mental break, relax, and then go at it again. There’s nothing wrong with admitting something didn’t work on the first try. There’s also nothing wrong with taking a breather.”
“Yeah, but the people Jackson hurts…the countries he’s destabilized…they don’t get to have a rest.”
“If you’re not smart about it, you’ll be blacklisted or worse.”
“Mom would have done it in a heartbeat.”
“And,” Margery interjected, her brown eyes serious, “your mom isn’t here anymore. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want is to lose my best friend. I’ll help you. Hell, I think Harris will help you or he wouldn’t have found a way to keep you on staff. Just go, relax, and stay safe. That’s what matters the most. You can’t help anyone without a platform, and you really can’t help them if you’re dead,” Margery finished.
“You’ve been holding that back, haven’t you?” she asked, biting her lip. “Not the part about keeping my head down and keeping my job…”
“I didn’t exactly say it that way.”
“No, but the part about being careful around Senator Jackson and about my mom’s death? You’re really worried about me.”
“I know the kind of man you’re dealing with as well as you do. I think one of the best things you could do is be half a world away and in a place with its own security staff. I want you to be a success, sure. I really want that jerk to get what’s coming to him, but I’m getting married in a year and where would I be without my maid of honor? Where will my kids be someday without a godmother?” Margery asked. “I mean, if anything happened, I’d never get over that impulse to pick up my phone to speed-dial you and realize I can’t because you’re gone. I need you in my life, Amanda, and the best way to do that is to help make sure you don’t piss off the great and powerful without a kickass plan.”
Amanda tried to ignore the pinpricks at her eyes. She and Margery were like sisters, but she’d never heard her friend talk about all the plans she had for both of them in the future. Frankly, with her looming marriage to Roger, Amanda was scared she’d be shoved to the wayside as the single friend. “And will I still be a part of your life while covering the grand opening of Ali Babba’s?”
“Yes. You never know, you try and have fun, and eventually, you might even have some for real.”
Chapter Two
“Would you do me a favor, Mafir?” Sheikh Amir Bahan asked, not even looking up from his spreadsheets as his assistant entered the room. The other man had been his executive assistant for the last five years and was practically psychic. Amir barely had to ask for anything. Still, sometimes even the best servants had to be prodded. “If it’s not too much bother.”
The other man bowed low and straightened the tip of his long beard on his chest. “It is alway
s an honor, my sheikh.”
“Good then,” he said. “But I have a guest in my bedroom, and she’s overstayed her welcome. Please make sure she gathers up her clothes, give her one of the gold chain necklaces as a parting gift, and make sure she’s out in the next thirty minutes.”
Mafir nodded and stood back to his full height. He wasn’t very tall at barely five-foot-eight, but he was wiry and efficient, which Amir respected. “She doesn’t get a set of diamond earrings for her, ahem, troubles, my sheikh?”
“No, she was merely adequate,” he said, arching an eyebrow. “I save diamonds for those conquests that might at least be memorable. She, alas, was not.”
“One day, my sheikh, you may wish to actually settle down.”
“That’s what my parents and brothers say. Now you?”
“Well, I do admit that Sheikha Bahan may have called earlier this week lamenting how the throne still has no heirs, and how long it’s been since she had a grandbaby in the palace.”
“Then I suggest that Naseef and Jasmine have a third child. They’re surely up for toddlers running around and smashing things all over again,” Amir replied, folding up his files and sitting back in his chair. This was obviously a setup. His mother and the assistant she’d corrupted had been waiting a while to confront him about his playboy ways.
However, he was thirty-five and busy expanding the Bahan building empire. He was preparing to unveil the first in a cadre of successful casinos. He didn’t need romance. Sure, he occasionally loved having the attentions of one lucky lady for the night (or sometimes more if he were feeling adventurous). What he didn’t need was to be dragged down into anything else. He didn’t need commitment, didn’t need his prying parents getting involved, and he certainly didn’t want whiny brats who destroyed everything they touched. As much as he cared for his nieces and nephews, he appreciated them a lot more as six-year-olds than he had when they were toddlers.
He just wasn’t paternal, and he wasn’t sure how to get Mother and Father to understand that.
Of course, since he was the oldest of his brothers and the legitimate heir to the throne, it wasn’t just his family that was interested in him having children. There was a whole country waiting with bated breath for the next sheikh in line.
“Mother doesn’t need to deputize you to do her dirty work, Mafir.”
He shrugged and suppressed a smile. “My sheikh, between you and Sheikha Bahan, I’m going to listen to her. She’s far scarier than you’ll ever be.”
“That’s seriously undercutting my mystique.”
“No, it’s not. I know the sheikha is a hair puller and fights dirty. You would engage me in a duel with honor. She’s definitely the person to be more wary of,” Mafir continued. “I only suggest from her, ahem, ‘advice’ that you think less of one-night stands and jewelry as signs of insincere gratitude.”
“Even if they’re not the best or most enthusiastic partners, I appreciate every woman who shares my bed,” Amir objected, folding his hands behind his head and leaning even further back. “I just have a tier system.”
“And the sheikha thinks that you should, perhaps, engage in that final top tier and, as the Americans say, put a ring on it.”
“Well, I can’t wait to speak more to Mother when she’s here for the opening gala this week. I’m sure she’ll talk my ear off about how I’m ruining the family, breaking her heart, and being an utter cad about town.”
“Oh she used a far more colorful word for you, my sheikh,” Mafir said with a smirk.
“Quite. Just get Svetlana up and thank her kindly. Also, what’s the next thing on my schedule? I’ve been slammed going over the final plans and financials for the art gallery opening—”
“Let it never be said that your luxury resort doesn’t have a bit of everything,” Mafir conceded.
“Exactly, but what’s next on the docket? I know that the sous chef at Sayonara has been clashing with Yoshi. Also, I’m still not sure I’m happy with the Gucci display in our retail venue. I think it could do better, be more eye catching.”
“Sir, you can exercise your micromanaging tendencies soon enough. Right now there’s a reporter from the Style section of, I believe, the Washington Sentinel here to interview you.”
“Can’t Kantaya do another one? That’s what the press secretary is for.”
Mafir shook his head. “Market research indicated that at least twenty percent of interviews should be done with you directly. Since this is an American outlet, and we’re trying to make sure the whale gamblers from the United States feel safe and secure here, you know that speaking with Miss Sinclair will be best.”
“You say that now, but I find those interviews mind-numbingly boring.”
“Yes, but unfortunately, the property won’t sell itself,” he said, bowing low again. “I’ll take care of, uh, Svetlana and see Miss Sinclair in. Be nice, my sheikh.”
“I’m always nice. I’m practically a teddy bear,” he replied gruffly.
“Quite, how could I have ever been mistaken?” Mafir said before disappearing out the door.
He really had to find a way to get his assistant squarely on his team. He’d be damned if he’d be getting the responsibility spiel forever from every corner—even from his freaking manservant! Shaking his head, Amir rose and came to stand at the huge bank of windows that were the main focal feature of his office. The casino was a massive structure, standing as the tallest high-rise in Abu Dhabi. It wasn’t just a casino; it was an entire compound of fine dining, shopping, and entertainment. Ali Babba Casino’s boasted three separate concert and entertainment halls, as well as a gallery featuring a collection showcasing the most beautiful art from the ancient world and his own personal favorites. It was a huge gamble—something bigger than any of his father’s or grandfather’s holdings—but if it all worked, it would put the Bahan family on the map in the same way that the American casinos were so closely tied to the Maloofs.
Of course, if it failed, he’d be the laughingstock of Middle Eastern business.
He wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Ahem, are you going to stand there all day?” a clipped voice rang out.
He turned and was about to send the reporter away for being so rude when his breath caught in his throat. The woman before him was not traditionally beautiful. While she did have long, blond hair that was the color of spun gold and blue eyes that reminded him of cut sapphires, she was barely five feet tall and curvier than he usually liked. Yet, there was something about her that stirred him deeply. Perhaps it was those soul-searching eyes or the amused quirk of her lips, but he was pretty sure the thing that drew him most was the defiant jut of her chin, the way she seemed to be daring him to cross her. It didn’t seem to make her pause in the least that she was standing before both a billionaire and royalty.
And that was a damn sexy turn-on.
“Excuse my manners then, Miss Sinclair.”
“Just call me Amanda,” she said, sitting down in a chair and pulling out her recorder. “I’ve given up on any pretense of formality.”
He arched his eyebrow back at her, intrigued again by her flippancy. After all, it was so rare for him to feel amused by anything. Women could be alluring…for a time. It was just that so few ever held his attention. Even if she were just here on business, Miss Sinclair was off to a promising start.
“Would the Sentinel be happy with that, Miss Sinclair?”
“I told you we could be informal.”
“Then if we’re being informal, I have to confess that I love the way your last name rolls off my tongue, Miss Sinclair,” he said, enunciating each syllable slowly to help convey his point. “Still, I’ve rarely had a reporter come and question where I was even standing in the interview. What’s your story?”
“That’s not part of the interview,” she said, her tone clipped. “I think the only thing that is would be a plethora of airhead questions about what the best sushi dish will be and
how you were able to get Lagerfeld to set up a store for you. I have that all prepped. You give me the pat answers, and I can be out of here in five.”
“Where would the fun in that be?” he purred, as he circled her chair. She sat up straighter, and the way he was clearly getting under her skin only encouraged him. “Let’s do a bit more quid pro quo.”
“Well, I’m not Clarice Starling, and you’re not Hannibal Lecter, so I’m not sure that’s what I want to do,” she said.
“You know some actual honesty would be more interesting than ‘puff-piece bullshit,’ as you put it.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said, a faint flush coloring her cheeks. That hint of pink only served to make his heart race and push blood to places farther south.
“But you were thinking it,” he added as he passed behind her again. Reaching out, he swept her hair back from off her shoulder. Dear Allah, it felt like silk against his skin. “I’m thinking it too. I’ve done at least two dozen of these this month, and we both know I’m not going to tell you anything you can’t get from the press release or that hasn’t already been said by my press agent.”
“Exactly, so if you would just give me whatever spiel you need out there, then I’ll be happily back to my room.”
“Oh, so you’re staying here?”
“I’m sure I’m not the only reporter here who’s being spoiled,” she said, tilting that chin of hers back up at him. “You’re sparing no expense to wine and dine potential critics and naysayers. Are you nervous about the speculation? The thoughts that tourism to Abu Dhabi doesn’t merit a spectacle like you’ve created?”
He stopped sauntering and leaned back against his desk. “That’s not the usual question someone from this beat would ask.”
Sheikh's Revenge Page 10
