Sheikh's Unlikely Desire Read online

  She pulled her phone out of her purse and blinked.

  Hey, have you met him yet???????

  Daisy, her cousin from Albany. Daisy had always been the quiet one in the family. No one had been surprised when Mira had run off to marry Middle Eastern royalty, but absolutely no one expected Daisy to follow in Mira's footsteps.

  Him who? Leah texted back cautiously.

  You know! Zayn al-Fasi!!!!

  Leah found that she was looking at the texts, multiple exclamation points and all, with a great deal of wariness.

  Daisy, what the hell do you know about this? My firm JUST got this notice that we were going to be hosting the sheik of Almira, and that we had better be ready if we knew what was good for us.

  There was a pause as Daisy typed out a longer message.

  Zayn's a really old friend of Rashad. He's got some real troubles I know you can help him with. I promise, you are the right person to deal with the case, and to deal with him. It's going to be fine. I ran it by Rashad, and even Mira and Kahlil, and they both agree!

  Leah gritted her teeth. Daisy was one of the most positive people in the world when she was up, but sometimes, her view of reality didn't exactly match the world.

  Daisy... I'm an entertainment lawyer. I'm not an expert in international law or whatever it is that he needs. I need you to understand this.

  Don't worry! You're exactly what he needs.

  Leah thought about her slip-up in the car and flinched. When Daisy was wrong, she was incredibly wrong, but there was something heartening about the other woman's faith in her. She had heard that Rashad was quite good about reining in some of her more erratic ideas, while being absolutely stunning at spoiling her rotten.

  She started to type up a reply when she glanced up to see Zayn gazing at her. With a softly muttered curse, she shoved her phone back in her purse. To her relief, he didn't look angry, only thoughtful.

  “You're forgiven,” he said softly.

  She blinked. “What?”

  He shrugged. “I forgive you for what you said in the car. People in the West hear of places like Almira, Samara and Marat, and they have visions in their heads. Flying carpets and harems are the best of it. The worst, well. At worst, they see savages. Barbarians a few inches away from storming their cities and taking their women.”

  Leah bit her lip, because in many ways, he was right. Dressed in his crisp and lovely desert clothes, Zayn was a vision of male beauty, but there were those who would always see him as some kind of foreign and exotic monster.

  “Thank you for forgiving me,” she said. “I would understand if you hadn't.”

  For the first time, Zayn smiled at her, a dazzling display of white teeth that were stark in his dark face. She had lived in Los Angeles for years, surrounded by movie stars and movie star wannabes, and this smile left them all in the dirt.

  “That means I was right to do so. Come, sit down with me, and we shall talk about my case.”

  Leah blinked, a little dazed about how fast everything was moving. “What? No... I'm... I'm sorry, I think you're confused. I'm a junior partner at Hiller and Hiller. It'll be Bryce Hiller who will be taking on your case, likely him and Grant Chastain.”

  His smile was still pleasant, but now there was a bit of iron behind it. “No. It will be you.”

  A number of arguments boiled up. She was young. She only had a few years of experience. She was going to step on a lot of toes if she snatched this case away from the senior partners. She snapped her mouth shut on all of them.

  “Yes. Will you please excuse me? I'd like to go down to the lobby to make some calls.”

  Zayn inclined his head graciously. “So long as you hurry back.”

  She muttered something about staying on task and all but stumbled back into the elevator. On her way out of it, she passed by Azim and his men, still dressed in black, still serious to a fault. Azim, his arms filled with bundles, spared her a single piercing glance as they got into the elevator, and she wondered what he made of all of this.

  Parked in a corner of the lobby, feeling far shabbier than she should have felt in her outfit, she took a deep breath and called Hiller and Hiller. She was lucky, she got Grant on the first try.

  “Hey, Leah, you get the guy?”

  “I did, I did, but we ran into an interesting situation...”

  Grant was utterly silent as she explained the situation to him, revealing everything, including her connection to Daisy and Mira, though she left out how she had messed up with Zayn in the car.

  “So... that's how things stand. He wants me for the case, and if you want to come fight him about it, you're welcome to come down here yourself and do that.”

  Grant took a deep breath. He was almost a decade younger than Bryce Hiller, though still much older than Leah herself. When she had come to work at Hiller and Hiller, he had been one of her strongest supporters. She could hear the faith she had built up over the last few years being tested in that long breath.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. I'm going to be seeing Bryce in just a few, and I'll clear it with him on one condition.”

  “What's that?”

  “I need you to be entirely certain that you can handle this. You can't be eighty percent sure, or ninety percent sure, or even ninety-eight percent sure. I want one hundred percent assurance that you can do this, Montgomery. Otherwise, I will go down there and explain things. Your call.”

  Leah clenched her free hand to keep it from trembling. “I am one hundred percent sure,” she said, her voice strong and firm. “I can handle whatever he throws at me.”

  “Good. That's what I needed to know.” She was gratified to hear how warm Grant's voice was. Once she had accepted the job, she knew that he was going to be behind her completely. Even more important, he would keep Bryce off her back.

  “Go for it. Keep us in the loop, and don't you dare miss debriefings with me or with Bryce, but we're going to back you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I won't let you down.”

  “I know you won't.”

  For a long moment, she stood in the lobby with the phone in her hand. She felt a little light-headed. She wasn't sure what she had committed herself to, but there was something in the air that told her that her life had changed.

  Somehow, between arguing with a security guard at the airport and hanging up the phone with Grant, everything had changed.

  “All right,” she said softly. “All right.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  When she came up the elevator and entered the penthouse, she was startled to find it quiet. Then she realized that Azim and his men were likely camped out on the floors below, leaving the penthouse in single, solitary splendor for Zayn.

  “Hello?” she called, hovering by the elevator doors. “Are you still here?”

  The door to the bedroom opened, and she stared.

  Dressed in his white clothes, Zayn was handsome. Now he was dressed casually in sharp dark jeans and a black T-shirt that stretched tight across his broad chest. Even barefoot, he looked like an incredibly handsome aspiring actor on his way out for a night on the town. The sudden shift was enough to make her head spin, and she had to force her mouth closed.

  “There you are,” she said. “I've spoken with the office, and I'll be handling your case.”

  “I wouldn't accept anyone else,” he said with a supremely casual shrug. “They would have given you the case, or I would have found someone else.”

  It was incredibly bad policy to ask a client why they had asked for her services, but Leah was so curious for a moment that she almost did. Instead she bit it back, taking a seat on the pristine white couch.

  “All right. I'm glad for your faith in me, and if you're not too tired from your flight, I wouldn't mind getting a few basics from you about your case. You've been very closed-mouthed about it so far, but the time where you can be is drawing to a close.”

  Zayn gave her a ghost of a smile as he came to sit down next to her. For a
moment, she wondered if he was sitting too close. She could almost feel the heat of his leg through the thin fabric of her trousers. She shook it off, both the silly idea and the attraction.

  “You leap in for the kill, I see,” he commented. “I am glad to see that the assessment I made at the airport was correct.”

  Leah started to ask what he meant, but then she remembered, biting her lip with a grimace.

  “The security officer,” she said with chagrin. “Not my best moment.”

  Zayn chuckled, a dark and warm sound. “Then I truly look forward to seeing what your best might be. I need a fighter, Ms. Montgomery. I need someone who will help me set things right.”

  “That's what we're here for,” she said earnestly. It was something she said to many clients, but right now, she had never meant it more.

  “I'm going to order us some food,” she said briskly. “You're probably starving from your flight, and the last thing I want to have happen is for you to fall over from hunger when we really get into it.”

  “Very well,” Zayn said, smiling tolerantly. “I have no food restrictions, so simply order what you think we would both enjoy.”

  She grinned. “LA has some of the most interesting food in the world. Let me make a call. You won't be sorry.”

  She had food ordered in less than five minutes, and now she settled down to work.

  “So tell me about what's going on,” she said, pulling out her tablet. “I need to hear all about it.”

  For a moment, Zayn looked startled. She realized with surprise that he had been watching her while she ordered. For a self-conscious moment, she wondered what he had seen, but then she reminded herself that he was paying for her skills not her looks.

  He sighed a little. “At the bottom of it, it is very simple. A production company here in LA called Ice Fields is creating a movie, and I want it stopped.”

  Leah waited to hear more, but he simply looked at her expectantly.

  “I'll need to know more than that,” she said. “Are they infringing on something that belongs to you? Have you or a family member written a story or film that is very close to the plot? These are hard things to prove, and the more you tell me, the better off I am going to be...”

  Zayn's jaw clenched, and those extraordinary green eyes darkened like the storm coming over a glassy sea. “In many ways, all those things are true. To begin from the beginning, the head of Ice Fields and some of his men came to Almira a year ago. They came as part of a cultural exchange, and at first it was going quite well. They learned, we learned from them, and when we sent them home, it was with a great deal of celebration and thanks. I assumed that we had learned from each other a mutual respect of each other's ways and culture. A month ago, I find that this is far from the case.”

  A brief look of pain crossed Zayn's face, making Leah reach out to touch his hand. It was more than she would have done otherwise, but when she touched his warm skin, she knew it was right.

  He smiled at her briefly before he continued. “I received word from one of my cultural attaches that Ice Fields was making a movie set in Almira and... well, it is based on some truly abhorrent gossip.”

  Leah was starting to see the shape of things, but she couldn't go to war based on hurt feelings and injured pride. Whatever Ice Fields was doing, it upset Zayn greatly, but so far, it wasn't something they could stop.

  “I'm very sorry,” she said softly, “but if I'm to help you...”

  “You need to know more, of course.” Zayn nodded, suddenly looking quite tired. “The story is about my mother and my father. In brief, my mother was an English woman who came to Almira when she was just a teenager, the daughter of a diplomat. During that time, there was a great deal of strife in the country. The diplomatic corps was moved to the palace, and that was where she met my father, Safir al-Fasi. He was older than she was, much older, but she was taken. When she described that time, she spoke of herself like a lioness stalking its prey, and she would not rest until he was hers. They loved each other very much, and they married when she was eighteen.”

  “What happened to them?” Leah could see it, the teenage girl, headstrong and wild in a strange land. She could feel the love and passion that must have driven her to follow a man who looked like Zayn around the palace, learning his ways and finding the nerve to speak with him, and then to speak to him again when he rebuffed her for her youth.

  Zayn's smile was wry. “What happens to us all if we are very lucky,” he said. “They married and they ruled together for almost thirty-five years. She was his rock, the power that kept his back straight and his eyes bright even when affairs of state wanted to devour him whole. He was her passion, and whenever he was in the room, her eyes followed him. Almost three years ago, she died of cancer, and my father, well, he was uninterested in living without her.”

  Leah flinched at that bald assessment, and she had to make herself speak. “That sounds like a wonderful story,” she hazarded.

  Zayn's laugh was bitter. “Yes, it was, and if that was the story they wished to tell, I would let them film in Almira without asking for a single cent. No, what they want to film is a travesty, based on ancient gossip that has been spun by my family's enemies for so long that it's become threadbare.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Zayn flinched, and when he spoke next, it was as if the words were being dragged from him.

  “The story they wish to tell is a pack of lies. They want to tell about a brave English girl who came to a savage land that was torn by war. They want to reduce my mother to a frightened child who was terrified of gunfire, and who came to the attention of a man who was as much an animal as he was a soldier. She is an innocent that he captures and rapes, and then he makes her his wife and the queen of a monstrous land. She sees the terrible land she has come to rule, and she is caught, frozen until she births a son that changes everything.”

  “You,” Leah guessed with a flinch.

  “Yes, much to my dismay. So a son appears, and she knows that she must change everything. She goes to kill the evil king, but before she can kill him, he kills her as well, and they die together, leaving a child who will carry his mother's good English ideals forward into the barbarity of a savage, backward land.”

  Leah flinched, because she could see it. It was like any number of forgettable movies that had come out over the past years. She could even guess what starlets might be tapped to play the brave Englishwoman who suffers and loses all. When there were real people behind it, it became a real travesty.

  “And you want this story stopped. You want production to cease, is that correct?”

  Something dark flashes through Zayn's eyes. “I want this ended,” he spat. “If this were a different age and a different time, I would show them what it meant to trifle with the family of a sheik of Almira. I would show them how a real barbarian behaves. But no. I want this stopped.”

  Leah nodded slowly. This was a place she had definitely been before. She had worked with people on similar jobs, though none of them had been as important as Ice Fields or Zayn.

  “I think I know what the answer will be, but I have to ask,” she said. “Are you willing to settle for a sum of cash? That's going to be the first thing that they offer.”

  Zayn snorted. “Of course they would seek to buy me out. No. that is not something that I will allow.”

  “All right. Just so I'm clear going forward. This is just about the shape of what I need. Tonight I can start putting together my brief, and in the meantime, I'll send a cease and desist letter to Ice Fields. In a perfect world, they see that they're overstepping and they back the hell off, but they're not going to. This is just a formality.”

  Zayn eyed her with something new in his eyes. It looked like respect and a kind of regard she did not usually see in men, particularly ones who were rich and powerful.

  “You sound like you are ready to go off to war for me,” he noted.

  Leah grinned. “In many ways, that's exactly what I'm doin
g.”

  She paused. One of the first rules of the business was that she should not let her heart overrule her common sense. She should never let passion take the front seat when she needed a cool head. However, there was something about Zayn that told her that if he respected anything, he would respect passion. He would understand this.

  “I am going to do everything I can to stop this movie from being produced,” she said. “I will not stop until they have given up. It may not be easy, and I'm sure there will be some parts where it will look very dark, but I will do my best for you. I'll give you everything I have.”

  Zayn nodded slowly. “In the long history of Almira, we have gone to many wars, countless struggles. In the last generation, we have kept ourselves well away from them. How strange it is to come to another land and to brace myself for a battle with you as my knight. Very well, Ms. Montgomery. I put my faith, my honor and my will in your hands.”

  There was something startlingly formal about it, as if it was a real ceremony where she was being invested with real powers. Leah felt a dull blush come up to her cheeks, but she nodded.

  “I will be worthy of it,” she said. “Now, it's getting a little late in the day, and I'm sure that you are going to want some time to yourself to recover.”

  Zayn arched one dark brow at her. Some watchful part of her noted how dark it was and how beautiful, as if it had been inked in by the hand of a gifted artist.

  “Leaving so soon? I'm afraid that if you are going to be my knight, there is one more part of the service that you must submit to.”

  Something in Leah trembled at the idea of submission, but she shook it off. “What do you need?” she asked instead.

  He smiled, showing those sharp white teeth. “I need you to join me, and together we will eat and drink. Breaking bread is sacred all over the world, and that is what we need to do.”

  Leah bit her lip. Nothing excited her more than the idea of going to join Zayn, but there was a great deal of work to be done. “This evening, I need to draw up some paperwork and get that cease and desist letter out the door. I need to brief Hiller and Hiller about what's going on. But tonight at ten, I'll be all yours.”