just to prove she might be down but she wasn’t defeated.
So she’d combed her hair, straightened her panty hose, smoothed down the skirt of her navy suit and headed for the boardroom.
By the time she’d finally strolled in, the formal handshakes and greetings were over. Jerry Simpson saw her and glowered but what could he do about it without making a scene? The sheikh hadn’t even noticed, surrounded as he was by his adoring fans and his pathetic minions.
Megan had tossed Jerry a thousand-watt smile meant to let him suffer as he tried to figure out why she’d showed up. Then she’d headed for the buffet table, where she’d sipped more coffee before switching to Mimosas.
No caffeine there. Only little bubbles.
All she had to do was hang in long enough to make Simpson squirm. Once the sheikh and his henchmen departed, she could start the ugly business of crawling back into her boss’s good graces, though she doubted he’d let her get that far anytime this decade.
Well, no rush. The sheikh wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet. Everyone was having too much fun. She could hear Jerry’s voice, and a deeper, huskier one she assumed was the sheikh’s. She could hear occasional trills of girlish laughter, too, punctuated by loud male ha-ha-ha’s.
Like, for instance, right now. A giggle, a ha-ha, a simpering, “That’s so clever, Your Highness!”
Megan swung around and stared at Geraldine McBride. Geraldine, simpering? All two hundred tweedy pounds of her?
Megan snorted.
She didn’t mean to. She just couldn’t help it, not while she was envisioning the Pooh-Bah riding an Arabian stallion with Geraldine flung across the saddle in front of him.
She snorted again. Unfortunately the second snort erupted during a second’s pause in the babble of voices. Heads turned in her direction. Jerry looked as if he wanted to kill her. The sheikh looked—
Mmm-mmm-mmm. He looked spectacular. You had to give him that. The tabloids were right. The man was gorgeous. They had his eye-color wrong, though. It wasn’t gray. The color reminded her of charcoal. Or slate.
Or storm clouds. That’s how cold those eyes were as they fixed on her.
There was no mistaking that expression. He didn’t like her. Not in the slightest. Jerry must have told him she’d been a problem.
So be it.
I don’t like you, either, she thought coolly, and couldn’t resist raising her glass in mocking salute before she turned away.
Why care what the sheikh thought? Why care what Jerry thought? Why care what anybody thought? She had her own life to live, her own independence to enjoy—
“Miss O’Connell,” a deep voice said.
Megan swung around. The sheikh was coming toward her, his walk slow, deliberate and masculine enough to make her heart bump up into her throat, which was silly. There was nothing to be afraid of, except losing her job, and that wouldn’t happen if she used her head.
He reached her side. Oh, yes. He was definitely easy on the eyes. Tall, lean, the hint of a well-muscled body under that expensive suit.
D and D, she thought, and her heart gave another little bump. What she and Bree always joked about.
Dark and Dangerous.
He gave her what the people at the other end of the room would surely think was a smile. It wasn’t. That look in his eyes was colder than ever, cold enough to make the hair rise on the nape of her neck. How could such a gorgeous man be such a mean son of a bitch?
Megan drew herself up. “Your Mightiness.”
His eyes bored into hers again. Then he lifted his hand. That was all. No wave, no turning around, nothing but that upraised hand. It was enough. Someone said something—her boss, maybe, or one of the sheikh’s henchmen—and people headed for the door.
Scant seconds later, the room was empty.
Megan smiled sweetly. “Must be nice, being emperor of the universe.”
“It must be equally nice, not caring what people think of you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
His gaze moved over her, from her hair to her toes and then back up again. “You’re drunk.”
“I am not.”
“Put down that glass.”
Megan’s eyebrows. “What?”
“I said, put the glass down.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Someone should have told you what to do a long time ago,” he said grimly. “Then you’d know better than to try to threaten me.”
“Threaten you? Are you insane? I most assuredly did not—”
“For the last time, Miss O’Connell, put the glass down.”
Megan’s jaw shot forward. “For the last time, oh mighty king, stop trying to order me ar—”
Her words ended in a startled yelp as Sheikh Qasim al Daud al Rashid, King of Suliyam and Absolute Ruler of his People, picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder and marched from the room.
CHAPTER TWO
CAZ hadn’t intended to sling the O’Connell woman over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
He hadn’t intended to deal with her at all. Oh, he wanted to, all right. Hell, yes, he wanted to. Simpson had told him how he’d given the woman a simple assignment, how she’d tried to make it seem as if he’d promised her something he hadn’t…
And how she’d threatened to discredit him and Suliyam if she didn’t get a job she wanted.
How dare she attempt to blackmail him?
He’d felt the rage churning inside him. His ancestors would have known how to deal with the woman.
Damn it, so did he.
Caz was the one who snorted now as he strode down the hall, past startled faces, the O’Connell woman beating her fists against his shoulders and yelling words a decent woman should not even think.
There was no need to go back to an earlier generation. Ninety percent of the men in Suliyam would know how to deal with her, and that was just the problem. After his hurried conversation with her boss, he’d known that if he let himself show his anger, he might as well put up a sign in Times Square that told the world he and his nation were still living in the dark ages.
So he’d decided to ignore her. There was no reason for him to get involved. After all, Simpson said he’d made it clear to her that he was not going to give her the job.
“I took care of things, your highness,” he’d said. “She’s just one of those prickly feminists. You know the type.”
Caz did, indeed. The western world was filled with them. They weren’t soft-spoken or soft and welcoming, a safe harbor for a man who spent his days on the financial and political battlefields where empires were won and lost.
They were hard-edged and aggressive, unattractive and unfeminine.
He didn’t enjoy their company. He certainly didn’t understand them. Why would a woman want to behave like a man? But he’d learned not to underestimate their business skills, as long as they followed the rules.
If a woman wanted to play in a man’s world, Caz expected her to play a man’s game.
Threatening a lawsuit when none was warranted, pretending that things had been promised you when they hadn’t, were things a woman would do.
Not a man.
Megan O’Connell slammed a fist between his shoulder