“Oh yeah, sure I can. You want my plane because it adds one more powerful weapon to your impressive desert arsenal. Let me, Falcons against Vixens at twenty thousand feet above the desert. Kang Industries is not a defense contractor, Sheik Leeteuk. We have nothing to do with the machines of war.”

“Inshallah.”

“I repeat, we do not make military planes. We do not make components of anything other than radar and computer equipment. What does Inshallah mean?”

“The will of Allah is a will of Allah,” he explained. “My company has not contracted with Kang Industries for twenty fighter jets. We have purchased twenty jets. What use we put them is to our concern after the sale. However, I will tell you this, all of my personal resources are at the disposal of my country. I will have those planes. Each and every one of them.”

“Let me guess. You’re building your personal military base out there in the desert.”

“You have an overactive imagination.”

“Hah!” Sora laughed aloud. “I supposed next you’re going to try to convince me I didn’t witness Al Kuwait International explode. Do you think I don’t care because it wasn’t my hometown the rockets were levelling?”

“From your words and actions thus far, I assume you care deeply about Sora Kang only.”

”You’re a swine,” Sora said forcefully. “My father happens to be trapped in your country. And so is my godfather. Besides that, I have two sisters, two brothers and a mother back home who must have been worried sick about the three of us.”

“You make no mention of a husband, though you are well past the age when a woman should be married.”

“The day hadn’t come that I marry just because I passed the age of consent.” Sora said without thinking.

His dark eyes seems to bore right through her. Sora gulped as a wash of heat flushed her cheeks. Why couldn’t she keep shut?

“A desirable woman such as you should be married.”

“Are you applying for the position?” she demanded haughtily.

‘I do not think so. I would have no patience with a woman whose bold tongue would force me to take measures to curb her defiance of my will.”

The sheik’s cool response left no doubt in Sora’s mind that he found her entirely unsuitable, which was quite all right in her current state of mind.”

“Good,” she responded with a good toss of her head. “You’d be the last man on earth from whom I’d request a resume. No woman in her right mind would willingly consent to becoming another statistic of violence.”

“Are you assuming that as an Arab I know of no other means but physical violence to assert my will?” he asked chillingly. 

“Are you implying that you know the fine art of compromise? So far in this conversation, I have seen no indication that you hold that trait in esteem.”