by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
He could almost hear the dismayed shake of Rashid's head. "The woman?"
"Yes."
There was a silent moment, a hesitant pause. Rashid knew he would have to choose his words carefully. "Please tell me this is not the woman I think it might be."
Since Rashid had heard of only one woman in Texas, Hassan knew his brother suspected it was Elena who had detained him last night. "If you don't want to know, perhaps you should not ask."
Again, Rashid sighed. Hassan knew, had known all along, that if Rashid could've sent in a well-trained agent to do this job, he would have. The security breach made that impossible.
"Hassan, it isn't wise to mix business with pleasure."
"Have faith, brother," he said, and then he returned the receiver to its cradle before Rashid could try to talk some common sense into his little brother.
* * *
It had not been a productive day, but for once Elena didn't particularly care. She was floating on a cloud. This was so unlike her.
Instead of working, as she should, she stood in the outer office talking to Kitty. Not about business and not about Hassan, but about little things. Clothes. Preferred shades of lipstick and nail polish. Elena even asked Kitty if she'd ever read Kahlil Gibran.
She'd allowed a man, an aggravating, confusing, wonderful man to change her life. It was true that she barely knew Hassan Kamal, and yet she did trust him. Love him. Want him with every fiber of her being. Given what had happened in the past week, she should be skeptical, suspicious, wary.. .but her heart was light and full of unexpected joy.
Her good mood was spoiled by the arrival of her father and more than a half dozen of his cronies. Most of them she recognized. A few she did not, and that piqued her interest. The men, all well dressed in dark suits and wearing very serious expressions, stepped off the elevator and headed for the conference room. Her father and Arif trailed behind.
Elena stepped into the hallway. "What's going on?" she asked.
Her father turned to face her, and so did his companion. Arif, who was taller than Yusuf Rahman and much thinner, even smiled at her. The grin was tight and unfriendly, totally without warmth.
"It doesn't concern you," her father said sternly.
"How can that be?" she asked, puzzled and annoyed as she stepped down the hallway, closing the distance between herself and the two men. "I'm CEO of this company. Like it or not, everything that goes on here concerns me."
The old man glanced toward the conference room door at the end of the hallway.
"Elena, we will talk later."
She looked toward the conference room herself, and caught a pair of curious, strange eyes peering from the doorway. Her heart sank. "Does this have anything to do with Mr. Kamal's.. .suggestion?" Proposal was the wrong word. A man proposed to the woman he wanted to marry, not her father.
"No," he snapped. "I can see very well that you don't like Kamal, and I don't blame you. You shouldn't concern yourself with the future. He's offering a business deal, nothing more. Think of it, Elena," he said forcefully. "You would be a princess."
Elena shook her head, more agitated than before. "I won't be sold off so you can tell everyone that your daughter is a princess. That's no reason..."
An agitated Arif stepped forward. "Don't worry about it, Elena." He glanced at his friend and associate, Elena's father, and lowered his voice. "If the new husband becomes a problem, he can always meet with an accident, like the other one."
Yusuf Rahman's response was immediate and frightening. He gave his friend a look that would melt any other man where he stood. Arif stepped back, his lips tight.
"We must hurry," Arif said.
Elena couldn't speak. He can always meet with an accident, like the other one.
Her father shooed Arif to the conference room with a promise that he would be there shortly. Elena stood there, feeling faint, as if the blood had drained from her head.
"Don't pay any attention to Arif," her father said with a wave of his hand. "He's callous and has never learned the nuances of the English language."
Elena nodded. Unfortunately, she knew that Arif spoke English quite well.
"We will discuss the plans for your marriage to Kamal tomorrow..."
"Dad, I..."
He raised a hand to silence her. "Tonight I want you to keep him away from the refinery. I will have a guest there this evening, another potential investor, and I don't want the sheik around to get in the way."
All she could do was nod, as her father turned and stalked to the conference room, closing the door behind him with a resounding thud.
Elena stood there for a moment, alone in the hallway. Arif had just suggested that she marry Hassan and then.. .what? He would have an accident?Like the other one?
She turned around and headed for her office, shaking off Kitty's confused questions about what was up in the conference room. She closed the door behind her and went to her desk, sitting down easily and opening the bottom left drawer.
There, beneath a stack of papers, sat the weapon her father had given her, months after Johnny's murder. Johnny had been killed with a 9mm weapon. Was this...? She closed her eyes and shook her head. No. It couldn't be. No matter how cold and distant her father could be, he wouldn't.. .he couldn't...
Besides, Johnny's death hadn't been an accident. It had been a cold-blooded, senseless murder.
But she hadn't imagined the threat in Arif's words, and suddenly her father's turnaround where Hassan was concerned made sense. He hated the Tamiri royal family, she knew he did. He had objected to doing business with them from the beginning. Had he changed his mind because Hassan's offer of marriage would give him some kind of elevated stature? And was he willing to kill his new son-in-law once he had what he wanted?
Hassan knew something was wrong the moment Elena opened the door to her condo, in answer to his soft knock. Her face was pale, her lips thin. And though she tried to hide it, her hands trembled ever so slightly.
"I got your message," he said, stepping into the entryway as she opened the door wide and moved back. "Is everything all right?"
"Yeah," she said, tossing the answer out casually. "I just thought we might as well finish up tonight." She didn't look him in the eye. In fact, she seemed to look everywhere else. The carpet beneath her feet was suddenly fascinating.
Finish up? "Something's wrong," he said, grabbing her arm and making her face him, as she tried to turn away.
He wondered if Elena knew how transparent she was, at least to him. She tried to be cool, untouched, but her eyes were filled with fear and she quivered down deep. Not with desire, not this time, but with that same fear she tried to hide.
"Nothing's wrong," she said, finally looking him in the eye and lying too well. "It's just.. .it's time for you to go."
"Go where?"
"Go home," she said softly. Her lower lip trembled, just a little, but she caught it quickly. "I'm not going to marry you, you're not going to buy your way into the refinery business, and you're not going to sleep your way into a partnership, either." She tried for a little edge, and found it. "Game's over," she said. "We both know you were trying to romance your way into Rahman Oil. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm not as gullible as you seem to think. Go back to Tamir where you belong."
She tried to turn away, but Hassan caught her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. "Last night..."
"Last night was...it was just...it didn't mean anything." Again, the lie, only not so smooth this time.
"You said..."
"I was caught up in the moment," she said, cutting him off before he could finish his sentence. "That's all it was."
He didn't believe her. Something was wrong, and he wanted, more than anything, for her to tell him what had happened. He wanted her to trust him enough to tell him what had frightened her. She'd seen or overheard something, and she was doing her best to get rid of him. Why? Was she protecting the father she loved so much? Did she know the truth about El-Malak, afte
r all?
"Elena," he whispered, moving his mouth toward hers.
"Hayati."
She let him kiss her. She even kissed him back, for one long moment. Did he taste dried tears on her lips? Did she give away too much with the hint of desperation in her kiss? Her lips stiffened and she moved her head to the side, breaking the contact of mouth to mouth.
"Tell me what's wrong," he whispered, tracing her jaw with his fingers.
"Nothing's wrong. It's just...over."
"No. Not like this," he insisted lowly.
"I'll...e-mail you," she said. "I saw the address on your business card."
She wasn't going to tell him anything. He would have done anything to protect her, to love her, and she was dismissing him this way because his presence was no longer convenient. "You'll e-mail me?" he asked, unable to hide his anger.
"Unless you'd rather I not," she said, again trying to be cool and distant.
Hassan stepped back. He didn't know what had happened, but he did know one thing. For some reason Elena had been forced to choose between her father and her lover, and she had chosen El-Malak.
Rashid was right. Mixing espionage with pleasure was bad business.
"This is what you want?"
Elena's lips softened and Hassan wished, in the split second that she hesitated, that she would say no. "Yes," she finally answered.
"Fine," he said, turning away and heading for the door. "E-mail me when you get a chance."
She said nothing as he left her home, slamming the door behind him as he went. He stalked down the hall, but he didn't wait or listen for Elena to follow. She had made her choice, she had made her decision. In the parking lot he lifted his head to the sky. It would soon be dark, and it looked like it would be a clear night.
Unable to shake his anger Hassan sped out of the parking lot, but he didn't go far. He parked his truck in the lot next door, in a place where it would be shielded from view by a leafy hedge, should Elena go out tonight. He left the truck and found a secluded, bushy spot near the corner of the brick building, where he could watch the front entrance without being seen.
Hassan's stomach churned, his heart rose to his throat. He still loved Elena, but if she had chosen to align herself with El-Malak, what was he to do?
He cursed, long and low, and dropped to his haunches.
"E-mail," he muttered in disgust, as he pinned his eyes on the front door.
* * *
Elena stared at the phone, as she had for the past hour. She wouldn't call anyone until she knew Hassan was gone. She didn't want him caught in the middle of this, and that's right where he would be. Caught in the middle. If her father was capable of the crime she suspected him of, he was capable of anything... including killing Hassan if it suited his purposes. Including using Hassan to ensure her silence, if he learned what she
was up to.
She'd call Cade first, she imagined, and then the police. Her heart flipped over. Could she call the police on her own father? Could she report that she suspected him of murder? It would be simple enough to test the weapon in her desk drawer against the bullet that had killed Johnny, she imagined. Even after eight years, they would surely have all the evidence filed away somewhere.
Elena asked herself why, and then shook off the question. She knew why. She and Johnny had never told Yusuf Rahman that they were going to marry, but somehow he had found out. And he had disapproved, as she had known he would. Instead of telling her he knew of her plans and was not pleased, he'd taken care of the problem in a more permanent way. And then he'd held her hand at the funeral and let her cry on his shoulder. What kind of a man was he?
Something inside her had wanted, so desperately, to tell Hassan everything tonight, to lean on him and ask for his help. It wasn't a lack of trust that stopped her, it was the heart-clenching certainty that her father would kill Hassan without a second thought, if the sheik turned out to be more trouble than he was worth.
She had barely survived burying Johnny. Burying Hassan would kill her.
She jumped when the phone she was watching rang, and quickly snatched up the receiver.
"Elena," Kitty's agitated voice cracked. "Something's going on at the refinery."
Elena looked at her watch. "Why are you at work? It's almost nine."
"I was trying to finish up the payroll. I was almost done when I looked out the window and saw all these cars headed up the road toward the refinery. Maybe a dozen."
"Did you call the guard shack?"
"No answer," Kitty said.
"Call the police," Elena said. "I'll be right..."
"Hey!" Kitty cried. "Who the hell do you think you are? Put that thing down!"
"Kitty!" Elena shouted. "Who's there? What thing?"
A deep, accented voice replaced that of the agitated woman. "Call the police, and she dies." With that, the connection was severed, and Elena was left staring at the useless phone in her hand.
She set the receiver in the cradle, and then quickly picked it up with every intention of calling Hassan's hotel. He should be there by now, he would know what to do. But she had only four numbers dialed before she thought better of it and slammed the receiver down.
He'd probably already gone, packed his bags and left Evangeline in a huff. Of course he was hurt. One night she tells him she loves him, the next she sends him packing. How could she ever explain that all she wanted was to protect him the way she hadn't been able to protect Johnny?
But she needed someone, and if anyone would know what to do, it was Hassan. He wasn't a kid, like Johnny had been. And like it or not, she needed him now.
Blind faith. Hassan didn't know what he asked, when he asked that complete faith of her. Trust. How many times had he asked her to trust him? Without cause. Without proof that he was deserving of that trust.
She picked up the phone again and dialed quickly, asking for Hassan's room when the hotel operator answered. She tapped her foot while the phone rang, and rang, and when the operator came back on the line to ask if she wanted to leave a message, Elena slammed down the phone.
She was on her own.
Chapter 16
The front door to the admin building was unlocked, and all was quiet. Elena took the elevator, fidgeting as it rose too slowly. When the doors opened she rushed into the hallway and ran to her office. Again, the door was unlocked, and as she surveyed the scene around her she found she couldn't breathe. Kitty's chair had been knocked onto its side, and most of the papers that had been sitting on her desk had been swept to the floor.
Elena lifted her eyes to the window. At the moment, everything looked normal at the refinery. She'd always thought the plain, functional plant became beautiful at night, when the lights came on and it was made brilliant against the black sky.
Beautiful or not, at the moment something was wrong. She ran into her office, her first instinct taking her to the bottom left drawer of her desk. She lifted the papers that hid her gun and stared at it for a long moment.
Johnny might well have been killed with this very weapon. Until today, that possibility had not even crossed her mind, but now.. .she was almost certain. She hadn't seen him, after he'd been shot, but her imagination had painted a picture that still haunted her dreams, on occasion. The damage a bullet could do, entering the back of his head and exiting his face. The blood, the pain. She couldn't even make herself touch a gun, and she knew damn well she wouldn't be able to pull the trigger.
She slammed the drawer shut and popped up to her feet, eyes landing on the small closet across the room. There was no way she could storm in there, armed and looking for trouble, and do Kitty any good. But by God, she was CEO and no one was going to tell her she couldn't look at every inch of that plant.
She had a million questions about her father, a million doubts. If he was behind this, in some way.. .no matter what, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.
* * *
Hassan waited at the end of the hallway, crouched down and hidden by a table whi
ch held a terra-cotta statue of a woman and child. Waiting was torture, but he'd already established that no one but Elena was in the office. He could hear her from here, opening and closing drawers, banging around in her office.
Finally she emerged, dressed not in her jeans and plain white blouse, but wearing her black coveralls and carrying a large, jangling ring of keys. She was heading for the refinery. What could take her there so late?
He didn't like this. Something had happened to agitate the usually calm Elena. As soon as the elevator doors closed behind her, he hurried down the hall to her office. The signs of a struggle didn't reassure him that all was well.
All was not well. He would have given anything to believe that Elena would trust him enough to ask for his help. He didn't.
Hassan ran into Elena's office and opened the drawer where he had seen the weapon her father had given her. He half expected to see that it was gone, that Elena had taken the Heckler & Koch with her, but the pistol sat there, untouched. Without hesitation, Hassan took the weapon and checked to make sure it was still fully loaded. It was.
As he went to the window, he jammed the weapon into the waistband at his spine. In the parking low below, Elena stood beside her truck, still as a statue as she stared toward the refinery down the road. His own truck was parked at the back of the building, situated among a row of maintenance trucks. If Elena looked for it, she would find it. If not, she would have no way of knowing that he was here.
Instead of jumping in her truck, she turned her back on the office building and started walking. Not down the street, but through the wooded area along the side of the road.
She was sneaking up on the refinery, rather than approaching dead on. Why? He didn't like any of the answers that came to him, as he ran for the stairs.
Elena stopped at the east gate, found the proper key, and unlocked the padlock. So far, everything looked fine. Oh, God, if Kitty wasn't here she had no idea where to look. She didn't dare call the police, not with the threat of death hanging over Kitty's head.
