His sneer grew more profound, hidden temporarily behind his small cup of espresso before he revealed it to proclaim, “Success.”
She nodded, shrugging casually. “Sometimes success and overconfidence can look oddly familiar,” she cautioned, unable – or perhaps merely unwilling – to leave his grating cockiness unanswered.
He arched one midnight black eyebrow before flaring his nostrils threateningly. “Overconfidence?” he sneered, voice deep and masculine like his endlessly radiant eyes. “Is there such a thing?”
“Only for those that don’t know any better,” she sighed aloud before muttering under her breath, “or simply don’t care.”
“Au contraire,” the sexy stranger corrected, clearly a master of more than two languages. “I know, and care, enough to embrace what you Americans so clearly fear.”
“Which is?” she asked, truly curious this time.
He made her wait for the answer, lifting the small cup effortlessly to his lips, as if wanting her to study his long, elegant fingers, manicured nails and the way his lips embraced the rim of the small cup. When he was through he lowered it just enough to smile, wink and say, “Change, my dear. Simply the ability to change and overcome.”
With that he handed her the empty espresso cup, as if she was the waitress merely there to do his bidding, and turned to another male competitor to laugh heartily at the slight. Carly turned as well, if only to set the rattling cup and saucer down on the break room counter beside her and hide the growing shame blushing across her face.
As one of the few women at Razor, the Miami investment firm where she worked, Carly was used to the daily sleights of a male-dominated world. But rarely were those sleights so obvious, derisive and outright dismissive.
The handsome stranger seemed to take great pleasure in treating her as a washer woman, or perhaps came from a culture that treated woman – businesswomen in particular – as second class citizens.
As her blush subsided, Carly heard rumblings behind her and turned, noting the half-dozen investment firm representatives that had gathered at the corporate HQ of PrimeTime being ushered into the conference room proper for their morning presentations.
Smiling, Carly tugged down on the hem of her own fitted jacket and strode confidently toward the conference room. She’d show the sexy Middle Easterner a thing or two about second class citizens, she thought, if it was the last thing she did!
Two
Rahmad “Rahm” Farzik II sat in the back of the conference room, shoulders straight and spine stiff, just as his etiquette teacher had taught him in the sumptuous classroom of his father’s palace. The tiny peninsula of Hahmsuit, in the Persian Gulf, where his family had reigned for centuries, seemed far removed from this modern Miami conference room, despite the similar climates.
Rahm was destined to become Sheik Rahmad Farzik II upon his father’s death but, until then, had convinced his father that to diversify in western companies was the future as their diminishing oil reserves began to lose luster. Not that they’d lost any value, of course. The Farzik’s fortunes were nearly unsurpassed in the Ferzah region, where their oil reserves stretched for hundreds of miles in either direction and had made them billionaires many times over.
Still, one tired of riding in dusty Range Rovers week in and week out, staring at the same endless sea of Arabian desert year after year. Rahm craved change, adventure and, above all, the company of comely western women, shapely and curvy and eager to please a visiting dignitary, even if they didn’t know how to spell the word. College had been his ticket to the states, affording Rahm both the opportunity and proclivity for putting his family’s money – and his overactive libido – to good use.
After securing his MBA with honors from Cornell University, Rahm had begun investing his monthly stipend – which rivaled the coffers of most Fortune 500 companies to begin with – in small tech startups. To be honest, most were former classmates from his Cornell days, those who knew of his interest in modern technology and all things American and sought to impress him with their newfangled gadgets and digital prowess.
All the same, he’d managed to acquire a steady stream of small but potentially lucrative companies, one that more than tripled his investments in turn and made his father, the real sheikh, more than content to let Rahm live and work in the industrialized west – as long as his assets far outweighed his liabilities.
Along the way “Rahm” had adopted his western nickname, wore his traditional garb only in his weekly video conference calls back home, and made the most of his time in America. For a man like Rahm, whose business pursuits were not near as legendary as his romantic conquests, that meant finding, seducing and ultimately taming sexy, beautiful, independent and vulnerable western women like the one who’d just chatted him up in the break room before the morning’s presentations started.
He watched her take the floor now: long, lean, radiant and lustrous in a maroon jacket and matching pencil skirt that complimented her sleek grey blouse and coltish legs, to say nothing of her long red hair and shimmering green eyes.
Of all his conquests, in nearly all 50 American states, Rahm realized he’d never bedded a redhead before, something he decided he would do immediately upon securing the account for PrimeTime, the latest digital photo sharing company he was poised to acquire once the formalities of the other investors’ presentations were over.
“Good afternoon,” said the pale, luminous stranger with the long, endless legs and stiff, pert breasts. “My name is Carly Stanton and I represent Razor.” She paused, hands outstretched in an inviting, if practiced, manner. Making eye contact with each man in the room, save for Rahm, that is, young Ms. Stanton continued, “Why Razor? Because we are a company on the ‘cutting edge’ of modern technology designed specifically to meet the needs of today’s dynamic, sophisticated and reckless youth. We believe PrimeTime is the next SnapChat, and are excited to offer our significant growth and investment expertise to help achieve that loft goal in record time…”
Though he was intrigued by the soft, velvet tones of her voice, particularly the husky hue that made his loins quiver with desire and anticipation of their union to come, Rahm felt his mind drifting to her other various “assets” as Carly spoke.
Instead he admired her milky white skin, imagining what it might feel like beneath his own dusky fingers. How their bodies might look, intertwined on the soft, silken sheets of his rented penthouse at the southernmost tip of south Beach. How her liquor might taste, dancing along his tongue as he teased the wisps of her fine, ginger thatch with his eager lips. How her voice might grow even huskier as she called out his name, scratching his back with those long, maroon fingernails as he made her writhe and pulse beneath him—
“Rahm?”
He jerked back to consciousness, aware that the sexy redhead had returned to her seat at the front of the conference room and was now peering back at him. Was she already calling his name? he wondered, remaining stone faced as he realized they were all looking at him – everyone in the room. And no, it wasn’t Carly calling out his name, but Vernon Farkle, the nerdy inventor of PrimeTime, sitting behind his big clear desk to one side and peering at him curiously. “Rahm, would you… care to make your presentation now?”
Rahm nodded, standing abruptly and ignoring Carly’s curious, smiling green eyes to brush past her to the front of the room. Turning, he ignored the other investors and addressed the barely legal Vernon Farkle instead, ignoring his chubby cheeks and the spray of dirty blond stubble on his double chins to peer into his warm blue eyes.
“I don’t know what PrimeTime does,” he explained, eliciting murmurs and not a few gasps from those assembled as he continued, undaunted. “But I do know that you need money to do it. If you’re interested in getting 10% more funds than the highest bidder here promised you, then please see me after they’ve all left.”
He smiled, confidently, and began to take a step back toward his seat when Vernon said, “But… aren’t you interested
in what you’re investing in?”
Rahm met the young tech CEO’s curious gaze with a steely one of his own. “Of course I am,” he said, smiling insincerely. “I am here today because your company piqued my interest. Otherwise, I’d be on my private jet flying to Silicon Valley to invest in your nearest competitor.”
There were grumbles among the other investors before a familiar voice said, “Uh, nice try Rahm, but SmileSize, their nearest competitor, is out of Seattle. Washington? You of all people should know that.”
He turned to Carly, admiring the flush in her cheeks and fire in her intense, emerald eyes. “And why is that?” he asked, supremely confident in the fact that she wouldn’t know the answer.
She clucked a tongue and peered back at him incredulously. But it was Vernon Farkle who answered. “Because, Mr. Farzik,” he said dismissively. “Your investment firm, Platinum Dunes, already owns them.”
Three
“Congratulations, Carly.”
The voice emerged from the darkness, surprising but not alarming her. She stood still all the same, peering as her eyes adjusted to the cavernous parking garage’s dim lighting and seeing a striking figure inch from the shadows with a predator’s grace.
Rahm.
He looked even more magnificent in the dramatic lighting, the weakly glowing bulb above his head casting his lean, chiseled features in sexy shadows that made her swoon even as she stood, rigidly, keys to her Lexus sedan clutched tightly in her grip.
“For what?” she asked, inching closer to show she wasn’t afraid.
The visitor’s level of the PrimeTime parking garage was empty by now, the other investors having left long ago. She’d assumed, after his dismal performance back in the boardroom, Rahm would have beaten them all to a hasty retreat. And yet here he was, long and lean and lurking in the shadows.
Still waiting, she realized, but… for what?
“On securing the PrimeTime account,” he said, sounding neither disappointed in his own failure or, for that matter, entirely congratulatory of her success.
She smirked. “You could have beaten me fair and square,” she said, pausing beneath her own weak sodium lamp. “If you’d only done a little more research into the company.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. Sometimes, nerdy little tech boys are threatened by my… presence.”
She snorted aloud, never quite sure if Rahm’s bravado was merely a persona he thought all westerners should adopt, or if he sincerely believed the BS that came out of those two glorious, thick, sultry lips. “Is that right?” she purred, egging him on.
He shrugged those broad shoulders again and inched even closer. “And sometimes,” he added, moving so close she could smell the musky fragrance that danced along his lustrous, Persian skin. “Nerdy little tech boys award companies to the sexy girls they couldn’t get in high school.”
Carly stiffened, her patience and good humor turning to sudden and penetrating irritation. “And sometimes,” she huffed before turning on her heels, “certain Middle Eastern types have watched too many American movies where they think talking like John Wayne will get them the girl.”
His imported Italian shoes followed her, step for step, until she whirled to find them, face to face – nearly nose to nose – in the murky garage light. “Here’s a tip, Rahm: John Wayne was kind of a jerk!”
He chuckled, revealing a warm, sexy grin that immediately threw cold water on her roiling rage. “Is it not blasphemy in your country to say such a thing?” he asked, revealing the soft, lilting tone of his natural accent.
She laughed quietly, reveling in a wit that was as sharp as his imported, tailored suit. “Indeed,” she confirmed, admiring him anew, but not so much that she could avoid adding insult to injury. “And is it not blasphemy in your country to lose to a girl?”
His face changed immediately, the wry grin turning down into a stiff, curt frown. “Indeed,” he replied, shaking his head and looking like a sad little boy who’d just lost the championship game. “My father will be very disappointed when I call him later today and reveal the news.”
Carly softened, slightly, to see what looked like abject fear in Rahm’s normally fearless brown eyes; to see defeat bow that normally stiff spine. “Does he have to know?”
Rahm clucked a tongue, adopting a defensive stance before pacing, slightly, to the left and right in front of where she stood. “Of course,” he insisted, waving large, masculine hands that featured long, delicate fingers. “It’s his money I’m investing, after all.”
“But Platinum Dunes,” she said, thumbs still sore from researching Rahm on her smart phone in the quiet moments she’d spent in the conference room while awaiting Vernon’s verdict. “It’s your company, right?”
“Funded with my father’s oil money,” he huffed, as if resentful of the apron strings that stretched all the way back to the Persian Gulf and his homeland of small, but oil rich, Hahmsuit.
She nodded, as if understanding what it might feel like to resent being a billionaire in waiting – to say nothing of a full-fledged sheik. “Might I make a suggestion?” she asked, tentatively, lifting a hand to squeeze his arm conspiratorially before thinking better of the intimate gesture and waving it instead.
“By all means,” he snorted. “Please educate me, Ms. Stanton.”
She ignored his petulant tone and said, “Maybe if you’d spent a little more time researching PrimeTime and less bragging about how eager you were to outbid me, you might have won the contract after all.”
Rahm glowered back at her, shaking his head and breaking the warm, even convivial mood. “Thank you, Ms. Stanton,” he huffed, turning on his heels. “I’m sure father will appreciate your words of wisdom.”
He stomped across the parking garage, shaking his head and muttering to himself as she stood, fists clenched at her side. “Or, you know,” she called after him, unable to control herself. “Just stand up to him and admit you screwed up!”
She waited for a pause in his footsteps, or even a withering glare over his shoulder, but got instead the sounds of a back door opening and closing, a severe driver – who looked trained to kill her in about 1,001 ways – glaring at her from the shadows that surrounded most, but not all, of his white Rolls Royce.
The driver slid inside, started the engine and raced off, leaving Carly to ponder the ways of the Middle East, and why she still worried about what Rahm’s father might say to him when he heard the news that his son had been bested by a westerner – and a woman at that!
Four
“Unacceptable!”
Rahm’s father’s voice was so deep, so enraged, so full of betrayal and menace it fairly shook the flat screen computer monitor on his desk. “Father,” Rahm said, bowing slightly, almost imperceptibly, as he stood in front of the web cam for his weekly follow-up call with his father, Rahmad “Rahm” Farzik the First. “I take full responsibility for losing the MeTime account. I was preoccupied with last week’s acquisition of the—”
“Spare me the excuses,” his father bellowed, accent thick as his rich, oily beard and the “thawb,” or flowing off-white tunic, he wore from chin to toe. His head was covered in a matching “Keffiyeh,” or scarf, a sumptuous gold ring securing it to his head. Thick reading glasses, used to peruse Rahm’s spreadsheets for the month, was his only nod to western wear.
Behind him were the trappings of his opulent office, including priceless artwork and commendations from the various international organizations he belonged to, mostly at the behest of his completely westernized sun. The sky outside his double-high palace doors a brilliant blue over the tiny peninsula of Hahmsuit, towering palms lining the walkway along his office balcony.
“Part of being a man,” his father continued, pacing the marble tiled floor of his opulent office, his corpulent frame an ode to his sumptuous lifestyle, “is owning up to one’s failures.”
“I hardly consider missing out on one tech company a failure,” Rahm blurted before he could thi
nk better of it.
On the screen, broadcasting from the other side of the world, is father paused in his pacing and turned toward the camera recording his every move. “It’s not the company I’m concerned with,” his father hissed. “It’s losing out to Xavier Stanton.”
“Of Stanton Investments?” Rahm asked. “I didn’t see him at the presentation.”
“Not him,” growled the elder Farzik. “His daughter!”
Rahm racked his brain before remembering the sexy redhead’s last name was, indeed, Stanton. “Carly?”
“Indeed, son.”
Now Rahm paced, mind whirling with the possibilities. How could he have missed the fact that Carly shared a last name with his father’s biggest business rival, Xavier Stanton. Head of Stanton Investing, Xavier and Rahmad Farzik had a long history of rival acquisitions extending back as long as Rahm’s father had been investing in western and other international companies.
“Father,” he said, bowing more humbly – and sincerely – before the blinking blue web cam on his own computer monitor. “I had no idea. Of course I would have made more of an effort if I’d known—”
“You should make an effort every time, son,” Rahmad Farzik said, voice still steely but quieter this time. “No matter who the other bidders are, you should win every account. Isn’t that what I sent you to America to do?”
ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance Page 76
