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“Well, my reporter, this is your estate for the weekend.”
She chuckled and slid out of the seat. He loved watching her eyes as she gaped up at the massive shadow of his home. “God, if your casino is all about the forty thieves, then I feel like I’m in a whole new world with you.”
“Then come,” he said.
She winked at him. “Oh, again we’re back to threats and promises.”
“Always, my reporter. Always.”
***
She was sitting on his lap, and he wasn’t restraining his interest in her in the slightest. His erection was rigid against the delectable curves of her ass, and her long, honey-gold hair tickled his nose as she reclined against him.
“You’re quiet. That seems rare for you.”
“You’re getting to know me so well already,” she said.
They were relaxing under the night stars in the rose garden that was his mother’s pride and joy. The current sheikha of Abu Dhabi was blessed with a green thumb, and she would probably still win the surfeit of horticultural awards she usually swept during the competition season. The prize of her collection was the bright blue hybrids she’d worked decades to cultivate. They were near one of those bushes now, and he’d even carefully plucked one to thread behind Amanda’s ear.
It made her look as exotic as she was to this landscape.
“Still, you seem distracted. I promise I’ll take you up to my bedroom right away and have my way with you. I didn’t want you to think all I wanted was to have you for your body.”
Amanda gave a rueful chuckle. “You’d be the first.”
He practically growled as he nibbled the skin on her neck. “Then all those other men were fools.”
“I love the way you say that,” she said, but her voice grew quiet, and he wasn’t sure she quite believed him.
“And yet, you seem like there’s something huge weighing you down. Would you like to talk about it?”
“Well, I feel like I’ve been hijacked a bit. I’m never like this, but all this stress has been building on me for over six months and it’s only gotten worse since I got sent here.”
“You make it sound as if Abu Dhabi is Siberia. As if coming to Ali Babba’s and to me was a punishment.”
“Maybe it was. I angered a very powerful man in my country.”
“May I ask who?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Senator Darryl Jackson. Have you heard of him?”
He frowned and thought over what he knew of American politics. He kept up with what he could, and he mainly focused on the president or on the movers and shakers of Wall Street, people he needed to go to in order to get financing for his casino or other projects. The senator’s name didn’t ring any bells.
“Sorry, I don’t know him.”
“He’s been in power a long time, and no one knows it yet, but I’ve been working for six months to link him to illegal arms dealing and funding to some extremely powerful Central American drug cartels. His people didn’t like that, and there were huge suits threatened at the Washington Sentinel. The compromise was either I get exiled to the fluffy beat or I get fired. This was the best I could do.”
He nodded again and kissed her throat, letting his tongue trail over the pulse point near her clavicle. “That assuredly explains the chip on your shoulder and the fierce tongue.”
“I bet you’d like my fierce tongue.”
“That I know I would,” he said. “I…do you need my help? Maybe I can put some of my own intelligence detail on helping find more concrete evidence to nail Jackson to the wall.”
She quirked her head back at him, angling her body so that she could see him fully. “I can’t do that. This is my fight, the man I’ve spent time focusing on. I’ll get him, and I’ll get him with even more research and tapping of my sources than before. You know,” she huffed, “after I get back from Japan or South Africa or Singapore, wherever else there’s a resort opening or a celebrity wedding. I’m supposed to be on my tour of the quote-unquote glamorous life until at least Christmas.”
“When there’s a punishment, then it really does stick, doesn’t it?”
“My editor did stick up for me. I s
