The Sheik's Secret

And he did have the weekend free. He didn’t have to be back in Boston until Monday morning.

But to impersonate his brother…That was the kind of impulsive behavior that had always characterized Karim, not him. He was the cautious twin. The one who could always be counted on to do the right thing.

But wasn’t minimizing the impact Karim’s defection had on Kali the right thing to do? Or was he simply rationalizing his inexplicable desire to see more of her even though he knew perfectly well that nothing could ever come of it.

His motives were irrelevant, he finally decided. His family owed Kali a fiancе for the weekend. Since he was the only one in America at the moment, it was up to him to pay the debt.

“I’ll go,” Hassan blurted out and then winced at the curt sound of his acceptance. He’d sounded as if he were agreeing to something he didn’t want to do, and it wasn’t like that at all.

“Thanks, Karim. Um…Hassan. Why do you want to be called Hassan all of a sudden?” she asked.

“It’s my nickname in the family,” he lied. “And I much prefer it to Karim.”

“Oh,” Kali muttered, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned his preference of names when she’d accepted his proposal. Although there hadn’t been much opportunity for him to tell her anything so far, she reminded herself. The only time they’d had together was that one rushed evening before he’d had to fly to Australia. This really was the first chance he’d had.

Hassan shifted from one handmade shoe to the other as he quickly sifted through his mind, looking for another topic of conversation. One that didn’t have any hidden dangers to it. Not only did the thoughtful expression on her face make him very uneasy, but he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go back to Karim’s empty apartment. He wanted to stay here and listen to the seductive sound of Kali’s voice.

He wanted to do a whole lot more than talk to her, he admitted. His eyes instinctively homed in on her luscious lips. He wanted to pull her back into his arms and cover her mouth with his. He wanted to taste the essence of her. He wanted to breathe in the luxuriant floral scent that clung to her. She was like an erotic gift that a benevolent deity had packaged for some lucky man.

A gift! He suddenly remembered that one took a present to christenings.

“What did you buy for the baby?”

“Nothing yet,” Kali said. “I was going to pick something up during my lunch hour yesterday, but like most Fridays I wound up running late and never got around to it.”

“Why don’t we go and buy something now?”

The sudden spurt of pleasure that shot through Kali at the thought of spending the afternoon with him caught her by surprise. But why shouldn’t she find pleasure in his company? She was going to marry the man. It was probably just the thought of spending tomorrow, with her sister giving her guilty looks, that had unsettled her. Once the christening was over, things would return to normal.

“I’d love to. I—” Kali paused as she suddenly remembered something. “Did you bring my boomerang?”

“Boomerang?” he asked cautiously.

“You forgot to get it.” She gave him a ruefully exasperated look that made him want to kiss it off her lips…and then to keep on kissing her until she couldn’t remember the first thing about boomerangs.

“I just forgot to bring it with me,” Hassan said, hastily improvising. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow.

“Would you mind if I used your bathroom before we go shopping?” As soon as he asked, he wished he hadn’t. He had no idea where her bathroom was, and his brother would surely have known.

“Help yourself.” Kali made a faint gesture toward the hallway at the back of the living room.

Hassan walked toward it, trying to look more sure of himself than he felt. To his relief, the bathroom door was ajar.

Slipping inside, he hastily closed the door behind him. He turned the water on full force to hide the sound of his voice, hurriedly dialed his father’s consulate on his cell phone and asked for the consul, Mohammed. A minute later, Hassan had arranged for a boomerang to be delivered the following morning to Karim’s apartment.

Deep in thought, Hassan left the bathroom. Now, if he were buying Kali a gift it certainly wouldn’t be an oddly shaped piece of wood. It would be something very personal and highly feminine. Something like jewelry. Maybe emeralds to highlight the tawny tints in her hair. Yes, that was it. He’d buy her a necklace with an emerald suspended from a long golden chain. Long enough so that the jewel would rest in the cleft between her breasts. He felt his guts clench as his mind pictured her wearing such a necklace and nothing else.

“Ready to go?” Kali’s voice dragged him out of his delightful daydream.

What was the matter with him? he wondered uneasily as he walked toward the front door with Kali. He hadn’t fantasized this much about a woman since he’d been an adolescent and his every second thought had been of sex. Now he was a grown man, a highly trained pediatrician, who knew that sex without commitment had no place in his life. And who also knew that he couldn’t make a commitment to any Western woman. For her sake.

He tried to ignore the sense of loss that filled him at the thought of never making love to Kali.

“What are we going to buy the child?” Hassan asked, once they were in the elevator.

“Well…I’m not sure. I doubt that Eddie needs anything. My mother started buying things when she found out my sister was pregnant, and she hasn’t stopped since.”

“How about the traditional silver porringer?”

“What’s a porringer?”

“I think it’s a bowl that you put cereal in, but I wouldn’t give you odds on it.”

She grinned at him. “How can I ask to see something when I’m not even sure what it is?”

“Easy. You simply walk into a jewelry store, stare down the length of your nose at the clerk and demand to see a silver porringer.” He mimicked one of his father’s imperious looks to demonstrate.

Kali felt a chill sweep through her as her gaze moved up over his clenched jaw and tightly compressed lips, but her sense of apprehension dissolved when she reached his eyes and saw the devilment dancing in their dark depths. It totally dispelled the autocratic expression he was trying to create.

Smiling she reached up and ran her fingertips along his jawline. “No one who looks into your eyes is ever going to buy your impersonation of a despot.”

Hassan felt a tiny muscle beneath his left eye twitch at the tantalizing sensation of her fingertips moving over his skin. Instinctively he captured her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm.

Her skin felt warm and infinitely intriguing. His tongue darted out to taste it, and a sense of satisfaction filled him as he saw her eyes widen in reaction. Whatever it was that he felt when he was around her, she obviously felt something, too. Or was it that she was reacting to him because she thought he was Karim? The appalling thought effectively doused his ardor, and he dropped her hand as if burned.

“Are you the baby’s godmother?” Hassan clung to the relatively safe subject of the christening like a lifeline.

Kali gulped in air, trying to get enough breath to answer him. She felt as if his kiss had seared her, leaving a permanent imprint of his lips on her skin. Despite the fact that she knew her reaction was highly illogical, it didn’t change the way she felt.

Worry about your strange reaction later, she told herself. For now she needed to concentrate on treating him as she always had. As a mildly sexy, highly intelligent, very likable man. Whom she was going to marry. The tantalizing thought did nothing for her already-shaky composure.

“I’m not the godmother,” Kali finally answered him. “If you can believe it, my mother told me that Bart feels it would be too painful for me. I swear, sometimes I want to grab Bart by one of his appalling ties and shake him until his sense of overweening importance falls out!”

“Are they?”

Kali blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Are his ties appalling?”

“Yes. Clashing splotches of color, not tastefully modern like—” Her voice faded away when she noticed the somber magnificence of his navy-and-green striped silk tie.

Uh-oh, Hassan thought. He’d completely forgotten Karim’s penchant for avant-garde neckwear. “This is my old school tie,” he hurriedly offered an explanation, hoping she wouldn’t know what the Eton tie really looked like.

Kali nodded, although the thoughtful look in her eyes made him uneasy.

Just how smart was she? he wondered, trying to remember what Karim had said about her. It hadn’t been much. Just that she was a psychologist, which meant she was used to looking beneath the surface of things. And if she were to look at him too closely.

It wouldn’t matter, he assured himself as he followed her out of the building. His impersonation wouldn’t last long enough for her to figure out that he wasn’t Karim. By tomorrow evening he’d have told her the truth and. His mind shied away from the thought of what would follow.