Engaged To The Sheikh. Sue Swift

shook a finger at her. “You don’t have to be back in the office until a week from next Monday. You can take an afternoon or two to look at some catalogs.”

      Selina scrutinized Jerry, who’d put her into an untenable position. Last night, she’d promised that she’d be nice to Prince Kamar, but at the time she hadn’t known what “being nice” would entail. If she didn’t cooperate, Jerry would think she was reneging. He’d guilt trip her all the way to Timbuktu and Kalamazoo.

      “Okay, I’ll pretend to be his girlfriend—under one condition.” She pointed her water bottle at Kam. “You have to be nicer to people.”

      “Me? I am perfectly nice to people. Everyone loves me.”

      “You are not perfectly nice to people, and people don’t love you. I saw you with that bartender last night.”

      “She was quite negligent.” Kamar sipped juice.

      “She was not negligent, and you were an arrogant buffoon.”

      “Selina!” Jerome looked scandalized.

      Ignoring her grandfather, she went on. “I won’t be the girlfriend or fiancée, or whatever, of an arrogant buffoon.”

      “You are calling a prince of the Zohra-zbel an arrogant buffoon?” His unibrow was now punctuated by two deep furrows above his nose.

      “If you’re a prince of the Zohra-z-whatever, then yes, I guess I am.”

      He sat back, clearly bewildered. “I am an arrogant buffoon? No other woman has told me that.”

      “Maybe you never made a spectacle of yourself the way you did last night,” Selina said, “but I doubt it.”

      “Me? A spectacle? How was I a spectacle?” He twirled the stem of his Matrix-style sunglasses.

      Selina grinned. “How were you not a spectacle?”

      “The bartender was a complete twit.” Kam’s stuffy British accent had become more pronounced.

      “A twit? Did you actually call her a twit?” Selina laughed.