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

It was mortifying. How many times had she been told to keep one card and a copy of her itinerary and travel insurance separate from the rest? How she wished she had. It would have saved a lot of grief. And a host of I-told-you-you-wouldn’t-survive-alones from her father, when she finally managed to locate him.

“All that I had left was twenty Hong Kong dollars that I had in my pocket and I used that for last night’s accommodation.”

“How convenient.”

The mocking note in his voice made it clear Mr. Arrogant Know-all thought she was lying.

“You don’t believe me.”

The seat gave as he shrugged. “It’s hardly an original story. Although I prefer it to a fabricated tale about an ailing grandfather or a brother with leukemia.”

He thought she was angling for sympathy. She stared across the backseat in disbelief. “Good grief, but you’re cynical. I hope I never become like you.”

In the flash of passing lights she glimpsed a flare of emotion in his eyes. Then it vanished as darkness closed around them again. “And I hope, for your sake, that you are not as naive as you pretend to be.”

“I’m not naive,” Tiffany said, annoyed by the nerve he’d unwittingly struck. He sounded exactly like her father.

“Then come up with a better story.”

“It’s true. Do you think I’d voluntarily make myself look like such an airhead?”

“The helpless, stranded tourist might work on some.”

She glared at him under the cover of night.

His voice dropped to a rasp. “Perhaps I’m the fool. I find myself actually considering this silly tale—against my better judgment.”

“Well, thanks.” Her tone dripped affront.

Unexpectedly he laughed aloud. “My pleasure.”

The sound was warm and full of joy. The cab pulled up at a well-lit intersection and the handsome features were flooded with light. Tiffany caught her breath at the sudden, startling charm that warmed his face, and somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach liquid heat melted. For a heady fragment of time she almost allowed herself smile, too, and laugh at the ridiculousness of her plight.

Then she came to her senses.

“It’s not funny,” she said with more than a hint of rebellion.

Rafiq moved his weight on the seat beside her. “No, I don’t suppose it would be—if your story were true.”

Rafiq’s brooding gaze settled on the woman bundled up against the door. If she moved any farther away from him, she’d be in serious danger of falling out. Was she telling the truth? Or was it all an elaborate charade?

The lights changed and the vehicle pulled away from the intersection. “Don’t you have anyone you can borrow money from?”

She turned her head and looked out into the night. “No.”

Frowning now, Rafiq stared at the dark shape of her head and pale curve of her cheek that was all he could see from this perspective, highlighted every few seconds by flashes from passing neon signs.

“What about your friend Renate? Can’t she help you out?”

She gave a strangled laugh. “Hardly a friend. I only met her today. She lodges at the hostel I’m staying at.”

Aah. He started to see the light. “There’s no one else?”

She shook her head. “Not someone I can ask for money.”

Rafiq waited for a heartbeat. For two. Then three. But the expected plea never came.

“You’re traveling by yourself.” It was a statement. And it explained so much, Rafiq decided, the reluctant urge to believe her growing stronger by the minute.

Tiffany shifted, and he sensed her uneasy glance before she turned back to the window.

She’d be a fool to tell him if she was. Or perhaps this was part of an act designed to make him feel more sympathy for a young woman all alone and out of her depth.

Had he been hustled by an expert? To Rafiq’s disquiet he wasn’t certain. And he was not accustomed to being rendered uncertain, off-balance. Particularly not by a woman. A young, attractive woman.

He was far from being an impressionable youth.

Three times he’d been in love. Three times he’d been on the brink of proposing marriage. And each time, much to his father’s fury, he’d pulled away. At the last moment Rafiq had discovered that the desire, the sparkle, had burnt out under the weight of family expectation.

Rafiq himself didn’t understand how something that started with so much hope and promise could fizzle out so disappointingly as soon as his father started to talk marriage settlements.

“So how much money do you need?” He directed the question to the sliver of sculpted cheek that was all he could see of her face.

This should establish whether he was being hustled.

A modest request for only a few dollars to cover necessities and shelter until she could arrange for her bank to put her back in funds would make it easier to swallow her tale.

“Enough to cover my bed and food until Monday.”

Rafiq released the breath that he hadn’t even been aware of holding.

As head of the Royal Bank of Dhahara he was familiar with all kinds of fraud, from the simplest ploys that emptied the pockets of soft-hearted elders to complex Internet frauds. Tiffany would not be seeing him again, so this was her only opportunity to try stripping him of a substantial amount of money and she had not taken it. She was in genuine need. All she wanted—and she hadn’t even directly asked him for it yet—was a small amount of cash to tide her over.

This was not a scam.

The first whisper of real concern for the situation in which she found herself sounded inside his head. He had a cousin who was as close to him as a sister. He’d hate for Zara to be in the position that Tiffany was in, with no one to turn to for help. Rafiq knew he would make sure Tiffany would be looked after. “Tell me more.”

“Except …” Her voice trailed away.

Every muscle in his body contracted as he tensed, praying that his instincts had not played him false.

“Except … what?“ he prompted.

She averted her face. Even in the dark, he caught the movement as her pale fingers fiddled with the hem of the short, flirty dress. “I’m not sure that I’m going to have enough available on my credit card to pay for the changes to my flight.”

“How much?”

Here it was. Rafiq forced his gaze up from the distraction of those fingers. She’d just hit him with the big sum—a drop in the ocean to him if she’d but known it—and he couldn’t even see her face to read her eyes as his hopes that she was the real deal faded into oblivion. The tidal wave of anger that shook him was unexpected.