The Billionaire's Innocent - Part 4

“I am aware,” the sultan said grandly. “You have no secrets from me, Zair.” His laugh was perhaps more strained then, or maybe that was a rare bit of honesty shining through. “Unless you have something you wish to confess?”

Zair laughed, too, and it sounded so obviously fake to him that he half expected Azhil to summon his guards and have him charged with treason then and there, but his brother only watched him with that same smile and even an indulgent look on his face.

It did not occur to Azhil that the boy he’d elevated to ambassador could ever turn on him. This was perfectly clear to Zair. And if there was a part of him that grieved for both of them, if there was a space within him where he would always be that boy and believe the things that boy had believed about what little family he had, he refused to indulge it now. He couldn’t. He had too much else to lose.

“She is an asset,” Zair said when the laughter ebbed. “The fact that she was for sale means only one thing, brother. That I own her. That is why I allowed us to be photographed.”

“That is what dowries are for,” Azhil said dismissively. “They serve the same function without the attendant tabloid attention, and they are far more useful to me in other regions of the world where I could use alliances.”

“That can’t possibly offer the same level of control,” Zair replied. He shrugged at Azhil’s stare. “I am not an emotional man. I have no tie to this girl. I am anxious to please you, nothing more. I do not mean to argue with you, brother, but this is all part of a plan.”

Lie after lie after lie. What would be left of him when this was done? If this was ever truly done? What would look back at him when he saw himself in the mirror? Or would he simply learn how to live with what he was now—this ghost of a man he’d become?

Azhil sighed again, as if Zair was testing the limits of his indulgence. “And what plan is this, dare I ask?”

Zair smiled, and it was hard to keep it from edging over into something dark and triumphant.

“It would give our enemies great pleasure to see me wedded to a woman they know is nothing more than a yacht girl. Water seeks its own level, they will say.”

“This is my objection.”

“Ah, but we can use it.” Zair settled against his chair. “Our enemies may smirk, but our allies will applaud, for the same reason. Because they will know she is completely under my control.” He laughed. “And yet I will parade her into state dinners and introduce her to the American president. It can only cement your stature and legend, that you can offer such an insult on the same hand as your friendship.”

He saw Azhil ponder that obviously appealing prospect, and felt his mind quiet even as his body stilled. The way it always had in combat, when the thinking and the plotting were done and there was only the fight. Nothing but the fight.

And through the fight, the inevitable win.

“I cannot deny the appeal of that,” Azhil murmured after a moment, as Zair had hoped he would. As they’d banked he would.

“Meanwhile, Nora Grant is the equivalent of American royalty,” Zair continued. “There are only a select few who will understand what she was doing in France, and then only because they make use of such services themselves. Who will they tell? Each other? These are the types of men—and I can tell you this from experience—who are more likely to ask to rent her out instead.”

“Still. Does a woman like this deserve the elevation of a marriage that connects her to me?” Azhil’s stare was hard. Ugly, even. The truth, Zair understood, written on his face at last. “Even if it is only through one of my father’s bastards?”

Azhil smiled faintly as he said it, and his voice was something like kind, but Zair did not mistake that for anything but what it was: the sultan’s booted foot, heavy on his neck. He couldn’t remember if Azhil had said such things before—but then, perhaps he hadn’t needed to remind Zair of their positions before.

Zair chose to take it as a positive thing indeed that he felt moved to do so now.

“How could any woman be worthy of such a thing?” he asked, because that was the expected response. That was the only possible way Azhil might be mollified. He bowed his head down and it didn’t even feel servile. It was necessary, nothing more. A feint before the strike. “How could anyone?”

That sat there for a moment or two, as if Azhil wanted them both to truly experience the difference in their positions. Then he lifted a finger, beckoning Zair to continue.

“Is there more?” he asked. “I am not convinced.”

Zair shifted in his seat because he was meant to find it uncomfortable, not because he did. And because that, too, would please Azhil. All these little indications of status and sadism. All these little games.

“Her brother has the kind of fame that these people dream about in their endless quest for personal celebrity,” he said. “And all of these things together are as good as engraved invitations into different levels of American society and more important, the money that drives it.” He frowned thoughtfully. “And yet she is also tarnished. In that way, she is truly the perfect choice for one such as me.”

He paused, then inclined his head with the subservience his brother would expect, and told himself that soon enough, he’d never have to bow his head to anyone again. Or he’d cut his own damned head off and circumvent the issue entirely.

“Unless, of course, you have something else in mind for me. It is at your pleasure only, Azhil. As is everything.”

* * *

The June night was clear and softly warm, but Nora was chilled to the bone, which she knew had nothing at all to do with the weather.

The private airfield was deserted. Zair had picked her up a few hours after dark and it was the first time she’d seen him in casual clothes in as long as she could remember. It was better to focus on that than the storm that washed through her at the sight of him, so dark and forbidding and gorgeous, standing there at her door with a frown on his face and all the memories of the last time he’d been at her loft dancing in the air between them.

Better to concentrate on this instead, she’d told herself, because she definitely wasn’t imagining him naked: Zair al Ruyi was dressed like a regular guy instead of an elegant diplomat.

She’d blinked, and then her throat had gone dry, as though his hand was around it again, hot and hard. Maybe there was no avoiding the storm, after all.

“I didn’t know you owned a pair of jeans,” she’d said, and she knew he’d seen the heat that flooded her face then. She’d seen that awareness in his green gaze. She’d seen the way he’d looked back at her. Hungry. “In fact, if anyone had asked, I’d have insisted that you didn’t. That you were incapable of wearing anything that wasn’t slaved over by at least six Italian tailors.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d chided her. “You’re not allowed to graduate from an American college without at least three pairs of jeans. Much less graduate school.”

And something warm had swelled there, for an instant, in the space between them, a certain buoyancy that had lit Nora up from the inside. She’d smiled before she thought better of it, seen it reflected in the green of his eyes, and then he’d scowled at her.

“My brother often dresses in the disguise of the common man, particularly when he is pretending to be me,” Zair had said then, his voice clipped, reminding Nora why he’d turned up at her door. Not for a date. Not for anything good.

Not to share a smile in the large, open loft that contained her bed.

Not many people looked the way he did in jeans, Nora thought now, ignoring the empty runway and the too-still night and focusing on Zair instead. It was easier to let her gaze linger on the way the band of weathered denim clung to that flat, low part of his abdomen that she knew the taste of now. It was easier to admire the length of his strong legs and the way the breeze moved his soft cotton T-shirt against his extraordinary torso.

Maybe it would be even easier if he weren’t quite so beautiful. Maybe it would make everything hurt less. Then again, maybe everything about him hurts and always will.

He was on the phone now, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he paced and muttered in a dark tone, his sharp gaze flickering to her and away every now and again. Then again, maybe nothing about Zair would ever be easy. Maybe that was the part Nora was going to have to find a way to come to terms with.

He ended his call and walked over to her, leaning against the back of the glossy black SUV next to her, even crossing his arms over his chest the way she was doing. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t look over at the driver Zair had turned up with who wasn’t a part of his usual detail, who stood some distance away from the SUV, waiting. But Nora thought she could feel the heat of Zair’s arm, almost touching hers, moving through her like the embrace she’d never dare ask him to give her.

No matter how much she craved it. Needed it, even.

“Do you think this will work?” she asked.

She’d been afraid to ask it in the drive out here tonight. The driver had navigated their way through the rush and roar of Manhattan traffic while Nora sat in the back and ordered herself not to put her hands on the man who’d sprawled there in an evident, seething fury beside her. She’d understood that his reaction might well have been explosive. She’d concentrated instead on the plane that should even now be making its final descent into the New York area.

And the person she hoped against hope would really, truly be on it.

“If the house is in your name, then the girls inside it must be, too,” she’d said that night in her loft. Zair had still been standing at the door, glaring at her as if it had all been some elaborate ruse on her part to get him back in her bed. She hadn’t been entirely sure it wasn’t.

“Presumably.”

“Then you should be able to order them to send those girls wherever you want them.”

He’d stared at her. She’d held her breath, but he’d turned fully toward her then and even took a step closer. Away from the door.

“For example,” she’d continued, “you could make them send Harlow here.”

Zair had drifted closer, and soon they’d both been sitting on her couch together, talking. Plotting how they could do this—if they could do it, and what it would entail. Whom they could trust and how they’d bring those people in, if they went ahead and did the things they were discussing.