Honestly, what was she thinking?
She didn’t know the first thing about Hayat, she didn’t speak the language and, most importantly, she had no idea what she was asking. Did she have no sense of self-preservation?
Probably not. Like most Americans, she probably believed that the world was wild and free and full of desperate dreamers.
In Hayat, she would merely be another soul he was responsible for keeping safe and happy while simultaneously staging a coup.
But damn, she was right about the car.
His eyes found hers desperate, and he paused.
For an instant her expression shuttered, and she took a deep breath. Then a layer of resolution settled over her.
On an exhale, she said, “I’ll let you pick out a car from my personal fleet if you let me come.”
Jag blinked.
She was beautiful and ingenuous and enigmatic, and he simply didn’t have the time to take care of her while he dealt with his father.
But that was before she’d offered him a vehicle from her personal fleet, a sly voice inside reminded.
And there was the point she’d made about maintenance. And, as she was one of the world’s foremost experts on electric cars, he could build her into the program, even this late in the game.
An idea was beginning to form in his mind.
His advisers had told him multiple times since his permanent return to Hayat that marriage would greatly boost his popularity. It was a step he had resisted, however, despite being willing to refrain from having public romantic associations, because he had not been willing to take the risk of making a woman his bride.
A marriage of convenience with a logical peer—a woman of high status, wealth and connections—was simply too big a risk, given his plans.
The kind of woman who would go into a partnership like that with open eyes would undoubtedly bring a level of honed cynicism that just wasn’t a good idea to have around when one was planning a coup.
That left him with the alternative of pursuing and wooing, which he had neither the time nor the duplicity for.
He would not present himself as a genuine lover to a woman when he knew that was something he would never be.
He had learned long ago that love, affection and closeness were liabilities when one had a father like his. It would not be right to capture a heart that he had no intention of caring for and keeping.
And, of course, there was the matter of the vow that he and the three men he considered friends had made while still young foreign men doing a long stint in English boarding school.
Jag and his friends had done their damnedest to fight back at every step, and even making plans into the future, such as in their promise to one another that when the time came, they would each find the most unsuitable brides they could.
Vin, Rafael and even Zeus may have pushed the boundaries of their vow by falling into real love with their unsuitable brides, but each had met the terms without causing harm to their people.
Jag could do no less, particularly when a brilliant and beautiful opportunity knocked.
Bringing a thumb and forefinger to stroke his beard, Jag reconsidered Rita, otherwise known as NECTAR. She was equal parts famous and mysterious.
She had an eye for design and detail, a mind for engineering and complex systems, and in making demands of a powerful man she barely knew, had shown herself to be both dangerously bold and categorically reckless.
She was wealthy—if the fees she charged and her property were any indication—and charismatic. She was passionate about cars, as he was famous for being, and a leader in electric transportation at a time when he was leading Hayat into becoming a world leader in clean energy.
She made sense as much as the absurd plan forming in his mind did not.
And she has a body that begs to be driven along with the face of a heavenly maiden, his own internal recklessness pointed out—though that point he ruthlessly pushed aside.
Her body and face were irrelevant insofar as the future of their relationship was to go.
He was not considering this outrageous idea because he wanted her.