To Touch a Sheikh. Оливия Гейтс

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      Worse, she’d dragged him through this compulsive confrontation, volleyed his salvos—which seemed only to whet her … appetite for him even more—with a huge grin …

      What was he thinking?

      None of that mattered. Only one thing did. That she was here in her father’s stead. That messed up all his plans.

      No. This was his only opportunity to see them through.

      But his plans had hinged on her father’s presence.

      He had to improvise.

      His gut tightened. He never took a step without calculating the minutest consequence. The only time he had, it had almost cost him his life. Now the fate of Zohayd itself hung in the balance.

      But he had no choice.

      If he couldn’t have her father, he’d kidnap Maram instead.

      Two

      How do you kidnap the willing?

      The answer: Easily.

      Or that should be the answer.

      It remained to be seen how this kidnapping would turn out.

      Amjad brooded after Maram’s lithe figure, his mind racing to adjust his original plan.

      Her father had said he’d come early, after Amjad had hinted he was willing to negotiate the terms for the dealership he’d been coveting. That Yusuf had agreed to come at all had made Amjad certain he had no idea the Aal Shalaan brothers had discovered his leading role in stealing and counterfeiting the Pride of Zohayd jewels.

      Due to an inane tribal law, the jewels were necessary for the Aal Shalaans to remain rulers of Zohayd. The law sprouted from equally lame legends that said that King Ezzat—Amjad’s ancestor and supposed doppelganger, or as the harebrained public liked to tell it, Amjad was Ezzat reincarnated—had united the tribes under his rule and founded Zohayd through their power.

      The dimwitted story became more established the more the world around them advanced. It didn’t matter to Zohaydans that the Aal Shalaans had made their country one of the most prosperous nations in the world. All they cared about was that the royal family make good treasure keepers. The kingdom’s most important event was Exhibition Day, when imbecile representatives of the moronic public came to ascertain the jewels’ safety. The legends claimed the demon-spawn jewelry wouldn’t remain in the hands of anyone who no longer deserved the throne.

      Yusuf Aal Waaked and his cohorts were using that entrenched superstition, biding their time until Exhibition Day to expose the jewels currently in the Aal Shalaans’ possession as fakes. When Yusuf produced the real ones, no one in the brainless herd would accuse him of theft but would hail him as the new ruler the jewels had “chosen.”

      Idiots. All of them. Including his own family.

      He was tempted to leave the whole region to muck around in its Dark Ages rot. His father could be better off retiring, and he would prefer to never again have to endure being around some of the world’s sleaziest creatures—without ripping them apart—to serve trivial things like world peace.

      He’d always found this royalty gig a pain anyway. Sure, he did his job because he did nothing if not to the best of his abilities, and his father needed him more since his heart attack. But being first in line to the throne was synonymous with being the same in front of a stampeding herd or a firing squad. He’d gotten nothing for it but slaughter attempts in the boardroom and murder schemes in the bedroom, interspersed with persistent conspiracies to trap, bankrupt or implicate him in crimes he’d never be stupid enough to contemplate. Not to mention the infringing fascination of the public.

      But he and his brothers had made their fortunes unaided by their status. None of them would lose anything but boatloads of burdens if they woke up tomorrow a royal family no more. And it would serve the ingrate nation right if, after all the royal family had done for the kingdom, they chose criminals over the Aal Shalaans because of some trinkets.

      But—and it was a gigantic but—it wasn’t as simple as that.

      Even if the people were stupid enough to bow to the rule of legend, they wouldn’t find an outside force easy to accept. Yusuf, a man who ruled only a tiny emirate, couldn’t hope to control a kingdom of Zohayd’s size and complexity. He’d be overthrown, and the true catastrophe would begin.

      None of the tribes had enough clout to claim the throne alone. They could all get a piece of the action only through a democracy. He needed no foresight to know how that would turn out. A look at the so-called democracies in the region said it all.

      So, like it or not, the Pride of Zohayd jewels were vital, making his mission unavoidable. He had to get them back.

      He’d intended to make Yusuf ransom himself with them.

      But the weasel had sent his daughter in his stead.

      Yusuf didn’t suspect exposure, or he wouldn’t have sent his only offspring, the daughter he called “the heart outside my body.” But Amjad knew why he had.

      Yusuf knew Amjad opposed a union between Maram and Haidar. Yusuf must think Maram could sway Amjad if she got him alone, facilitating her acquisition of Haidar while having him eating out of her hand, too, hitting two princes with one seduction spell.

      She was no innocent. Even had she been, children often paid for their parents’ sins. It was her father who’d conspired against his family, then dared to stay home sick.

      Yusuf had better not surprise him again. He wouldn’t appreciate finding out that Yusuf didn’t value his daughter enough to ransom her with the jewels that could secure him a throne ten times the size of his current one.

      “So where are you keeping the food?”

      Maram swirled back to him, her ponytail swishing like that of a spirited mare.

      Amjad gritted his teeth at the jolt of hated response that lashed through him, spread his lips in a smile he knew mirrored his vicious thoughts. “Something finally defeated Your Nosiness?”

      Her smile was one of elation. She was invulnerable to his put-downs, wasn’t she? She truly did thrive on them. If he wanted to thwart her, he should deprive her of them.

      “Since you must be keeping it in airtight containers, I doubt a hound dog could smell it out.” She stopped before him again, deluging his lungs with the uniqueness of her scent, a distillation of desire and delicacy, of freshness, femininity and fragrant flesh. Her. Her eyes gleamed up at him. “I’ll settle for coffee. Just set me on the trail and I’ll fix myself a cup. I’ll fix you one, too, if you’re … not too nasty.”

      It was no use. He was incapable of thwarting her. “Guess you’ll never fix me one, then.”

      She let out one of those laughs that tinkled through his nerves with harmonies of sensation and vitality. He had to exert extra effort not to groan, not to crowd her and hiss for her to stop trying to ensnare him.

      “Nah, I’ll fix you one. Bad boys are just misunderstood and shouldn’t be left out.”

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