As the sun sank low over the city of Kezab, highlighting the downtown skyscrapers with hues of orange and rose, Dakota Lee stepped out onto the patio of the palace, cocktail in hand, and sighed disconsolately. Tonight hadn’t been nearly as much fun as she’d hoped.

Events at the Baraq Royal Palace were always a bit of a gamble, she knew, having attended several in the five years her family had lived here.

The food was always spectacular, of course, and there were drinks and dancing after dinner; Dakota always relished the opportunity to put on an expensive ball gown, have her long, honey-blond hair done, and get her picture taken.

The problem tonight was simply that it was New Year’s Eve, and Dakota hadn’t managed to find a date. At first, this had seemed like no problem at all—the royals would be playing host to many of the most wealthy and prominent families in the nation of Baraq, as well as several foreign dignitaries. Everyone would be drinking and dancing and looking for someone to kiss at midnight. What better way to ring in the new year?

But now it was quarter to eleven and time was running out. Dakota had done several laps of the party, checking for eligible bachelors, and had found none. Well, she amended inwardly, none worth talking to, at any rate. Looks like it’s just you and me, vodka, she thought, sipping her martini. Here’s to another year.

She didn’t know why she was feeling so glum—the past year had been a great one. Dakota had been promoted to Executive Communications Officer at LeeWay Corp, her family’s aeronautics manufacturing company. It was a huge step up from her previous role as Junior Communications Executive. Dakota now managed the entire communications team, and her salary had more than doubled.

She had also begun to feel truly at home here in Kezab. The city of Seattle and the home she and her family had left behind when they had moved here seemed a long way away, and she no longer missed it. In fact, Seattle had taken on a dreary cast in her memory. Looking out at the glorious sunset, she couldn’t remember what she had ever liked about the rainy, perpetually overcast city.

So why wasn’t she feeling happier? The party hadn’t been that bad. Dinner had been delicious, and Dakota knew she looked amazing with her svelte figure in her teal-colored gown. She was being ridiculous, she decided. Looking for problems where there weren’t any. She needed to relax and allow herself to enjoy this night.

“Hey,” came a familiar voice from behind.

Dakota turned and saw her older brother, Dylan, emerging out onto the patio. A wiry, perpetually tousle-haired blond, her brother was two years her senior, at twenty-nine. He walked with a saunter that women generally seemed to find irresistible, but as he approached the rail of the balcony where Dakota was leaning, he stumbled into it.

She caught him by the arm. “Are you drunk?”

He shrugged. “Probably. It’s a party.”

She gestured to his glass of champagne. “How many of those have you had?”

“Six. Seven?”

“The truth, Dyl?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Dakota groaned inwardly. This was exactly like Dylan. His drinking got out of control at parties, and it always seemed to fall on her shoulders to corral him so he didn’t embarrass the rest of the family too badly. Part of it was her responsibility as the head of communications at LeeWay Corp, but it also stemmed from the fact that her parents frequently turned a blind eye to any wrongdoing on Dylan’s part. He never seemed to learn because he was never held accountable for anything.

Dakota drained her drink and set the glass on the rail. She took her brother by the arm. “Let’s go back to the table, okay? We’ll order you some water, and maybe a coffee.”

“I’m not driving,” he said, laughing.

“No kidding, hotshot.”

She parked him at the circular table where the two of them had eaten—her parents had been seated elsewhere, with the CEOs of other corporations important to the royal family—and went to the bar to fetch another martini for herself and a glass of water for Dylan. So much for trying to meet someone, she thought, forgetting in her frustration that she’d abandoned that idea before Dylan had intervened. Maybe the bartender will be cute, at least.

But the bartender was not especially cute, nor did he give Dakota more than a cursory glance as he prepared her drinks. She placed a few coins in the tip jar, took up the drinks, and made her way back to the table.

Dylan was gone. Of course.

Dakota was beyond irritated. He isn’t my problem, she told herself, resisting the urge to tap her foot on the marble floor. If he wants to make a fool of himself, let him. It wasn’t her problem that the press were here, that there would be photos of anything he did tonight all over the internet tomorrow, that she had just been promoted into this job and she knew her father was still keeping a close eye on her, making sure she would be able to do it…

Oh, hell.

She had to find him. She was going to have to tail him for the rest of the night to make sure he behaved himself.

Quickly, she gulped down the drink in her hand and set the glass on the table. She was beginning to feel tipsy herself now, but that was probably a good thing—it would help her find her brother amusing instead of annoying.

She was tempted to climb on a chair to see over the heads of the other people in the room, but she knew that as soon as she did, a photographer’s flashbulb would go off, and she’d see a story about herself dancing on chairs at the New Year’s Eve ball in tomorrow’s news. Then she’d have even more to explain away.

Finally, she caught sight of Dylan. He was on the dance floor, and he’d picked up another flute of champagne. He was now weaving his way among a throng of young women, and as Dakota watched, he took one by the hand, spun her, and dipped her.

And then he stumbled.

It seemed to unfold in slow motion. Dylan pitched forward, the girl still draped over his arm, and for a paralyzing moment Dakota thought he was about to drop her on her head. At what seemed like the last moment, he pulled her up, saving her from impact, but as he did so he dropped the flute of champagne he’d been holding. The glass fell to the floor and shattered, and the drink spilled all over the front of the girl’s dress.

Silence fell. Even the band stopped playing.

Dakota ran out onto the dance floor, snatching up a cloth napkin from a table as she went, but before she could reach her brother and the girl, a man had made his way over. He was barrel-chested and thick-bearded and wore ivory robes with gold trim. Dakota recognized him at once, and her heart sank—Sheikh Ubaid bin Ayad.

Crap.

The bin Ayads were the Lee family’s fiercest business rivals.

It all went back five years, to when the Lees had first come to Baraq. Her family had bought out a small private plane manufacturer with the intent to absorb its employees, premises, and capital into LeeWay Corp. It had been a minor but fruitful move for Ben Lee, and Dakota felt her father had done the right thing. Unfortunately, the bin Ayads had been on the verge of signing a contract with the plane manufacturer to make them their sole aircraft provider, and they had taken it personally when the company had been bought out. Dakota couldn’t see what the big deal was—so they’d have to buy their planes somewhere else, who cared? But apparently it mattered to Sheikh bin Ayad because he had been perpetuating the feud with the Lees ever since.

If she were honest with herself, though, Dakota would have to acknowledge that her family was not entirely innocent when it came to keeping animosity alive. Small planes cost more now than they had before the Lees had come to Baraq. Of course, they were also better—no one made a plane like LeeWay—but if you couldn’t afford one, Dakota supposed it didn’t matter how good they were. And her father was always saying things in interviews that he must have known would provoke bin Ayad. Just recently he had taken credit in a magazine for bringing the twenty-first century of air travel to Baraq. Even Dakota was willing to admit that was a bit rich.

Dylan was trying to apologize to the Sheikh, who was howling at him so furiously that it took Dakota several moments to piece together that the girl whose dress Dylan had ruined was the Sheikh’s daughter.

“It was an accident,” Dylan said feebly, and, pulling a napkin from a nearby table, made as if to dry off the front of her dress.

The Sheikh roared and shoved Dylan away from his daughter, who turned and fled, pursued by two of her friends.

Dylan staggered back with the force of the Sheikh’s push, regained his composure, shouted, “Hey!” and shoved the Sheikh back.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Dakota moaned, picking her way through the assembled crowd, who had stopped partying altogether to watch the Sheikh fight the American. She could already see the flashbulbs going off, indicating the presence of reporters. This was going to make headlines tomorrow.

“Dakota, what’s going on?” It was her father. He’d appeared at her elbow looking anxious and concerned. “Is that Dylan?”

“Is that Mom?” Dakota countered.

Anne Lee had pushed her way through the crowd to her son’s side and was now yelling at Sheikh bin Ayad, who had paused in his shoving match with Dylan long enough to stare at her incredulously. Ben Lee pushed his way into the crowd. Dakota tried to catch his sleeve, to stop him, but missed.

The Sheikh had been joined by two of his sons. The fighting was now so loud that it drowned out all side conversations; everyone was staring at the conflict on the center of the dance floor. Dakota made her way to the front of the crowd. Dylan was standing off to one side looking bemused and a bit sheepish, no longer taking part. She sidled over to him.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “While they’re all still fighting.”

He glanced at her and nodded.

Tonight was not the first time Dakota had had to extract her brother from an escalating conflict—far from it. At least she could be assured that the cameras would be inside capturing the Sheikh’s meltdown rather than her brother’s graceless exit from tonight’s ball. With any luck, the bin Ayads would come off the worse in this one. She would just have to hope her parents could behave themselves.

She put Dylan in the car and then climbed in after him. As they rode home, she was already spinning the event in her head, working out what she would say to the press and the shareholders when she was asked to explain her family’s behavior tonight. Maybe it was time to send Dylan to a treatment facility. She didn’t really think he had a drinking problem, but as a gesture it might be good for the shareholders to see. She wondered if she would be able to persuade him to go.

And to think she had been so excited for tonight’s party. How was it that things always went sour, and that when they did, the bin Ayads were never far away?

* * *

Dylan dropped off to sleep almost immediately, but Dakota felt miles from rest. Instead of retreating to her bedroom, she went down to the kitchen and began putting together a sandwich. As she ate, she pulled up a news site on her laptop and scanned it for references to the evening’s meltdown. Nothing so far…but the night was young, she thought grimly.

She didn’t expect to get any sleep at all tonight. Tomorrow, it would be her job to face a press conference and explain her family’s behavior at the Emir’s party. Somewhere, the bin Ayads would be facing the same task, and Dakota could only hope that she would do a better job than whoever spoke for their family. If the news cycle focused on the misbehavior of the bin Ayads, it was possible the Lees would be overlooked.

And there was a chance of it. After all, the bin Ayads were royalty. They were related to the Emir. Surely their behavior would be more highly scrutinized by the people of Baraq than that of the Lee family. Dakota was used to being part of a high profile family, but there was a difference between running an aeronautics company and being a member of the royal family. The Lees would be a footnote to this story. The bin Ayads would be the headline.

She refreshed the page. No news yet. Social media no doubt had reports of it from people who had been at the party, but Dakota knew from unpleasant experience how tempestuous those kinds of reports would be and decided not to check. She would wait and see what the official news outlets were saying first.

It was nearly two in the morning by the time her parents arrived home. Anne Lee came into the kitchen looking disheveled, her immaculate updo falling apart and her heels dangling from one hand. She padded across the kitchen without acknowledging her daughter, opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of beer, twisted off the cap, and took a long swig. Only after she’d drained half the bottle did she look over at Dakota. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “That was a disaster.”

“What took you so long getting home?” Dakota asked, folding down the top of the computer.

“We couldn’t get a car,” Anne said. “No, don’t make that face. You were right to take ours and get Dylan out of there. That was smart. Where is he now?”

“Up in bed, sleeping it off.”

Anne sighed heavily. “I mean, all he did was spill some champagne.”

“Right down the front of Karida bin Ayad’s dress,” Dakota pointed out. “Why did he have to choose her to dance with?”

Dakota’s dad Ben made his way into the kitchen, loosening his tie. “Anything in the news about it yet?”

“Not yet,” Dakota said, tipping up her laptop screen and refreshing the page to make sure. “What happened after Dylan and I left?”

“Oh, it turned into a whole ordeal.”

“Turned into? It wasn’t an ordeal already?”

“Security started throwing people out,” Ben said. “The Sheikh and his sons and your mother and I were all removed from the party.”

“I was just telling her it was a good thing she and Dylan left when they did,” Anne said, taking another pull of her beer. “Our whole family being kicked out would be a much bigger story.”

Dakota nodded her agreement. “As it is, they’ll probably just focus on you, Dad. No offense, Mom.”

Anne shook her head to indicate that no offense was taken.

“Well, hopefully, the real story will be that the Emir kicked Sheikh bin Ayad out of the palace,” Ben said. “That’s family feud stuff. If we get lucky, they’ll leave us out of it altogether.”

Dakota said nothing but inwardly felt that her family would have to have more than luck on their side to escape being tarnished by tonight’s debacle.

“We might as well go to bed,” Anne said. “I don’t think we’re likely to find anything out tonight.”

Dakota hesitated. She was tempted to stay up and wait for the news reports to come in. That way, she would be better prepared for the inevitable press conference she would have to hold if she’d had time to go over what was already being said about the scene at the palace. It was her best chance to get a leg up on the bin Ayads.

They’re royalty, she thought with a huff, not for the first time. I’m sure they have servants who can stay up all night, scouring the internet and making notes for them. They’re probably getting a good night’s sleep and will wake up to breakfast in bed and a full briefing on the incident. Meanwhile, I have to do it all myself.

At the same time, her mother was probably right. It wouldn’t help her spin any if she had to address reporters looking as though she hadn’t slept. As things stood, she was the one member of the Lee family who hadn’t been involved in the scandal. If she showed up looking like a mess…well, who knew what the press would make of that.

It’s a good thing this job pays so well, Dakota thought, shutting her computer and carrying her plate over to the dishwasher. Kicked out of the Emir’s palace. Talk about humiliating. One of these days, her family would have to learn to coexist with the bin Ayads without a fight breaking out. Otherwise, Dakota’s whole life was likely to be spent papering over the cracks of their petty conflicts.

What a disappointing New Year’s Eve it had turned out to be. Her family ejected from the party in disgrace, Dakota stuck working on the first morning of the new year, and she hadn’t even been kissed.

* * *