by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
"Dress casually, and I'll have a pair of coveralls here for you to wear."
He nodded in agreement.
"Wonderful. Meet me here, and after you change I'll drive you out to the refinery." Elena stood, signaling that the meeting was over, and Hassan rose slowly to his feet.
The last thing he wanted to do was return to his suite at the hotel and try to sleep. Yes, it had been a long trip, but his mind was spinning. There was so much to be done, so little time. And yet, to push for an immediate tour of the refinery might seem strange.
Elena opened the door and gave him a smile as she tried to usher him out of her office. As he passed very close by the Rahman Oil CEO, Hassan sensed an uneasiness in her, a nervous sparkle in her eyes and in the way her slender fingers fluttered. He suspected her unsettled response had nothing to do with the oil business.
He stepped through the doorway and into the outer office. No, he did not want to wait until tomorrow to proceed with his investigation. Time was of the essence. If his initial instincts were correct, Elena might not be involved with the Brothers of Darkness at all, she might know nothing about the prince's disappearance. But she knew the people at Rahman Oil. If the Brothers were here, she knew something. Even if she wasn't aware of her knowledge.
Hassan spun to face Elena Rahman, wanting another look, not quite ready to leave her. "I have an idea," he said, smiling at the solution that came to him. "I will buy you dinner this evening to make amends for my earlier blunder. I feel quite guilty."
Elena seemed taken aback by the offer. She had definitely not expected it. "That's.. .very kind of you, but I have a meeting this evening..."
"Oh," the woman seated at the outer office desk interrupted, spinning around in her chair to face them. "I forgot to tell you, Ms. Rahman. That meeting has been canceled." Elena's secretary, an older woman with wildly misbehaving hair and mischievously twinkling blue eyes, smiled widely. "I'd be happy to make reservations for you," she added. "Leon's at eight?"
Elena glared at her secretary. "Thank you," she said tersely, turning a tight smile Hassan's way. "I'll meet you there. You shouldn't have any problem finding it. Evangeline is a pretty small town, and the restaurant is less than a mile from your hotel."
"Lovely." He offered his hand, as if for a handshake. Elena hesitated before offering her own hand. He took that hand, bent down to kiss the knuckles once again. This time he let his mouth linger, just a moment longer than was proper. She shivered tellingly and he felt her response through his hands, through his lips.
This assignment might not be such a sacrifice after all.
* * *
Elena waited until Hassan's Ferrari left the parking lot at warp speed. "You're fired," she whispered without turning to look at the short, gleeful woman who stood behind her.
"I am not," Kitty said. "No one else knows the filing system. You'd be lost without me."
She would be lost without Kitty, but not because of Kitty's filing system or her efficiency as an assistant. They both knew Kitty's job was secure, even when she pulled stunts like this one.
"You couldn't just leave well enough alone."
Kitty snorted. "You didn't have any meeting tonight. You never did! A drool-worthy man asks you on a date, and you blow him off with a nonexistent business meeting? What's wrong with you?"
"It's not a date," Elena argued, something in her stomach flipping over at the very idea. "It's business. Just business."
"Ha." Kitty snorted. "The way that hunky sheik was looking at you, I could tell the only business on his mind was monkey business."
"If you think he's such a hunk, then why don't you meet him for dinner?"
Elena turned around in time to see Kitty wrinkle her nose. "I'm old enough to be his.. .well, not his mother, but I'm definitely old enough to be his much older sister, or an aunt or something. Besides, he didn't stare at me like he wanted to eat me up."
Elena's heart lurched. She had caught glimpses of that stare herself.
"You haven't had a real date in..." Kitty shook her head. "It's been so long I can't even remember!"
"I don't have time for a social life," Elena argued.
"Make time," Kitty said, no hint of teasing in her voice.
Elena sighed. For too long, Rahman Oil had been her entire world. She'd only loved once in her life. After Johnny had died, just weeks after he'd asked her to marry him, she couldn't bear to make herself even think about loving again. It had been years before she'd found the nerve to so much as agree to a dinner date, and even those short evenings were usually disasters. The few relationships she had forged after Johnny's death had never lasted, because she had learned to put business before all else. No man, no matter how charming or handsome, could ever come before the business she had devoted herself to. And no man wanted to be second best. She had learned that early on.
In the past couple of years, she had tried to remedy a few of her mistakes, but romantic relationships still proved to be more than she could handle. She was thirty years old, and she'd never been married. Johnny had been gone eight years, long enough for her to mourn his loss and move on. It wasn't too late for her, far from it. But time was running out, with every day that passed, and she didn't want to wake up one morning to realize that she was an old woman and it really was too late. Too late for love and children. Too late to build the kind of family she'd never known. But how do you force yourself to fall in love? To see hope when you feel none?
If only she'd known her mother. A woman needed a mother at a time like this. But Lydia Parker Rahman had died twenty-nine years ago, when Elena had been a baby. Elena had never known her, not even through loving tales from her father. Yusuf Rahman never talked about his late wife, he'd never told Elena sweet bedtime stories about her mother. Elena suspected he had loved her too much, and even something so simple as talking to his daughter about the woman he had lost was more than he could bear.
The knowledge that love could be so powerful scared her. Loving and losing Johnny had almost destroyed her. Maybe that was one of the reasons she had kept men and love at bay for so long. She was in control at all times. If a love like that were ever to grip her again, would she still be in control?
Her father had tried, more than once, to introduce her to men he thought suitable. Those he presented were all sons of Malounian friends or the friends themselves, older men Yusuf Rahman thought would make fitting husbands. He expected Elena to deny her American mother, to forget that she had been born and raised right here in Texas, and become a proper Malounian woman.
She had never been able to make her father understand that it was too late. After her mother's death, he had left her care to a series of nannies and then sent her away to school as soon as she was old enough. She could never understand how he could expect her to become the kind of traditional daughter he wanted her to be.
Old-world men, like her father and Sheik Hassan Kamal, had little time for an independent woman. Dinner was going to be a disaster.
"Wear the red dress," Kitty said, her smile drifting back.
"I don't think so."
"But you look fabulous in the red dress!" Kitty argued.
"I don't want to look fabulous," Elena argued.
"Yes, you do," Kitty said as she turned to return to her desk.
"Don't."
"Do!" Kitty said as she left the office.
Elena waited until the door was closed before she whispered, not very convincingly. "Don't."
* * *
Hassan, dressed in dark clothing that would be less conspicuous than his white robes, lay belly down on a hill about a quarter mile from the refinery. He studied the place from top to bottom and side to side, looking for signs of unusual activity.
There were none, and no sign of unusually tight security, either. He saw no armed guards, nothing resembling a military-like force.
But then, any such measures would be well hidden. This was a working refinery, and at least some, likely most, of the people there were n
ot involved with or even aware of the Brothers in their midst.
The Rahman Oil Refinery covered a square mile at least. Steam rose from gray stacks, and the fenced refinery area housed cooling towers, storage tanks, a water treatment plant, the refinery's own fire brigade, a special lot for cranes and forklifts, a number of warehouses, a machine shop, and several admin buildings. Beyond the last row of storage tanks was the refinery water access. A barge sat there in the bay, waiting.
Where would they hide a prince? He scanned the length of the refinery, taking in the barbed wire-topped fence, the padlocked gates and the windowless outbuildings. They could hide the prince any one of a thousand places, he imagined.
Rashid had married Princess Julia Sebastiani a few months earlier. Prince Lucas, if they found him alive, would be Rashid's brother-in-law. Family. Uncle to the same child Hassan was uncle to. Even a year ago, that would have been unthinkable, but now.. .things had changed. Relations between Tamir and Montebello were healing. But there was still a long way to go.
Seeing nothing suspicious, Hassan shifted his focus to the office building that sat approximately a half mile to the north of the refinery. His gaze raked up the three-story building to the top floor, where he easily found Elena Rahman's window. He smiled, remembering their meeting. He had never meet a woman like her, of that he was certain. It was more than her unusual position that piqued his interest, more than her beauty. She was a fascinating woman, her eyes full of sweet secrets and tantalizing promise one moment, hard and strictly business the next. He could not wait to get her away from the office.
Yes, this was a job. A mission. He had to find out what Elena knew, had to use her to get to the information he needed. But when that was done....
As he moved the binoculars down, he caught sight of movement in the parking lot, and refocused his attention there. A man in a rumpled suit, he realized with disappointment, making his way to his car at the end of the work day.
But two women left shortly after the man. Elena and her secretary, talking animatedly, walked side by side across the parking lot. Hassan focused on Elena's face, watched her smile at something the secretary said, and then answer with a cavalier wave of her hand. He wished he could read lips. He wanted, so much, to know what she said. Was she talking about their dinner tonight? Or what might come after? She laughed, and her entire face lit up. Ah, that was not the face of a woman who was talking about oil, or the refining process, or the mundane details involved in the business side of Rahman Oil.
When Elena got into her vehicle—a red pickup truck, of all things—and drove off, Hassan lowered his binoculars. Their dinner wasn't until eight. He had plenty of time to sneak into the office building, make his way up to Elena's office, and see if he could find anything incriminating on her computer.
He felt almost guilty for deceiving her, but guilt was not an emotion he could afford at the moment.
Chapter 2
Kitty had made reservations at the most extravagant restaurant in the area, darn her hide. Leon's was expensive, but Elena had never heard anyone complain. The food was always excellent, the music soft and soothing, the lighting romantically dim. And besides, everyone loved Leon. Even on a Tuesday night, the place was bound to be crowded.
Elena left her truck with the valet and headed toward the front entrance, her heart in her throat. If there had been any diplomatic way to get out of this dinner, she would have found it. She approached the entrance to Leon's as she would the doorway to any other business meeting. Determined to be as tough as any man. Knowing that she had to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove that she was worthy of her place at Rahman Oil.
The door swung open as she reached it, and she stepped inside, glancing up at the man who had opened the door for her. She was completely unprepared for the sight of Hassan Kamal in an expensive black suit, his longish black hair uncovered, his smile as wicked as ever. She had been expecting the traditional dress he'd worn this afternoon, but for tonight he had opted for something even more striking. Black-and-white simplicity —a well-cut suit that must have been made to fit him and a white shirt with a high collar, no tie. He looked even broader than he had earlier that day, more imposing.
He took her arm. "You should always wear red," he said softly. "It suits you."
Elena cursed herself silently. She should not have worn the red, she knew that now. She should have worn any one of the dresses she had tried on and discarded. Every other nice dress she owned was still there in her bedroom, tossed across her bed. Some of those dresses she had tried on twice, in her attempt to come up with the perfect outfit for the evening. Kitty had cursed her in suggesting the red. It was a tad too snug, a tad too low-cut. And the red heels that matched the dress were just a tad too high. The black, she decided too late. The baggy black knit that hung below her knees and came up to her throat, that's the dress she should have worn tonight.
"Thank you, Mr. Kamal," she said politely, rather than contending aloud that she should not have worn red.
"Hassan," he insisted, leaning down to place his face just a bit too close to hers, invading her space without actually being too forceful. Her heart kicked, just a little. The room turned just a little bit too warm.
"Hassan," she repeated, giving in too easily. How was she to maintain a strictly business relationship with this man when he looked at her like this? She tried to strengthen her resolve by reminding herself that when they'd met he'd been sure she was a secretary. And even afterward, when he'd known who she was, he'd asked her who actually did all the work. It should be easy to maintain her distance from a man whose thinking was so antiquated.
And then he smashed her resolve with words that had nothing to do with business.
"I like the way you say my name," he said with a smile that was surely illegal in some countries. "You say it...differently." "
"It's my Southern accent," she confessed. "I'm surprised you like it. My father hates my accent." It was a personal confession, one better left unsaid, and she realized it, too late.
"I adore your voice. It's very soft and...slow. Not too soft or too slow, but warm and welcoming."
He seemed sincere. Perhaps she had been hasty in putting him in the same category as her constantly disapproving father.
Heads turned as Hassan escorted her to their table. Of course heads turned. There weren't many men like this in Evangeline, Texas. Or anywhere else, she imagined. He seemed unaware of the stir he caused, or maybe he was accustomed to being the center of attention. He didn't even seem to notice the eyes that followed them across the room to a secluded table by the window that looked out over a rambling, overgrown garden.
The casual hairstyle Hassan wore suited him, Elena decided as he held her chair out for her. The long, black waves that touched his collar and brushed his cheek made him look like a pirate, or a warrior prince. She half expected to spot a gold loop dangling from one ear, or a hint of an exotic tattoo crawling up his neck from beneath his starched collar. She saw neither, of course, and dismissed her fanciful musings with a shake of her head.
Hassan Kamal liked her Southern accent, or so he said. He himself had almost no accent at all. If not for just a hint of formality in the way he formed his words, you wouldn't know English wasn't his first language. Determined not to like him too much, Elena decided he must be one of those annoying men to whom everything came easily. Knowledge. Money. And women.
Her neck prickled in warning. She couldn't allow herself to be sucked in by his charm, good looks, and killer smile. She did not give in easily. In fact, she did not give in at all.
As he took the chair across from her, she steeled her spine. "Mr. Kamal," she began. "Hassan," she corrected herself when he opened his mouth to protest. "I want to be up-front with you. While I think a partnership with the Kamal family would be a wonderful idea, a real coup for Rahman Oil, I have to tell you, it will take some persuasion to get my father to agree."
He didn't seem at all disturbed by this news. In fact,
he smiled and leaned in her direction. The table was between them, and still it seemed he moved too close. "Must we discuss business tonight?" he asked softly.
Her heart skipped a beat. If they didn't discuss business, what on earth would they talk about? "I thought business was the reason for your visit. And for this dinner, as well."
Hassan laid hooded black eyes on her face. "Business can wait until tomorrow. Tonight I am having dinner with a beautiful woman, and I have no desire...to discuss oil refineries."
God, the man had a smile that would stop traffic. "All right," she said, taking a deep breath. "Perhaps you can tell me about Tamir. From what little I know, it's a beautiful country."
"It is," he said. "And you must tell me all about Texas."
Elena nodded. This conversation she could live with. As long as he didn't smile at her like that again...
"I ordered for you," he said. "I hope you don't mind."
He'd ordered for her? Of course she minded. It was an outrageously presumptuous action. "That depends on what you ordered."
"The broiled shrimp and pasta, steamed vegetables, a pitcher of water with lemon and the chocolate mousse for dessert."
She relaxed. All her favorites. "You talked to Kitty, didn't you?"
He nodded. "I called your office this afternoon, after you and your secretary..."
"Assistant," Elena interrupted.
"After you and your assistant left for the day," Hassan finished, perhaps just a little amused. "The woman who answered the phone was kind enough to give me your assistant's home phone number. I hope you don't mind."
How could she mind? It would be unreasonable to be irritated because a man went to the trouble to find out what she liked to eat. "Of course not." But she would have to have a word with Stephanie, who usually worked until seven and knew better than to give out Kitty's home phone number. At least she now knew that the sheik could be as charming on the phone as he was in person.
"Tamir," she said, anxious to change the subject. "Tell me about your home."
