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“Yep.”
“Me too.”
“Really?” She faced Spencer, her hip grazing his. “Guess we have something in common.”
“Guess so.”
Whatever reply she might have made was interrupted by the ding of the elevator arriving in their foyer. He straightened and cleared his throat before stepping back inside from the balcony. “Bet that’s dinner. Be right back.”
Spencer showed the room service waiter into the dining room and watched while he unloaded their meal onto the black marble tabletop. The smells of curry and garlic and lemon tickled his nose and made his stomach rumble anew. Toni wandered in and took a seat across the table from where Spencer stood. Once the guy had laid everything out, Spencer tried to give the man a tip.
“No, sir,” the waiter said, bowing. “You are here under the hospitality of the sheik. To take your money would be an insult to his highness.”
“Of course.” Spencer made a small bow of his own to the man, thanking him in his native tongue.“Shukraan.”
“La shukr ala wajib,” the man said, bowing once more before leaving.
Toni lifted the domes off several plates and inhaled the rich aromas of roasted shrimp and spiced beans. “Man, I’ve missed this food. I love these dishes any time I can get them, but there’s just something about Jubailian flavoring. It’s really not like anything else.”
“How many times have you been to Jubail?” Spencer asked as he waited for her to fill her plate, then did the same himself. He took the seat across from her and dug into the delicious meal.
“Only once, several years ago. But I loved the food so much, I tracked down a restaurant in the DC area—it’s run by a couple who emigrated to the US from right here in Hasan fifteen years ago. Their food is amazing. We should go sometime.”
Spencer blinked. Had she meant to ask him out? No, it must have been a slip of the tongue. He decided to change the subject. “You must travel a lot for the foundation. How many of these e-readers would you say you hand out in a given year?”
She frowned, chewing and swallowing a large bite of pita bread slathered with hummus before answering. “Last year we donated over twelve thousand in five countries around the world. We’re on track to double that this year. Why?”
“Just wondered.” He filed the information away to share with his team later and opened two bottles of the pale ale, passing one to her before taking a large gulp of his own. The prawns on his kebabs were each nearly the size of his hand and tasted like pure sweet and sour goodness. “That’s a lot of reading.”
“Books help kids use their imaginations. They teach them that anything is possible.”
“No argument here.” He tore off another bite of grilled shrimp. “I love to read.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that. Or, at least, you mentioned that you read business books. What else do you like to read?”
He shrugged. “History, biographies. I like the social sciences, too—especially anthropology. I’m interested in the ways that different cultures develop and adapt. It’s come in handy on missions before, knowing enough about the native culture to be able to pick up on something they’d expect a foreigner to miss.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “You’re an interesting man, Spencer Nixon.”
“And you’re an interesting woman, Toni Williams,” he shot back with a grin. He winked, then took another swig of his beer, the alcohol doing its part to relax his tense muscles and slow his overactive mind.
Toni blushed under his gaze, her dark eyes glittering with possibility and a lingering hint of caution. Her eyes lowered to his lips before meeting his gaze again, and he felt the movement like a caress.
* * *
Toni woke up before dawn the next morning. She had a lot of work left to do on her big presentation. In theory, the message she was delivering was simple. All she had to do was prove the e-readers’ worth to her listeners—and since theyweregenuinely valuable and useful, that should be easy enough to do. But as with most things, it was all in the delivery. She had to get this just right.
As she stepped under the shower spray, she couldn’t shake a niggling sense of unease. It had started as nervousness over her upcoming presentation, then sprouted into full-blown anxiety about her father. As she shampooed her hair, she thought back over the last twelve months. He’d taken an unusual interest in her foundation over the past year, especially in her proposed distribution channels. Then, after the explosion at his publishing company, he’d vanished without a word to her or anyone else. After frantically trying to call him for several days, she’d watched with shock and no small amount of hurt when he came forward to make a public statement that he was alive and well—all without bothering to call her, his only child.
She huffed out a sigh and scrubbed her hair harder. Why was she surprised to be lowest on his priority list? She should be used to that by now. Given that she could count on one hand the number of days she’d spent in her father’s presence growing up, his recent behavior was nothing more than business as usual. The aberration was the fact that he’d seemed interested in her and her work for a stretch. She should have known that wouldn’t last. And she certainly shouldn’t let it throw her off her game now that she was here, on this make-or-break trip.
She tried to relax, telling herself it was just the stress of travel and the presentation that was making her worry about everything. She rinsed the conditioner out of her hair, then shut off the water.
After drying off, Toni padded into her bedroom and pulled on a fresh outfit for the day—a modest white skirt that hit below the knee, sunny yellow crewneck top, comfy flats—then slicked her wet hair back into a ponytail and walked out into the main part of the suite. Looking around at the empty sitting area, she started a pot of coffee, thinking that this would give her a chance to do a little internet snooping into Spencer before he got up.
As she headed back to the sitting room where she’d left her laptop the night before, she noticed motion out on the balcony. Heart pounding, she inched her way toward the French doors. When she caught sight of Spencer sprawled on one of the two chaise lounges, her computer open on his lap and her cell phone beside him, she gave up any pretense of stealth and charged outside. “What the hell are you doing?”
He looked up at her, his eyes going wide for the briefest moment. If she’d blinked, she would’ve missed it, because his face went smooth and businesslike so quickly that she almost found herself questioning what she’d seen. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
