Mistress Of The Sheikh

“Okay.”

Dawn quickened her pace as they started up the wide staircase that led to the second floor. “We’ll have to hurry. You put on that slinky red dress, fix your hair, spritz on some perfume and get ready to convince my brother he’d be crazy to turn up his regal nose at the chance to have this place done by the one, the only, the incredible Amanda Benning.”

“You ever think about going into PR?”

“You can put me on the payroll after the first time your name shows up in the—oh, damn! We never finished our tour. You haven’t seen Nick’s suite.”

“That’s all right.” Amanda patted the pocket of her silk trousers. “I’ll transfer my camera into my evening bag.”

“No, don’t do that.” Dawn shuddered dramatically as she opened the door to her rooms. “If Nick sees you taking pictures, he’ll figure you for a media spy and…” She grinned and sliced her hand across her throat. “How’s this? You shower first, get dressed, then grab a quick look. His rooms are at the other end of the hall.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Amanda said quickly. “What if the sheikh comes in while I’m poking around?”

“He won’t. Nicky promised he’d be on time, but he’s always late. He hates stuff like this. You know, public appearances, being the center of attention. The longer he can delay his entrance, the better he likes it.”

Amanda thought about the walking ego who’d shoved his way into her room, unasked and unannounced.

“I’ll bet,” she said, and softened the words with a smile. “But I’d still feel more comfortable if you were with me.”

“I promise I’ll join you just as soon as I turn myself into the gorgeous, desirable creature we both know I am. Okay?”

Amanda hesitated, told herself she was being an idiot, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Good.” Dawn kicked off her shoes. “In that case, the shower’s all yours.”

Twenty minutes later, Amanda paused outside the door to the sheikh’s rooms.

If anybody took her pulse right now, they’d probably enter the result in the record books. She could feel it galloping like a runaway horse, but why wouldn’t it?

It wasn’t every day she sneaked into a man’s bedroom to take pictures and make notes. Into the bedroom of a man who demanded people address him as “Lord”. A man to whom other men bowed.

Instinct told her to turn tail and run. Necessity told her to stop being a coward. She was wasting time, and there really wasn’t much to waste. Ten minutes, if Dawn was wrong and the sheikh showed up promptly.

She ran a nervous hand through the short, pale gold hair that framed her face, took the tiny digital camera from her evening purse and tapped at the door.

“Sheikh Rashid?”

There was no answer. The only sounds that carried through the vastness of the penthouse were snatches of baroque music from the quartet setting up in the library far below.

Amanda straightened her shoulders, opened the door and stepped inside the room.

It was clearly a man’s domain. Dawn had said her brother hadn’t changed any of the furnishings in the penthouse and Amanda could believe that—everywhere but here. This one room bore a stamp that she instantly knew was the sheikh’s.

She didn’t know why she would think it. Asked to describe a room Nicholas al Rashid would design for himself, she’d have come up with mahogany furniture. Dark crimson walls. Velvet drapes.

These walls were pale blue silk. The furniture was satin-finished rosewood, and the tall windows had been left unadorned to frame the view of Central Park. The carpet was Persian, she was sure, and old enough to date back to a century when that had been the name of the country in which it had been made.

A sleek portable computer sat open on a low table.

The room spoke of simplicity and elegance. It spoke, too, of a time older than memory that flowed into a time yet to come.

Amanda began taking photos. The room. The bed. The open windows and the view beyond. She worked quickly while images of the sheikh flashed through her mind. She could see him in this room, tall and leanly muscled, stiff with regal arrogance. He belonged here.

Then she saw the oil painting on the wall. She hesitated, then walked toward it, eyes lifted to the canvas.

The room was a sham. All the sophistication, the urbanity…a lie, all of it. This was the real man, the one she’d met that night, and never mind the jeans and T-shirt he’d worn then, and the nonsense about his half-American ancestry.

The painting was of Nicholas al Rashid dressed in desert robes of white trimmed with gold, seated on the back of a white horse that looked as wild as he did. One hand held the reins; the other lay on the pommel of the elaborate saddle.

And his eyes, those silver eyes, seemed to be staring straight at her.

Amanda took a step back.

She was wrong to have come here, wrong to have let Dawn convince her she could take this job, even if the sheikh permitted it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong—

“What in hell do you think you’re doing in my bedroom?”

The tiny camera fell from Amanda’s hand. She swung around, heart racing, and saw the Lion of the Desert, the Heir to the Imperial Throne of Quidar, standing in the doorway, just as he’d been doing that night in her dormitory room.

No jeans and T-shirt this time.

He wore a dark gray suit, a white-on-white shirt and a dark red tie. He was dressed the same as half the men in Manhattan—but it was easy to imagine him in his flowing robes and headdress, with the endless expanse of the desert behind him instead of the marble hall.

Maybe it had something to do with the way he stood, legs apart, hands planted on his hips, as if he owned the world. Maybe it was the look on his hard, handsome face that said he was emperor of the universe and she was nothing but an insignificant subject….

Get a grip, Amanda.

The man had caught her off guard that night, but it wouldn’t happen again. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, and she’d learned how to deal with hard men who thought they owned the world, men like her father, her stepfather, her ex-husband.

Whatever else they owned, they didn’t own her.

“Well? Are you deaf, woman? I asked you a question.”

Amanda bent down, retrieved her camera and tucked it into her beaded evening purse.

“I heard you,” she said politely. “It’s just that you startled me, Sheikh Rashid.” She took a breath, then held out her hand. “I’m Amanda Benning.”

“And?” he said, pointedly ignoring her outstretched hand.

“Didn’t your sister tell you about me?”

“No.”

No? Oh. Dawn? Dawn, where are you?

Amanda smiled politely. “Well, she, um, she invited me here tonight.”