accomplished.
“Don’t worry,” Anne said as soon as the door closed behind him. “I have no wish to go to any gala benefit. I’ve had enough fancy parties this month to last me a lifetime.”
“I understand completely,” Rafik said, feeling a giant surge of relief. “I’ll convey your regrets to my father.” Anne Sheridan would have been totally out of place at this party. Ostensibly a benefit for a charity, it was really a thinly veiled device for his father to find a bride for him. Not Rahman, just him. It wasn’t fair. Thirty minutes seniority and his father’s focus was on him. While Rahman played the field, played golf whenever he wanted to, and came to work whenever he felt like it, Rafik was expected to take over the investments of a huge family corporation.
He agreed it was time to get to work, he welcomed the chance to put his stamp on the family investments, but he didn’t agree it was time to get married. His plan was to reject all the women as unsuitable no matter what his father said or how impeccable their credentials. He didn’t know if it would work, but he’d give it a try because there was no way in hell he was going to get married. He’d tried that. He’d gone so far as to get engaged. It hadn’t worked. His father knew it, but he hadn’t given up. Not yet.
A few minutes later, the messenger knocked on the door, handed Anne her purse and shoes then closed the door behind him.
“My driver will take you home,” Rafik said. “He’ll be waiting at the front entrance.” He took her by the hand and leaned over to give her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. But she turned her face at the last moment and their lips met. Just a brush of her lips, and he felt as if he was falling down a slippery slope. He couldn’t stop himself. Operating on pure instinct, he put one hand on her shoulder, the other cradled the back of her head and he deepened the kiss. He felt her gasp of surprise, felt her try to back off, then sigh and give in. She didn’t kiss him back, but neither did she pull away. She could have. He wasn’t holding her that tightly. Frankly he was shocked at his reaction. An ordinary kiss had caused a surge of desire to course through his veins. What the hell was wrong with him?
When he came to his senses and dropped his hands he saw she had turned several shades of pink brighter than her dress. “How dare you,” she said.
“How dare I? After what we’ve been through together? That was nothing.” It was nothing. Just a kiss. But what a kiss. Didn’t she feel it, too?
“Nothing?” She spun on her bare heels and headed for the door. But before she left, she raised her arm and threw a handful of dollar bills across the room. “There. That’s the change from your hundred dollars. I’ll send you a check for what I owe you for the cab fare.”
“Come on, Anne, I don’t want your money.”
“And I don’t want yours. I never want to see you again.”
“Wait a minute.” He couldn’t let her leave like this, thinking he’d seduced her. It was a matter of pride. “Nothing happened last night. I mean it. I was teasing you.”
“Nothing?” she said again.
Solemnly, he shook his head.
She gave him a long look, then she shook her head, walked out the door and slammed it behind her. Rafik collapsed into the same chair she’d been sitting in. Which was where his brother found him ten minutes later.
Rahman sat on the edge of Rafik’s desk and observed his brother with a mixture of humor and complacence. “So you got caught, did you?”
“I don’t know,” Rafik said. “Did I?”
“Father thinks so. Of course I told him nothing of what I knew.”
“That’s because you know nothing.”
“So you say,” Rahman said. “I know she was with you last night and I know she was here today. The woman in pink. Still wearing the same dress as yesterday. How can you deny something happened between you?”
Rafik sighed loudly. “Why should I bother? No one believes me. In any case, she’s history.”
“That’s not what I heard. Father says she’s coming to the party,” Rahman said.
“He invited her but she won’t come. Not her kind of thing. She’s really not the party animal you think.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think?” Rahman asked.
“I don’t think. I just did what I had to do. Can we forget the woman for a moment? I told you she’s history. She doesn’t want to see me again and I don’t want to see her.”
“A one-night stand.”
“Yes. Whatever.” Rafik didn’t want to see Anne, think about her, talk about her or examine his unexpected reaction to that strange kiss. “I have bigger problems. The biggest being this damned scheme of Father’s to find me a bride. What am I going to do? How am I going to put him off?”
“What you need is a decoy. How do they call it? A beard.”
“What’s that?” Rafik asked. Sometimes his brother was amazing. Often when he’d discounted him as a hopeless hedonist, he’d come up with a brilliant idea. He hoped this was one of those times.
“You find a woman who will pretend to be your girlfriend, fiancée, whatever it takes to pacify Father, then he’ll stop looking,” Rahman said.
“But I don’t know anyone like that. I’m new in town as are you. We don’t know any women we can ask such a favor of.”
“We don’t?” Rahman asked. “Are you sure?”
“Sure. Absolutely sure.”
“What about that woman you spent the night with last night. What’s wrong with her?”
“Wrong with her? Everything. No, absolutely not. Didn’t you hear me tell you she didn’t ever want to see me again?”
“When has that ever stopped you from pursuing a woman? Usually you like a challenge.”
“Anne Sheridan is more than a challenge. She’s a stone wall.” But kissing her was not like kissing a stone wall. It was more like kissing flower petals. The memory caused a wave of sensual awareness to rocket through his body.
“We’ll buy her off. Even a stone wall has a price. We’ll offer her money to play the part. She can’t refuse,” Rahman suggested.
“Hah. You see this money all over the floor? She threw it there. Does that sound like a woman who can be bought? No, your plan won’t work. Besides…”
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