Page 20 of Her Irresistible Sheik
Sweats.Hoodie.Bare feet.Cheeto dust on her keyboard tray.There was a bag of potato chips next to her chair, not even the good kettle kind, but the off-brand kind that tasted vaguely of salt and factory air.
She leaned back, stared at the ceiling.
“I think I’ve become a cliché,” she muttered.
The ceiling didn’t respond.Just one sad fluorescent light up there, neglected like the rest of her life.
She’d once been the girl who stole from billionaires to buy antibiotics for sick people.Now she was feeding Clyde breadcrumbs for his next kill.
And this one?This one felt wrong.
With a grimace, she clicked away from her email and pulled up a browser.The hacker forums could wait.Curiosity got the better of her.
Princess Nahla Al-Sintra.Target.Victim.Also—shockingly—not an idiot.
Leona skimmed her photography portfolio.Landscapes.Animals.Candid portraits with depth.Then she clicked over to Nahla’s website design samples.Clean.Elegant.Nothing overblown.Just simple beauty.
“Damn,” she whispered.“She’s good.”
Two hours later, Leona leaned her cheek against her hand, staring at a zoomed-in photo of a golden retriever puppy with a lopsided grin.He was muddy, half-starved, and adorable.And in the background—blurred, but unmistakable—was Clyde.
The photo that had triggered the hit.
“Seriously?”Leona whispered.“He’s going to kill her over apuppyphoto?”
The guilt settled hard in her chest.She clicked back to the puppy.Something in that image—maybe the way the fluffball looked straight at the camera like hetrustedNahla—made her stomach twist.
Leona blinked at the picture again.“Damn it.I want a dog.”
A dog wouldn’t snort all her rent money like her last boyfriend had.A puppy wouldn’t ignore her to go off and drink beer with his friends.A puppy wouldn’t expect flawless code delivered within twenty-four hours.It would just wag its tail and want food and love.
“I need to get a grip,” she muttered, pushing the bag of Cheetos farther away like they were the root of all evil.She glanced down.No shoes.Again.Whenhadshe last worn shoes?
Probably before the last job.
Or maybe the one before that.
Okay, new rule: leave the office once a day to get healthy food for lunch.Every day.
She could start there.Baby steps.Like, literal baby steps, because her calves had probably atrophied.
Still… something about this job didn’t sit right.
Maybe she couldn’t stop Clyde.But she could slow him down.Maybe reroute a few data trails.Plant some misleading information.Set some digital traps.
After all, Nahla wasn’t just some vapid royal.She had heart.She had talent.And she’d saved a puppy.
If that didn’t make her worth protecting—even secretly—Leona didn’t know what did.
Chapter 12
Clyde stayed perfectly still, coiled for stealth, his eyes trimming the dim sliver of light beneath the door until shapes came into focus.He’d slipped in through the palace loading docks—posing as a supplier, asking politely to use the restroom—and from there had worked his way past checkpoint after checkpoint, clipboard in hand, supervising an imaginary security sweep.If anyone questioned him, he’d smile, nod, and pretend to check something off.It had been methodical, slow work, but it had gotten him here.
Seventy-two hours slid by in a cleaning closet—three days sharing breathing space with a vacuum that squeaked at the worst possible moments and a mop that forever smelled faintly of mildew and lemon cleaner.He was done hiding.
He had to move fast.It had taken a string of bribes to find where Princess Nahla had been taken; now that he had the location, he couldn’t afford to let her disappear again.
The guards?Idiots.They passed the closet and gossiped about “the intruder” as if some raccoon had been rifling the palace trash.They had no idea the intruder had been snoring two feet from their mop buckets, quietly judging their security protocols—and the sad state of the floor polish.
