The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh (6 page)

“Livvy…”

“Mm?”

“I’m going back to London later today.” The flight was arranged. To change things would raise a lot of questions that neither of them wanted to deal with.

She pushed herself up on one elbow and looked at him. “Better late than never.”

“I suppose so.”

She gave him a shy smile. “It was nice.”

He reached out a hand to tickle her waist. “More than nice.”

She wriggled away. “Very nice. It’s a shame it’s over already.”

He squeezed his eyes closed. She was right. Their worlds were far too different. She had her goals and he had his duty.

“You could come and visit me in London.”

She bent her head to his chest, pressing little kisses down his sternum. “Maybe.”

From the other side of the room came the unmistakable sound of his phone. It was the ringtone reserved for the palace. Talk about spectacularly bad timing.

He moved Olivia off him gently. “I have to answer that.” He rolled out of bed, still naked, and walked over to the pile of clothes strewn in front of the fireplace. He extracted his phone from a pocket, pressed a button, and said his name.

She wouldn’t visit him in London. They both knew that. It had been an enjoyable interlude, but it couldn’t last. She had no intention of risking her reputation for a casual fling and Khaled had made it abundantly clear that there were no possibility of a serious relationship. Brief, mutually pleasurable affairs that satisfied her physical needs without encroaching on her work commitments were all Olivia needed. Her affair with Khaled had certainly been pleasurable, if a little briefer than she would have liked.

He was speaking into his phone in rapid Arabic that she had no hope of understanding. Whatever it was about, she could see the tension in his shoulders and the taut lines across his forehead. In the daylight, he was even more magnificent. All toned muscles and tanned skin, with a smattering of dark hair that shadowed his frame. Like a lion prowling, he strode back and forth across the room, wholly unaware of his nakedness. With a final terse phrase, he ended his call and tossed the phone down.

He turned to Olivia, his eyes bleak and his mouth tight.

“What’s the matter?”

Khaled ran a hand through his hair, then rubbed his face. “I have to go to Saqat. Today.”

She sat up, clutching the sheet around her. “What’s happened, Khaled? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He drew in a deep breath and came to sit beside her. “It’s my father. He’s on his way to hospital. They suspect a heart attack.”

She put her arms around him and held him tight. “I’m so sorry.”

“He’s all right. They say he’s all right,” Khaled muttered. “But I have to go. I have to be there.”

“Of course you do. You need to see for yourself.”

He laid his head on her shoulder. “Not just that. I have to take his place. I am his heir.”

She hadn’t thought of that, but Khaled must have realized it immediately. He would have to give up his career and go home now, to take his father’s place. Even if the emir recovered, this would surely be the beginning of the handover from father to son.

She rubbed circles on his back, comforting him the way her mother had done for her when she was upset. “You can do it, Khaled. I know you can.”

“I’m so afraid,” he said, so quietly she wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly.

“Of what?”

“Of letting them down. My father. My brother. My people.”

“Khaled.” She put her hands on his shoulders and levered him up so that she could look into his eyes. “You won’t let anyone down. You’ll be a good ruler.”

He shook his head. “How can you say that? My father gave me this one task. A simple thing, to negotiate the contract with MCI Oil, but I can’t do it, Livvy. I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes, you do,” she told him. “You know in your heart.”

He sighed. “I know what my heart says, and I know what my duty is, but they are not the same. I cannot only please myself in this.”

She leaned forward so that her forehead rested against his. “You know what to do, Khaled. You’ll find the answer. Here.” She laid her hand against his heart, comforted by the regular beat.

“Kiss me, Livvy,” he said. “Kiss me once more.”

Olivia let him kiss her, let him do whatever he wanted. She had been right—he did need her. She was an escape from the duty that weighed on him so hard. She had been here in the right place, at the right time to provide that relief, and she was glad. Whatever he found in this moment with her, he needed and she was glad to give.

“I have to go. I can’t make any decisions today.” He stood up and went to gaze out of the window.

“Yes, you must go. Don’t worry about it now. I’ll make arrangements to visit Saqat and we can continue our negotiations then.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. Olivia longed to go over to him, to slide her arms around his waist, to kiss him, and tell him that everything would be okay. But how could she promise him that? She had only the sketchiest understanding of the pressures he was under. He was concerned for his father, for his country, and for the wildlife his research was aiming to protect. He bore so many burdens on his broad shoulders and Olivia had no way of lifting them from him.

“Very well,” Khaled said at last. “But I must tell you, Olivia… Livvy.” His voice cracked a little. “It cannot be in Saqat like it has been here.”

“I know.”

“You do not know.”

“Then tell me.”

He sighed and came back to sit beside her. “I am the Sheikh Mirza, the heir to the throne. My country is more modern than some, but still, I am a member of the royal family, second only to my father in rank. There is protocol for everything. We will have arranged meetings to discuss the contract, and I hope I will be able to escort you to the research center, but there will be no opportunity for more.” His dark eyes were fierce and his jaw was tight. She knew he hated this as much as she did.

She did what she could to make it easier for him. “You said this was just a little bit of fun. A fling.” She waved a hand dismissively.

“I must take on more of my father’s work. You will be treated as a valued guest, of course. But we cannot be…”

“Lovers.”

“No, it’s more than that. I am not even sure we can be friends.”

“That sounds unnecessarily extreme.” It sounded a bleak prospect indeed.

He shrugged wearily. “Do you still want to come?”

She still wanted the contract.

She still wanted Khaled.

“I’ll come.”

Chapter Five

He motioned to his driver to circle again. The plane wasn’t scheduled to land for another thirty minutes. Even with the business-class ticket and the high-level visa Olivia had, it would be a while before she entered the airport. He had insisted on making this journey himself. His secretary wasn’t convinced that it was necessary for the sheikh to greet the representative of MCI Oil personally at the airport, but Khaled didn’t care. He needed to speak to her alone before she arrived at the palace.

He sighed. That wasn’t quite true. He just needed to speak to her. To see her. To breathe the same air as her.

Since he had arrived in Saqat a week earlier, his life had been thrown up in the air and tossed around a hundred times, and he was no nearer making sense of it than he had been at the beginning. The emir was ill. Seriously ill. Khaled had been shocked to see the frailty in his father’s bearing and in his voice. When he had demanded to see the doctors for himself, he hadn’t liked what they had to say. The heart attack had been relatively minor, but while he was in hospital the doctors noticed he was jaundiced. CT scans showed that he had cancer of the bile duct.

How had this been missed? Why hadn’t the doctors found it before? Why hadn’t they treated it? Couldn’t they have cured it?

It was a disease with few symptoms, they explained, which meant that it often went undetected until it was well beyond the stage where surgical intervention was a possibility. On the positive side, the lack of symptoms meant his father had experienced minimal discomfort. There was no pain, the doctors assured him, and whatever came later they would ensure he didn’t suffer. He had to be grateful for that. It was the rest of it that terrified him, the other words that went round and round in his head like a ticker tape newsreel: rapid deterioration. Weeks. Months at most. Palliative care. Pain relief. Nothing else to be done.

Terminal.

He had restrained himself from ranting and raging at the medical men and women who had delivered their devastating verdicts, but in private he had longed to shout and scream and punch something hard. If only it would help. If only he could do something to save his father.

The only thing to be done was his duty. Always his duty.

It was his duty to remain calm. He spoke gently with his ailing father to assure him that he, Khaled, would shoulder the responsibilities of state. He would learn to put his people’s needs before his own. It was also his duty, the emir insisted, to marry.

On his second night back in Saqat, Khaled had been introduced to Aliya. Young, beautiful, and charming, Aliya was the perfect wife for the emir of Saqat. Her Saqati heritage was impeccable, her manners demure, her appearance modest. There was nothing anyone could object to about Aliya.

Except that she was not Olivia.

Khaled did not bother to mention this objection. It was irrelevant. Olivia was an impossible dream. She had only ever been intended as a temporary distraction, not as a potential bride for the ruler of Saqat. She wasn’t a Saqati woman. She wasn’t even a Muslim woman. She would be branded a
kafir,
an unbeliever. An infidel. She couldn’t be the woman who would stand beside him as he led his country. The Saqati people were more enlightened than many Arabs, but even so, he could not imagine them accepting a foreigner and a
kafir
as the wife of their leader.

Besides, he wasn’t the man she needed who would honor her ambitions and give her the freedom to succeed. So, that was it. He could not ask Olivia to marry him. The very thought was ludicrous. He didn’t know why it had even occurred to him, except that when his father had mentioned marriage, it was her sweet face with its pretty blush that shot into his mind. It was her sleep-filled eyes, begrudgingly smiling up at him when he’d woken her too early. Her reddened cheeks and bright eyes when they were together on the exposed deck of the rig.

One night and one morning. That’s all it had been. She shouldn’t have been able to get under his skin in such a short time. And yet here he was, waiting for her at the airport because he needed to see her again. He needed to talk to her. Not to kiss her, nor even take her hand in his. Not to smell her rose scent and gaze into her blue eyes once more. He had come simply to ensure that they would have a few moments of privacy in the back of his car before they arrived at the palace.

They had arrived at the VIP car park. Khaled checked his watch and nodded to his driver to wait. He ran a finger under his collar to loosen it and cleared his throat.

Olivia nodded politely to the customs officer and stepped into the airport, pulling her suitcase behind her. Khaled had assured her that a car would be sent to meet her, so she scanned the chauffeurs waiting with name cards upheld.

“Hello.”

She couldn’t mistake that voice.

“Khaled?” She turned in surprise and delight, a wide grin sweeping her face. “What are you doing here? I thought you were sending a car.”

He shrugged. “I decided it would be polite to meet you myself.”

He indicated something to one of the uniformed security guards behind him, and the man stepped forward to take Olivia’s luggage.

“Thank you. And thank you,” she added to Khaled. “It’s nice to see a familiar face in an unfamiliar place.”

He smiled briefly. “It’s good to see you, too. Will you come out to the car? I thought we might take a brief tour of the city before we go to the palace.”

Olivia frowned a little, wondering at Khaled’s excessive formality and stilted tone, but she followed him willingly enough. Maybe this was how it would be in Saqat. He had warned her things would be different.
I’m not even sure we can be friends,
he’d said.

Once they were seated in the back of the luxurious car, Khaled pressed a button. Olivia watched as a screen slid up, separating them from the driver.

“He can’t hear us now,” Khaled muttered.

“How is your father?”

His face froze. “Not well.”

She reached out a hand to offer comfort, then remembered, stopped, and awkwardly withdrew the gesture. “I am so sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said dispassionately.

“It’s good to see you.”

He made a sharp gesture with his hand. “I am sorry, Olivia, but I thought I had made it clear that what we had together was finished.”

“Yes, you made that quite clear. However, we are here to do business and I believe we will need to be able to communicate civilly for that to happen.”

Khaled took in a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. There was no need for me to speak so harshly. As you say, we must be able to continue working together during your stay.”

Olivia murmured her assent.

“I am afraid, however, that it will not be possible for us to visit the research center until the weekend. I have duties that require my presence in the city for the next few days.”

“That’s fine.”

“If you like, I will arrange for someone to show you the city. And of course you will have whatever facilities you need to ensure that you can continue with your work.”

“Thank you. When can you schedule a meeting with me? We need to finalize details of the contract before you sign it.”

“I haven’t yet agreed to sign anything.”

“But you will.”

He glanced out of the window, in the direction of the sea. “I will mention the meeting to my secretary and he will find a suitable time.”

Olivia nodded and turned to stare out the window on her side of the car. She’d known this would be hard, but she hadn’t realized it would be this hard. Sitting next to Khaled, so close she could reach out and curl her hand into his dark silky hair, and yet unable to. It would be so easy to tug his face down to hers and taste once again the delicious warmth of his mouth against her lips. Such a small gesture, and yet so utterly forbidden. Even if Khaled hadn’t told her how it would be, back in Aberdeen, he was making it perfectly clear now. His body was stiff, his legs crossed away from hers, and his arms folded across his chest.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at an impressively ornate building.

“Police station.”

“And that?”

“Department store.”

Olivia glanced at him. Khaled wasn’t even looking where she was pointing.

“Sorry,” he said roughly. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know how to do this.”

“I know. I don’t want to make things difficult for you, Khaled, but you’re going to have to deal with me being here.”

He sighed. “Yes. Fine. I’ll try. We’re going to drive along the beach road.”

“Lovely. Are there beaches all the way along the Saqati coastline?”

“No. Here and a few miles further north. Most of the coastline is mangrove swamps.”

“Where the dugongs live?”

That drew the first smile from Khaled. “Yes. Where the dugongs live.”

“Can we see them?”

He laughed properly then. “It’s obvious you’ve never been to a mangrove swamp. I don’t think you would enjoy it, and we almost certainly wouldn’t see anything.”

“What about the research center?”

“What about it?”

“Will I see any dugongs there?”

“You’ve taken quite a fancy to them, haven’t you?”

She shrugged. “Someone has to. They don’t have the cute factor.”

“No. No, they don’t.”

The chauffeur held the door for Olivia to step out of the car when they reached the Golden Palace.

“It’s completely over the top,” Khaled said. “Imagine the most ridiculously fancy building you’ve ever seen, cover it with gold, and stick an onion on top.”

Olivia’s eyes moved slowly over the vast edifice, taking it all in. The palace was like a wedding cake, with every wall plastered and painted in pretty pastel shades, then decorated with white and gold icing so that it shimmered in the white Saqati sunlight. The entire building was topped with a huge pointed dome. Completely over the top, completely ridiculous, and completely fairy tale. She couldn’t imagine anything more different from the solid granite blocks of Dalneith House.

“Well?”

She became aware of Khaled standing beside her, watching her with an ironic glint in his eye.

“I love it,” she said. “I mean, it ought to be in Disneyland, or on a film set or something, but I love it. What woman wouldn’t?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. Welcome to my home, Ms. McInnes.”

“Thank you, Sheikh Khaled.”

…

“I thought you were going to arrange for someone else to show me the city.” Olivia had been surprised by Khaled’s appearance at her rooms after lunch, inviting her to walk with him into Saqat City.

“I have a couple of hours.”

Olivia slid him a sideways glance. “I see.”

“If you would prefer someone else…”

“No. I prefer you.”

He didn’t say anything, but his shoulders relaxed a little. He was under too much strain, Olivia realized. He needed a break.

“Show me your country, Khaled. I want to see as much of it as I can while I’m here.”

They strolled through unpaved streets lined with little white, flat-roofed houses. Even without the telltale presence of the guards walking a few paces behind, it was clear everyone knew the sheikh. Women lowered their faces, but the children stared wide-eyed. Khaled paused to talk to some of them, crouching down to their level. Olivia was conscious of the curious glances in her direction, but without knowing any Arabic, she was unable to engage anyone in conversation.

“You made their day,” she said, nodding toward the children who were chattering and gesturing excitedly.

“It’s just one day. One day doesn’t matter compared to the rest of their lives.”

“They’ll be telling that story to their children and their grandchildren for the rest of their lives.”

He made a dismissive noise. He was still terse with her, although he had relaxed while he was talking to the children. She was going to have to work hard to make conversation.

“That’s pretty.” She pointed toward a white building at the end of the street, topped with a gilded dome and surrounded by high towers.

“It’s the mosque.”

“Oh, of course.” She’d heard the prayer call earlier.

“Would you like to see inside?”

“Is that allowed?”

“You’ll need something to cover your hair. And you’ll have to take your shoes off.”

“I can do that.”

It was cool inside the mosque and dark after the bright sunlight. She slipped off her sandals and someone handed her a scarf to drape over her head. Khaled indicated the bowl where she should wash her hands.

“Will I do?” she asked him, checking to make sure she had done everything by the rules.

Khaled barely glanced at her. “Fine.”

There were no chairs, just a thin carpet covering the floor. Several men were on their knees, some lying prostrate, all facing in the same direction, and murmuring words she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see any women, but no one made any objection to her presence. Even so, she didn’t wander far, not wanting to intrude in this holy place.

The room itself was stunningly beautiful, wholly unlike the plain Scottish Presbyterian church she had attended as a child, with its stark, whitewashed walls and deliberately uncomfortable pews. The rich reds and blues of the geometrical pattern on the carpet in the mosque were picked out in an elaborate mosaic design around the walls. Olivia craned her neck to admire the domed ceiling, painted in pretty blues and creams, with a vast, ornate chandelier hanging from its center. A wooden pulpit near the front of the mosque was practically the only familiar object in the room.

Khaled touched her arm. “Wait for me,” he mouthed.

She nodded and watched him go forward, kneel, and reach his arms toward Mecca. Here, in the mosque, he was like every other man, a supplicant on his knees before God. She hoped he would find some respite from his burdens in the act of intercession.

She shouldn’t be watching him like this. It was too private. She handed back the scarf, reclaimed her shoes, and went outside to wait.

In the street, a group of scruffy teenage boys were setting up an impromptu football game. Discarded T-shirts were placed to mark the goals
,
and after a certain amount of bickering they divided into teams. Olivia sat down on a low wall to watch the game. She was no expert, but even she could see that some of the boys were pretty good.