“Is it pretty?”
“Gorgeous, and it has so many interesting places to see. It’s on the outskirts of the city, far from the tourist claptrap or the high-rises and malls. We could do that, too, but I thought you might want to see all the nuances my proud country has to offer.”
“And you’re not…I was so forward, Zahir.”
He set everything on his lap aside and reached up to cup both of her cheeks. His hands were so large that they seemed to swallow her face almost whole. This close, her nose was tickled by the scent of him—both that raw maleness mixed with the spicy aroma of turmeric. That was so very much Zahir, the exotic and the raw power. It was one of the myriad of things drawing her to him, making her weak even now.
“It’s more than fine. I care about you, and you care about me, and maybe this is moving fast.”
You have no idea how fast…
“But let me show you all the sights you haven’t had a chance to see this weekend. I promise you, that we’ll only do what you want. Let my driver take you home, you think about it for a few hours, and at noon I’ll come to pick you up if you would like. Then I’ll show you all of my world.”
“I can think about it?”
“Yes, and I don’t think that the dress would be practical in the more rugged parts of Al Ain,” he said, winking back at her. “Listen, Addy, I truly see a woman who is struggling and desperate to come into her own. Let me help you do that, please.”
“I…”
“Just think it over, and I’ll hopefully see you at noon.”
She nodded, her throat dry despite the water she’d drunk. After all, she wasn’t sure what to do. But now Zahir would be eager to have her answer and soon.
***
“Brother, you have an interesting way of getting information from employees, I admit that,” Fairuza said. She’d come to his office in the palace and was taking an emery board to her nails. Her sleek, dark hair was pulled up into braids and she looked sharply dressed at six on Saturday morning, already in a suit. He wasn’t surprised. Fairuza wouldn’t know a weekend if it bit her on the ass. “In fact, I wanted you to hire Miss Morgan because of how closely she’d worked under McDermott and her level of obvious discontent. The spectacular firing of hers. It’s quite the story and everyone in the Boston CEO set has heard it. But I didn’t expect you to seduce it out of her. That’s not fair.”
“I’m not.”
“She’s in our guest room and she’s clearly been busy last night. It’s one thing to give her a job and security for everything she’ll be unaware she’s giving you. I think that’s overall a fair swap, but you can’t just use her and seduce her for what you need. That’s not just drinks and a relaxed dinner. That’s something appalling.”
“It’s not like that at all. I…she’s special, and I know this sounds insane, but there’s something so familiar about her, something that touches me deeply. I can’t help that I’m falling for her and that she has information that I need. I swear that this weekend away—”
“What?” she asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re going away with her? How is this not about seducing an innocent to nefarious gains?”
“It’s not. I just…this weekend will be about us, and I won’t be trying to take information from her. There’s something between us, and I have to explore it.”
“And what if she ever finds out why you hired her in the first place?”
“I won’t ever let her know. None of this is what it looks like. I can’t help who I’m attracted to or the way she makes me feel, but I’m also not a fool. I know this looks terrible, and I just want to have a good weekend. She deserves that.”
“If in bed she happens to confess some dark secret of a certain steelworks, then that’s fine too. You’ll crush her if she finds out.”
“Then,” he said, storming back out of his office, “she’ll never know. I’ll protect her from everything. I can do it.”
***
She wasn’t sure how any of this had happened. Three weeks ago, she’d been working her ass off at a dead-end job and trying to guess her boss’s cryptic coffee orders every morning at the local Starbucks. Now she was working for a company halfway across the world and being swept away by its CEO and the resident sheikh of Dubai. That didn’t seem possible. She wasn’t the woman who had been whisked away in a Land Rover to a hotel at the outskirts of the Al Ain. They’d had to take the SUV because of the rough terrain, the harsh desert sands in boulders creating quite an obstacle in their way. But now they’d spent the day seeing the sights of the Al Ain, including the beautiful palace of the former Sheikh Zayed. She wondered if that man, who’d been so influential to Dubai’s growth, was related to Zahir.
She was out on a date with a head of state. He came from a long line of sheikhs. People in his family could have been shaping politics and government in the Middle East for decades or centuries for all she knew. It was so overwhelming, all of it, and it made her keenly aware of how different they were from one another, how very much their experiences were night versus day.
Still, they’d done a tour of the big palace and museum and had a traditional dinner of spiced lamb and dates. What they were doing next was something she never would have expected of a CEO. The fancier things like dinner, sure, but here she was at the Al Ain Camel Market. Addison was glad that he’d told her to put on more normal clothes, nothing fancy. Not that the camels had spit at her (although she’d been told they were likely to do that and often). However, it was quite a sight to behold. It was only six in the evening so the sun was low in the sky, the orange light spreading out through the burgeoning evening.
Everywhere she looked, there were stalls made like little bodegas, maybe no more than twelve-foot squares, and each one had at least half a dozen camels or more. As she passed one stall with its high gates, she had to smile at the matching white and pink woven blankets draped over the four animals’ humps. They were woven with rose patterns and the camels almost stuck out for her as more elite than some of the others. It was a funny, quirky thought, the idea of a designer camel.
In the distance, the next round of races was about to start, but she hadn’t been interested in that. No, she just was following Zahir, seeing what he loved here.
“You brought me to a camel bazaar?”