The Sheikh's Convenient Bride

If Megan had been born yesterday, maybe she’d have fallen for the whole routine, but twenty-eight years of living, a dual degree in economics and accounting, a master’s degree in finance and a hard-won slip of paper that said she was a Certified Public Accountant meant she was neither innocent, stupid, nor easily bought off.

And then there was that little remark about her being female.

Her boss was trying to bribe her into accepting her fate. Why? The truth was, he had the authority to take this job away from her. Why would he be trying to buy her off? There had to be a reason.

“Back up a little,” Megan said slowly. “You said I was a woman and that was a problem.”

“I didn’t say that. Not exactly. All I meant was—”

“Why is it a problem?”

Simpson folded his lips in so they all but disappeared. “Suliyam is a kingdom.”

“I’m fully aware of that. There’s a description of Suliyam’s structure in my proposal.”

“It has no constitution, no elected representatives—”

“Damn it, Jerry, that’s what a kingdom is! I spent three months doing the research.”

“Then you also know that its people live by traditions that might seem a bit, ah, old-fashioned to us.”

“Would you please get to the point?”

Simpson’s attempts to avoid the issue vanished. ‘‘You don’t want to handle the new account, then the best I can do is assign you to Frank Fisher as his assistant. He’ll go to Suliyam, you’ll stay here and execute the orders he sends.’’

‘‘No way am I going to play second fiddle to Fisher!’’

‘‘This discussion is over, Megan. You’re off the account. The sheikh wants it that way, and that’s the way it will be.’’

“The sheikh,” Megan said coldly, “is an idiot.”

Simpson had turned a deathly shade of white. He shot a look at her office door as if he expected to see the sheikh standing there with a sword in his hand.

“You see?” he hissed. “Aside from anything else, there’s one reason you’re not suitable for this assignment.”

Dumb, Megan told herself, dumb, dumb, dumb!

“You know I’d never say such a thing to him.”

“You’d never get the chance.” Simpson stuck out his jaw. “Or didn’t you notice, when you did your research, that women don’t have the same privileges there as they do here? They have no status in the sheikh’s world. Not as we understand it, anyway.”

“What women have here,” Megan said coldly, “aren’t privileges, they’re rights. As for the sheikh…he spends as much time in the west as he does in his own country. He deals with women ambassadors at the United Nation. You can’t actually mean—”

“Our representative will have to work at his side. Deal with his people. Do you think, for one minute, those men agree to sit down with a woman, much less take criticism and suggestions from her?”

“What I think is that it’s time they joined the twenty-first century.”

“Getting them to do that isn’t the function of Tremont, Burnside and Macomb.”

“I also think,” Megan said in a dangerously soft voice, “that you’d better join this century, too. I’m sure you’ve heard of anti-discrimination laws.”

Simpson proved ready for that threat. “Anti-discrimination laws are valid only within the United States. There are place where even our female soldiers conform to local customs.”

“What the military does has nothing to do with the sheikh’s plan to raise capital to further develop Suliyam’s resources,” Megan snapped, though a lurch in her belly told her she’d just lost ground.

“It has everything to do with it.”

“I doubt if a judge would agree.”

Simpson slapped his hands on her desk and leaned toward her. “If you’re threatening to sue us, Miss O’Connell, go right ahead. Our attorneys will make mincemeat out of your case. The laws of Suliyam take precedence over American law when our employees live and work there.”

Was he right? Megan wasn’t sure. For all she knew, Simpson might have already trotted the issue past the company’s legal counsel.

“And, knowing the outcome, if you were still foolish enough to go ahead with a lawsuit,” Simpson added with smug self-assurance, ‘what would you put on your résumé? That you sued your employers rather than follow their wishes? How many jobs do you think that would get you?”

Zero, but Megan wasn’t going to admit that. “That’s blackmail!”

“It’s the truth. You’d be poison to any firm of financial advisors.”

Her stomach took another dip. He was right. Legally, you couldn’t pay a penalty for bringing an anti-discrimination lawsuit. Practically, things weren’t quite that simple.

Simpson smiled slyly. ‘‘Besides, we never really had this conversation. I only stopped by to thank you for the fine work you did on that proposal and to tell you, sadly enough, that you don’t have quite the experience you’d need to take on the job yourself. I’m sure you’ll gain a world of experience staying here in the States and being Fisher’s diligent assistant.” Her boss rocked up on his toes, which elevated him to at least five foot five. “Nothing wrong with any of that, Miss O’Connell. Nothing at all.”

Megan stared at him. He was a worm, but he was right. She probably didn’t have grounds for suing the company. Even if she did, doing so would end her career.

She was stuck. Cornered, with no valid options.

The logical thing was to choke back her rage, pin a smile to her lips and thank Simpson for telling her she was going to become a partner and that she’d be thrilled to take on an important new client in the film business.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t. She’d always believed in playing by the rules and Jerry Simpson was telling her the rules didn’t mean a thing. He was beaming at her now, certain he had her beat.

He didn’t.

“You’re wrong,” she said quietly. “Wrong about me, Jerry. I’m not going to let you and the Prince of Darkness shove me aside.”

Simpson’s smile tilted. “Don’t be stupid, Megan. I just told you, you can’t win a suit against us.”

“Maybe not, but think of the publicity! It’ll be bad for you—we both know what the senior partners think about negative publicity. And it’ll be worse for the sheikh. Suliyam’s floating on a sea of oil and minerals, but once investors hear his backward little country’s up to its neck in a human rights lawsuit, I’ll bet they’ll gallop in the other direction.”

Simpson wasn’t smiling at all now. Good, Megan thought, and leaned in for the kill.

“You yank this job away from me,” she said, “I’ll see to it that Suliyam’s dirty linen is hung out for the world to see.” She stepped past her boss, then turned and faced him one last time. “Be sure and tell the exalted Pooh-Bah that, Mr. Simpson.”

It had seemed the perfect exit line and she’d stalked away, realizing too late that she’d abandoned her own office, not Simpson’s, but no way in hell would she have turned back.

As for her threat—she wouldn’t take that back, either, even though it was meaningless. She knew it and she didn’t doubt that Simpson knew it, too. He was an oily little worm but he wasn’t stupid.

Her career meant everything to her. She’d devoted herself to it. She wasn’t like her mother, who’d cheerfully handed her life over to a man so he could do with it as he chose. She wasn’t like her sister, Fallon, whose beauty had been her ticket to independence. She wasn’t like her sister, Bree, who seemed content to drift through life.