The Sheikh's Convenient Bride

But she never did.

He’d hated her for a little while, when he was thirteen or fourteen and Hakim let slip that she’d left his father and him because she’d despised living in Suliyam. He hadn’t known that. His father had always told him his mother had gone back to her beloved California for a holiday, that she’d taken ill and had to stay there to get the proper medical care.

It turned out only part of that was true. She’d gotten sick and died in California, all right, but she hadn’t gone for a h

oliday. She’d abandoned everything. Her husband, her adopted country…

Her son.

Caz frowned, saw an opening in the next lane and shot into it.

It had all happened more than twenty years ago. Water under the bridge, as the Americans said.

He had more important things to think about.

Caz sighed. He was wound up like a spring about tonight’s dinner appointment. He had to relax. That woman was to blame for his bad mood. What an aggressive female! A feminist, to the core.

Was that the genie in the bottle he’d be setting loose, once he began implementing his plans back home? Maybe, and maybe he’d regret it, but you couldn’t lead a nation into the twenty-first century without granting rights and privileges to all its citizens.

Even women.

Surely they wouldn’t all turn out like…

No. He wasn’t going to think about Megan O’Connell. He’d wasted too much time on her already. All in all, this day had been a mess.

First that abominable meeting this morning. He’d taken one look at the buffet table, the champagne, the people staring at him and he’d been tempted to turn and walk out. He hadn’t, of course. He was his nation’s emissary. Manners, protocol, were everything.

How come he’d forgotten that with the woman? He’d lost it with her and he knew it but, damn it, she’d deserved it. That temper. Those threats…

Those eyes, that mouth, the certainty that the body beneath the awful suit was meant for pleasure…

“Hell,” Caz said, and stepped harder on the gas.

Business. That was what he had to concentrate on tonight.

It was what he’d wanted to concentrate on this morning, but Simpson had screwed it up. Instead of serious discussion with the man who’d written that excellent proposal, he’d had to endure an eternity of all those people fawning over him.

Bad enough his own countrymen insisted on treating him as if he were Elvis risen from the dead. That, at least, was understandable. It was tradition, the same tradition, unchanged for centuries, that would make implementing his plans a rough sell. His advisors would look aghast at his determination to create a modern infrastructure in Suliyam by opening it to foreign investors. He intended to commit much of his own vast fortune to the plan, as well.

His people would balk, protest, tell him such things could not be done.

It was tradition.

And it was tradition, too, that said he could not possibly bring a woman into Suliyam as his financial advisor.

He had explained all of that to Simpson from the first. He knew there were bright, well-educated women in the west. Hadn’t his mother been one of them? But Suliyam wasn’t ready for such things. He supposed it was one of the reasons his parents’ marriage had fallen apart.

He hadn’t told that to Simpson, of course, but he’d made it clear he would not be able to work with anyone but a man.

‘‘No problem, your worship,’’ Simpson had said.

“I am not called by that title,” Caz had told him pleasantly. “Please, just address me as Sheikh Qasim.”

Hakim had given him a look that meant he didn’t approve. Caz had ignored him. Hakim was devoted and loyal, but he believed in the old ways and those days were coming to an end.

“I will assign my best person to write this proposal, your majesty,” Simpson had replied.

Caz put on his signal light and shot across three lanes of traffic to the exit ramp.