“Fifty thousand, Miss O’Connell. Surely that’s ample payment for the time you’d like me to think you put in on this project.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Are you offering me a bribe?”
“I’m offering you payment for the job you claim to have done.”
“My God, you are! You think you can buy my silence!”
His eyes darkened. “Let’s not make a melodrama out of this. You’ve threatened to derail a project that’s of great importance to me. I’m simply suggesting there’s no need for you to do that.” He smiled, and she wanted to wipe the smile off his face. “I don’t carry a checkbook with me, of course—”
“Of course.”
“But I will have a courier deliver a check to you here within—”
“No!”
“Ah. You’d rather we kept the transaction private.” He reached in his breast pocket, took out a small leather notebook and a pen. “If you’ll give me your home address—”
“I am not for sale, Sheikh Qasim!”
Caz looked up. The woman’s face was white, except for two slashes of crimson across those elegant cheekbones. She was going to be more difficult to deal with than he’d anticipated.
“How much?” he said coldly.
“I just told you, I am not—”
“One hundred thousand.”
“Are you deaf? I said—”
“I’m weary of this game, Miss O’Connell, and of your act. Name your price.”
She laughed. Laughed! At him! And edged toward the door, still laughing, as if he were a lunatic howling at the moon.
“Goodbye, your Mightiness. It’s been interest—”
She gasped as he grabbed her shoulders and swung her toward him.
“How dare you laugh at me?” he growled.
“Take your hands off me.”
“You’re a fool, Miss O’Connell. Did you really think you could threaten me and get away with it?”
Megan looked up into eyes filled with hostility. She knew that this was the moment to tell the sheikh that her threat, as he called it, had been made in the heat of the moment, that there’d be no lawsuit because Simpson, damn his soul, was right. The only thing she’d win, if she sued, was a reputation as a troublemaker, and that would mark the end of her corporate career.
That was the logical thing to do.
Logic, however, had nothing to do with what she felt at that moment.
The sheikh obviously thought he ruled the universe. Well, why wouldn’t he? During her research, she’d learned that women were treated like dirt in his country. Well, she was a woman, but she didn’t have to bow to this man. She was an American citizen, and she didn’t have to take this nonsense.
“I asked you a question,” he said. “Did you think—’’
“What I think,” Megan said, enunciating each word with precision, “is that you’re a tyrant. You’re so used to people treating you like a god, to you treating them as if they were your property—’’
“Stop it! How dare you?”
“What you mean,” she said, her voice trembling, “is how dare a woman speak to you this way? Isn’t that right, Sheikh Qasim? I’m a female. A worthless creature. And you are absolutely certain that women are only good for one thing.”