grin. “Who told?”
She blushed. “Your music, I mean. But if you’re here, then who...” She turned and saw there was now a four-person band playing the music. She hadn’t even noticed the change. She finished lamely, “You are very good on the guitar.”
“The least of my skills, I assure you. Would you care to dance?”
“Oh.” Her blush deepened. Another handsome playboy, way out of her league, flirting with her? Weird. Had Emma slipped a ten-dollar bill to the most handsome guests in an attempt to boost Irene’s confidence? Although these didn’t seem like the type of men to be swayed by a ten-dollar bill. Ten million dollars, maybe. Maybe not even then.
Biting her lip, she again indicated the sleeping baby. “Sorry. Emma left me in charge. I’d have only stepped on your feet anyway.” She added hastily, “Thanks, though!”
“Another time, perhaps,” the Spaniard murmured, and moved on without any apparent heartbreak to one of the wealthy-supermodel types she’d seen the sheikh talking to earlier. Irene looked down at the warm, sleeping baby in her lap. At least she didn’t need to worry that anyone had paid little Sam to pretend to like her.
“It must be exhausting,” a man’s sardonic voice observed behind her, “that the ruder you become, the more you have to beat potential lovers off with a stick.”
Irene felt a shock of electricity through her body. She turned her head to see the sheikh standing behind her, his black eyes gleaming. She hid the uncontrollable leap of her heart.
“You would know,” she murmured, looking at him sideways beneath her lashes. “Isn’t that how it usually works for you? You tell women that they mean nothing to you, that they’re just the next mark on your bedpost, and they are so enamored of this thought that they fall at your feet and beg you, Take me, take me now?”
His dark eyes held a bright gleam as he took another step toward her.
“Say those five words to me, Miss Taylor,” he said softly, “and see what happens.”
A tremble electrified her body, from her earlobes down her spine to the hollows of her feet. She licked her lips and tossed her head.
“That’s one thing I’ll never say to you. Not in a million years.”
“I could make you say it, I think,” he said softly. “If I really tried.”
He looked down at her with eyes black and hot as smoldering coals, and her throat went dry. She felt her body turning into putty, her brain into mush.
“Don’t bother trying,” she managed to croak. “You’ll fail.”
He tilted his head. “I don’t fail.”
“Never?”
“No.”
As they stared at each other, the air thickened between them. Something sizzled, something primal. The people around them became blurs of color, mere noise. Held in his dark gaze, Irene felt time stand still.
Then her heart started to beat again. “You used my name. How did you know? Did you ask about me?”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “I was curious.”
“I know about you now, too. The famous playboy emir.”
He tilted his head toward her, as if confiding a secret. “I know something about you, too, Miss Taylor.”
“What’s that?”
With a slow, sensual smile, the billionaire emir held out his hand.
“The reason you refused to dance with those other men,” he said huskily, “is because you want to dance with me.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE INTENSITY AND focus of his gaze held her down like a butterfly with a pin, leaving her helpless and trembling. Irene’s heart pounded in her chest.
“I want to dance with you, Miss Taylor.” The sheikh looked down at her. “I want it very much.”
Her throat was dry, her mind scrambling. She exhaled when she remembered Sam sleeping in her arms. “Sorry, but I couldn’t possibly. I promised to hold the baby and...”
Unfortunately at that moment Sam’s mother brushed past them to scoop her sleeping baby up in her arms. “It’s time to put this sleepy boy to bed,” Emma said, holding him snug against her beaded white gown. She threw the sheikh a troubled glance and said in a low voice to Irene, “Be careful.”
“You don’t need to worry,” Irene said. Really, couldn’t her friend see that she could look out for herself? She wasn’t totally naive.
“Good,” Emma murmured, then turned and said brightly to the sheikh, “Excuse me.”
Irene looked at him, wondering how much of the whispered conversation he’d heard. One glance told her he’d heard everything. He gave her an amused smile, then lifted a dark eyebrow.
“It’s just a dance,” he drawled. He tilted his head. “Surely you’re not afraid of me.”
“Not even slightly,” she lied.
“In that case...” Holding out his hand with the courtly formality of an eighteenth-century prince waiting for his lady, he waited.
Irene stared at his outstretched hand. She hesitated, remembering how her body had reacted the last time they’d touched, the way he’d made her tremble with just a touch on her wrist. But as he’d said, this time he was just asking for a dance, not a hot, torrid affair. They were surrounded by chaperones here.
One dance, and she’d show them both that she wasn’t afraid. She could control her body’s response to him. One dance, and he’d stop being so intrigued by her refusals and leave her safely alone for the rest of the weekend. He’d move on to some other, more responsive woman.
Slowly, Irene placed her hand in his. She gave an involuntary shudder when she felt the electricity as their fingers intertwined, and she felt the heat of his skin pressing against her own.
His handsome face was inscrutable as he led her out onto the terrace’s impromptu dance floor. Above them, dappled moonlight turned wisteria vines into braided threads of silver, like magic.
He held her against his body, leading her, swaying her against him as they moved to the music. He looked at her, and Irene felt her body break out in a sweat even as a cool breeze trailed off the moonlit lake against her overheated skin.
“So, Miss Taylor,” he murmured, “tell me the real reason you were pushing me away—along with every other man here.”
She swallowed, then looked at him. “I will tell you. If you tell me something first.”
“Yes?”
“Why you have continued to pursue me anyway.” She looked at the women watching them enviously from the edge of the dance floor. “Those other women are far more beautiful than I. They
