USA TODAY bestselling author Olivia Gates introduces the first marriage-of-convenience novel in her Married by Royal Decree series.

Only one thing stands between Aram Nazaryan and the high-powered position he craves: the proper wife. Although this billionaire would do anything to return to Zohayd, the desert kingdom he considers home, marrying Princess Kanza Aal Ajmaan is too high a price to pay. Or so he thinks—until he meets Kanza…and she turns his world upside down.

After claiming Kanza as his princess, everything falls into place. But then she learns the truth. She may have married for love, but his vows are tainted by ambition. Will doubt, betrayal and mistrust end this too-convenient union?

In moments, she drove away with a screech.

He stood watching her backlights flash red as she hit the brakes at the garage’s exit, the adrenaline of exhilaration flooding his system.

She’d really done it. Something no other woman, no other person, had ever done. She’d turned him down. No. More. She’d rebuffed him. And then some.

Well. There was only one thing he could do now.

Give chase.

Dear Reader,

When I first met Aram Nazaryan in the first book of the Pride of Zohayd trilogy, To Tame A Sheikh, he told me he had a heart that had been lonely all his life, the deepest need for belonging among my heroes…but that he’d long given up on the hope that he’d ever have his heart filled, or would ever belong with anyone, or anywhere.

Then his best friend and brother-in-law, Prince Shaheen Aal Shalaan, offered him what would provide him with a family and a return to the one place he’d ever called home…Zohayd.

I winced as I heard the offer, for I knew this “Marry a Princess to Become Royal” snag would make Aram refuse. He wasn’t a man who would marry for convenience, and certainly not “Kanza The Monster.”

He did refuse, and I thought all was lost…until he met said “Monster”… and she proceeded to turn him inside out and his world upside down.

It was a delight to go on this roller-coaster ride with Aram and Kanza as they developed a unique-to-my-heroes-and-heroines connection. Their feelings developed from antagonism to camaraderie, then from close friendship to the deepest reaches of passion. I was heartbroken along with them when everything seemed to be destroyed beyond repair. I hope you will feel as powerfully about their relationship as I do.

I love to hear from readers, so please visit my website for my latest news at www.oliviagates.com, email me at oliviagates@gmail.com, and connect with me on Facebook, www.facebook.com/oliviagatesauthor, on Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/author/show/405461.Olivia_Gates and on Twitter, @OliviaGates.

Thanks for reading!

Olivia

Conveniently His Princess

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heartpounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

To my family and friends, who give me all I need… love, understanding, encouragement and space, to keep on writing…and enjoying it. Love you all.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Excerpt

One

“You want me to marry Kanza the Monster?”

Aram Nazaryan winced at the loudness of his own voice.

Not that anyone could blame him for going off like that. Shaheen Aal Shalaan had made some unacceptable requests in his time, but this one warranted a description not yet coined by any language he knew. And he knew four.

But the transformation of his best and only friend into a meddling mother hen had been steadily progressing from ignorable to untenable for the past three years. It seemed that the happier Shaheen became with Aram’s kid sister Johara after they had miraculously reunited and gotten married, the more sorry for Aram he became and the more he intensified his efforts to get his brother-in-law to change what he called his “unlife.”

And to think he’d still been gullible enough to believe that Shaheen had dropped by his office for a simple visit. Ten minutes into the chitchat, he’d carpet bombed him with emotional blackmail.

He’d started by abandoning all subtlety about enticing him to go back to Zohayd, asking him point-blank to come home.

Annoyed into equal bluntness, he’d finally retorted that Zohayd was Shaheen’s home, not his, and he wouldn’t go back there to be the family’s seventh wheel, when Shaheen and Johara’s second baby arrived.

Shaheen had only upped the ante of his persistence. To prove that he’d have a vital role and a full life in Zohayd, he’d offered him his job. He’d actually asked him to become Zohayd’s freaking minister of economy!

Thinking that Shaheen was pulling his leg, he’d at first laughed. What else could it be but a joke when only a royal Zohaydan could assume that role, and the last time Aram checked, he was a French-Armenian American?

Shaheen, regretfully, hadn’t sprouted a sense of humor. What he had was a harebrained plan of how Aram could become a royal Zohaydan. By marrying a Zohaydan princess.

Before he could bite Shaheen’s head off for that suggestion, his brother-in-law had hit him with the identity of the candidate he thought perfect for him. And that had been the last straw.

Aram shot his friend an incredulous look when Shaheen rose to face him. “Has conjugal bliss finally fried your brain, Shaheen? There’s no way I’m marrying that monster.”

In response, Shaheen reeled back his flabbergasted expression, adjusting it to a neutral one. “I don’t know where you got that name. The Kanza I know is certainly no monster.”

“Then there are two different Kanzas. The one I know, Kanza Aal Ajmaan, the princess from a maternal branch of your royal family, has earned that name and then some.”

Shaheen’s gaze became cautious, as if he were dealing with a madman. “There’s only one Kanza...and she is delightful.”

“Delightful?” A spectacular snort accompanied that exclamation. “But let’s say I go along with your delusion and agree that she is Miss Congeniality herself. Are you out of your mind even suggesting her to me? She’s a kid!”

It was Shaheen’s turn to snort. “She’s almost thirty.”

“Wha...? No way. The last time I saw her she was somewhere around eighteen.”

“Yes. And that was over ten years ago.”

Had it really been that long? A quick calculation said it had been, since he’d last seen her at that fateful ball, days before he’d left Zohayd.

He waved the realization away. “Whatever. The eleven or twelve years between us sure hasn’t shrunk by time.”

“I’m eight years older than Johara. Three or four years’ more age difference might have been a big deal back then, but it’s no longer a concern at your respective ages now.”

“That may be your opinion, but I...” He stopped, huffed a laugh, shaking his finger at Shaheen. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not dragging me into discussing her as if she’s actually a possibility. She’s a monster, I’m telling you.”

“And I’m telling you she’s no such thing.”

“Okay, let’s go into details, shall we? The Kanza I knew was a dour, sullen creature who sent people scurrying in the opposite direction just by glaring at them. In fact, every time she looked my way, I thought I’d find two holes drilled into me wherever her gaze landed, fuming black, billowing smoke.”

Shaheen whistled. “Quite the image. I see she made quite an impression on you, if after over ten years you still recall her with such vividness and her very memory still incites such intense reactions.”

“Intense unfavorable reactions.” He grunted in disgust. “It’s appalling enough that you’re suggesting this marriage of convenience at all but to recommend the one...creature who ever creeped the hell out of me?”

“Creeped?” Shaheen tutted. “Don’t you think you’re going overboard here?”

He scowled, his pesky sense of fairness rearing its head. “Okay, so perhaps creeped is not the right word. She just...disturbed me. She is disturbed. Do you know that horror once went around with purple hair, green full-body paint and pink contact lenses? Another time she went total albino rabbit with white hair and red eyes. The last time I saw her she had blue hair and zombie makeup. That was downright creepy.”

Shaheen’s smile became that of an adult coddling an unreasonable child. “What, apart from weird hair and eye color and makeup experimentation, do you have against her?”

“The way she used to mutter my name, as if she was casting a curse. I always had the impression she had some...goblin living inside her wisp of a body.”

Shaheen shoved his hands inside his pockets, the image of complacency. “Sounds like she’s exactly what you need. You could certainly use someone that potent to thaw you out of the deep freeze you’ve been stuck in for around two decades now.”

“Why don’t I just go stick myself in an incinerator? It would handle that deep freeze much more effectively and far less painfully.”

Shaheen only gave him the forbearing, compassionate look of a man who knew such deep contentment and fulfillment and was willing to take anything from his poor, unfortunate friend with the barren life.

“Quit it with the pitying look, Shaheen. My temperature is fine. It’s how I am now.... It’s called growing up.”

“If only. Johara feels your coldness. I feel it. Your parents are frantic, believing they’d done that to you when you were forced to remain with your father in Zohayd at the expense of your own life.”

“Nobody forced me to do anything. I chose to stay with Father because he wouldn’t have survived alone after his breakup with Mother.”

“And when they eventually found their way back to each other, you’d already sacrificed your own desires and ambitions and swerved from your own planned path to support your family, and you’ve never been able to correct your course. Now you’re still trapped on the outside, watching the rest of us live our lives from that solitude of yours.”

Aram glowered at Shaheen. He was happy, incredibly so, for his mother and father. For his sister and best friend. But when they kept shoving his so-called solitude in his face, he felt nothing endearing toward any of them. Their solicitude only chafed when he knew he couldn’t do anything about it.

“I made my own choices, so there’s nothing for anyone to feel guilty about. The solitude you lament suits me just fine. So put your minds the hell at ease and leave me be.”

“I’ll be happy to, right after you give my proposition serious consideration and not dismiss it out of hand.”

“Said proposition deserves nothing else.”

“Give me one good reason it does. Citing things about Kanza that are ten years outdated doesn’t count.”

“How about an updated one? If she’s twenty-eight—”

“She’ll be twenty-nine in a few months.”

“And she hasn’t married yet—I assume no poor man has taken her off the shelf only to drop her back there like a burning coal and run into the horizon screaming?”

Shaheen’s pursed lips were the essence of disapproval. “No, she hasn’t been married or even engaged.”

He smirked in self-satisfaction at the accuracy of his projections. “At her age, by Zohaydan standards, she’s already long fossilized.”

“How gallant of you, Aram. I thought you were a progressive man who’s against all backward ideas, including ageism. I never dreamed you’d hold a woman’s age against her in anything, let alone in her suitability for marriage.”

“You know I don’t subscribe to any of that crap. What I’m saying is if she is a Zohaydan woman, and a princess, who didn’t get approached by a man for that long, it is proof that she is generally viewed as incompatible with human life.”

“The exact same thing could be said about you.”

Throwing his hands up in exasperation, he landed them on his friend’s shoulders. “Listen carefully, Shaheen, because I’ll say this once, and we will not speak of this again. I will not get married. Not to become Zohaydan and become your minister of economy, not for any other reason. If you really need my help, I’ll gladly offer you and Zohayd my services.”

Shaheen, who had clearly anticipated this as one of Aram’s answers, was ready with his rebuttal. “The level of involvement needed has to be full-time, with you taking the top job and living in Zohayd.”

“I have my own business...”

“Which you’ve set up so ingeniously and have trained your deputies so thoroughly you only need to supervise operations from afar for it to continue on its current trajectory of phenomenal success. This level of efficiency, this uncanny ability to employ the right people and to get the best out of them is exactly what I need you to do for Zohayd.”

“You haven’t been working the job full-time,” he pointed out.

“Only because my father has been helping me since he abdicated. But now he’s retreating from public life completely. Even with his help, I’ve been torn between my family, my business and the ministry. Now we have another baby on the way and family time will only increase. And Johara is becoming more involved in humanitarian projects that require my attention, as well. I simply can’t find a way to juggle it all if I remain minister.”

He narrowed his eyes at Shaheen. “So I should sacrifice my own life to smooth out yours?”

“You’d be sacrificing nothing. Your business will continue as always, you’d be the best minister of economy humanly possible, a position you’d revel in, and you’ll get a family...something I know you have always longed for.”

Yeah. He was the only male he knew who’d planned at sixteen that he’d get married by eighteen, have half a dozen kids, pick one place and one job and grow deep, deep roots.

And here he was, forty, alone and rootless.

How had that happened?

Which was the rhetorical question to end all rhetorical questions. He knew just how.

“What I longed for and what I am equipped for are poles apart, Shaheen. I’ve long come to terms with the fact that I’m never getting married, never having a family. This might be unimaginable to you in your state of familial nirvana, but not everyone is made for wedded bliss. Given the number of broken homes worldwide, I’d say those who are equipped for it are a minority. I happen to be one of the majority, but I happen to be at peace with it.”

It was Shaheen who took him by the shoulders now. “I believed the exact same thing about myself before Johara found me again. Now look at me...ecstatically united with the one right person.”

Aram bit back a comment that would take this argument into an unending loop. That it was Shaheen and Johara’s marriage that had shattered any delusions he’d entertained that he could ever get married himself.

What they had together—this total commitment, trust, friendship and passion—was what he’d always dreamed of. Their example had made him certain that if he couldn’t have that—and he didn’t entertain the least hope he’d ever have it—then he couldn’t settle for anything less.

Evidently worried that Aram had stopped arguing, Shaheen rushed to add, “I’m not asking you to get married tomorrow, Aram. I’m just asking you to consider the possibility.”

“I don’t need to. I have been and will always remain perfectly fine on my own.”

Eager to put an abrupt end to this latest bout of emotional wrestling—the worst he’d had so far with Shaheen—he started to turn around, but his friend held him back.

He leveled fed-up eyes on Shaheen. “Now what?”

“You look like hell.”

He felt like it, too. As for how he looked, during necessary self-maintenance he’d indeed been seeing a frayed edition of the self he remembered.

Seemed hitting forty did hit a man hard.

A huff of deprecation escaped him. “Why, thanks, Shaheen. You were always such a sweet talker.”

“I’m telling it as it is, Aram. You’re working yourself into the ground...and if you think I’m blunt, it’s nothing compared to what Amjad said when he last saw you.”

Amjad, the king of Zohayd, Shaheen’s oldest brother. The Mad Prince turned the Crazy King. And one of the biggest jerks in human history.

Aram exhaled in disgust. “I was right there when he relished the fact that I looked ‘like something the cat dragged in, chewed up and barfed.’ But thanks for bringing up that royal pain. I didn’t even factor him in my refusal. But even if I considered the job offer/marriage package the opportunity of a lifetime, I’d still turn it down flat because it would bring me in contact with him. I can’t believe you’re actually asking me to become a minister in that inhuman affliction’s cabinet.”

Shaheen grinned at his diatribe. “You’ll work with me, not him.”

“No, I won’t. Give it up, already.”

Shaheen looked unsatisfied and tried again. “About Kanza...”

A memory burst in his head. He couldn’t believe it hadn’t come to him before. “Yes, about her and about abominations for older siblings. You didn’t only pick Kanza the Monster for my best match but the half sister of the Fury herself, Maysoon.”

“I hoped you’d forgotten about her. But I guess that was asking too much.” Wryness twisted Shaheen’s lips. “Maysoon was a tad...temperamental.”

“A tad?” he scoffed. “She was a raging basket case. I barely escaped her in one piece.”

And she’d been the reason that he’d had to leave Zohayd and his father behind. The reason he’d had to abandon his dream of ever making a home there.

“Kanza is her extreme opposite, anyway.”

“You got that right. While Maysoon was a stunning if unstable harpy, Kanza was an off-putting miscreant.”

“I diametrically differ with your evaluation of Kanza. While I know she may not be...sophisticated like her womenfolk, Kanza’s very unpretentiousness makes me like her far more. Even if you don’t consider those virtues exciting, they would actually make her a more suitable wife for you.”

Aram lifted a sarcastic brow. “You figure?”

“I do. It would make her safe and steady, not like the fickle, demanding women you’re used to.”

“You’re only making your argument even more inadmissible, Shaheen. Even if I wanted this, and I consider almost anything admissible in achieving my objectives, I would draw the line at exploiting the mousy, unworldly spinster you’re painting her to be.”

“Who says there’d be any exploitation? You might be a pain in the neck that rivals even Amjad sometimes but you’re one of the most coveted eligible bachelors in the world. Kanza would probably jump at the opportunity to be your wife.”

Maybe. Probably. Still...

“No, Shaheen. And that’s final.”

The forcefulness he’d injected into his voice seemed to finally get to Shaheen, who looked at him with that drop-it-now-to-attack-another-day expression that he knew all too well.

Aram clamped his friend’s arm, dragging him to the door. “Now go home, Shaheen. Kiss Johara and Gharam for me.”

Shaheen still resisted being shoved out. “Just assess the situation like you do any other business proposition before you make a decision either way.”

Aram groaned. Shaheen was one dogged son of a king. “I’ve already made a decision, Shaheen, so give it a rest.”

Before he finally walked away, Shaheen gave him that unfazed smile of his that eloquently said he wouldn’t.

Resigned that he hadn’t heard the last of this, Aram closed the door after him with a decisive click.

The moment he did, his shoulders slumped as his feet dragged to the couch. Throwing himself down on it, he decided to spend yet another night there. No need for him to go “home.” Since he didn’t have one anyway.

But as he stretched out and closed his eyes, his meeting with Shaheen revolved in his mind in a nonstop loop.

He might have sent Shaheen on his way with an adamant refusal, but it wasn’t that easy to suppress his own temptation.

Shaheen’s previous persuasions hadn’t even given him pause. After all, there had been nothing for him to do in Zohayd except be with his family, who had their priorities—of which he wasn’t one. But now that Shaheen was dangling that job offer in front of him, he could actually visualize a real future there.

He’d given Zohayd’s economy constant thought when he’d lived there, had studied it and planned to make it his life’s work. Now, as if Shaheen had been privy to all that, he was offering him the very position where he could utilize all his talents and expertise and put his plans into action.

Then came that one snag in what could have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The get-married-to-become-Zohaydan one.

But...should it be a snag? Maybe convenience was the one way he could get married. And since he didn’t want to get married for real, perhaps Shaheen’s candidate was exactly what he needed.

Her family was royal but not too high up on the tree of royalty as to be too lofty, and their fortune was nowhere near his billionaire status. Maybe as Shaheen had suggested, she’d give him the status he needed, luxuriate in the boost in wealth he’d provide and stay out of his hair.

He found himself standing before the wall-to-wall mirror in the bathroom. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. Meeting his own eyes jogged him out of the preposterous trajectory of his thoughts.

He winced at himself. Shaheen had played him but good. He’d actually made him consider the impossible.

And it was impossible. Being in Zohayd, the only place that had been home to him, being with his family, being Zohayd’s minister of economy were nice fantasies.

And they would remain just that.

* * *

Miraculously, Shaheen hadn’t pursued the subject further.

Wonders would never cease, it seemed.

The only thing he’d brought up in the past two weeks had been an invitation to a party he and Johara were holding in their New York penthouse tonight. An invitation he’d declined.

He was driving to the hotel where he “lived,” musing over Shaheen dropping the subject, wrestling with this ridiculously perverse sense of disappointment, when his phone rang. Johara.

He pressed the Bluetooth button and her voice poured its warmth over the crystal-clear connection.

“Aram, please tell me you’re not working or sleeping.”

He barely caught back a groan. This must be about the party, and he’d hate refusing her to her ears. It was an actual physical pain being unable to give Johara whatever she wanted. Since the moment she’d been born, he’d been a khaatem f’esba’ha, or “a ring on her finger,” as they said in Zohayd. He was lucky that she was part angel or she would have used him as her rattle toy through life.

He prayed she wouldn’t exercise her power over him, make it impossible for him to turn down the invitation again. He was at an all-time low, wasn’t in any condition to be exposed to her and Shaheen’s happiness.

He imbued his voice with the smile that only Johara could generate inside him no matter what. “I’m driving back to the hotel, sweetheart. Are you almost ready for your party?”

“Oh, I am, but...are you already there? If you are, don’t bother. I’ll think of something else.”

He frowned. “What is this all about, Johara?”

Sounding apologetic, she sighed. “There’s a very important file that one of my guests gave me to read, and we’d planned to discuss it at the party. Unfortunately, I forgot it back in my office at Shaheen’s building, and I can’t leave now. So I was wondering if you could go get the file and bring it here to me?” She hesitated. “I’m sorry to take you out of your way and I promise not to try to persuade you to stay at the party, but I can’t trust anyone else with the pass codes to my filing cabinets.”

“You know you can ask me anything at all, anytime.”

“Anything but come to the party, huh?” He started to recite the rehearsed excuse he’d given Shaheen, and she interjected, “But Shaheen told me you did look like you needed an early night, so I totally understand. And it’s not as if I could have enjoyed your company anyway, since we’ve invited a few dozen people and I’ll be flitting all over playing hostess.”

He let out a sigh of relief for her letting him off the hook, looking forward to seeing them yet having the excuse to keep the visit to the brevity he could withstand tonight.

“Tell me what to look for.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Aram was striding across the top floor of Shaheen’s skyscraper.

As he entered Johara’s company headquarters, he frowned. The door to her assistants’ office, which led to hers, was open. Weird.

Deciding that it must have been a rare oversight in their haste to attend Johara and Shaheen’s soiree, he walked in and found the door to his sister’s private office also ajar. Before he could process this new information, a slam reverberated through him.

He froze, his senses on high alert. Not that it took any effort to pinpoint the source of the noise. The racket that followed was unmistakable in direction and nature. Someone was inside Johara’s office and was turning it upside down.

Thief was the first thing that jumped into his mind.

But no. There was no way anyone could have bypassed security. Except someone the guards knew. Maybe one of Johara’s assistants was in there looking for the file she’d asked him for? But she had been clear she hadn’t trusted anyone else with her personal pass codes. So could one of her employees be trying to break into her files?

No, again. He trusted his gut feelings, and he knew Johara had chosen her people well.

Then perhaps someone who worked for Shaheen was trying to steal classified info only she as his wife would be privy to?

Maybe. Calling the guards was the logical next step, anyway. But if he’d jumped to conclusions it could cause unnecessary fright and embarrassment to whomever was inside. He should take a look before he made up his mind how to proceed.

He neared the door in soundless steps, not that the person inside would have heard a marching band. A bulldozer wouldn’t have caused more commotion than that intruder. That alone was just cause to give whomever it was a bit of a scare.

Peeping inside, he primed himself for a confrontation if need be. The next moment, everything in his mind emptied.

It was a woman. Young, slight, wiry. With the thickest mane of hair he’d ever seen flying after her like dark flames as she crashed about Johara’s office. And she didn’t look in the least worried she’d be caught in the act.

Without making a conscious decision, he found himself striding right in.

Then he heard himself saying, “Why don’t you fill me in on what you’re looking for?”

The woman jumped in the air. She was so light, her movement so vertical, so high, it triggered an exaggerated image in his mind of a cartoon character jumping out of her skin in fright. It almost forced a laugh from his lips at its absurdity yet its appropriateness for this brownie.

The laugh dissolved into a smile that hadn’t touched his lips in far too long as she turned to him.

He watched her, feeling as if time was decelerating, like one of those slow-motion movie sequences that signified a momentous event.

He heard himself again, amusement soaking his drawl. “I hear that while searching for something that evidently elusive, two sets of hands and eyes, not to mention two brains, are better than one.”

With his last word, she was facing him. And though her face was a canvas of shock, and he could tell from her shapeless black shirt and pants that the tiny sprite was unarmed, it felt as if he’d gotten a kick in his gut.

And that was before her startled expression faded, before those fierce, dark eyes flayed a layer off his skin and her husky voice burned down his nerve endings.

“I should have known the unfortunate event of tripping into your presence was a territorial hazard around this place. So what brings you to your poor sister’s office while she’s not around? Is no one safe from the raids of The Pirate?”

Two

Aram stared at the slight creature who faced him across the elegant office, radiating the impact of a miniature force of nature, and one thing reverberating through his mind.

She’d recognized him on the spot.

No. More than that. She knew him. At least knew of him.

She’d called him “The Pirate.” The persona, or rather the caricature of him that distasteful tabloids, scorned women and disgruntled business rivals had popularized.

She seemed to be waiting for him to make a comeback to her opening salvo.

A charge of electricity forked up his spine, then all the way up to his lips, spreading them wider. “So I’m The Pirate. And what do you answer to? The Tornado? The Hurricane? You did tear through Johara’s office with the comparative havoc of one. Or do you simply go with The Burglar? A very messy, noisy, reckless one at that?”

She tilted her head, sending her masses of glossy curls tumbling over one slim shoulder. He could swear he heard them tutting in sarcastic vexation that echoed the expression on her elfin face.

It also poured into her voice, its timbre causing something inside his rib cage to rev. “So are you going to stand there like the behemoth that you are blocking my escape route and sucking all oxygen from the room into that ridiculously massive chest of yours, or are you going to give a fellow thief a hand?”

His lips twitched, every word out of hers another zap lashing through his nerves. “Now, how is it fair that I assist you in your heist without even having the privilege of knowing who I’m going to be indicted with when we’re caught? Or are formal introductions not even necessary? Perhaps your spritely self plans on disappearing into the night, leaving me behind to take the fall?”

Her stare froze on him for several long seconds before she suddenly tossed her hair back with a careless hand. “Oh, right...I remember now. Sorry for that. I guess having you materialize behind me like some genie surprised me so much it took me a while to reboot and access my memory banks.”

He blinked, then frowned. Was she the one who’d stopped making sense, or had his mind finally stopped functioning? It had been increasingly glitch riddled of late. He had been teetering on the brink of some breakdown for a long time now, and he’d thought it was only a matter of time before the chasm running through his being became complete.

So had his psyche picked now of all times to hit rock bottom? But why now, when he’d finally found someone to jog him out of his apathy, even if temporarily; someone he actually couldn’t predict?

Maybe he’d blacked out or something, missed something she’d said that would make her last words make sense.

He cleared his throat. “Uh...come again?”

Her fed-up expression deepened. “I momentarily forgot how you got your nickname, and that you continue to live down to it, and then some.”

Though the jump in continuity still baffled him, he went along. “Oh? I’m very much interested in hearing your dissection of my character. Knowing how another criminal mastermind perceives me would no doubt help me perfect my M.O.”

One of those dense, slanting eyebrows rose. “Invoking the code of dishonor among thieves? Sure, why not? I’m charitable like that with fellow crooks.” That obsidian gaze poured mockery over him. “Let’s see. You earned your moniker after building a reputation of treating other sentient beings like commodities to be pillaged then tossed aside once their benefit is depleted. But you reserve an added insult and injury to those who suffer the terrible misfortune of being exposed to you on a personal level, as you reward those hapless people by deleting them from you mind. So, if you’re seeking my counsel about enhancing your performance, my opinion is that you can’t improve on your M.O. of perfectly efficient cruelty.”

Her scathing portrayal was the image that had been painted of him in the business world and by the women he’d kept away by whatever measures necessary.

When his actions had been exaggerated or misinterpreted and that ruthless reputation had begun to be established, he’d never tried to adjust it. On the contrary, he’d let it become entrenched, since that perceived cold-bloodedness did endow him with a power nothing else could. Not to mention that it supplied him with peace of mind he couldn’t have bought if he’d projected a more approachable persona. This one did keep the world at bay.

But the only actual accuracy in her summation was the personal interactions bit. He didn’t crowd his recollections with the mundane details of anyone who hadn’t proved worth his while. Only major incidents remained in his memory—if stripped from any emotional impact they might have had.

But...wait a minute. Inquiring about her identity had triggered this caustic commentary in the first place. Was she obliquely saying that he didn’t remember her, when he should?

That was just not possible. How would he have ever forgotten those eyes that could reduce a man to ashes at thirty paces, or that tongue that could shred him to ribbons, or that wit that could weave those ribbons into the hand basket to send him to hell in?

No way. If he’d ever as much as exchanged a few words with her, not only would he have remembered, he would probably have borne the marks of every one. After mere minutes of being exposed to her, he felt her eyes and tongue had left no part of him unscathed.

And he was loving it.

God, to be reveling in this, he must be sicker than he’d thought of all the fawning he got from everyone else—especially women. Though he knew that had never been for him. During his stint in Zohayd, it had been his exotic looks but mainly his closeness to the royal family that had incited the relentless pursuit of women there. After he’d become a millionaire, then a billionaire... Well, status and wealth were irresistible magnets to almost everyone.

That made being slammed with such downright derision unprecedented. He doubted if he would have accepted it from anyone else, though. But from this enigma, he was outright relishing it.

Wanting to incite even more of her verbal insults, he gave her a bow of mock gratitude. “Your testimony of dishonor honors me, and your maligning warms my stone-cold heart.”

Both her eyebrows shot up this time. “You have one? I thought your species didn’t come equipped with those superfluous organs.”

His grin widened. “I do have a rudimentary thing somewhere.”

“Like an appendix?” A short, derogatory sound purred in the back of her throat. “Something that could be excised and you’d probably function better without? Wonder why you didn’t have it electively removed. It must be festering in there.”

As if compelled, he moved away from the door, needing a closer look at this being he’d never seen the likes of before. He kept drawing nearer as she stood her ground, her glare one that could have stopped an attacking horde.

It only made getting even closer imperative. He stopped only when he was three feet away, peering down at this diminutive woman who was a good foot or more shorter than he was yet feeling as if he was standing nose to nose with an equal.

“Don’t worry,” he finally said, answering her last dig. “There is no reason for surgical intervention. It has long since shriveled and calcified. But thank you from the bottom of my vestigial heart for the concern. And for the counsel. It’s indeed reassuring to have such a merciless authority confirm that I’m doing the wrong thing so right.”

He waited for her ricocheting blitz, anticipation rising. Instead, she seared him with an incinerating glance before seeming to delete him from her mind as she resumed her search.

By now he knew for certain that she wasn’t here to do anything behind Johara’s back. Even when she’d readily engaged him in the “thieves in the night” scenario he’d initiated, and rifling through the very cabinets he himself was here to search...

It suddenly hit him, right in the solar plexus, who this tempest in human form was.

It was her.

Kanza. Kanza Aal Ajmaan.

Unable to blink, to breathe, he stood staring at her as she kept transferring files from the cabinets, plopping them down on Johara’s desk before attacking them with a speed and focus that once again flooded his mind’s eye with images of hilarious cartoon characters. He had no clue how he’d even recognized her. Just as she’d accused him, his memories of the Kanza he’d known over ten years ago had been stripped of any specifics.

All he could recall of the fierce and fearsome teenager she’d been, apart from the caricature he’d painted for Shaheen of her atrocious fashion style and the weird, bordering-on-repulsive things she’d done with her hair and eyes, was that it had felt as if something ancient had been inhabiting that younger-than-her-age body.

A decade later, she still seemed more youthful than her chronological age, yet packed the wallop of this same primal force. But that was where the resemblance ended.

The Mad Hatter and Wicked Witch clothes and makeup and extraterrestrial hair, contact lenses and body paint were gone now. From the nondescript black clothes and the white sneakers that clashed with them, to the face scrubbed clean of any enhancements, to the thick, untamed mahogany tresses that didn’t seem to have met a stylist since he’d last seen her, she had gone all the way in the other direction.

Though in an opposite way to her former self, she was still the antithesis of all the svelte, stylish women who’d ever entered his orbit, starting with her half sisters. Where they’d been overtly feminine and flaunting their assets, she made no effort whatsoever to maximize any attributes she might have. Not that she had much to work with. She was small, almost boyish. The only big thing about her was her hair. And eyes. Those were enormous. Everything else was tiny.

But that was when he analyzed her looks clinically. But when he experienced them with the influence of the being they housed, the spirit that animated them...that was when his entire perception changed. The pattern of her features, the shape of her lips, the sweep of her lashes, the energy of her movements... Everything about her evolved into something totally different, making her something far more interesting than pretty.

Singular. Compelling.

And the most singular and compelling thing about her was those night eyes that had burned to ashes any preformed ideas of what made a woman worthy of a second glance, let alone constant staring.

Though he was still staring after she’d deprived him of their contact, he was glad to be relieved of their all-seeing scrutiny. He needed respite to process finding her here.

How could Shaheen bring her up a couple of weeks ago only for him to stumble on her here of all places when he hadn’t crossed paths with her in ten years? This was too much of a coincidence. Which meant...

It wasn’t one. Johara had set him up.

Another realization hit simultaneously.

Kanza seemed to be here running his same errand. Evidently Johara had set her up, too.

God. He was growing duller by the day. How could he have even thought Shaheen wouldn’t share this with Johara, the woman where half his soul resided? How hadn’t he picked up on Johara’s knowledge or intentions?

Not that those two coconspirators were important now. The only relevant thing here was Kanza.

Had she realized the setup once he’d walked through that door? Was that why she’d reacted so cuttingly to his appearance? Did she take exception to Johara’s matchmaking, and that was her way of telling her, and him, “Hell, no!”?

If this was the truth, then that made her even more interesting than he’d originally thought. It wasn’t conceit, but as Shaheen had said, in the marriage market, he was about as big a catch as an eligible bachelor got. He couldn’t imagine any woman would be averse to the idea of being his wife—if only for his status and wealth. Even his reputation was an irresistible lure in that arena. If women thought they had access, it only made him more of a challenge, a dangerous bad boy each dreamed she’d be the one to tame.

But if Kanza was so immune to his assets, so opposed to exploring his possibility as a groom, that alone made her worthy of in-depth investigation.

Not that he was even considering Shaheen and Johara’s neat little plan. But he was more intrigued by the moment by this...entity they’d gotten it into their minds was perfect for him.

Suddenly, said entity looked up from the files, transfixed him in the crosshairs of her fiercest glare yet. “Don’t just stand there and pose. Come do something more useful than look pretty.” When she saw his eyebrows shoot up, her lips twisted. “What? You take exception to being called pretty?”

He opened his mouth to answer, and her impatient gesture closed it for him, had him hurrying next to her where she foisted a pile of files on him and instructed him to look for the very file Johara had sent him here to retrieve.

Without looking at him, she resumed her search. “I guess pretty is too mild. You have a right to expect more powerful descriptions.”

He gave her engrossed profile a sideways glance. “If I expect anything, it certainly isn’t that.”

She slammed another file shut. “Why not? You have the market of halawah cornered after all.”

Halawah, literally sweetness, was used in Zohayd to describe beauty. That had him turning fully toward her. “Where do you come up with these things that you say?”

She flicked him a fleeting glance, closed another file on a sigh of frustration. “That’s what women in Zohayd used to say about you. Wonder what they’d say now that your halawah is so exacerbated by age it could induce diabetes.”

That had a laugh barking from his depths. “Why, thanks. Being called a diabetes risk is certainly a new spin on my supposed good looks.”

She tsked. “You know damn well how beautiful you are.”

He shook his bemused head at what kept spilling from those dainty lips, compliments with the razor-sharp edges of insults. “No one has accused me of being beautiful before.”

“Probably because everyone is programmed to call men handsome or hunks or at most gorgeous. Well, sorry, buddy. You leave all those adjectives in the dust. You’re all-out beautiful. It’s really quite disgusting.”

“Disgusting!”

“Sickeningly so. The resources you must devote to maximizing your assets and maintaining them at this...level...” She tossed him a gesture that eloquently encompassed him from head to toe. “When your looks aren’t your livelihood, this is an excess that should be punishable by law.”

An incredulous huff escaped him. “It’s surreal to hear you say that when my closest people keep telling me the very opposite—that I’m totally neglecting myself.”

She slanted him a caustic look. “You have people who can bear being close to you? My deepest condolences to them.”

He smiled as if she’d just lavished the most extravagant praise on him. “I’ll make sure to relay your sympathies.”

Another withering glance came his way before she resumed her work. “I’ll give mine directly to Johara. No wonder she’s seemed burdened of late. It must be quite a hardship having you for an only brother in general, not to mention having to see you frequently when she’s here.”

His gaze lengthened on her averted face. Then suddenly everything jolted into place.

Who Kanza really was.

She was the new partner that Johara had been waxing poetic about. Now he replayed the times his sister had raved about the woman who’d taken Johara’s design house from moderate success to household-name status, this financial marketing guru who had never actually been mentioned by name. But he had no doubt now it was Kanza.

Had Johara never brought up her name because she didn’t want to alert him to her intentions, making him resistant to meeting Kanza and predisposed to finding fault with her if he did? If so, then Johara understood him better than Shaheen did, who’d hit him over the head with his intentions and Kanza’s name. That had backfired. Evidently Johara had reeled Shaheen in, telling her husband not to bring up the subject again and that she’d handle everything from that point on, discreetly. And she had.

Another certainty slotted into place. Johara had kept her business partner in the dark about all this for the same reason.

Which meant that Kanza had no clue this meeting wasn’t a coincidence.

The urge to divulge everything about their situation surged from zero to one hundred. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face as the truth of Johara and Shaheen’s machinations sank in and to just stand back and enjoy the fireworks.

He turned to her, the words almost on his lips, when another thought hit him.

What if, once he told her, she became stilted, self-conscious? Or worse, nice? He couldn’t bear the idea that after their invigorating duel of wits, her revitalizing lambasting, she’d suddenly start to sugarcoat her true nature in an attempt to endear herself to him as a potential bride. But worst of all, what if she shut him out completely?

From what he’d found out about her character so far, he’d go with scenario number three as the far more plausible one.

Whichever way this played out, he couldn’t risk spoiling her spontaneity or ending this stimulating interlude.

Deciding to keep this juicy tidbit to himself, he said, “Apart from burdening Johara with my existence, I was actually serious for a change. Everyone I meet tells me I’ve never looked worse. The mirror confirms their opinion.”

“I’ve smacked people upside the head for less, buddy.” She narrowed her eyes at him, as if charting the trajectory of the smack he’d earn if he weren’t careful. “Nothing annoys me more than false modesty, so if you don’t want me to muss that perfectly styled mane of yours, watch it.”

Suddenly it was important for him to settle this with her. “There is no trace of anything false in what I’m saying—modesty or otherwise. I really have been in bad shape and have been getting progressively worse for over a year now.”

This gave her pause for a moment, something like contrition or sympathy coming into her eyes.

Before he could be sure, it was gone, her fathomless eyes glittering with annoyance again. “You mean you’ve looked better than this? Any better and you should be...arrested or something.”

Something warm seeped through his bones, brought that unfamiliar smile to his lips again. “Though I barely give the way I look any thought, you managed what I thought impossible. You flattered me in a way I never was before.”

She grimaced as if at some terrible taste. “Hello? Wasn’t I speaking English just now? Flattering you isn’t among the things I would ever do, even at gunpoint.”

“Sorry if this causes you an allergic reaction, but that is exactly what you did, when I’ve been looking at myself lately and finding only a depleted wretch looking back at me.”

She opened her mouth to deliver another disparaging blow, before she closed it, her eyes narrowing contemplatively over his face.

“Now I’m looking for it. I guess, yeah, I see it. But it sort of...roughens your slickness and gives you a simulation of humanity that makes you look better than your former overly polished perfection. Figures, huh? Instead of looking like crap, you manage to make wretched and depleted work for you.”

He abandoned any pretense of looking through the files and turned to her, arms folded over his chest. “Okay. I get it. You despise the hell out of me. Are you going to tell me what I ever did to deserve your wrath, Kanza?”

When she heard her name on his lips, something blipped in her eyes. It was gone again before he could latch on to it, and she reverted back to full-blast disdain mode. “Give the poor, depleted Pirate an energy bar. He’s exerted himself digging through his hard drive’s trash and recognized me. And even after he did, he still asks. What? You think your transgressions should have been dropped from the record by time?”

“Which transgressions are we talking about here?”

“Yeah, with multitudes to pick from, you can’t even figure out which ones I’m referring to.”

“Though I’m finding your bashing delightful, even therapeutic, my curiosity levels are edging into the danger zone. How about you put me out of my misery and enlighten me as to what exactly I’m paying the price for now?”

Her lips twisted disbelievingly. “You’ve really forgotten, haven’t you?” At his unrepentant yet impatient nod, she rolled her eyes and turned back to the files, muttering under her breath. “You can go rack your brains with a rake for the answer for all I care. I’m not helping you scratch that itch.”

“Since there’s no way I’ve forgotten anything I did to you that could cause such an everlasting grudge...” He paused, frowned then exclaimed, “Don’t tell me this is about Maysoon!”

“And he remembers. In a way that adds more insult to injury. You’re a species of one, aren’t you, Aram Nazaryan?”

Before he could say anything, she strode away, clearly not intending to let him pursue the subject. He could push his luck but doubted she’d oblige him.

But at least he now knew where this animosity was coming from. While he hadn’t factored in that this would be her stance regarding the fiasco between him and Maysoon, it seemed she had accumulated an unhealthy dose of prejudice against him from the time he’d been briefly engaged to her half sister. And she’d added an impressive amount of further bias ever since.

She slammed another filing cabinet shut. “This damn file isn’t here.” She suddenly turned on him. “But you are. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

So it had finally sunk in, the improbability of his stumbling in on her here in his sister’s office.

Having already decided to throw her off, he said, “I was hoping Johara would be working late.”

She frowned. “So you don’t know that she and Shaheen are throwing a party tonight?”

“They are?” This had to be his best acting moment ever.

She bought it, as evidenced by her return to mockery. “You forgot that, too? Is anything of any importance to you?”

He approached her again with the same caution he would approach a hostile feline. “Why do you assume it’s me who forgot and not them who neglected to invite me?”

“Because I’d never believe either Johara or Shaheen would neglect anyone, even you.”

When he was a few feet away, he looked down at her, amusement again rising unbidden. “But it’s fully believable that I got their invitation and tossed it in the bin unread?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I’d believe you got a dozen phone calls, too, or even face-to-face invitations and just disregarded them.”

“Then I come here to visit my sister because I’m disregarding her?”

“Maybe you need something from her and came to ask for it, even though you won’t consider going to her party.”

He let out a short, delighted laugh. “You’ll go the extra light-year to think the worst of me, won’t you?”

“Don’t give me any credit. It’s you who makes it exceptionally easy to malign you.”

Hardly believing how much he was enjoying her onslaught, he shook his head. “One would think Maysoon is your favorite sister and bosom buddy from the way you’re hacking at me.”

The intensity of her contempt grew hotter. “I would have hacked at you if you’d done the same to a stranger or even an enemy.”

“So your moral code is unaffected by personal considerations. Commendable. But what have I done exactly, in your opinion?”

Her snort was so cute, so incongruous, that it had his unfettered laugh ringing out again.

“Oh, you’re good. With three words you’ve turned this from a matter of fact to a matter of opinion. Play another one.”

“I’m trying hard to.”

“Then el’ab be’eed.”

This meant play far away. From her, of course.

Something he had no intention of doing. “Won’t you at least recite my charges and read me my rights?”

She produced her cell phone. “Nope. I bypassed all that and long pronounced your sentence.”

“Shouldn’t I be getting parole after ten years?”

“Not when I gave you life in the first place, no.”

His whole face was aching. He hadn’t smiled this much in...ever. “You’re a mean little thing, aren’t you?”

“And you’re a sleazy huge thing, aren’t you?”

He guffawed this time.

Wondering how the hell this pixie was doing this, triggering his humor with every acerbic remark, he headed back to Johara’s desk. “So are we done with your search mission? Or going by the aftermath of your efforts, search-and-destroy operation?”

“Just for that,” she said as she placed a call, “you put everything back where it belongs.”

“I don’t think even Johara herself can accomplish that impossibility after the chaos you’ve wrought.”

She flicked him one last annihilating look, then dismissed him as she started speaking into the phone without preamble. “Okay, Jo, I can’t find anything that might be the file you described, and I’ve gone through every shred of paper you got here.”

“You mean we did.” Aram raised his voice to make sure Johara heard him.

An obsidian bolt hit him right between the eyes, had his heart skipping a beat.

He grinned even more widely at her. He had no doubt Johara had heard him, but it was clear she’d pretended she hadn’t, since Kanza’s wrath would have only increased if Johara had made any comment or asked who was with her.

And he’d thought he’d known everything there was to know about his kid sister. Turned out she wasn’t only capable of the subterfuge of setting him and her partner up, but of acting seamlessly on the fly, too.

Kanza was frowning now. “What do you mean it’s okay? It’s not okay. You need the file, and if it’s here, I’ll find it. Just give me a better description. I might have looked at it a dozen times and didn’t recognize it for what it was.”

Kanza fell silent for a few moments as Johara answered. He had a feeling she was telling Kanza a load of ultra-convincing bull. By now, he was 100 percent certain that file didn’t even exist.

Kanza ended the conversation and confirmed his deductions. “I can’t believe it! Johara is now not even sure the file is here at all. Blames it on pregnancy hormones.”

Hoping his placating act was half as good as Johara’s misleading one, he said, “We only lost an hour of turning her office upside down. Apart from the mess, no harm done.”

“First, there’s no we in the matter. Second, I was here an hour before you breezed in. Third, you did breeze in. Can’t think of more harm than that. But the good news is I now get to breeze out of here and put an end to this unwelcome and torturous exchange with you.”

“Aren’t you even going to try to ameliorate the destruction you’ve left in your wake?”

“Johara insisted I leave everything and just rush over to the party.”

So she was invited. Of course. Though from the way she was dressed, no one would think she had anything more glamorous planned than going to the grocery store.

But it was evident she intended to go. That must have been Johara and Shaheen’s plan A. They’d invited him to set him and Kanza up at the soirée. And when he’d refused, Johara had improvised find-the-nonexistent-file plan B.

Kanza grabbed a red jacket from one of the couches, which he hadn’t noticed before, and shrugged it on before hooking what looked like a small laptop bag across her body.

Then, without even a backward glance at him, she was striding toward the door.

He didn’t know how he’d managed to move that fast, but he found himself blocking her path.

This surprised her so much that she bumped into him. He caught an unguarded expression in those bottomless black eyes as she stumbled back. A look of pure vulnerability. As though the steely persona she’d been projecting wasn’t the real her, or not the only side to her. As though his nearness unsettled her so much it left her floundering.

A moment later he wondered if he’d imagined what he’d seen, since the look was now gone and annoyance was the only thing left in its place.

He tried what he hoped was the smooth charm he’d seen others practice but had never attempted himself. “How about we breeze out of here together and I drive you to the party?”

“You assume I came here...how? On foot?”

“A pixie like you might have just blinked in here.”

“Then I can blink out the same way.”

“I’m still offering to conserve your mystic energies.”

“Acting the gentleman doesn’t become you, and any attempt at simulating one is wasted on me since I’m hardly a damsel in distress. And if you’re offering in order to score points with Johara, forget it.”

“There you go again—assigning such convoluted motives to my actions when I’m far simpler than you think. I’ve decided to go to the party, and since you’re going, too, you can save your pixie magic, as I have a perfectly mundane car parked in the garage.”

“What a coincidence. So do I. Though mine is mundane for real. While yours verges on the supernatural. I hear it talks, thinks, takes your orders, parks itself and knows when to brake and where to go. All it has left to do is make you a sandwich and a cappuccino to become truly sentient.”

“I’ll see about developing those sandwich-and cappuccino-making capabilities. Thanks for the suggestion. But wouldn’t you like to take a spin in my near-sentient car?”

“No. Just like I wouldn’t want to be in your near-sentient presence. Now ann eznak...or better still, men ghair eznak.” Then she turned and strode away.

He waited until she exited the room before moving. In moments, his far-longer strides overtook her at the elevators.

Kanza didn’t give any indication that she noticed him, going through messages on her phone. She still made no reaction when he boarded the elevator with her and then when he followed her to the garage.

It was only when he tailed her to her car that she finally turned on him. “What?”

He gave her his best pseudoinnocent smile and lobbed back her parting shot. “By your leave, or better still without it, I’m escorting you to your car.”

She looked him up and down in silence, then turned and took the last strides to a Ford Escape that was the exact color of her jacket. Seemed she was fond of red.

In moments, she drove away with a screech right out of a car chase, which had him jumping out of the way.

He stood watching her taillights flashing as she hit the brakes at the garage’s exit. Grinning to himself, he felt a rush of pure adrenaline flood his system.

She’d really done it. Something no other woman—no other person—had ever done.

She’d turned him down.

No...it was more that that. She’d rebuffed him.

Well. There was only one thing he could do now.

Give chase.

Three

Kanza resisted the urge to floor the gas pedal.

That...rat was following her.

That colossal, cruelly magnificent rat.

Though the way he made her feel was that she was the rat, running for her life, growing more frantic by the breath, chased by a majestic, terminally bored cat who’d gotten it in his mind to chase her...just for the hell of it.

She snatched another look in the rearview mirror.

Yep. There he still was. Driving safely, damn him, keeping the length of three cars between them, almost to the inch. He’d probably told his pet car how far away it should stick to her car’s butt. The constant distance was more nerve-racking than if he’d kept approaching and receding, if he’d made any indication that he was expending any effort in keeping up with her.

She knew he didn’t really want to catch her. He was just exercising the prerogative of his havoc-inducing powers. He was doing this to rattle her. To show her that no one refused him, that he’d do whatever he pleased, even if it infringed on others. Preferably if it did.

It made her want to slam the brakes in the middle of the road, force him to stop right behind her. Then she’d get down, walk over there and haul him out of his car and...and... What?

Bite mouthfuls out of his gorgeous bod? Swipe his keys and cell phone and leave him stranded on the side of the road?

Evidently, from the maddening time she’d just spent in his company, he’d probably enjoy the hell out of whatever she did. She had tried her level worst back in Johara’s office, and that insensitive lout had seemed to be having a ball, thinking every insult out of her mouth was a hoot. Seemed his jaded blood levels had long been toxic and now any form of abuse was a stimulant.

Gritting her teeth all the way to Johara and Shaheen’s place, she kept taking compulsive glances back at this incorrigible predator who tailed her in such unhurried pursuit.

Twenty minutes later, she parked the car in the garage, filled her lungs with air. Then, holding it as if she was bracing for a blow, she got out.

Out of the corner of her eye she could estimate he’d parked, too. Three empty car places away. He was really going the distance to maintain the joke, wasn’t he?

Fine. Let him have his fun. Which would only be exacerbated if she made any response. She wouldn’t.

When she was at the elevator, she stopped, a groan escaping her. Aram had frazzled her so much that she’d left Johara and Shaheen’s housewarming present, along with the Arabian horse miniature set she’d promised Gharam, in the trunk.

Cursing him to grow a billion blue blistering barnacles, she turned on her heel and stalked back to the car. She passed him on her way back, as he’d been following in her wake, maintaining the equivalent of three paces behind her.

Feeling his gaze on her like the heaviest embarrassment she’d ever suffered, she retrieved the boxes. Just as the tailgate clicked closed, she almost knocked her head against it in chagrin. She’d forgotten to change her sneakers.

Great. This guy was frying her synapses even at fifty paces, where he was standing serenely by the elevator, awaiting her return. Maybe she should just forget about changing the sneakers. Or better still, hurl them at him.

But it was one thing to skip around in those sneakers, another to attend Johara and Shaheen’s chic party in them. It was bad enough she’d be the most underdressed one around, as usual.

Forcing herself to breathe calmly, she reopened the tailgate and hopped on the edge of the trunk. He’d just have to bear the excitement of watching her change into slightly less nondescript two-inch heels. At least those were black and didn’t clash like a chalk aberration on a black background.

In two minutes she was back at the elevators, hoisting the boxes—each under an arm. Contrary to her expectations, he didn’t offer to help her carry them. Then he didn’t even board the elevator with her. Instead, he just stood there in that disconcerting calm while the doors closed. Though she was again pretending to be busy with her phone, she knew he didn’t pry his gaze from her face. And that he had that infuriating smile on his all the time.

Sensing she’d gotten only a short-lived respite since he was certain to follow her up at his own pace, she knew her smile was on the verge of shattering as Johara received her at the door. It must have been her own tension that made her imagine that Johara looked disappointed. For why would she be, when she’d already known she hadn’t found her file and had been the one to insist Kanza stop searching for it?

Speculation evaporated as Johara exclaimed over Kanza’s gifts and ushered her toward Shaheen and Gharam. But barely three minutes later, Johara excused herself and hurried to the door again.

Though Kanza was certain it was him, her breath still caught in her throat, and her heart sputtered like a malfunctioning throttle.

Ya Ullah... Why was she letting this virtuoso manipulator pull her strings like this?

The surge of fury manifested in exaggerated gaiety with Shaheen and Gharam. But a minute later Shaheen excused himself, too, and rushed away with Gharam to join his wife in welcoming his so-called best friend. She almost blurted out that Aram was here only to annoy her, not to see him or his sister, and that Shaheen should do himself a favor and find himself a new best friend, since that one cared about no one but himself.

Biting her tongue and striding deeper into the penthouse, she forced herself to mingle, which usually rated right with anesthesia-free tooth extractions on her list of favorite pastimes. However, right now, it felt like the most desirable thing ever, compared to being exposed to Aram Nazaryan again.

But to her surprise, she wasn’t.

After an hour passed, throughout which she’d felt his eyes constantly on her, he’d made no attempt to approach her, and her tension started to dissipate.

It seemed her novelty to him had worn off. He must be wondering why the hell he’d taken his challenge this far—at the price of suffering the company of actual human beings. Ones who clearly loved him, though why, she’d never understand.

She still welcomed the distraction when Johara asked her to put the horse set in their family living room away from Gharam’s determined-to-take-them-apart hands. The two-and-a-half-year-old tyke was one unstoppable girl who everyone said took after her maternal uncle. Clearly, in nature as well as looks.

She’d finished her chore and was debating what was more moronic—that she was this affected by Aram’s presence or that her relief at the end of this perplexing interlude was mixed with what infuriatingly resembled letdown—when it felt as if a thousand volts of electricity zapped her. His dark, velvety baritone that drenched her every receptor in paralysis.

It was long, heart-thudding moments before what he’d said made sense.

“I’m petitioning for a reopening of my case.”

She didn’t turn to him. She couldn’t.

For the second time tonight, he’d snuck up on her, startling the reins of volition out of her reach.

But this time, courtesy of the building tension that had been defused in false security, the surprise incapacitated her.

When she didn’t turn, it was Aram who circled her in a wide arc, coming to face her at that distance he’d been maintaining, as if he was a hunter who knew he had his quarry cornered yet still wasn’t taking any chances he’d get a set of claws across the face.

And as usual with him around, she felt the spacious, ingeniously decorated room shrink and fade away, her senses converging like a spotlight on him.

It was always a shock to the system beholding him. He was without any doubt the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen. Damn him.

She’d bet it was beyond anyone alive not to be awed by his sheer grandeur and presence, to not gape as they drank in the details of what made him what he was. She remembered with acute vividness the first time she’d seen him. She had gaped then and every time she’d seen him afterward, trying to wrap her mind around how anyone could be endowed with so much magnificence.

He lived up to his pseudonym—a pirate from a fairy tale, imposing, imperious, mysterious with a dark, ruthless edge to his beauty, making him...utterly compelling.

It still seemed unbelievable that he was Johara’s brother. Apart from both of them possessing a level of beauty that was spellbinding, verging on painful to behold, they looked nothing alike. While Johara had the most amazing golden hair, molten chocolate eyes and thick cream complexion, Aram was her total opposite. But after she’d seen both their parents, she’d realized he’d manifested the absolute best in both, too.

His eyes were a more dazzling shade of azure than that of his French mother’s—the most vivid, hypnotic color she’d ever seen. From his mother, too, and her family, he’d also inherited his prodigious height and amplified it. He’d added a generous brush of burnished copper to his Armenian-American father’s swarthy complexion, a deepened gloss and luxury to his raven mane and an enhanced bulk and breadth to his physique.

Then came the details. And the devil was very much in those. A dancing, laughing, knowing one, aware of the exact measure of their unstoppable influence. Of every slash and hollow and plane of a face stamped with splendor and uniqueness, every bulge and sweep and slope of a body emanating maleness and strength, every move and glance and intonation demonstrating grace and manliness, power and perfection. All in all, he was glory personified.

Now, exuding enough charisma and confidence to power a small city, he towered across from her, calmly sweeping his silk black jacket out of the way, shoving his hands into his pockets. The movement had the cream shirt stretching over the expanse of virility it clung to. Her lips tingled as his chiseled mouth quirked up into that lethal smile.

“I submit a motion that I have been unjustly tried.”

Aram’s obvious enjoyment, not to mention his biding his time before springing his presence on her again, made retaliation a necessity.

Her voice, when she managed to operate her vocal cords, thankfully sounded cool and dismissive. “And I submit you’ve not only gotten away with your crimes but you’ve been phenomenally rewarded for them.”

“If you’re referring to my current business success, how are you managing to correlate it to my alleged crimes?”

She fought not to lick the dryness from her lips, to bite into the numbness that was spreading through them. “I’m managing because you’ve built said success using the same principles with which you perpetrated those crimes.”

His eyes literally glittered with mischief, becoming bluer before her dazzled ones. “Then I am submitting that those principles you ascribe to me and your proof of them were built around pure circumstantial evidence.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So you’re not after a retrial. What you really want is your whole criminal record expunged.”

He raised those large, perfectly formed hands like someone blocking blows. “I wouldn’t dream of universally dismissing my convictions.” His painstakingly sculpted lips curled into a delicious grin. “That would be pushing my luck. But I do demand an actual primary hearing of my testimony, since I distinctly remember one was never taken.”

Although she felt her heart sputtering out of control, she tried to match his composure outwardly. “Who says you get a hearing at all? You certainly didn’t grant others such mercy or consideration.”

The scorching amusement in those gemlike eyes remained unperturbed. “By others you mean Maysoon, I assume?”

“Hers was the case I observed firsthand. As I am a stickler for justice, I will not pass judgment on those I know of only through secondhand testimonies and hearsay.”

His eyes widened on what looked like genuine surprise.

Yeah, right. As if he could feel anything for real.

“That’s very...progressive of you. Elevated, even.” At her baleful glance, something that simulated seriousness took over his expression. “No, I mean it. In my experience, when people don’t like someone, they demonize them wholesale, stop granting them even the possibility of fairness.”

She pursed her lips, refusing to consider the possibility of his sincerity. “Lauding my merits won’t work, you know.”

“In granting me a hearing?”

“In granting you leniency you haven’t earned and certainly don’t deserve.” He opened his mouth, and she raised her hand. “Don’t you think you’ve taken your joke far enough?”

For a moment he looked actually confused before a careful expression replaced uncertainty. “What joke, exactly?”

She rolled her eyes. “Spare me.”

“Or you’ll spear me?” At her exasperated rumble, he raised his hands again, the coaxing in his eyes rising another notch. “That was lame. But I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I am barely keeping up with you.”

“Yeah, right. Since you materialized behind me like some capricious spirit, you’ve been ready with something right off the smart-ass chart before I’ve even finished speaking.”

He shook his head, causing his collar-length mane to undulate. “If you think that was easy, think again. You’re making me struggle for every inch before you snatch it away with your next lob. For the first time in my life I have no idea what will spill out of someone’s lips next, so give me a break.”

“I would ask where you want it, but I have to be realistic. Considering our respective physiques, I probably can’t give you one without the help of heavy, blunt objects.”

The next moment, all her nerves fired up as he proceeded to subject her to the sight and sound of his all-out amusement, a demonstration so...virile, so debilitating, each peal was a new bolt forking through her nervous system.

When he at last brought his mirth under control, his lips remained stretched the widest she’d seen them, showing off that set of extraordinary white teeth in the most devastating smile she’d had the misfortune of witnessing. He even wiped away a couple of tears of hilarity. “You can give me compound fractures with your tongue alone. As for your glares, we’re talking incineration.”

Hating that even when he was out of breath and wheezing, he sounded more hard-hitting for it, she gritted out, “If I could do that, it would be the least I owe you.”

“What have I done now?” Even his pseudolament was scrumptious. This guy needed some kind of quarantine. He shouldn’t be left free to roam the realm of flimsy mortals. “Is this about the joke you’ve accused me of perpetrating?”

“There’s no accusation here—just statement of fact. You’ve been enjoying one big fat joke at my expense since you stumbled on me in Johara’s office.”

His eyes sobered at once, filling with something even more distressing than mischief and humor. Indulgence? “I’ve been relishing the experience immensely, but not as a joke and certainly not at your expense.”

Her heart gave her ribs another vicious kick. She had to stop this before her heart literally bruised.

She raised her hands. “Okay, this is going nowhere. Let’s say I believe you. Give me another reason you’re doing this. And don’t tell me that you care one way or the other what I think in general or what I think of you specifically. You don’t care about what anyone thinks.”

The earnestness in his eyes deepened. “You’re right. I care nothing for what others think of me.”

“And you’re absolutely right not to.”

That seemed to stun him yet again. “I am?” At her nod, he prodded, “That includes everyone?”

She nodded again. “Of course. What other people think of you, no matter who they are, is irrelevant. Unsolicited opinions are usually a hindrance and a source of discontentment, if not outright unhappiness. So carry on not caring, go take your leave from Johara and Shaheen and return to your universe where no one’s opinion matters...as it shouldn’t.”

“At least grant me the right to care or not care.” Those unbelievable eyes seemed to penetrate right through her as his gaze narrowed in on her. “And whether it comes under caring or not, I do happen to be extremely interested in your opinion of me. Now, let me escort you back to the party. Let me get us a drink over which we’ll reopen my case and explore the possibility of adjusting your opinion of me—at least to a degree.”

She arched a brow. “You mean you’d settle for adjusting my opinion of you from horrific to just plain horrid?”

“Who knows, maybe while retrying my case, your unwavering sense of justice will lead you to adjusting it to plain misjudged.”

“Or maybe just downright wretched.”

He hit her with another of his pouts. Then he raised the level of chaos and laughed again, his merriment as potent as everything else about him. “I’d take that.”

Trying to convince her heart to slot back into its usual place after its latest somersault, she again tried her best glower. It had no effect on him, as usual. Worse. It had the opposite effect to what she’d perfected it for. He looked at her as if her glare was the cutest thing he’d seen.

She voiced her frustration. “You talk about my incinerating glares, but I could be throwing cotton balls or rose petals at you for all the effect they have on you.”

“It’s not your glares that are ineffective. It’s me who’s discovering a penchant for incineration.”

Instead of appeasing her, it annoyed her more. “I’ll have you know I’ve reduced other men to dust with those scowls. No one has withstood a minute in my presence once I engaged annihilate mode.” She lifted her chin. “But you seem to need specifically designed weapons. If I go along with you in this game you got it in your mind to play, it’ll be so I can find out if you have an Achilles’ heel.”

“I have no idea if I have that.” His gaze grew thoughtful. “Would you use it to...annihilate me if you discovered it?”

She gave him one of her patented sizing-up glances and regretted it midway. She must quit trying her usual strategies with him. Not only because they always backfired, but it wasn’t advisable to expose herself to another distressing dose of his wonders.

She returned to his eyes, those turquoise depths that exuded the ferocity of his intellect and the power of his wit, and found gazing into them just as taxing to her circulatory system.

She sighed, more vexed with her own inability to moderate her reactions than with him. “Nah. I’ll just be satisfied knowing your Achilles’ heel exists and you’re not invulnerable. And maybe, if you get too obnoxious, I’ll use my knowledge as leverage to make you back off.”

That current of mischief and challenge in his eyes spiked. “It goes against my nature to back off.”

“Not even under threat of...annihilation?”

“Especially then. I’d probably beg you to use whatever fatal weakness you discover just to find out how it feels.”

“Wow. You’re jaded to the point of numbness, aren’t you?”

“You’ve got me figured out, don’t you? Or do you? Shall we find out?”

It was clear this monolith would stand there and spar with her until she agreed to this “retrial” of his. If she was in her own domain or on neutral ground, or at least somewhere without a hundred witnesses blocking her only escape route, she would have slammed him with something cutting and walked out as she’d done in Johara’s office.

But she couldn’t inflict on her friends the scene this gorgeous jerk would instigate if he didn’t have his way. She bet he knew she suffered from those scruples, was using the knowledge to corner her into participating in his game.

“You’re counting on my inability to risk spoiling Johara and Shaheen’s party, aren’t you?”

His blink was all innocence, and downright evil for it. “I thought you didn’t care what other people thought.”

“I don’t, not when it comes to how I choose to live my life. But I do care about what others think of my actions that directly impact them. And if I walk out now, you’ll tail me in the most obvious, disruptive way you can, generating curiosity and speculation, which would end up putting a damper on Johara and Shaheen’s party.” Her eyes narrowed as another thought hit her. “Now I am wondering if maybe they didn’t extend an invitation to you after all because they’ve been burned by your sabotage before.”

He pounced on that, took it where she couldn’t have anticipated. “So you’re considering changing your mind about whether I was invited? See? Maybe you’ll change your mind about everything else if you give me a chance.”

She blew out a breath in exasperation. “I only change my mind for the worse...or worst.”

“You’re one tiny bundle of nastiness, aren’t you?” His smile said he thought that the best thing to aspire to be.

She tossed her head, infusing her disadvantaged stature with all the belittling she could muster. “Again with the size references.”

“It was you who started using mine in derogatory terms. Then you moved on to my looks, then my character, then my history, and if there were more components to me, I bet you’d have pummeled through them, too.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, she turned around and stomped away.

He followed her. Keeping those famous three steps behind. With his footfalls being soundless, she could pinpoint his location only by the chuckles rumbling in the depths of his massive chest. When those ended, his overpowering presence took over, cocooning her all the way to the expansive reception area.

Absorbed in warding off his influence, she could barely register the ultraelegant surroundings or the dozens of chic people milling around. No one noticed her, as usual, but everyone’s gaze was drawn to the nonchalant predator behind her. Abhorring the thought of having everyone’s eyes on her by association once they realized he was following her, she continued walking where she hoped the least amount of spectators were around.

She stepped out onto the wraparound terrace that overlooked the now-shrouded-in-darkness Central Park, with Manhattan glittering like fiery jewels beyond its extensive domain. Stopping at the three-foot-high brushed stainless steel and Plexiglas railings, gazing out into the moonlit night, she shivered as September’s high-altitude wind hit her overheating body. But she preferred hypothermia to the burning speculation that being in Aram Nazaryan’s company would have provoked. Not that she’d managed to escape that totally. The few people who’d had the same idea of seeking privacy out here did their part in singeing her with their curiosity.

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