Kamal didn’t want to take the call from his father, but he knew that if he didn’t, it would only make things worse. The Masri patriarch wasn’t the type to tolerate being ignored, especially by his oldest son and heir.

“Good morning, sir,” Kamal said as he sat at his desk with the phone on speaker so that he could sign documents while he talked.

“I am in London. It’s past morning here,” the older man corrected.

Kamal rolled his eyes, trying to remember to breathe. He had been raised to show the utmost respect to his elders, but his father made it difficult at times.

“Yes, sir. You have business in London?”

“I do, and in doing it, I have had to hear repeatedly about this accord you are working on with President Hampton.”

Kamal sat and waited because he knew his father, and just because the man paused didn’t mean it was time for Kamal to respond.

“My business partners are not pleased with this agreement you are crafting.”

He did respond then, because his irritation spiked. “How can they be upset with something that isn’t written yet?”

His father made a sound of disapproval. “The world knows what the Millennial Accord is intended to do. We’re not fools simply because we don’t have diplomatic access, Kamal.”

Kamal put his expensive fountain pen down and leaned back in his large leather chair.

“And what is it that you propose I do about your associates’ complaints?”

“You need to find a way to take this idea off the table.”

Kamal sighed, long and deep, and while he felt a twinge of guilt because it was rude to his father, he couldn’t quite control it.

“Father, I am Egypt’s ambassador to the US. A position, I’ll remind you, that you wanted me to have. As such, I am not solely obligated to you and your associates. I answer to the president and parliament of Egypt. Ideally, I also have responsibilities to the people of Egypt, I’m not naïve enough to think that they factor into all of this very much, however.”

“And I’ll remind you, my oldest son, that I did not have you installed in that position to forsake your family. We are your first responsibility always.”

Kamal’s heart thudded hard against the wall of his chest one time, and his head began to squeeze with the signs of an impending headache.

“But surely you understand that I cannot ignore the wishes of the majority of the parliament who voted to grant me the authority to negotiate this accord?”

“Be creative, Kamal. As much as I spent for your American education, you can surely manage to give the appearance of negotiating the agreement while ensuring that it doesn’t get finalized.”

Kamal knew a few things from dealing with his father for the last thirty-four years, and the main one was that arguing with the man was pointless. Whether you intended to do as he said or not, life was much more pleasant if you simply acted as though you did.

“As you say, sir,” he said deferentially. “My loyalty to my family is always my first concern.”

“Good,” his father barked out gruffly. The man couldn’t even be gracious in victory. He was a despot in expensive suits and a hundred-thousand-dollar limousine. “I will keep watching to see how the events unfold. And I will tell your sisters that you asked after them.”

Shit. His sisters whom he hadn’t talked to in weeks. He was batting a thousand as a son today. “Yes. Please tell them that I will speak with them soon.”

His father grunted some sort of good-bye, and Kamal tapped the button on the phone to disconnect the call.

He scrubbed a hand across his jaw before standing and striding to the door. When he swung it open, his personal security detail stood waiting, dark suits and earpieces immediately giving away their identities. Uniformed and heavily armed Egyptian soldiers stood outside the building, surrounding it on all four sides, while top-level intelligence operatives were living unobtrusively throughout the Egyptian expat community, ready to provide intelligence and aid should there be any political unrest in either the US or Egypt. Unfortunately, none of them had been any help as multiple bomb threats had disrupted the day-to-day operations of the embassy for several months now.

“Please bring the car around,” Kamal said to his bodyguard.

“Mr. Ambassador, your meeting at the White House isn’t for two more hours,” the guard advised.

“I don’t give a damn,” Kamal snapped. “I want to leave now.” Because if he didn’t get out from under the staggering array of expectations and responsibilities and commitments, he might just ignite a bomb himself to blow it all to hell. And if he was caught in the debris, well then, so be it. At least he’d finally be free.

* * *

Jessica wasn’t sure why she felt the need to set the meeting up outside on the patio, but it was a beautiful autumn day and she wanted to feel the sunshine and fresh air for a while if she could. Ambassador Masri was the only one of her afternoon meetings that she could imagine having in such an informal setting. While the ambassador had been presumptuous with his comments about her staff, he’d also been respectful and reasonable in their discussions about the accord. He was a brilliant analyst, and easy to talk to once you got past the bossiness.

“Madam President,” Vanessa called from the French doors that looked from the Oval Office out onto the patio. “The ambassador is here for your appointment.”

“Thank you, please show him out.”

A moment later the ambassador stepped out onto the patio, and Jessica was shocked to find that her heart picked up its pace, causing a few butterflies to flutter around inside her chest.

He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit, but in tan, making him stand out from most of the dark suits that men in Washington wore. The contrast with his thick, dark hair was striking, and she couldn’t help also noticing the way his broad shoulders filled the custom suit to perfection. The man’s tailor really should be commended.

“Madam President,” he said as he approached and held out his hand. She shook it and tried not to notice the little frisson of electricity that wrapped around her arm as she touched him.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Ambassador. I hope you don’t mind sitting outside. I sometimes feel as if I haven’t been outdoors in days.”

“As do I. This is perfect.” He smiled, and she was dazzled by his brilliantly white teeth. She again noticed the gold earring, and thoughts of Danger Pirate shot through her head.

“I went ahead and ordered some lemonade and tea sandwiches for us. They’ve already been served but if you’d like, I can call the staff back and have them pour for us,” she said, smiling and giving him a saucy wink. It was probably inappropriate for the president to wink at an ambassador, but Jessica was feeling like breaking out today, rebelling, living a little for once.

The ambassador dropped his head, giving her a contrite look from under his lashes.

“I overstepped my bounds, Madam President. I apologize. If you’ll forgive me, I will pour your lemonade with my own hands in penance.”

She could see the spark of laughter in his eyes, even as he tried to look chagrined.

“I think that would do fine, Mr. Ambassador,” she replied, finally laughing. He watched her, and she could have sworn she saw something hot and ready there in his eyes, but he extinguished it quickly and moved to pour them each a glass of ice-cold lemonade.

“You need to call me Kamal, Madam President.”

“I will, if you’ll call me Jessica when we’re in private. I sort of forget who Jessica is sometimes, so few people use her name.”

He nodded seriously as if he understood exactly what she meant.

She pulled a sheaf of papers closer and set her lemonade down on the glass-topped table. “Now, Kamal, what are we going to do about this provision to put tariffs on manufacturing exports after 2019?”

* * *

Kamal watched Jessica Hampton as she made her way through several of the provisions of the proposed accord. He knew she was a few years older than him, but she easily looked his age or younger. Her skin was smooth, her blue eyes bright and clear, and her copper hair without a touch of gray. And while it was entirely inappropriate to notice, he couldn’t help but catalog in his male brain that below the neck, the woman was as gifted as she was above it. Yes, the president of the United States was a babe, and he was having a hard time focusing on the complicated negotiations he was supposed to be working through.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that last provision?” he asked, giving himself a small shake to restart the other parts of his mind.

She gave him a gentle smile that caused his dick to twitch in his expensive dress pants. Fuck.

“Why don’t we take a small break,” she said before looking at her cell phone that lay on the table in front of her. “We have another hour before my next appointment. Would you like to take a walk around the rose garden for a quick change of pace? Sometimes moving around helps me think.”

“An excellent idea,” he said as he stood and held out his hand to her. She took it hesitantly, but when she stood, he did what he wanted and not what he was supposed to and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm as he led her to the nearby famous White House Rose Garden.

“So you’ve been in the US a long time from what I understand?” she asked as they entered the rows of rose bushes.

“I first came for college when I was eighteen,” he said. “I was in boarding school in England for ten years before that.”

“Oh my,” she exclaimed. “So you haven’t actually lived in Egypt since you were a little boy?”

“That’s correct. I visit frequently, of course, but my education has been entirely Western.”

Her brow furrowed, and he bit back the urge to smooth his finger over the tiny line that appeared between her eyes.

“Well, that explains the British accent,” she said with a smile.

“I would have had it regardless of boarding school. You’ll recall that Egypt was a British colony for quite some time. Most of my countrymen have learned British pronunciation when they speak English.”

She nodded, and for a moment, they walked in silence, her hand still folded in his arm. He could smell the roses and also something like almonds that came from her hair. The sun shone down on them, and he closed his eyes for just a moment, pretending that this was his life, a beautiful place, a beautiful woman by his side, and no other duties.

“Is it difficult?” she asked, breaking the silence around them. “Representing a nation you’ve never really lived in? I admit that I sometimes find it difficult representing a country that I’ve been immersed in my entire life. I have a hard time imagining doing it for a place that in some ways must be foreign to you.”

He took a breath, searching for the right words to explain to an American his concept of family, country, and culture. It was something many of his Middle Eastern brethren would understand, but most Americans would not.

“My father is very prominent in Egypt, and I have a large extended family. My cousins and my brother attended boarding school with me, I have nieces and nephews working for me at the embassy, my father visited England to check on my schooling nearly once a month, and I spent all my vacations at our home outside of Cairo.”

She nodded, her expression encouraging.

“For me, to be Egyptian isn’t only a matter of location, it is an entire set of beliefs, worldviews, family connections, cultural expectations. My Egypt-ness isn’t tied to the land but to the people, and there are Egyptians throughout the world. I represent all of them, and they are part of me no matter where we are at any given point in time.”

She finally removed her hand from his arm, and he nearly snatched it back to replace it, the spot where it had been suddenly cold and alone.

“That’s really very beautiful,” she said, facing him. “Maybe because we don’t travel the world as extensively as those in some other countries, but Americans seem to be more attached to the particular land. Although I think expats probably become more acutely aware of those things that aren’t place linked about being American. I know when I spent junior year abroad, I was fascinated with the things that clung to me and made me feel American even when I was deep in the Moroccan culture.”

He smiled as they rotated by unspoken agreement and began to saunter back to the entrance of the gardens. He once again ignored propriety and placed her hand around his arm.

“And what were some of these things?” he asked, finding himself pinned to every word she spoke, her voice like warm honey on his tongue, her lips moving like a siren’s call to his lower regions.

“Clothing is always an obvious one, and of course I had to adapt the way I dressed while I was in Morocco, and it made me ache for the freedom to wear what I wanted like I could at home. I’d never had restrictions like that placed on me. I was twenty-one and so unaware of how much freedom I’d had in my life.”

“Yes. Americans talk about their freedoms like voting and speech, but what I’ve always thought were the most incredible freedoms in this country weren’t the obvious ones. Things like dressing how you want, taking the jobs that you want, living where you want—those are the things that you cannot do in Egyptian culture, and once you’ve experienced them here, it’s difficult to return to the more restrictive norms.”

He immediately felt the guilt twist in his gut. He tried not to think such things, even to himself, much less say them out loud to the leader of a foreign nation.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, clearing his throat. “That was inappropriate. Our countries are different, both valuable in their own right.”

She touched him lightly on the arm as they reached the entryway to the gardens. “Kamal? It’s okay. You obviously love your country deeply. I didn’t hear anything that said otherwise.”

“Thank you.” He dipped his head toward her.

She hadn’t moved her hand, and he found himself wishing that she never would. He looked down at her, close enough to see every one of her inky lashes as they fluttered over her bright blue eyes, like shutters opening and closing over her soul.

“I think,” she said softly, holding his gaze, “that as long as we are Kamal and Jessica, our discussions are between them as well. The ambassador and the president can have the appropriate conversations, but we can leave them in the anteroom of the Oval Office, can’t we?”

She looked almost hopeful. Some lonely part of him reached out to that hope in her eyes, and they latched on to one another so hard, he knew resistance was futile. He took her small, soft hand from his arm, and her eyes snapped to their linked hands as if she’d forgotten she was touching him. Slowly, he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a long kiss to her fingertips. She gasped softly but didn’t pull away.

“I think that is an excellent arrangement, Jessica.” His voice was low and rough, and she blinked at him in a daze as his own insides curled with heat and want.

But Jessica Hampton didn’t become the first woman president by giving in to her desires, so she quickly shook off the magic that circled them, and gave him a bright smile. “Well then, we have forty minutes left. Shall we go over the tariff section again?”

“Yes, Madam President. By all means.” He winked at her, and she blushed before they returned to the table and the important accord that Kamal was very grateful for now.