she shouldn’t try to figure it out, she considered. Maybe she should simply accept it as a good thing that she was so sexually attracted to the man she was going to marry.
But was it a good thing? she wondered uneasily.
She stole a quick glance at Hassan as he pulled into her parents’ driveway. Would Hassan think so? He’d been crystal clear about only wanting a wife who liked him. A wife who wouldn’t interfere with his work or make emotional demands on him. What would he say if she were to suddenly tell him that she was fast becoming obsessed with his body?
She sighed. Put like that, it sounded so…juvenile. Adult women of thirty who had agreed to what was essentially a marriage of convenience should be able to control their sexual desires. So why couldn’t she?
“Don’t worry.” Hassan misunderstood the reason for her sigh. “I’ll protect you from Bart.”
An image of Bart’s slightly overweight, definitely outof-condition body flitted through her mind. Bart wouldn’t stand a chance against Hassan. Not that she needed protecting from Bart or anyone else for that matter. She was a modern woman who was the graduate of a self-defense class. She could protect herself.
“Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.” Kali determinedly shoved open the car door, hoping that Annette and Bart hadn’t arrived yet. It would be easier if she could introduce Hassan to her parents first.
Fate turned a deaf ear to her hopes. The first person she saw when she opened the front door was Bart.
“Kali, glad you could make it,” he said, sounding to Kali’s critical ears just a shade too expansive.
“Bart” Kali nodded. “I’d like you to meet my flancé, Hassan Rashid.”
“Glad to meet you,” Bart shook the hand Hassan held out. “I guess you and I have something in common. Or didn’t Kali tell you about us?” Bart gave her a conspiratorial look that made Kali want to smack him. Hard. Why did he persist in referring to the past?
“You mean your engagement?” Hassan gave Bart his best imitation of what he and Karim had always called their father’s long-suffering-aristocrat-faced-with-erringpeasant expression. “That’s what youth is for—to make mistakes. After all, if Kali hadn’t experimented when she was young, how would she ever have realized what she really wanted in a man?”
Kali wanted to fling her arms around Hassan and hug him. With just a few words he’d relegated her engagement to Bart to the ranks of a youthful mistake and not a very important one at that.
“I’ll let your mother know you’re here, Kali.” Bart gave Hassan a sour look and escaped into the kitchen.
“You’ve got to show me how to do that,” Kali said.
“Do what?”
“That look you gave Bart. It was inspired. Where did you learn it?”
Hassan chuckled, finding her humor infectious. “From my father. He always used it on—” he hurriedly caught himself before he said Karim and substituted “—me, whenever I’d done something that particularly annoyed him.”
“Oh?” Kali felt a momentary flash of unease at the realization that she knew absolutely nothing about his father. What was he like? Would he dislike her? Did he even know that Hassan had proposed to her?
“Hassan,” she said slowly, “what is your father going to say about you marrying an American woman?”
“He’ll love you,” Hassan said, knowing his father would have given his blessing to Karim’s marrying her because he intended to live and work in America.
Hassan also knew his father would be violently opposed to him marrying Kali because he was committed to returning to the Middle East once his course in hospital management was completed.
When his uncle’s death in the automobile accident had forced his father’s return to the kingdom, his parents’ marriage had faltered and eventually crumbled. His mother had been unable to adjust to life there. His father certainly wouldn’t want that pain revisited on one of his sons.
And he was absolutely right, Hassan admitted. Western women did not belong in the narrow restrictive world of his country.
“Darling, you’re here!” Mrs. Whitman rushed into the living room, forestalling any more questions on Kali’s part for which Hassan was grateful.
“And you must be Karim.” Mrs. Whitman beamed at him. “My goodness, you’re tall. For an Arab, I mean.”
“Mom, his family calls him Hassan. Hassan, this tactful soul is my mother and—Where’s dad?” Kali looked behind her mother.
Mrs. Whitman grimaced. “One of his patients went into labor, and he had to leave. And, what’s worse, since it’s her first, he has no idea how long it’ll be. So annoying when he was looking forward to meeting your fiancé.” She smiled at Hassan.
“And I was looking forward to meeting him, Mrs. Whitman,” Hassan said cautiously. It sounded as if Kali’s father was an obstetrician, but he couldn’t be sure. Nor could he ask, because he didn’t know if Kali had already told Karim. Which meant his best bet would be to stick to social platitudes, he decided.
“Oh, call me Mom,” Mrs. Whitman said. “After all, you’ll soon be one of the family. I mean, it’s not like last time when…um…Do come in and meet Kali’s sister,” Mrs. Whitman said hurriedly.
“Mom is not known for thinking before she speaks,” Kali whispered to Hassan as they followed her mother into the family room. “But she means well.”
As he did with this impersonation, Hassan thought, having a great deal of empathy for Mrs. Whitman.
“Kali, I’m so glad you could make it.” Annette looked up from the couch where she was giving her son a bottle of juice.
“We wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Kali put her arm through Hassan’s and drew him close to her, almost losing her train of thought when she felt the hard length of him pressing against her side.
“Annette, this is Hassan Rashid, my fiancé.” Some of the excitement she was feeling colored her voice, giving it a sensual quality that sent a shiver of awareness through Hassan.
Responding to it, he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her even closer. She fit perfectly against his side. As if she’d been created expressly for him, he thought fancifully.
“I’m glad to meet you, Hassan.” Annette didn’t sound any too sure of the fact.
“And I you,” Hassan said. “I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Annette blinked uncertainly. “Me?”
“Yes, if you hadn’t married her first fiancé, I would have missed the love of my life.” Hassan said smoothly.
“You’re welcome. Don’t you think Eddie has grown, Kali?” Annette seemed eager to change the subject.
“Definitely. He’s starting to look more like a person and less like a baby.”
