Page 237 of The Skeikh's Games

“On securing the PrimeTime account,” he said, sounding neither disappointed in his own failure or, for that matter, entirely congratulatory of her success.

She smirked. “You could have beaten me fair and square,” she said, pausing beneath her own weak sodium lamp. “If you’d only done a little more research into the company.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. Sometimes, nerdy little tech boys are threatened by my… presence.”

She snorted aloud, never quite sure if Rahm’s bravado was merely a persona he thought all westerners should adopt, or if he sincerely believed the BS that came out of those two glorious, thick, sultry lips. “Is that right?” she purred, egging him on.

He shrugged those broad shoulders again and inched even closer. “And sometimes,” he added, moving so close she could smell the musky fragrance that danced along his lustrous, Persian skin. “Nerdy little tech boys award companies to the sexy girls they couldn’t get in high school.”

Carly stiffened, her patience and good humor turning to sudden and penetrating irritation. “And sometimes,” she huffed before turning on her heels, “certain Middle Eastern types have watched too many American movies where they think talking like John Wayne will get them the girl.”

His imported Italian shoes followed her, step for step, until she whirled to find them, face to face – nearly nose to nose – in the murky garage light. “Here’s a tip, Rahm: John Wayne was kind of a jerk!”

He chuckled, revealing a warm, sexy grin that immediately threw cold water on her roiling rage. “Is it not blasphemy in your country to say such a thing?” he asked, revealing the soft, lilting tone of his natural accent.

She laughed quietly, reveling in a wit that was as sharp as his imported, tailored suit. “Indeed,” she confirmed, admiring him anew, but not so much that she could avoid adding insult to injury. “And is it not blasphemy in your country to lose to a girl?”

His face changed immediately, the wry grin turning down into a stiff, curt frown. “Indeed,” he replied, shaking his head and looking like a sad little boy who’d just lost the championship game. “My father will be very disappointed when I call him later today and reveal the news.”

Carly softened, slightly, to see what looked like abject fear in Rahm’s normally fearless brown eyes; to see defeat bow that normally stiff spine. “Does he have to know?”

Rahm clucked a tongue, adopting a defensive stance before pacing, slightly, to the left and right in front of where she stood. “Of course,” he insisted, waving large, masculine hands that featured long, delicate fingers. “It’s his money I’m investing, after all.”

“But Platinum Dunes,” she said, thumbs still sore from researching Rahm on her smart phone in the quiet moments she’d spent in the conference room while awaiting Vernon’s verdict. “It’s your company, right?”

“Funded with my father’s oil money,” he huffed, as if resentful of the apron strings that stretched all the way back to the Persian Gulf and his homeland of small, but oil rich, Hahmsuit.

She nodded, as if understanding what it might feel like to resent being a billionaire in waiting – to say nothing of a full-fledged sheik. “Might I make a suggestion?” she asked, tentatively, lifting a hand to squeeze his arm conspiratorially before thinking better of the intimate gesture and waving it instead.

“By all means,” he snorted. “Please educate me, Ms. Stanton.”

She ignored his petulant tone and said, “Maybe if you’d spent a little more time researching PrimeTime and less bragging about how eager you were to outbid me, you might have won the contract after all.”

Rahm glowered back at her, shaking his head and breaking the warm, even convivial mood. “Thank you, Ms. Stanton,” he huffed, turning on his heels. “I’m sure father will appreciate your words of wisdom.”

He stomped across the parking garage, shaking his head and muttering to himself as she stood, fists clenched at her side. “Or, you know,” she called after him, unable to control herself. “Just stand up to him and admit you screwed up!”

She waited for a pause in his footsteps, or even a withering glare over his shoulder, but got instead the sounds of a back door opening and closing, a severe driver – who looked trained to kill her in about 1,001 ways – glaring at her from the shadows that surrounded most, but not all, of his white Rolls Royce.

The driver slid inside, started the engine and raced off, leaving Carly to ponder the ways of the Middle East, and why she still worried about what Rahm’s father might say to him when he heard the news that his son had been bested by a westerner – and a woman at that!

Four

“Unacceptable!”

Rahm’s father’s voice was so deep, so enraged, so full of betrayal and menace it fairly shook the flat screen computer monitor on his desk. “Father,” Rahm said, bowing slightly, almost imperceptibly, as he stood in front of the web cam for his weekly follow-up call with his father, Rahmad “Rahm” Farzik the First. “I take full responsibility for losing the MeTime account. I was preoccupied with last week’s acquisition of the—”

“Spare me the excuses,” his father bellowed, accent thick as his rich, oily beard and the “thawb,” or flowing off-white tunic, he wore from chin to toe. His head was covered in a matching “Keffiyeh,” or scarf, a sumptuous gold ring securing it to his head. Thick reading glasses, used to peruse Rahm’s spreadsheets for the month, was his only nod to western wear.

Behind him were the trappings of his opulent office, including priceless artwork and commendations from the various international organizations he belonged to, mostly at the behest of his completely westernized sun. The sky outside his double-high palace doors a brilliant blue over the tiny peninsula of Hahmsuit, towering palms lining the walkway along his office balcony.

“Part of being a man,” his father continued, pacing the marble tiled floor of his opulent office, his corpulent frame an ode to his sumptuous lifestyle, “is owning up to one’s failures.”

“I hardly consider missing out on one tech company a failure,” Rahm blurted before he could think better of it.

On the screen, broadcasting from the other side of the world, is father paused in his pacing and turned toward the camera recording his every move. “It’s not the company I’m concerned with,” his father hissed. “It’s losing out to Xavier Stanton.”

“Of Stanton Investments?” Rahm asked. “I didn’t see him at the presentation.”

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