The Sheik's Secret

“Karim! Thank heavens you’re back. Come on up. I need to talk to you.”

Damn! Hassan thought. Karim was wrong. Again.

Kali’s welcome hadn’t been that of a woman who didn’t care one way or the other about her engagement. She was clearly ecstatic to hear her fiancе’s voice. As if she’d been counting the days until Karim returned to New York.

But why? Hassan wondered uncertainly. According to Karim, their engagement was an arranged affair based on their mutual respect for each other’s work with emotionally troubled children rather than any personal feelings they had for each other. He’d said that they had met during the course of their work and had never actually dated.

Karim had told him that he’d felt it was time he married and had children, and he’d decided that he’d have a better chance of making a success of marriage if he chose a woman who shared his interests and goals. That, when he’d made a list of the women he knew, he’d realized that Kali Whitman fit all his requirements for a wife. So he’d written her a letter explaining his position and asking her to marry him. Karim had said that she had considered his proposal for almost a week before finally accepting it the day before he’d had to fly to Australia for a conference.

Hassan frowned. Of course Karim’s assumption that her acceptance meant that she agreed with his practical approach to marriage didn’t mean it was true. Kali Whitman could have agreed to marry his brother because she was in love with him.

He had no way of knowing what her original motivation had been, and he hated walking into a situation blind.

Hassan forced himself to enter the elevator when his every instinct was urging him to run from what threatened to be a very unpleasant interview. But he couldn’t. He was the responsible twin, he reminded himself. The twin who had always tried to make amends for Karim’s thoughtless behavior. But this was the last time! From now on, Karim could clean up his own messes.

The elevator slid to a smooth stop on the sixth floor.

Hassan stepped out and headed toward 6C, still undecided as to how to tell her what Karim had done.

Stopping in front of Kali’s apartment, he stared blindly at the oak door. Maybe the best way to break the news would be a blunt, unemotional statement of the facts. But the problem was it wouldn’t stay unemotional for long. She’d probably burst into tears and then what was he supposed to do?

He shifted uncomfortably at the thought of trying to deal with a hysterical woman.

He lifted his hand to knock, but before he could, the door swung open.

Hassan blinked, his hand suspended in midair as he stared at the unexpected vision in front of him. Small and slender, Kali barely reached his chin. He swallowed uneasily as he noticed the thrust of her full breasts against the rust-colored sweater she was wearing. Hastily wrenching his gaze upward, he turned his attention to the cloud of reddish-brown hair that framed the creamy perfection of her ivory skin and the delicacy of her perfectly formed features.

The strangest sense of disorientation filled him when his eyes met hers. They were the most gorgeous color, like the chestnuts that grew on his mother’s estate in England.

Chestnuts were good luck, his nanny had told him. As a boy he’d gathered them by the pocketfuls and hidden them in his room against future need. Which is what he would like to do with this woman. Secrete her away somewhere for his own personal enjoyment.

“Karim?”

Dimly, as if from a distance, Hassan heard the melodic sound of her voice, and his eyes dropped to her lips. A sudden tightness encircled his chest as he studied their delectable curve. They looked so soft. Soft and mobile and made to be kissed.

Karim was out of his tiny little mind, Hassan thought as he remembered his brother’s description of her. Calling her “kind of attractive” was like calling their father “kind of rich”—the understatement of the year. Kali Whitman was the most sensually alluring woman he had ever seen.

He froze as she unexpectedly leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. His guts clenched painfully at the feel of her lips against his skin, and it was all he could do not to grab her and capture her mouth with his own. He wanted—

His head examined, he thought uneasily. Kali Whitman had been taken advantage of enough by his brother without him compounding the sin by kissing her.

Kali stared up into his face, instinctively shaking her head in an attempt to banish the surge of desire that had so unexpectedly engulfed her when she’d kissed him. What was the matter with her? she wondered uncertainly. She’d kissed Karim when she’d accepted his proposal. Or rather he’d kissed her. A rather restrained touching of their lips that she found vaguely pleasant. So why was it different this time?

And it was different. For a timeless moment she’d completely lost track of what she’d wanted to say to him. All she’d been able to think about was how she’d felt. Excited and full of anticipation. As if he really were a beloved fiancе who’d just returned from an interminable absence.

Troubled, Kali studied his face, looking for a clue to explain her strange reaction. She couldn’t find one. Except for appearing slightly paler, as if he’d spent the entire two weeks of his conference in Australia inside, he looked exactly the same as she remembered. Her inexplicable sense of disorientation grew as she suddenly noticed the silvery sparks that seemed to swirl through his night-dark eyes. Funny, she’d never noticed them before. She blinked, and they were gone, making her wonder if she really had seen them.

“Um, I…” Hassan said, and Kali winced at the uncertain note in his voice. Poor Karim, he’d asked her to marry him because she was a levelheaded, intelligent woman not given to romantic excesses, and here she was staring at him like a teenager unexpectedly faced with her favorite rock star.

Feeling gauche, Kali rushed to say, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. I was afraid you wouldn’t get back in time.”

“In time?” Hassan repeated, looking for an opening to break his news.

Kali stepped back. The added distance helped her to think a little more clearly. From here she couldn’t smell the delicious scent that clung to him. It reminded her of woodlands and sunshine and crisp autumn air. And it wasn’t the one he’d been wearing the night he’d taken her out to celebrate their engagement. Perhaps it was something he’d picked up in Australia? If so, she hoped he’d brought plenty of it back with him because it was—

A distraction, she hurriedly cut off the thought. She needed to concentrate on her problem, not on how she was finding Karim so inexplicably attractive.

“Karim—”

“Hassan,” he corrected her.

Kali blinked in confusion, wondering why he’d suddenly decided he wanted to be called by a nickname. Worry about it later, she told herself. For now she needed to focus on a more urgent problem.

“My mother called last night to warn me that my nephew’s christening is tomorrow,” she said.

“Warn?” Hassan picked up on the odd word. He’d been to a couple of christenings, and he couldn’t remember anything about the ceremony that would necessitate a warning.

Kali grimaced. “You remember when I accepted your proposal I said that a marriage based on friendship and shared interests was what I wanted, too?”

Hassan frowned, taken aback. She still thought he was his brother, but why? He’d told her his name was Hassan. Unless Karim hadn’t bothered to tell her that he had a twin brother? Or even a brother named Hassan.

He opened his mouth to explain who he really was, but before he could get the words out she continued.

“You see, I didn’t mention it at the time, but the reason I feel that way is because I had an experience with the falling-madly-in-love bit. And it was a disaster.”

Hassan was appalled at the echo of remembered pain and humiliation he could see shimmering in the depths of her gorgeous eyes. He wanted to thump the lout who was responsible for that look.

“I take it he turned out to be a jerk?”

Kali sighed. “No, it would have been a whole lot easier to deal with if he had been. To make a long, sad story short, a month before the wedding Bart met my younger sister, Annette, for the first time. It was a classic case of love at first sight for them both. Bart married her instead of me.”

Driven by a need to console her, Hassan reached out and pulled Kali’s slender body against his, holding her comfortingly close.

“That must have been rough,” he finally said.

Kali closed her eyes as she savored the feel of his hard body pressing into her much-softer curves. He felt so good. So solidly reassuring, and he was showing far more empathy than her short acquaintance with him would have led her to believe he possessed. A fact that pleased her since it argued well for the success of their marriage.

Stepping out of his arms, she said, “I was pretty upset about Bart’s defection at the time, but that was almost two years ago. I’ve long since gotten over him. In fact, these days I find him a bit of a bore. The problem is that my family thinks I’m harboring this great unrequited love for him. When I try to tell them that I could care less, they just smile and tell me that I’m being so brave.”

Hassan chuckled at her indignant expression, and the warm sound rolled through Kali, drowning her annoyance. She’d never heard Hassan chuckle before. It was the most sexually enticing sound she’d ever experienced. And the most distracting. She fought to keep her focus on what she wanted to say and not on how she felt.

“So I thought that if I were to take you with me to the christening of Bart and Annette’s baby tomorrow and introduce you to my family, they’ll realize that I’m not still hankering after Bart.

“And you did say that we’d go out and meet them when you got back,” she added when he didn’t respond.

Now what? Hassan wondered in dismay. This was hardly the time to tell her that not only wasn’t he Karim, but Karim had changed his mind about marrying her. She’d be humiliated when she had to go home and tell her family that she’d been rejected by yet another fiancе.

Hassan stared down into her soft, brown eyes and felt a surge of tenderness at the uncertainty he could see there. He couldn’t do it to her. Not without some warning. And his bad news could easily wait until after the christening. In fact, it would probably be better to tell her then. That way she’d have some time to figure out the best way to tell her family about Karim’s defection.