She felt awful, needling him about bodyguards when his own father had died in a situation every bit as apparently safe as this. “I’m sorry...you...I’m such a...I can’t even imagine...”
“Forget about it.” Sharif looked at the rest of the wedding party farther down the meadow. “As you said, today is a day for celebration. What’s this?” Reaching into the basket, he pulled out a bottle of expensive champagne. “And still chilled.” His lips curved as he looked at the label. “Now, this is the right way to endure a wedding.”
Endure? She wondered at his choice of words. Then, she could hardly blame him for thinking so ill of romance, love or marriage, when his own parents’ marriage had ended as it had.
He looked up, his dark gaze daring her to ask him more about it. Her mouth went dry.
“It’s a little early for champagne, isn’t it?” was all she could manage.
Without answering, Sharif popped the bottle open and poured it into two crystal glasses. He held one out to her, with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
“Surely you, Miss Taylor, with your romantic nature,” he drawled, “would not refuse a glass of champagne to celebrate your dearest friend’s happy day?”
When he put it like that... “Well, no.” She took the glass. “And for heaven’s sake. Call me Irene.”
Sharif looked down at her across the blanket.
“Irene,” he said in a low voice.
Sensuality and power emanated from him in a way that fascinated her. In a way that was dangerous. Her eyes fell to his lips. To the slight shadow of scruff on his sharp jawline. To his neck.
Forcing herself to look away, she drank deeply from her glass. She’d never tasted champagne before, and it was every bit as delicious and bubbly and intoxicating as it looked in the movies. Sitting here in the meadow, beside a sexy Makhtari emir, overlooking a two-hundred-year-old Italian villa with the blue sparkling lake beyond, Irene felt as if she, too, had been transported into a movie, or a dream.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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