The Sheik's Secret

“It’s even more gorgeous than I remember,” she said, uncertain as to whether she should put it on or let him, as a couple would do in a normal engagement.

But she didn’t want a normal engagement. She’d already tried falling in love, and it had been a complete disaster. Her cool, considered arrangement with Hassan was much better.

She looked up into Hassan’s dark eyes, and her heart skipped a beat. At least it had been cool and considered, she amended. But for some reason, ever since Hassan had gotten back from Australia, he’d been different.

No, she corrected herself as she studied his familiar features. Hassan wasn’t different. What was different was how she was reacting to him. And she had no idea why.

Hassan answered her unspoken question by taking her hand and slipping the ring on her finger.

“A perfect fit,” Hassan announced, wanting to kiss her again. He wanted to see if it felt the same or if his explosive reaction to their earlier kiss had been a fluke. He wanted.some common sense. He choked off his desire with monumental effort. He had absolutely no business kissing her, because tonight he was going to tell her the truth.

But until then he was playing the part of her fiancе and if he didn’t play the part convincingly, he wouldn’t fool her family. And this whole exercise would have been a waste.

Kali watched the emotions flitting across his face, wondering what he was thinking. She didn’t have a clue. Hassan was turning out to be a lot more complicated than she’d originally thought.

But this wasn’t the time to worry about it, she told herself as the cuckoo clock she’d lugged home from Germany four years ago suddenly chimed the half hour.

Hurriedly she got her tan dress coat out of the closet and shrugged into it.

“I told Mom I’d call her from the train station when we get in,” Kali told Hassan as she carefully locked her apartment door behind them. “Someone will collect us.”

“I’ve got a car.”

“But you hate to drive.” She frowned uncertainly at him.

Damn! Hassan mentally cursed his slip. How could he have forgotten the car accident that had killed his uncle and led to the breakup of his parents’ happy marriage? Six-year-old Karim had been severely injured. The whole family had spent the next fifteen years catering to his every whim. The accident had also left Karim with a horror of driving. But maybe Karim hadn’t told Kali the reason he didn’t drive. He didn’t seem to have told her anything else about his background.

“I wouldn’t exactly say that I hate to drive,” Hassan carefully felt his way. “It’s more that I find it a nuisance in New York City. But I thought that it would be better not to be tied to the Long Island Railroad’s schedule. Especially on a Sunday. So I borrowed a car from a friend at the consulate.”

Kali chuckled. “You sound like you’re anticipating a quick getaway. Not that I blame you. The best of families can be pretty heavy going at times.”

“I’ll say!”

Kali blinked at his heartfelt tone, wondering what he was thinking of. His own family? She frowned when she realized that she knew almost nothing about them. Just a couple of chance comments that added up to the fact that his mother was English and his parents were divorced.

“Hassan, do you have any brothers and sisters?”

“No sisters, but two brothers. I’m parked right out in front of your building.” He deliberately changed the subject, hoping he hadn’t sounded as abrupt to her as he did to himself. He could hardly give her any specifics about his brothers without lying, and he didn’t want to tell any more lies than he absolutely had to.

He held the lobby door open for her and then led her over to the large black Mercedes that Mohammed had loaned him.

“Very impressive.” Kali studied the leather interior as Hassan started the car. “I don’t think I’ve ever driven in anything this luxurious before.”

“Hmm” Hassan murmured, his mind completely taken up with the sound of her voice. She had the most intriguing voice he’d ever heard in a woman. Low and husky, full of feminine promise. And that was just in a normal, everyday setting. What would her voice sound like if he were to make love to her? Soft and dreamy? A sudden shaft of desire pierced his composure, making him grip the steering wheel tightly. Not now, he thought, forcing himself to concentrate on driving. There were enough distractions on the road without his adding the most dangerous one of all—sexual desire.

* * *

The trip out to Long Island took almost an hour. An hour during which Kali had become increasingly aware of Hassan’s physical presence: the way his long fingers competently gripped the wheel; the way his broad shoulders shifted as he steered the car; the length of his long legs so near to her own.

By the time they reached her home, she was beginning to feel rattled. As if she were a music box which had been wound too tightly and now couldn’t quite perform the way it was supposed to. But why? The question nagged at her. Why was she responding so strongly to him now, when she never had before?

Could it be because he was being more open with her than he had in the past? Like sharing his family nickname and taking her shopping? But it couldn’t be just that. She remembered the unprecedented surge of desire she’d felt when she’d opened the door yesterday afternoon and had seen him standing there. She’d experienced the attraction before he’d even said a word.

Maybe she shouldn’t try to figure it out, she considered. Maybe she should simply accept it as a good thing that she was so sexually attracted to the man she was going to marry.

But was it a good thing? she wondered uneasily.

She stole a quick glance at Hassan as he pulled into her parents’ driveway. Would Hassan think so? He’d been crystal clear about only wanting a wife who liked him. A wife who wouldn’t interfere with his work or make emotional demands on him. What would he say if she were to suddenly tell him that she was fast becoming obsessed with his body?

She sighed. Put like that, it sounded so…juvenile. Adult women of thirty who had agreed to what was essentially a marriage of convenience should be able to control their sexual desires. So why couldn’t she?

“Don’t worry.” Hassan misunderstood the reason for her sigh. “I’ll protect you from Bart.”

An image of Bart’s slightly overweight, definitely outof-condition body flitted through her mind. Bart wouldn’t stand a chance against Hassan. Not that she needed protecting from Bart or anyone else for that matter. She was a modern woman who was the graduate of a self-defense class. She could protect herself.

“Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.” Kali determinedly shoved open the car door, hoping that Annette and Bart hadn’t arrived yet. It would be easier if she could introduce Hassan to her parents first.

Fate turned a deaf ear to her hopes. The first person she saw when she opened the front door was Bart.

“Kali, glad you could make it,” he said, sounding to Kali’s critical ears just a shade too expansive.

“Bart” Kali nodded. “I’d like you to meet my flancе, Hassan Rashid.”

“Glad to meet you,” Bart shook the hand Hassan held out. “I guess you and I have something in common. Or didn’t Kali tell you about us?” Bart gave her a conspiratorial look that made Kali want to smack him. Hard. Why did he persist in referring to the past?

“You mean your engagement?” Hassan gave Bart his best imitation of what he and Karim had always called their father’s long-suffering-aristocrat-faced-with-erringpeasant expression. “That’s what youth is for—to make mistakes. After all, if Kali hadn’t experimented when she was young, how would she ever have realized what she really wanted in a man?”

Kali wanted to fling her arms around Hassan and hug him. With just a few words he’d relegated her engagement to Bart to the ranks of a youthful mistake and not a very important one at that.

“I’ll let your mother know you’re here, Kali.” Bart gave Hassan a sour look and escaped into the kitchen.

“You’ve got to show me how to do that,” Kali said.

“Do what?”

“That look you gave Bart. It was inspired. Where did you learn it?”

Hassan chuckled, finding her humor infectious. “From my father. He always used it on—” he hurriedly caught himself before he said Karim and substituted “—me, whenever I’d done something that particularly annoyed him.”

“Oh?” Kali felt a momentary flash of unease at the realization that she knew absolutely nothing about his father. What was he like? Would he dislike her? Did he even know that Hassan had proposed to her?

“Hassan,” she said slowly, “what is your father going to say about you marrying an American woman?”

“He’ll love you,” Hassan said, knowing his father would have given his blessing to Karim’s marrying her because he intended to live and work in America.

Hassan also knew his father would be violently opposed to him marrying Kali because he was committed to returning to the Middle East once his course in hospital management was completed.

When his uncle’s death in the automobile accident had forced his father’s return to the kingdom, his parents’ marriage had faltered and eventually crumbled. His mother had been unable to adjust to life there. His father certainly wouldn’t want that pain revisited on one of his sons.