Hired Wife

She could well imagine what people might think. Personal assistants, interior decorators and housekeepers were readily available locally and importing one from the other side of the world might raise questions. She smiled. “Saying I’m your sister, Yasmina, is not going to work, either.”

He laughed, reaching out to touch her hair. “Not with your coloring, no.”

He only barely touched her head and she hardly felt his hand, yet it seemed such an intimate gesture that her heart turned over in her chest and her breath caught in her throat. She looked into his eyes and couldn’t tear her gaze away. She couldn’t believe what was happening to her, she who had sworn off men.

“I suppose we could say you’re my mistress,” he said evenly, “which is not the truth, but they’d believe it.”

The devilish glint in his eyes belied his level tone and she knew he was playing a game with her.

“Mistress? Me? Not on your life. I’m not going to be a kept woman, not even a pretend one.”

He raised a brow in question. “Why not?”

“I find it distasteful,” she said loftily. “In the extreme.”

“Because it would imply you’d be having a sexual relationship with me?” He leaned back against the sofa cushions, apparently curious rather than offended.

Just like a man not to understand this. She sighed. “No.”

“Oh, good,” he said, quasirelieved. “I was beginning to think you found me unappetizing.”

Oh, sure, she thought, looking at his handsome face, seeing the faint smile.

“Why then?” he asked.

“Because,” she said patiently, “it would imply that I was getting paid or maintained in return for sexual favors.”

“Ah,” he said. “I understand. You have a high moral code.”

A high moral code. It sounded so saintly. She didn’t feel saintly in the least, but if he wanted to think that, okay, why not. She smiled breezily. “My mother taught me well,” she said for good measure.

He laughed. “Of course, I should have known.”

“However,” she went on, “since I’ll be looking for a house and furnishing it and doing all those cozy housewifely things, we could just tell them I’m your wife. It will simplify matters.” She could play the game, too. She smiled innocently.

His eyebrows shot up and she laughed. “Oh, don’t you worry,” she said sunnily, “I have no designs on you.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “That was eleven years ago. Boy did I have designs on you then.”

He nodded in agreement. “You owe me big,” he said with dry humor in his voice.

The answer was not what she had expected. “Owe you?”

“You tempted me mercilessly and I had to be good.”

“You had to be good?”

“You were my friend’s little sister and I was offered hospitality in your home, which was very valuable to me, since your mother was an excellent cook. Needless to say fooling around with you was not a good idea. Apart from the fact, of course, that you were a mere child.”

“And flighty and silly. Don’t remind me.”

“Okay,” he agreed magnanimously.

“Besides, that’s all in the past. It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” he said deadpan. “It would be very disappointing to discover you hadn’t fine-tuned your seduction techniques in the past eleven years.”

There had to be something clever to say to that, but her scrambling mind could not come up with it. Instead she shrugged lightly.