A Surprise For The Sheikh

And as for Rafe...okay, she was still working on that part of the plan. She’d done another quick internet search on his country, Al Qunfudhah. The Wikipedia article had stressed that, compared to some of the neighboring countries and kingdoms, women enjoyed a great deal of freedom in Al Qunfudhah, but the article had hit Violet funny. Why would anyone make such a big deal about women being able to drive as if it were some wondrous gift?

She did not know what Rafe intended to do. He really was, according to that same article, a sheikh. His brother ruled the country. His father had died a few years ago. But beyond that?

It had been bad enough when she’d been pregnant with some random stranger’s baby. But a sheikh’s baby?

She was getting ahead of herself. Dinner first. And that meant she needed to put on clothes.

She finally settled on one of her few dresses—the fanciest dress she’d owned, until she’d bought the black one on a whim. It was an olive-green cotton dress with tiny pink flowers printed on it, and it had a pink satin bow at the scoop neck. It was just a little bit girlie but also, due to the darker color, not so girlie. Plus, it was a forgiving cut and it still fit. She paired it with her jean jacket and her nice pair of brown boots, the ones with the pointed toe. She twisted her hair up and pinned it into place, but she decided against dangly earrings. This wasn’t a date. This was a...negotiation, really.

That didn’t stop her from putting on small hoops, as well as mascara and a little blush, though. Not enough that it looked like she was trying, but every little bit helped.

At least Mac wasn’t here. If he saw her in any dress at all, he’d start asking questions. Outside of weddings and Easter services, she was not known for busting out the dresses.

She was debating the merits of her regular tinted lip balm versus actual lipstick when the doorbell rang. Crap. Violet started to hurry, but then thought better of it. She was not at Rafe’s beck and call. She was pregnant. She would not hurry to accommodate him. He’d better get used to doing the accommodating around here. She slowly applied a light layer of a deep pink lipstick and then grabbed her jacket. She was cool, calm and collected. No reason to be nervous, right? Just dinner with the father of her child. Easy peasy.

But by the time she got downstairs, she was on shaky legs and it only got worse when she opened the door to find Rafe standing there, a devilish grin on his face and a single red rose in his hands. And then he took her in, her dress and her boots and her jacket, and she wished in that moment she’d tried a little harder to get the zipper up on her black dress.

“Ah,” he said in a voice that sent a shiver through her. The voice was so unlike the way he’d spoken to her yesterday that she stared at him. This was the man she’d met in a bar. This was the man who’d taken her to bed.

“Hello,” she said, feeling unsettled because it was so hard to reconcile this man with the one who’d sat in the living room yesterday and looked at her as if she were a deer and he were a wolf.

He still looked as though he wanted to devour her, but the difference was so startling that she was helpless to do anything but stand there, gaping.

He held out the rose. “A beautiful flower for a beautiful woman.”

She couldn’t help it: she wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to feel the way he’d made her feel, beautiful and sensual and desirable. But now that they knew who the other was, she didn’t think chasing that little bit of happiness was the best idea. “Look—is this a date? What is this?”

There was that hardness in his expression again and she had to fight the urge to step back. She was not imagining that. “I would never force you to do something against your will, Violet. If you would like to go to dinner as friends, then we may do that. If you would like to consider this a more romantic evening...” His voice trailed off as his eyes warmed.

She took the rose and set it down on the foyer table. “The last time we had a romantic evening, things went wrong.” Two-positive-pregnancy-tests wrong. “I think we should get a few things settled before we do anything else.”

“Yes, that is a wise choice. It would be too easy to...well.” She could be seeing things but he might have actually blushed. “Shall we? I made reservations at Claire’s.”

“Oh.” Claire’s was one of the nicest restaurants in town and she was wearing a jean jacket. Crap. She looked down at her outfit. “Maybe I should change?”

“You look beautiful,” he said, stepping toward her. Before she could react, he had cupped her chin in his hand and lifted her face. “You were beautiful that night and you are beautiful now. And anyone who would deign to criticize you will face my wrath.”

Wow, that was the sexiest-sounding threat she’d ever heard. Violet was speechless. Even if she could talk, she had no idea what might come out of her mouth. Something impulsive? Something stupid? Both?

Or, worse, would she tell him how much she’d missed him, how much she’d savored their night together?

Because it would be terrible for him to back her into this house and carry her up the stairs the way he’d carried her down the hall of his hotel. It would be awful if he laid her out on her own bed and did all those things he’d done before.

Yup. It would simply be the worst.

“Ah,” he breathed, so close to her that she could have tilted her head just a little and brought her lips against his, “you asked me what this evening is about. But now I ask you—what is it you want this evening to be?”

Violet was used to dealing with men. She did a man’s work, day in and day out. She dealt with cowboys and her brother, and didn’t spend a hell of a lot of time in a beauty salon, gossiping with other women. She could more than hold her own when some jerk got it into his head that she, a delicate female, shouldn’t be fixing fences or branding cattle or any of those manly things men liked to think they were the only ones capable of getting done. Men who decided they were alphas and she had to fall into line either got their metaphorical butts handed to them on a platter or a black eye as a souvenir of the experience.

So, really, Violet should not have felt this urge to give in to Rafe, to tell him that whatever he wanted, she wanted. But she was tempted. The masculinity coming off him was so strong, so potent, it was almost as if she could see the air shimmering around him, like heat off a highway.

All those men before—they’d been all talk. They had to tell people they were the boss because otherwise, no one else would know it. But Rafe? Jesus, he was in a different class. This was not just an alpha man, this was a man born to power, a man who breathed it as easily as he breathed air.

This was a sheikh. Her sheikh.

But just as she was about to succumb to his sheer machismo, she remembered their situation.

So she forced herself to lift her chin out of his grasp and she forced herself to stare into his eyes—dark and warm and waiting on her to say the word so he could strip her right out of her dress—and she said, “I want to figure out how we got here and what we’re going to do next.” Dang it all, her voice came out as something closer to sultry than businesslike.

Rafe heard it, too, and his lips curved into a knowing smile. “Ah, yes. How we got here. I seem to recall carrying a beautiful, mysterious woman to my room and—”

“No, stop.” Heat flushed her body, but she was not going to fall for him a second time. She had enough going on right now. “I mean more along the lines of what happened afterward. I’m pregnant. We need to be taking this seriously.”

That worked. Rafe straightened and, sighing, nodded. “Would you like to discuss this over dinner or somewhere more private?”

Private was good. Private was great. But private also meant more of those smoldering looks and hot touches from this man and again, she was totally going to blame the hormones on this one, but she didn’t know how strong she could be if she had to fend off those sorts of advances all evening long. “Dinner,” she said decisively.

Rafe, to his credit, didn’t use all of his innate power to overrule her, just as he hadn’t coerced her into doing anything she hadn’t wanted that night. Instead, with a nod of his head that veered closer to a bow of respect than anything else, he said, “Dinner, then.”

Three (#ulink_55b4c781-0eba-576c-905c-c089eb3d3501)

Rafe and Violet were shown to a secluded table tucked into a small alcove in the back of the restaurant. Perfect.

He needed this dinner to be in the public eye because he had little doubt that word of it would make its way back to Mac, and Rafe wanted everyone to see him acting like a gentleman. But he also needed to be hidden away enough that he and Violet could discuss things like pregnancy and plans without being overheard.

He held Violet’s chair for her, which gave him the opportunity to admire her from the back. There’d been a moment earlier this evening when he’d wanted nothing more than to sweep her off her feet and carry her to a bedroom. Any bedroom would do. In this outfit, she was not the seductress V had been all those months ago, but she was also not the angry cowgirl who, just yesterday, had informed him she was carrying his child.

Yesterday, she had not been so very hard to resist, between her shell-shocked appearance and her perhaps justifiable anger. But today?

As she sat, Rafe had to physically restrain himself from leaning down and pressing his lips against the exposed nape of her neck, right next to where a tendril of hair had escaped her updo and lay curled against her fair skin like an invitation.

He managed not to kiss her there, but he must have stood too still for too long, for Violet turned and looked up over her shoulder at him and said, “Yes?”

Rafe didn’t answer immediately. He took his time circling the table and taking his seat. “I do not think I have told you how glad I am to see you again.”

Violet notched an eyebrow at him. “Seriously? You didn’t act all that glad yesterday.”

“True. But I think that, given the surprising nature of our reunion, we can both be forgiven for being less than enthusiastic at first.”

Her eyes narrowed and he got the feeling he’d said the wrong thing. “Oh, really?”

This called for a tactical retreat. A fast one. “Let us plan, as you have requested. How long have you been aware of your impending blessing?”

Because he needed to know that she was being honest—that not only was she expecting, but that it was his child. The four months between that evening and this one left plenty of time for her to have taken other lovers.

Her cheeks colored. “Well, since yesterday. I was in the process of peeing on a stick when Mac came to tell me you were in the living room.”

Rafe coughed over her coarse language, which made her eyes narrow again. “I did not realize,” he said. “Just...yesterday?”