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

It shouldn’t have mattered that she was a beautiful little schemer.

But it did.

Rafiq told himself it was because he wasn’t often wrong about people, that he’d considered himself too wily to be taken in by a pretty face. That was why he was angry ….

Because of his own foolishness.

Not because he’d hoped against all odds—

She turned her head toward him, and her gaze connected with his in the murky darkness of the backseat. He almost convinced himself that he sensed real desperation in her glistening eyes.

Anger overpowered him. Damn her. She was good. So good, she belonged in Hollywood.

How nearly had she hooked him with her air of innocence and lonely despair?

And so much smarter than Renate. He would never have fallen for the platinum blonde’s sexual promise of a one-night stand … but this woman … By Allah, he’d nearly bought everything she’d sold him. With her wide waif’s eyes, her hesitant smile … she’d suckered him. Like Scheherazade, she was a consummate teller of tales.

Rage licked at his gut like hot flames. He was wise to her now.

He would not be deceived again.

No one made a fool of him. No one. And he hadn’t fallen into her trap—he’d been fortunate enough to realize the truth before it was too late. No, not fortunate, he admitted, shamed. He’d almost been duped. A slip of a female had drawn him so close to the claws of her honeyed trap, and proven that he was not as wise as he liked to believe. He could still be taken in by a pair of heavily lashed eyes.

Tiffany had been a little too confident. The mistake she’d made had lain in her eagerness to reel him in too quickly.

“Where are we?”

The cab had slowed. Rafiq glanced away from her profile to the imposing marble facade lit up by pale gold light. “At my hotel.”

“I never agreed to come here.” Her voice was breathy, suddenly hesitant. Earlier he might have considered it uncertainty—even apprehension; now he knew it was nothing more than pretence.

“You never gave me any address when I asked.” He opened his door and hid his anger behind a slow smile as he consciously summoned every reserve of charm he possessed. “Come, you will tell me your problems and I will buy you a drink, and perhaps I can find a way to help you.”

This was the final test.

If she’d been telling him the truth, she would refuse. But if she was only after the money, she would interpret that smile as weakness, and she would accept.

Rafiq couldn’t figure why it was so important to give her a last chance when she’d already revealed her true colors.

She hesitated for a fleeting moment and gave him a tremulous smile designed to melt the hardest heart. Just as he was about to surrender his cynicism, she followed him out of the cab.

The taste inside his mouth was decidedly bitter as she joined him on the sidewalk. Rafiq hadn’t realized that he’d still had any illusions left to lose.

Inside the hotel, he headed for the bank of elevators. “There’s an open pool deck upstairs that offers views over the city,” he said over his shoulder as she hesitated.

Once in the elevator, Rafiq activated it with the key card to his presidential suite.

He brooded while he watched the floors light up as the car shot upward. A sweetly seductive fragrance surrounded him—a mix of fresh green notes and heady gardenia—and to his disgust his body stirred.

Rafiq told himself he wasn’t going to take her up on what she was so clearly here for—he only wanted to see how far she was prepared to go.

Yet the urge to teach Tiffany a lesson she would never forget pressed down on him even as the sweet, intoxicating scent of her filled his nostrils. When the elevator finally came to rest, he placed his hand on the small of her back and gently ushered her out.

Balmy night air embraced Tiffany as she stepped through frosted-glass sliding doors into the intimate darkness of the hotel’s deserted pool deck.

Overhead the moon hung in the sky, a perfectly shaped crescent, while far below the harbor gleamed like black satin beyond lights that sparkled like sprinklings of fairy dust.

Tiffany made for a group of chairs beside a surprisingly small pool, a row of lamps reflecting off the smooth surface like half a dozen full moons. She sank into a luxuriously padded armchair, nerve-rackingly conscious of the man who stood with his back to her, hands on hips, staring over the city … thinking God knew what. Because he was back in that remote space that he allowed no one else to inhabit.

When he wheeled about and shrugged off his suit jacket, her pulse leaped uncontrollably. He dropped into the chair beside her, and suddenly the air became thick and cloying.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked as a waiter appeared, as if that slice of time when he’d become so inaccessible had never been.

Tiffany rather fancied she needed a clear head. But she also had no intention of showing him how much he intimidated her. Her chin inched higher. “Vodka with lots of ice and orange.” She’d sip it. Make it last.

Casting a somewhat mocking smile at her, Rafiq ordered Perrier for himself. And Tiffany wished she’d thought of that herself.

By some magic, the waiter was back in seconds with the drinks, and then Rafiq dismissed him.

She shivered as the sudden silence, the silken heat of the night and the sheer imposing presence of the man beside her all closed in on her senses. They were alone. How had this happened? He’d offered to buy her a drink … to lend a sympathetic ear. She’d imagined a busy bar and a little kindness.

Not this.

He turned his head. The trickle of awareness grew to a torrent as she fell into the enigmatic depths of his dark eyes.

Tiffany let out a deep breath that she’d been unaware of holding, and told herself that Rafiq was only a man. A man. Her father was a well-known film director. She’d met some of the most sought-after men in the world; men who graced covers of glitzy magazines and were featured on lists of women’s most secret fantasy lovers. So why on earth was this one intimidating her?

The only explanation that made any sense was that losing her passport, her money, had stripped away the comfort of her identity and put her at a disadvantage. No longer her parents’ pampered princess, she was struggling to survive … and the unexpected reversal had disoriented her.

Of course, it wasn’t him. It had nothing to do with him. Or with the tantalizing air of reserve that invited her to crash through it.

This was about her.

About her confusion. It was easy to see how he had become appealing, an unexpected pillar of strength in a world gone crazy.

The rationality of the conclusion comforted her and allowed her to smile up at him with hastily mustered composure, to say in a carefully modulated tone, “I’m sorry, I’ve been so tied up in talking about me. What brings you to Hong Kong?”

His reply was terse. “Business.”

“With Sir Julian?”

A slight nod was the only response she got. And a renewed blast of that do-not-intrude-any-further reserve that he was so good at displaying. He might as well have worn a great, big sign with ten-foot-high red letters that read Danger: Keep Out.

“Hotel business?”

“Why do you think that?”

Tiffany took a sip of her drink. It was deliciously sweet and cool. “Because he’s famous for his hotels—are you trying to develop a resort?”