Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger: Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger

Renate’s features softened a trifle. “Tiff, the first time is the worst. It’ll be easier next time.”

“Next time?” She felt absolutely and utterly chilled. And infinitely wiser than she had been even an hour ago. Renate was no well-meaning friend; she’d misled Tiffany. Purposefully. A sense of betrayal spread through her.

“There won’t be a next time.” Tiffany had no intention of ever setting a foot back in this place.

Renate picked Tiffany’s tiny beaded purse off the vanity slab and slid the condom inside. “Don’t be so sure.”

Tiffany snatched her purse up and looped the strap around her wrist. “I’m leaving.”

“First shift ends at ten,” Renate pointed out. “If you leave before that, you won’t get paid for the hours you’ve worked. Work another shift and you’ll earn even more.”

Tiffany glanced at her watch. Nine-thirty. She had to last another thirty minutes. She needed that cash to pay for her bed at the hostel. But another shift was more than she could manage. She met Renate’s gaze. “I’ll wait it out.”

“Think about what I said. It’s no big deal after the first time—I promise.” For a moment something suspiciously akin to vulnerability glimmered in Renate’s eyes. “Everyone does it—there’s a lot of demand for young foreign female tourists.” Renate shrugged one shoulder. “Rafiq is good-looking. It won’t be too bad. Would you rather be broke and desperate?”

“Yes!” Tiffany shivered. Rafiq’s disdain suddenly made sense. He thought—

Her hand froze on the door handle.

God. Surely he didn’t intend … No, he hadn’t even exhibited any interest in her. She’d only served him a drink—there’d been no hint of anything more. “At least Rafiq isn’t expecting to sleep with me.”

“Of course he is.” The look Renate gave her was full of superiority. “Although sleeping will have little to do with it—and he will undoubtedly pay well.”

The chill that had been spreading through Tiffany froze into a solid block of ice. It took effort to release the door handle she was clutching. “I’d rather starve!”

“You won’t starve—not if you do what he wants.”

“No!” Tiffany clenched her fists, a steely determination filling her. “And I won’t starve, either.” She’d foolishly trusted Renate. But she intended to make the best of the situation. “I’m only a waitress tonight—and he still owes me a tip.”

Right now that tip meant tomorrow’s food, and when she walked out of there at ten o’clock with her shift money, it would be with a generous tip, too.

Rafiq found himself blocking out Julian Carling’s overloud voice as he focused on the archway to the right side of the bar where Tiffany and Renate had reappeared.

Tiffany wasn’t the kind of woman Rafiq would ever have expected to meet at a place like Le Club. Her face had a deceptive freshness … an innocence … at odds with the scarlet lipstick and the frilly, short black dress. He snorted in derision. It only went to show the ingenue act was exactly that—an act.

Yet as she neared the booth, Rafiq could’ve have sworn he saw her gulp.

She handed him a tall iced soda and stared at him with wary eyes.

“Thank you.” Rafiq’s body grew tight. He wasn’t accustomed to evoking that kind of look on a woman’s face. Usually there was admiration, a yearning for the worldly goods he could bestow. And a healthy dose of desire, too.

But Tiffany wore none of the too-familiar expressions.

Instead her pupils had dilated and transformed her eyes to dark holes in a face where her skin had lost its lotus-petal luminescence.

Apprehension. That’s what it was. A touch of fear. As though someone had told her he trafficked in human beings—or worse.

He switched his narrowed gaze to Renate. Had she told Tiffany something to result in that pinched expression?

While the statuesque blonde had instantly identified Sir Julian, who was something of a celebrity in Hong Kong, much to Rafiq’s relief she had not recognized him. Rafiq had wryly concluded that royal sheikhs didn’t have the same cachet as hoteliers. In fact, he’d been ready to call it a night as soon as he’d realized what kind of a place Le Club was. One celebratory drink with Julian out of politeness to seal the first stages of the proposal they’d put together for a hotel in his home country of Dhahara, and he’d intended to leave.

Then Tiffany had chosen water over fake champagne cocktails and he’d been intrigued enough to want to find out what kind of game she was playing.

Flicking his gaze back to her, he took in the stiff way she held herself. Only the tilt of her chin showed something of the woman he’d glimpsed before, the woman who had demanded more light in this tacky made-for-seduction booth.

Rafiq intended to find out what had disturbed her. Shifting a little farther into the booth to give her space to sit, he patted the seat beside him. She ignored the velvet upholstered expanse, and fixed him with the same dazed stare of a rabbit confronted by a hunting hawk.

His frown deepened.

She swallowed, visibly uneasy.

“Sit down,” he growled. “Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t bite.”

Her gaze skated away from his—and she blanched. He turned his head to see what had caused such an extreme reaction.

Renate was stroking a finger over Julian’s fleshy lips and the hotelier was nibbling lasciviously at the pad of her thumb. Even as they watched, Sir Julian took it into his mouth and sucked it suggestively.

Rafiq compressed his lips into a tight line. Only yesterday he’d been invited to Sir Julian’s home for dinner. The hotel magnate had proudly introduced his wife of almost three decades as the love of his life … and produced a daughter with whom he’d tried to match Rafiq.

“Nor do I devour thumbs,” he murmured to Tiffany. To his surprise, relief lightened her eyes. Surely a sucked thumb was tame for a place like Le Club?

For the first time he saw that her eyes were brown with gold streaks. Until now it had been her hair and peachy skin that had snagged his attention. Not that he’d been looking—he wasn’t interested in a woman who earned her living the way Tiffany did.

Abruptly, he asked, “Why do you choose to work here?”

“Tonight is my first time. Renate brought me—she said it was a good place to make cash.”

He withdrew imperceptibly at her confession. She’d come prepared to barter her body for cash? “You want money so desperately?” When she failed to respond, disappointment filtered through him like hot desert sand winnowing through his fingers, until nothing remained save emptiness. “You should leave,” he said.

A flush crept along her cheekbones. She looked down at the table and started to draw patterns on the white linen tablecloth with her index finger.

Rafiq looked away.

Across from them Julian’s hand had weaseled its way under the neckline of Renate’s dress, and Rafiq could see the ridges under the stretchy electric blue fabric where the other man’s fingers groped at her rounded breasts. Renate giggled.

This was what Tiffany was contemplating?

“Will it be worth it?” he asked her.

She didn’t answer.

He glanced down at her. Her attention was riveted on the couple on the other side of the table. She looked distinctly queasy.

“You’d let a man paw you for money?” He sounded harsher than he’d intended. “In front of a roomful of strangers?”

“I think I need the bathroom again.”

She looked as if she were about to throw up as she bolted from the booth. Good. His deliberate crudity had shaken her. She’d said tonight was her first night. Maybe he could still talk sense into her. Perhaps there was still a chance to lure her away from such a recklessly destructive course of action.