Bred By the Sheikh

Chapter 1

Dubai was so bright it looked Photoshopped.

Through the towering glass wall of the Al-Hadid Grand lobby, the sky stretched an impossible blue above the city, sharp and cloudless in the late-July sun. The light bounced off pale stone and glass outside hard enough to make me squint.

Then the doors whispered shut behind me, and the hotel swallowed me in cool, blessed air-conditioning.

I nearly moaned.

That probably wasn’t the first impression StayWell Hotels wanted its emergency representative making at the flagship property of one of the largest luxury hospitality companies in the world.

I adjusted the strap of my laptop bag instead.

My pale aqua dress had survived fourteen hours of travel better than I had, mostly.

The lightweight skirt still floated around my knees when I walked, but there was a crease near one hip from the plane, and my strawberry-blonde hair had abandoned its loose waves somewhere over the Atlantic.

Humidity had found every shorter piece around my face and encouraged it toward rebellion.

At least my sensible nude flats weren’t trying to kill me.

I took the small victory.

I checked the time on my phone, then the six-day itinerary Amanda had sent me before I left Omaha.

My first rebrand meeting started in twenty-three minutes.

My boss had been supposed to be here.

Amanda Emerson knew this account. Amanda had seniority. Amanda owned suits that never wrinkled and could probably cross three time zones without developing a cowlick.

I had forty-eight hours of warning, one hastily packed suitcase, and a bachelor’s degree that suddenly felt much less impressive beneath a ceiling high enough to have weather.

But I knew guest experience.

Amanda had sent me for exactly that.

So I pulled my shoulders back, followed the discreet sign toward the executive meeting rooms, and concentrated on the part I could control.

I just had to do the work.

For six days, that was all I had to do.

The executive meeting room was larger than the conference room at StayWell’s Omaha headquarters and considerably better at pretending it wasn’t a conference room.

There were no tangled charging cords, no whiteboard with someone’s half-erased notes from Tuesday, and no bowl of mints slowly turning into fossils.

A long pale table faced a wall-sized screen displaying the Al-Hadid Grand Dubai relaunch deck. Beyond another stretch of glass, the city rose into the white-blue afternoon.

I took a seat near the end of the table, opened Amanda’s brief, and reminded myself exactly what StayWell had sent me here to do.

I was here to provide the North American guest perspective, not run the relaunch, tell one of the world’s most powerful hotel companies how to operate, or develop a sudden case of executive confidence and start redesigning Dubai before lunch.

StayWell’s partnership gave us a narrow lane. Al-Hadid Hospitality wanted a stronger North American audience for its flagship brand, and our team was supposed to help identify where the current campaign connected with U.S. luxury travelers and where it didn’t.

That I could do.

I’d spent the last two years reading guest surveys, digging through loyalty data, sitting in focus groups, and listening to people explain that they’d happily pay too much for a hotel room as long as paying too much made their trip easier.

Travelers were surprisingly reasonable that way.

“Ms. Campbell?”

I looked up.

One of the Al-Hadid executives stood beside me, tablet in hand.

“Yes?”

“We’ll begin as soon as Sheikh Tariq arrives.”

“Of course.”

I managed not to ask whether people normally said that sentence with quite so much gravity.

Everyone else seemed to know where to sit. I recognized members of the Al-Hadid brand and marketing teams from the briefing documents, though Amanda had warned me most of the working group would remain functional contacts rather than people I needed to memorize.

I could handle that.

My brain was currently running on airplane coffee, determination, and whatever biochemical process allowed me to remain upright.

The door opened.

Conversation stopped.

I turned.

Then I forgot every single thing I’d just told myself about staying in my lane.

Sheikh Tariq Al-Hadid walked into the room like he’d been designed specifically to make women lose arguments with themselves.

He was enormous.

He wasn’t bulky or exaggerated, just very tall, broad through the shoulders, and built with the kind of athletic solidity that made the tailored lines of his suit look unfair to ordinary clothing.

He had thick black hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and warm olive-brown skin.

His eyes were so dark they looked almost black when they landed on me.

My stomach dropped.

And I didn’t mean metaphorically.

There was an actual physical dip low in my belly, followed by a warm rush up my throat.

I could’ve done without that.

Apparently fourteen hours on an airplane had stripped away whatever defenses normally prevented me from becoming sexually aware of clients before introductions.

His gaze moved over the room, then came back to me and stayed.

I swallowed.

Sheikh Tariq had the stillness of someone who’d never needed to fidget his way through an awkward moment in his life.

I, on the other hand, became abruptly aware of everything: my wrinkled hip, my StayWell lanyard, the freckles across my nose, and my nipples tightening beneath the pale blue fabric.

I folded my hands over my notebook.

He met my eyes.

“Good afternoon.”

His voice was deep without being theatrical, smooth and effortless.

Everyone answered.

I did, too.

At least, I probably did.

Tariq took the chair at the head of the table.

His attention shifted to the empty place reserved beside the StayWell placard.

“Where is Amanda Emerson?”

I’d known that question was coming since Nebraska.

I straightened.

“She became unavailable two days ago. StayWell asked me to take her place for this week’s review.”

His attention returned to me.

“You were given forty-eight hours’ notice?”

“I had forty-eight hours.”

“And you came from Omaha.”

“I came from Omaha.”

One dark eyebrow moved.

“That’s a long way to travel on forty-eight hours’ notice.”

“I discovered that somewhere around hour nine.”

A few people smiled.

His mouth changed.

It wasn’t a full smile, just something smaller and more dangerous.

Heat crept higher along my throat.

“What is your role at StayWell, Ms. Campbell?”

“I’m a junior marketing associate. Most of my work is guest research, campaign support, and U.S. traveler response.”

“You aren’t Amanda Emerson.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was challenging me or simply confirming the obvious.

“No, I’m not.”

The corner of his mouth moved again.

“Good. I would’ve been concerned if the flight changed you that dramatically.”

Laughter moved around the table.

A laugh escaped me, too.

He was funny.

That seemed unnecessary.

“I’m here to cover StayWell’s portion of the review,” I said. “I have Amanda’s brief, the partnership history, and the North American research. Anything outside my authority goes back through her.”

Tariq watched me for another second.

“Then we understand each other.”

The presentation began.

For the first twenty minutes, I mostly listened.

The new campaign was beautiful.

Of course it was beautiful.

There were aerial shots of the property at sunset, private suites with floor-to-ceiling glass, marble, water, linen, and food plated so perfectly I suspected eating it might constitute vandalism.

Every image said expensive, exclusive, immaculate.

It was the sort of campaign that made a person want to own a yacht despite having no idea what to do with one.

The Al-Hadid marketing lead moved through the deck while I made notes.

Tariq interrupted twice.

Both times with questions sharp enough to change the direction of the discussion without embarrassing the person answering.

I’d expected someone with his wealth and title to dominate the room through volume.

He didn’t.

He barely moved.

Everyone else adjusted around him.

Then the final concept slide disappeared.

Tariq leaned back in his chair.

He looked at me.

“Ms. Campbell.”

My pulse gave a hard kick.

“Yes?”

“You’ve been taking notes for forty-three minutes.”

I glanced down at my notebook.

“That sounds slightly accusatory.”

A couple of people laughed again.

Tariq didn’t look away.

“What do you think?”

Every muscle in my back tightened.

Amanda would have answered instantly.

Amanda also had fifteen years more experience than I did and hadn’t spent the last hour trying not to wonder what Tariq Al-Hadid’s beard would feel like against the inside of her thighs.

I looked at the screen, then at him.

“The campaign is beautiful.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No. It’s the part before the answer.”

His eyes narrowed with interest.

Annoyance would’ve been easier.

I took a breath.

“It proves the property is expensive.”

Silence settled across the table.

I continued before good judgment could tackle me to the floor.

“It shows the suite. The view. The food. The lobby. The car waiting outside. Everything is gorgeous, but the guest is almost missing from it.”

The marketing lead looked toward Tariq.

He kept looking at me.

“What do you mean?”

I turned the notebook around even though he was too far away to read it.

“People don’t travel as blank silhouettes who need marble.

They arrive tired. Excited. Nervous. They’ve got children melting down because it’s three in the morning in their home time zone.

Someone’s worried about whether her wheelchair can move easily through a restaurant.

Someone else is taking his first international trip and has no idea what he’s supposed to do after the driver takes his bag. ”

Nobody interrupted.

So I kept going.

“If you want North American guests to understand why Al-Hadid is different from every other luxury hotel they can book, I’d show them what all this luxury actually does for them.”

Tariq’s fingers rested against the table.

“What does it do?”

“It removes friction.”

His attention sharpened.

I leaned forward.