by Sophia Lynn
Bailey did not think about Adnan and the night she had spent with him.
She did not think about how his touch had set her on fire or how the tenderness of his mouth caught her at strange points as she was simply going through her day and living her life. She refused to think about how sometimes, between being awake and falling asleep, she could feel a ghostly mirage of his touch on her body, making her shiver with remembered pleasure.
No, she did not think of him at all, and that was the lie she told herself to get through the day.
The truth of the matter was that she was too busy to do much more than think about him, and that was for the best. At the moment, she was putting together the portfolio of images and facts for her father to share with investors who wanted to pour money into Amil, engaging images and stories that would lead them to see that this country was a place worth investing in.
Ikkar was where she was aiming for, but she still had to sell the investors and her father on the country as a whole; still had to make them believe it would be welcoming to foreign tourists and foreign dollars.
“You have to see the whole picture, kiddo,” her father had said more than once. “You can't get a multi-million dollar hydra like this one turned around on a dime. You have to be willing to see where it's all going to go and who might decide to crash it for you. Think about what the government's like, think about who might get behind you. Research the people in charge and make sure that they're in.”
“That … might be a problem,” Bailey said with a slight flinch, and over the phone, her father snorted.
“Come on. You know how to play this game, right? I've been doing it since you were playing with dolls. Grease the wheels a little. Talk to them, get them interested. Let them know that there's money in it for them.”
The problem was that while Bailey knew how the game was played, it seemed like a game that Adnan had no interest in playing at all. He wasn't the only power in Amil, not by a long shot, but it felt that no matter how many local investors she got curious and fascinated by the idea of a resort in Ikkar, Adnan himself stayed aloof.
“There has got to be something he wants, something that will sway him,” she muttered to herself late one afternoon in the capital. Koli-an was small but dense, all glass and steel high-rises that boasted some of the best tech and richest companies in the world. As far as Bailey was concerned, it could stand up to larger metropolises like Tokyo or San Francisco, but after a few days wining and dining an Amil investment firm, she found that she already missed Ikkar's quiet charm and beautiful beach.
In bed at her small hotel, she spent hours going over news stories about Adnan, learning about his playboy days, and how they had ended when his parents died in a plane crash when he was twenty. She flinched at how quickly he had had to take control, and she found herself smiling at how well he had done it. He was universally popular, universally loved, and despite it all, he still managed to keep a low profile to mostly do as he pleased when he was at home.
It was hard to believe that she had seen the handsome man in the sleek magazines in the town of Ikkar, even more difficult to believe that he had come to her rescue on a fiery mare when she had needed him.
“You need to stop this,” she muttered to herself, shutting off her tablet. “You've got work tonight.”
With her company black credit card at her disposal, she was meeting with some of the younger investment visionaries at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city. At some point, one of her father's professional liaisons would take over, but right now, with everything up in the air, it was anyone's game. Bailey told herself that she was just keeping things simple, but there was a part of her that very much liked the idea of going back to her father and telling him how she gotten the Babr group in her pocket.
In the city, Amil was very modern and very western. There were almost as many women in finance as men, and Bailey dressed the way she had seen them dress; in a sharp black suit, high heels and a white shirt to offer a crisp contrast to the black. She pulled her hair back into a tight sleek knot and the only jewelry she wore was a pair of glittering diamond studs.
She arrived at the restaurant, an opulent place with sleek glass and steel décor, and went to the reserved table. She was early, but not too early, and she sat down to wait.
At five past seven, she was just beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong when the waiter led a tall man in a pale cream suit to the table. She rose, holding out her hand and putting a bright smile on her face.
“Mr. Babr, I—”
She stopped, because her mind finally caught up with her trained manners, and she stared as Adnan grinned at her, taking her hand.
Instead of shaking it, however, he lifted it to his lips, brushing his lips over her knuckles. There was nothing wrong with the gesture, nothing salacious so much as continental, but it sent a shiver through her body that reminded her that, no, she had actually spent a lot of time thinking about him over the three weeks since they had been together in Ikkar.
“I'm not Mehmet Babr,” he said with a slight and mocking smile. “I hope I will do instead for a dinner companion.”
The pleasure she had felt immediately upon seeing him crashed into a smoldering anger, and Bailey pulled her hand back with an abruptness that stopped just short of being rude. For a moment, she considered simply storming out, but more than just being rude to a man who was literally the leader of a nation, it would have felt like a defeat. Instead, she sat back down as Adnan took the seat beside her and gave him a direct and pointed look.
“I certainly do not mind your presence, Sheikh Adnan,” she said with frosty politeness, “but I do wonder what happened to Mr. Babr.”
“Mr. Babr has decided that he will be moving forward more cautiously with his real estate ventures,” said Adnan. “It turns out, unfortunately for you, Ms Andress, that there are other contracts that are more pressing for him to keep.”
“Rather than taking on a foreign investment that might displease you,” she said with distrust, and Adnan smiled.
“I see you recognize the way of it.”
She leaned back in disgust, shaking her head.
“You bullied him away from the contract,” she said, “and then rather than let him tell me himself, you came to gloat, is that it?”
“Well, I certainly wouldn't mind doing a little gloating, but no. I met with Mehmet Babr a few hours ago. When I made my preferences were on the matter clear, he wasn't going to show up at all. The man is eager to please, which has its advantages, but it does not always make for the most polite of interactions. He told me he was only going to ignore you moving forward, and I thought, well, since you are going to be free for the evening…”
Bailey choked back a laugh.
“Free for the evening? Is that what you call it after you sabotaged my business meeting?”
“I sabotaged nothing,” he said, suddenly serious. “I am merely seizing an opportunity.”
“For what?”
“For the squid ink pasta with a side of goat bread they serve here. It's delicious. You should order some.”
Bailey's lips twitched as she fought a laugh. Dammit, there was no reason she should find this funny, but it was.
“By all means, order some,” she said dryly. “Andress Ventures is footing the tab, and my accountants aren't going to blink when they notice that I was having dinner with the Sheikh of Amil.”
“I'm not here as the Sheikh tonight,” he told her.
“Oh? It's that easy for you to just turn it off?”
“When I am with you, it seems incredibly easy,” he said, and she didn't have time to figure out what that meant before he continued.
“I am here as … let us say, a concerned citizen. I want what's best for my country, and that means preserving its traditions and its history.”
“Even if it makes the people and the places involved fall apart from a lack of money and repair?” she asked challengingly, and Adnan waved around at the r
estaurant and beyond it, the city around them.
“Does this look like a place that lacks money?” he asked pointedly, and she shook her head.
“Koli-an is not Ikkar. Ikkar needs money rather badly, and since that money is not coming from the capital, I don't think the people who live there are going to mind it coming from elsewhere.”
Adnan looked surprised at her sharp words, and for a moment, she wondered if he would abruptly stand and walk out. She had a fast mouth, and it had set off more than one man who couldn't stand to hear the truth. However, Adnan only smiled, and there was no malice or spite in it.
“You have an answer for everything, don't you, Bailey?”
Bailey shivered a little when she heard her name on his lips. It reminded her of how he had whispered it late at night as they made love a second and third time, and from the hungry way he was eyeing her, she thought there was a chance he was thinking about it as well.
“I have a lot of answers because I get asked a lot of questions,” she said. “But you called me Bailey. Who am I talking to right now, the Sheikh or the man I met on the beach? As a matter of fact, who are you speaking to, the foreign investor's daughter who is making your life hard or the girl you took home?”
Adnan was silent for a moment, and the waiter chose that moment to make his appearance. Adnan paused, and then he pointed at her.
“This woman does not pay for food here,” he said. “Tell your manager that. If you see her here, her money is no good, do you understand?”
The waiter, who had obviously recognized Adnan nodded even as Bailey uttered a sound of protest.
“You can't do that!”
“Of course I can,” Adnan said calmly. “I own this place. Now, let's see...”
Bailey sat in stunned silence as Adnan ordered, and then he turned to her with a slight teasing smile.
“I wouldn't presume to order for you,” he said, and she found herself laughing at his words, even as she shook her head.
“Your standards are strange and baffling,” she said, and she ordered her own food.
A silence fell over them when the waiter left. Adnan made no effort to hide the fact that he was watching her closely, his eyes flickering over her, a nearly predatory watchfulness in his gaze. Another woman might have been uncomfortable under his direct regard, but Bailey only tilted her head slightly, watching him right back.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, and a slight smile curled over his lips.
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“Yes.”
She expected him to say something about the night they had spent together. She might have been disappointed at his crudity, but she couldn't even say that he would be alone in it. She had spent more time thinking about it than she cared to, and she wondered if it would clear something between them, let them start off on a better footing.
“I was only thinking that we could have gone on much longer without revealing ourselves.”
Whatever Bailey had been expecting, it wasn't that, and she considered his words for a moment.
“We are the people that we are,” she said finally. “I don't think either of us are so very good at hiding that.”
“We were hiding who we were before that morning.”
Bailey bit her lip. There was something dangerous about all of it; the words they were saying, the tantalizing premise that he had effortlessly summoned up between them. She could see nothing but honest curiosity in his eyes. He wanted to know what she thought, and she knew what the truth was. It occurred to her to lie, or at least to obscure the truth, but she found that she didn't want to. Couldn't.
“For me at least, it felt as if I were more myself,” she said, her voice hushed, and something bright and hot sparked in Adnan's eyes before he pulled it back to something more civilized.
“Yes,” he said. “It was the same for me. And I was thinking how very rare that was, likely for both of us. And how even though we only had it for such a short time, I’ve missed it.”
“You are very eloquent,” she said, because she couldn't say what she really thought, which was that that was how she felt as well.
Their food came, elegant and plated so beautifully that it was almost a shame to eat it. Bailey had wondered if they would spend the entire dinner sparring, giving inches to gain territory, trying to learn more about the other, but something about their confessions had loosened them both, made them both step back and forward at once.
Instead they spoke about the food, they spoke about the unseasonably beautiful weather, a dance troupe that had come to Koli-an, where Bailey had gone to school and what Adnan thought about football in the United States.
It wasn't until dinner was over and Adnan handed her out of the booth that she realized how everything had gone.
“This feels like a date,” she blurted out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and Adnan glanced at her, an almost boyish look on his face.
“It does.”
“Is that what you intended?”
“You ascribe to me far greater planning ability than I have. No. I only came to tell you that Babr would not be joining you.”
“So … sitting down to eat with me, speaking with me...”
For perhaps the first time, Adnan hesitated. It gave her pause because she had the idea that he was not a man who hesitated very often.
“I missed you,” he said finally. “That … may have influenced me more than I wished it to.”
Impulsively, Bailey reached out to take his hand. His hand was warm, and she could feel the callouses on the palm that she remembered so clearly from their night together. Far from a politician's smooth hands, his were rough from time spent in the saddle.
“I missed you as well.”
She leaned up to give him a kiss. It was meant to be an innocent thing, light and soft, little more than a peck on the cheek, but Adnan turned his head at the last moment and her lips met his instead.
If Bailey had had any doubts about the chemistry that existed between her and Adnan, they were banished by the rush of fire and passion that swept through her. It was so much, almost too much, and she was helpless to keep herself from pressing against his body as his hand landed at the small of her back, gathering her close to him.
With a single motion, he pulled her into the small alcove of the door of a closed flower shop, his broad back shielding her from the street as his mouth slanted over hers. In another moment, his tongue had pressed between her lips, claiming her with a boldness that made her whimper as she clung to him.
This was what she had been missing, what she had needed. She had dreamed of him without remembering, she had needed him in odd moments of the day. She had had sex before, she thought she had experienced passion, but nothing had ever compared to this.
He was so warm against her, and when his hand slid inside her dark jacket, she could all too clearly feel the heat of his palm straight through her thin blouse, making her whimper against his lips.
“You did miss me,” he murmured. “You looked so cold, so aloof at first. I wondered if it could possibly be the same woman who gave me that night, who branded herself into my skin until I would never dare forget her...”
There was a moment, just a single bright and brilliant moment, where she wondered what it would be like to allow herself to tumble straight into his arms. Maybe they could be who they had been before everything got in the way. Maybe that would be fine.
Then sense reasserted itself, and she pushed back, her back flat against the glass of the door, shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “No. We can't.”
“We can,” he said, but he sighed, pulling back.
They were no longer touching, and the space between them felt more like a thousand miles than the ten inches it really was.
“You should pull back from Ikkar,” he said levelly, and her head spun at how calm he sounded.
“I should?” she asked, her tone like steel.
“Yes.
I am looking into having it classified as a World Heritage Site, a living piece of Amil culture and history. Once I have that ruling, there will be no resorts, nothing that will destroy its importance.”
“And I suppose you came to this decision all on your own. Because, Adnan, I have spoken with the people in Ikkar, and more of them than you might think would kill for the opportunities that Andress Ventures could bring. For some of them, it's the only hope.”
Adnan drew himself up to his full height. God, but he was a large man. She refused to be intimidated, standing her ground.
“You are a foreigner,” he said, his voice chilly. “You know nothing about the hope of the people of Amil.”
“I know because I have asked,” she retorted.
“Great Heaven that you could say such a thing to me,” he said, something almost like marvel in his voice. “You are a menace. I should have you escorted out of the country, I should have you put on a plane straight back to Chicago.”
It should have insulted her, perhaps even frightened her. She knew that as the Sheikh, it was well within in his power to do so. If he did, it would end her plans and her father's, and the people in Ikkar might end up with nothing at all but their history.
Instead of being afraid, however, Bailey only smiled.
“You are not going to do that.”
Adnan eyed her with something between distrust and frustration.
“You are very sure of yourself,” he said, and she nodded.
“I am. And you won't.”
She knew that she wasn't going to get better exit line than that, so she turned and walked down the street to the line of waiting cabs. The entire way, she could feel his eyes on her, his gaze heavy and piercing, bringing a flush to her cheeks and the warmth she had wanted since that fateful day in Ikkar.
Chapter 7
The sky over Ikkar was slate gray, and the water almost an identical shade. Adnan knew that it was only the vagary of the weather, but he couldn't help but think that it boded ill for the day's activities. He was dressed in a western style suit, which he typically enjoyed, but the oppressive feel of a threatening storm draped a humid blanket over the town.
