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  Chapter 3

  Aziz

  I’m sure you can imagine my surprise—and pleasure—when this particular reporter’s eyes were just as fiery up close as they had been from across the room. I mean, sure, I’d seen the girl before. Seen her interviewing my brothers and cousins—those who were older and more… shall we say, established… in the family than I was.

  I’d thought multiple times that I’d like to get her alone at a table and have a real conversation.

  But I’d never had her attention all to myself. You would have thought she’d have spoken to me at some point, given my position in the company, but it had just never worked out that way. So I’d never been within two feet of the girl. And it took me almost no time to decide that being within two feet of her was…

  Something I wanted to do more often. It was electric.

  In fact, the air around us felt like it was five times as thick as normal air was supposed to be.

  “Aziz Al-Sharim,” I said, offering my hand when we got close enough to each other to be able to carry on a conversation without having to shout.

  She offered me a pleased grin, full of dimples and a twinkling sort of effect that made me look twice at her, wondering how she did it, and took my hand. “Faye Darlow, though I expect you know that. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to an Al-Sharim event.” Then she frowned. “Although, I guess I won’t be surprised—or offended—if you don’t have one freaking idea who I am. You’re an Al-Sharim; a girl can’t expect one of you to keep track of every reporter that comes around.”

  I squeezed her hand and lifted it to my lips. “I admit that I did know your name. Your face, I also recognize. I’ve just never had your full attention on me before. You’re always too busy with my more important relatives.”

  She snorted in a way that clashed immensely with the strappy pink gown she had on—the gown incredibly feminine while the snort was one of someone who was used to walking the dusty streets of Dubai and fighting with someone else for the cab she’d managed to hail.

  I paused on that imaginary image, laughing on the inside about it, and barely brought my attention back to the real world before she answered.

  “More important, my butt. You’re all so high above us mere mortals that we can hardly measure up.”

  Well, I thought, she certainly did have a high opinion of our family. Though a glint in her eye, a sudden appearance of those dimples, told me that she might just be teasing me.

  And I kind of loved that.

  “With expectations like that, how would we ever satisfy anyone?” I asked. “We have to keep ourselves isolated just so people like you don’t realize how alarmingly human we are. I mean, you can’t pretend to be gods if people realize that you’re mortal.”

  She put a finger to her lips and tapped a couple times, considering the problem. “I can see how that would be a house of cards,” she finally answered. “Smoke and mirrors, you might say. Constantly trying to maintain that reputation.”

  “A constant worry.” I kept my face completely serious, enjoying this little game we were playing.

  Because she was partially correct. My family didn’t have a long history—we’d only been wealthy since my grandfather had decided to sink a well right into a lake of oil under the spot where Kayyem now sat—but we’d done more in three generations than many families did in ten. At this point, we owned entire cities and had an empire that spanned the world.

  All of which meant that very few people spoke to any of us like we were real people. They either hated us and wanted to take us down—hey, it happened more often than you might think—or came to us as if they were speaking to some sort of mysterious and slightly dangerous entity. And those people tiptoed around us. Went out of their way not to insult us.

  It made it impossible to get to know anyone. You were always having to live up to insane expectations, having to figure out what someone actually meant when they said one thing or another. No one told you the truth. No one allowed you to be human or make mistakes or have any emotions. If you made a mistake, it immediately put a target on your back. And we operated in cutthroat industries across the board.

  All the more reason to make this particular conversation—with a girl who was evidently not at all worried of what I might think of her, or whether or not I was actually god or human—all the more charming. I wanted to keep it going.

  “Do mortals like you get drinks with would-be immortals?” I asked quickly. “Can I get you something at the bar?”

  She turned her face a bit and glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, seemingly eyeing me to see whether I was serious or not. “The last time I checked, the drinks were free, but I will certainly let you accompany me. It’s not every day a girl gets to meet an immortal for drinks.”

  Laughing, I offered her my arm, figuring that as long as I was playing a deity, I might as well go all out.

  You can imagine, I’m sure, my surprise when she took it—and shot a lightning bolt right through my body.

  I mean, not literally. Though that would have been pretty amazing if she had. Talk about a great party trick. But figuratively. The flirtation we’d been working on seemed to have transformed into actual kinetic energy, because the moment her skin touched mine, I felt as if I’d been electrified. Shot through with an electrical current… or something even more powerful.

  Even more invigorating.

  I jumped, surprised, and glanced at her to see if she’d noticed.

  Faye was looking up at me as well, her golden eyes wide, her lip caught in her bottom teeth.

  Not just me, then. It seemed that electrical current had gone both ways. Which electrical currents weren’t actually supposed to do, if you were going to get technical. But I guessed that if you provided the right sort of environment, anything was possible.

  I wondered what else might be possible with this particular girl. And then I started walking toward the bar, my skin buzzing with her closeness, my mind alive with ideas.

  “You know,” Faye said, moving her glass in slow circles to mix the liquid within, “I only agreed to this drink because I want to use you for something.”

  “You are nothing if not direct,” I said, chuckling. “What can I do for you? Improve the quality of your crops? Call down the rain? A love potion, perhaps? Some other godly responsibility?”

  That shocked a laugh out of her, a silvery, twinkling sort of thing, and I grinned, the laugh tickling over my skin like butterflies. Golden eyes and a silvery laugh; this girl was full of sparkles.

  And I wanted to see more of them.

  I also needed to seriously get a grip on myself with these metaphors. I was starting to sound like a really horrible beat poet. One of those poets that my cousin Ibrahim had dragged me to see on the one occasion when we were in London at the same time.

  I’d had to drink an entire bottle of wine just to get through the cringe-fest of a night.

  “My crops are all good at the moment,” she said, the smile still on her face. “Though I could definitely go for some rain. A stormy day sounds pretty nice right about now.”

  Well that, I could understand. Dubai in the summertime was incredibly hot.

  “But you’re so tan,” I noted. “Surely that means you’re a worshipper of the sun.”

  She shrugged. “I’m from Southern California. You get kicked out if you don’t love the sunshine, and God help you if you don’t tan easily. But I prefer the rain. Stormy, cloudy days when your only choice is to stay inside with some cocoa and a good book. A roaring fire. Maybe a really good series on TV, and the comforter off your bed. Those are my favorite sorts of days.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. The love of a rainy day was something else we had in common—though I rarely got to stay inside with a good book, regardless of the weather.

  “Storms require you to stay inside?” I asked.

  She leaned in and widened her eyes. “For sure. Everyone knows Southern Californians can’t drive in the rain. T
hey panic, like they’ve never seen it rain before in their entire lives, and it gets dangerous. Besides, if we get wet, we might just evaporate. Much safer to stay inside with a book.”

  I ducked toward her as well, getting close enough that I could smell the scent wafting up off her skin. My own skin prickled in anticipation, but I held myself back, there only to share in her secret. “In that case, I suppose it’s just smart to stay in. Self-preservation, you might say. Now, what exactly do you want to use me for?”

  I didn’t want to admit that I already had some ideas about what she could use me for. And I had already decided that I would agree in a hot second if she suggested them.

  “An interview,” she said, suddenly all business, the fanciful conversation about a storm vanishing into thin air. “You might not know this, but I’m a freelance reporter, not on staff with anyone in particular, so I’m always hustling the stories I write. And it’ll be a whole lot easier to sell this one if I actually get to interview the Al-Sharim who’s responsible for this whole resort thing.”

  “Resort thing?” I asked, shocked. “First of all, never say that again or I might have to refuse to talk to you in the future. Second, I’ll do your interview, but only if you agree to another drink with me.”

  She threw her head back, drained her glass of whatever it was she’d ordered—vodka and soda, I thought—and then slammed the glass down on the counter. “Done,” she said with a grin. “I’ll have another, sir. And the interview can start right now, if you don’t mind. It’ll get me out of here before it gets too late and I turn back into a pumpkin.”

  I was about to answer—or at least ask her why in the world she would turn into a pumpkin—when my assistant showed up at my elbow, hissing that one of our top investors was here and wanted to meet with me.

  I frowned, but I wasn’t at liberty to turn something like that down—no matter how much I would rather stay here and do an interview with the captivating Faye.

  “I have to take this meeting,” I told her. “But you stay here. I’ll come back and do that interview with you the second I’m free.”

  I waited for long enough to see her nod, then turned and followed my assistant to the other side of the room. I left the majority of my attention with Faye—which didn’t bode well for the meeting I was about to have.

  Chapter 4

  Faye

  I watched my newly acquired Al-Sharim contact walk away, all steamy good looks and perfectly tailored suit, easy confidence oozing out of his pores. He was so hot it had almost melted my eyes when he smiled, and I was positive that he smelled better than anyone I’d ever smelled before.

  Not that I went around smelling people often. But when you’re sitting so close to a man and he’s the only one you can really see, you notice certain things. Like that he smells like he’s just rolled around in shavings from the most glorious tree ever planted, and then coated himself in something spicy and delicious.

  Money, through and through, I thought. He was the sort of well-groomed that only came with having unlimited amounts of money to spend. And a whole lot of good taste to go along with it.

  Because I’d seen a whole lot of rich people in LA, and having money didn’t actually mean you stepped right into the gorgeous-and-well-dressed crowd. Sometimes it meant you got plastic surgery to look like a doll and only wore clothes with clearly visible designer labels and lots of gaudy accessories.

  This new Al-Sharim, though… I had to admit that I was surprised. Not because he had all of the charm and taste in spades, but because underneath it all, he seemed to be… well, completely normal.

  A guy who wanted to be able to sit around and read in the middle of a storm. A guy who didn’t seem to believe in himself as a god-like figure—but who was absolutely willing to joke about it, even if it meant making fun of his own family more than a little bit. A guy who wasn’t afraid to say that I looked like I should be a sun worshipper—but who was equally willing to accept that I wasn’t actually, but had simply come from the sun-worshipping capital of the world.

  Interesting. Intriguing. And… hot. Like, super hot. The chemistry between us had been palpable—and I’d always thought that people who said that were exaggerating. But it was the only way to explain how thick the air had become the moment we started talking to each other.

  And don’t even get me started on the fireworks that had gone exploding through me when my skin touched his. Because oh. My. God.

  Even more surprising, I’d somehow managed to keep my mouth—and my tendency to let it run away with me—in check. Or at least… well, maybe not really in check. But I’d managed to find a guy who actually found it amusing, if his laughter was anything to go by.

  I was guessing that a lot of that was down to him not being used to people talking to him the way I was talking to him. I’d seen the sudden downward turn of his mouth when we talked about people believing his family was made up of gods. And it didn’t take a lot of brains to guess that it got really old for people to always be treating you like you were inhuman.

  From there, it wasn’t a big jump to think that he was probably getting a kick out of me specifically because I didn’t treat him like he was anything more than anyone else.

  And that combination of what had been going on—the chemistry, the laughter, the fact that my sarcasm hadn’t turned him off—made me think one thing: I wanted to talk to him again. Badly.

  If I was being honest with myself, I wanted to do a whole lot more than just talk. My skin was buzzing with it, and it had settled as a dull ache right at my core. But I would settle for starting with a conversation. After all, he’d promised me an interview.

  I settled myself on a barstool and watched him walk toward the other side of the room, content to wait it out until he returned. Sure, yeah, I was here to write a story and maybe mingling with the other people at the party would have been a more effective way to get ideas. But the prime Al-Sharim of the moment had agreed to an interview with me.

  There was a chance he wouldn’t come back to follow through on that, but I was betting on him getting his butt back here as quickly as he could and giving me the time. Because I’d seen his surprisingly green eyes, electric against the darkness of that hair and those eyebrows. I’d seen how they watched me.

  I’d seen how intrigued they were.

  I grinned at the thought and signaled to the waiter that I wanted another drink.

  “Gin and tonic, with a twist of lemon,” I told him when he arrived.

  He made the drink in seconds and slid it across the bar to me, then turned to his next customer, his attention already diverted—as Aziz Al-Sharim’s probably would have been if we hadn’t had that immediate connection.

  When I turned back around toward the room, already raising the drink to my lips, I found Aziz’s eyes on me, his mouth twisted up into a bit of a smile as he listened to the man standing next to him.

  I’d rather be over there getting a drink with you, his eyes said.

  I lifted a single eyebrow and tilted my head a bit.

  Be good, you’re working, I replied.

  He rolled his own eyes at that, shot me one more exasperated look, and then forced his attention toward the investor he was talking to—while I grinned like a maniac, already counting the seconds until he returned.

  While I watched and waited, I started sketching out the article in my head, going over the questions I would need to ask him and the information I wanted to get, and going through what I knew of the resort itself—and its history.

  This land had once belonged to another resort, and another company entirely, but Aziz—or someone in his family, if he wasn’t the one who actually controlled the pocketbook—had negotiated a deal to buy the land, tear down the old resort, and put up a new one. It had not only beachfront property but also a prime view of the Dubai Fountain, which made this real estate so valuable that it must have cost a pretty penny to not only talk the other company into giving it up, but also to then buy it.

&
nbsp; Still, the Al-Sharims had done just that. And then they’d handed it over to their company’s international construction arm, which was headed up by Aziz himself. A younger son of one of the older Al-Sharim brothers, and one who had shown a talent for not only valuing real estate but also going through all the organizational tasks of developing and then building on whatever property he acquired. He’d started in Kayyem itself, but before long they were sending him around the world on different projects, which meant he got to see more than the members of the family who stayed in Kayyem to oversee operations there.

  Kayyem. I sighed and took another sip of my drink, my eyes on the man who belonged to the family that had built and therefore owned the city. It was the most gorgeous city I’d ever been in—like Dubai in the rich, exotic feel of it, but also homier. More down to earth. Because there were farmers’ markets on the weekends and blocks and blocks of older buildings where people actually lived.

  It wasn’t a city built only for business and tourism, or for glitz and glamour or the beautiful photographs they could put in magazines. It was a city built for the people of the area. The Al-Sharims had made sure that they maintained the culture and feel of their country, rather than just bulldozing it and replacing everything with buildings that would appeal to strangers.

  It was a glorious city. And I wanted to live there, one day. I’d known it the first time I’d set foot in their airport, and then walked outside and breathed in the warm, sea-scented air. It had felt like home—only one that happened to sit half a world away from where I actually lived. And every trip to that city, every adventure into the streets themselves from my hotel, had confirmed that belief. It was the colors, the food, the history, the people…

  I wanted to be a part of it all. I just hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to do it.