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said to. She’d stay in the air until he said down, too.
    No need to tell him that just yet. For now, she’d let him believe she was an old hand at getting her way. If he believed she was more effective than she really was, it made it more likely she’d sway him, too. Good press was everything, after all.
    She smiled. “Invite me in, Rashid.”
    “That’s an ill-advised demand, princess.”
    “Will you stop with this ‘princess’ business? You’d better, if you don’t want me to ‘sheikh’ you.”
    “‘Sheikh’ away. Boundaries are essential.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can we take our boundaries inside? I’m dying for a cup of tea. I promise to make you one.”
    “I don’t drink tea.”
    He didn’t, huh? She might just discover he didn’t eat food, either, his sustenance being evil souls. And he’d already gorged on four for dinner.
    “You must have other beverages in your place.”
    “Tap water.”
    Her lips twisted. “You won’t put me off, you know.”
    “I’m stating facts.”
    “Next you’ll say you have nothing to eat but dried dates.”
    His shrug should have been immortalized on video as the template for nonchalance. “It’s not far from the truth.”
    Water and dates, huh? The sustenance of desert nomads. It actually fit that he, having lived years in survival mode through hardships and deprivation the likes of which she couldn’t imagine, would be programmed to exist on the bare necessities. Even now that he was a billionaire, he hadn’t gone soft or become dependent upon modern comforts and conveniences. He might drive a car only his kind of money could buy, but he reverted to his adversity-thriving true self in a heartbeat.
    We remain who we are, no matter where we are.
    And who he was, was the best thing she’d ever known.
    She grinned into his brooding eyes. “Water and dates work for me.”
    “Fine. You can come in.” Not much of an invitation, but she’d take it. She was sizzling with eagerness to. At least, she was before he doused it. “Until your escort arrives.”
    Before she could object, he was out of the car in yet another impossibly effortless move.
    Her exit wasn’t as graceful, nor was her progress to catch up with him at the door of what looked like a deserted warehouse below an equally empty, old, industrial-looking brick building.
    As he pointed a remote at the huge steel door, she nodded at the deserted area. “See this? There’s no one around like there always is in our region. No malicious eyes to monitor my visit or wagging tongues to weave it into a scandal. Why are you worried?”
    “Why aren’t you?”
    “Because I can’t worry about anything with you around. Because I feel safer with you than I ever did in my life. Why else?”
    Another episode of inertness descended on him. She was quickly learning that indicated astonishment. Even shock.
    His next words reinforced that belief, his eyes narrowing a fraction. “You believe I pose no danger of any sort?”
    “ Definitely not to me.” The words were out before she realized he might mean a different kind of danger...the sexual kind.
    If only. With this avenging archangel, she was safer in that arena than she was in her currently all-female environment. A depressing thought if any ever was.
    He pressed the remote and the door opened with the whirr of a perfectly oiled machine, belying its weather-beaten appearance.
    Before he turned away, he belatedly commented on her wholehearted assertion. “Interesting.”
    You can say that again, she thought, watching the receding streetlights paint shadows across his back as he forged deeper into the darkness, a sorcerer becoming one with his lair.
    He left the lights off. On purpose, she was sure, to rattle her. Punishing her for behaving so “inappropriately”?
    Too bad for him it wouldn’t work. Not only did she have no fear of darkness, it was true she’d fear nothing with him by her side. Maybe they did lack some knowledge of one