Buch lesen: «The Sheik's Secret»

One

Hassan Rashid reluctantly crossed the small lobby of Kali Whitman’s apartment building, double-checked the apartment which Karim had given him, then slowly pushed the call button beside the elevator.

Maybe his brother would be right for once in his life, Hassan thought, encouraging himself. Maybe this Kali Whitman really wouldn’t care when he told her that Karim was breaking their engagement.

“Yes?”

The musical lilt of the softly feminine voice that emerged from the call box poured through Hassan, raising both his body temperature and his doubts about the whole situation. That voice certainly didn’t sound as if it belonged to a cold woman who had agreed to trade romance for a marriage of convenience.

But then, who better than he knew that appearances were quite often deceptive. Physically he was the mirror image of Karim and yet, mentally, they were poles apart. Karim was an extrovert, the life and soul of every social gathering, while he was far more reserved. Social chitchat did not come easily to him.

“Is anyone there?” Kali’s voice sharpened slightly, and Hassan hurriedly cut off his thoughts. He didn’t want her annoyed to start with. She was going to be upset enough once he broke the news of Karim’s perfidy to her.

“Sorry,” he began.

“Karim! Thank heavens you’re back. Come on up. I need to talk to you.”

Damn! Hassan thought. Karim was wrong. Again.

Kali’s welcome hadn’t been that of a woman who didn’t care one way or the other about her engagement. She was clearly ecstatic to hear her fiancé’s voice. As if she’d been counting the days until Karim returned to New York.

But why? Hassan wondered uncertainly. According to Karim, their engagement was an arranged affair based on their mutual respect for each other’s work with emotionally troubled children rather than any personal feelings they had for each other. He’d said that they had met during the course of their work and had never actually dated.

Karim had told him that he’d felt it was time he married and had children, and he’d decided that he’d have a better chance of making a success of marriage if he chose a woman who shared his interests and goals. That, when he’d made a list of the women he knew, he’d realized that Kali Whitman fit all his requirements for a wife. So he’d written her a letter explaining his position and asking her to marry him. Karim had said that she had considered his proposal for almost a week before finally accepting it the day before he’d had to fly to Australia for a conference.

Hassan frowned. Of course Karim’s assumption that her acceptance meant that she agreed with his practical approach to marriage didn’t mean it was true. Kali Whitman could have agreed to marry his brother because she was in love with him.

He had no way of knowing what her original motivation had been, and he hated walking into a situation blind.

Hassan forced himself to enter the elevator when his every instinct was urging him to run from what threatened to be a very unpleasant interview. But he couldn’t. He was the responsible twin, he reminded himself. The twin who had always tried to make amends for Karim’s thoughtless behavior. But this was the last time! From now on, Karim could clean up his own messes.

The elevator slid to a smooth stop on the sixth floor.

Hassan stepped out and headed toward 6C, still undecided as to how to tell her what Karim had done.

Stopping in front of Kali’s apartment, he stared blindly at the oak door. Maybe the best way to break the news would be a blunt, unemotional statement of the facts. But the problem was it wouldn’t stay unemotional for long. She’d probably burst into tears and then what was he supposed to do?

He shifted uncomfortably at the thought of trying to deal with a hysterical woman.

He lifted his hand to knock, but before he could, the door swung open.

Hassan blinked, his hand suspended in midair as he stared at the unexpected vision in front of him. Small and slender, Kali barely reached his chin. He swallowed uneasily as he noticed the thrust of her full breasts against the rust-colored sweater she was wearing. Hastily wrenching his gaze upward, he turned his attention to the cloud of reddish-brown hair that framed the creamy perfection of her ivory skin and the delicacy of her perfectly formed features.

The strangest sense of disorientation filled him when his eyes met hers. They were the most gorgeous color, like the chestnuts that grew on his mother’s estate in England.

Chestnuts were good luck, his nanny had told him. As a boy he’d gathered them by the pocketfuls and hidden them in his room against future need. Which is what he would like to do with this woman. Secrete her away somewhere for his own personal enjoyment.

“Karim?”

Dimly, as if from a distance, Hassan heard the melodic sound of her voice, and his eyes dropped to her lips. A sudden tightness encircled his chest as he studied their delectable curve. They looked so soft. Soft and mobile and made to be kissed.

Karim was out of his tiny little mind, Hassan thought as he remembered his brother’s description of her. Calling her “kind of attractive” was like calling their father “kind of rich”—the understatement of the year. Kali Whitman was the most sensually alluring woman he had ever seen.

He froze as she unexpectedly leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. His guts clenched painfully at the feel of her lips against his skin, and it was all he could do not to grab her and capture her mouth with his own. He wanted—

His head examined, he thought uneasily. Kali Whitman had been taken advantage of enough by his brother without him compounding the sin by kissing her.

Kali stared up into his face, instinctively shaking her head in an attempt to banish the surge of desire that had so unexpectedly engulfed her when she’d kissed him. What was the matter with her? she wondered uncertainly. She’d kissed Karim when she’d accepted his proposal. Or rather he’d kissed her. A rather restrained touching of their lips that she found vaguely pleasant. So why was it different this time?

And it was different. For a timeless moment she’d completely lost track of what she’d wanted to say to him. All she’d been able to think about was how she’d felt. Excited and full of anticipation. As if he really were a beloved fiancé who’d just returned from an interminable absence.

Troubled, Kali studied his face, looking for a clue to explain her strange reaction. She couldn’t find one. Except for appearing slightly paler, as if he’d spent the entire two weeks of his conference in Australia inside, he looked exactly the same as she remembered. Her inexplicable sense of disorientation grew as she suddenly noticed the silvery sparks that seemed to swirl through his night-dark eyes. Funny, she’d never noticed them before. She blinked, and they were gone, making her wonder if she really had seen them.

“Um, I…” Hassan said, and Kali winced at the uncertain note in his voice. Poor Karim, he’d asked her to marry him because she was a levelheaded, intelligent woman not given to romantic excesses, and here she was staring at him like a teenager unexpectedly faced with her favorite rock star.

Feeling gauche, Kali rushed to say, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. I was afraid you wouldn’t get back in time.”

“In time?” Hassan repeated, looking for an opening to break his news.

Kali stepped back. The added distance helped her to think a little more clearly. From here she couldn’t smell the delicious scent that clung to him. It reminded her of woodlands and sunshine and crisp autumn air. And it wasn’t the one he’d been wearing the night he’d taken her out to celebrate their engagement. Perhaps it was something he’d picked up in Australia? If so, she hoped he’d brought plenty of it back with him because it was—

A distraction, she hurriedly cut off the thought. She needed to concentrate on her problem, not on how she was finding Karim so inexplicably attractive.

“Karim—”

“Hassan,” he corrected her.

Kali blinked in confusion, wondering why he’d suddenly decided he wanted to be called by a nickname. Worry about it later, she told herself. For now she needed to focus on a more urgent problem.

“My mother called last night to warn me that my nephew’s christening is tomorrow,” she said.

“Warn?” Hassan picked up on the odd word. He’d been to a couple of christenings, and he couldn’t remember anything about the ceremony that would necessitate a warning.

Kali grimaced. “You remember when I accepted your proposal I said that a marriage based on friendship and shared interests was what I wanted, too?”

Hassan frowned, taken aback. She still thought he was his brother, but why? He’d told her his name was Hassan. Unless Karim hadn’t bothered to tell her that he had a twin brother? Or even a brother named Hassan.

He opened his mouth to explain who he really was, but before he could get the words out she continued.

“You see, I didn’t mention it at the time, but the reason I feel that way is because I had an experience with the falling-madly-in-love bit. And it was a disaster.”

Hassan was appalled at the echo of remembered pain and humiliation he could see shimmering in the depths of her gorgeous eyes. He wanted to thump the lout who was responsible for that look.

“I take it he turned out to be a jerk?”

Kali sighed. “No, it would have been a whole lot easier to deal with if he had been. To make a long, sad story short, a month before the wedding Bart met my younger sister, Annette, for the first time. It was a classic case of love at first sight for them both. Bart married her instead of me.”

Driven by a need to console her, Hassan reached out and pulled Kali’s slender body against his, holding her comfortingly close.

“That must have been rough,” he finally said.

Kali closed her eyes as she savored the feel of his hard body pressing into her much-softer curves. He felt so good. So solidly reassuring, and he was showing far more empathy than her short acquaintance with him would have led her to believe he possessed. A fact that pleased her since it argued well for the success of their marriage.

Stepping out of his arms, she said, “I was pretty upset about Bart’s defection at the time, but that was almost two years ago. I’ve long since gotten over him. In fact, these days I find him a bit of a bore. The problem is that my family thinks I’m harboring this great unrequited love for him. When I try to tell them that I could care less, they just smile and tell me that I’m being so brave.”

Hassan chuckled at her indignant expression, and the warm sound rolled through Kali, drowning her annoyance. She’d never heard Hassan chuckle before. It was the most sexually enticing sound she’d ever experienced. And the most distracting. She fought to keep her focus on what she wanted to say and not on how she felt.

“So I thought that if I were to take you with me to the christening of Bart and Annette’s baby tomorrow and introduce you to my family, they’ll realize that I’m not still hankering after Bart.

“And you did say that we’d go out and meet them when you got back,” she added when he didn’t respond.

Now what? Hassan wondered in dismay. This was hardly the time to tell her that not only wasn’t he Karim, but Karim had changed his mind about marrying her. She’d be humiliated when she had to go home and tell her family that she’d been rejected by yet another fiancé.

Hassan stared down into her soft, brown eyes and felt a surge of tenderness at the uncertainty he could see there. He couldn’t do it to her. Not without some warning. And his bad news could easily wait until after the christening. In fact, it would probably be better to tell her then. That way she’d have some time to figure out the best way to tell her family about Karim’s defection.

And he did have the weekend free. He didn’t have to be back in Boston until Monday morning.

But to impersonate his brother…That was the kind of impulsive behavior that had always characterized Karim, not him. He was the cautious twin. The one who could always be counted on to do the right thing.

But wasn’t minimizing the impact Karim’s defection had on Kali the right thing to do? Or was he simply rationalizing his inexplicable desire to see more of her even though he knew perfectly well that nothing could ever come of it.

His motives were irrelevant, he finally decided. His family owed Kali a fiancé for the weekend. Since he was the only one in America at the moment, it was up to him to pay the debt.

“I’ll go,” Hassan blurted out and then winced at the curt sound of his acceptance. He’d sounded as if he were agreeing to something he didn’t want to do, and it wasn’t like that at all.

“Thanks, Karim. Um…Hassan. Why do you want to be called Hassan all of a sudden?” she asked.

“It’s my nickname in the family,” he lied. “And I much prefer it to Karim.”

“Oh,” Kali muttered, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned his preference of names when she’d accepted his proposal. Although there hadn’t been much opportunity for him to tell her anything so far, she reminded herself. The only time they’d had together was that one rushed evening before he’d had to fly to Australia. This really was the first chance he’d had.

Hassan shifted from one handmade shoe to the other as he quickly sifted through his mind, looking for another topic of conversation. One that didn’t have any hidden dangers to it. Not only did the thoughtful expression on her face make him very uneasy, but he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go back to Karim’s empty apartment. He wanted to stay here and listen to the seductive sound of Kali’s voice.

He wanted to do a whole lot more than talk to her, he admitted. His eyes instinctively homed in on her luscious lips. He wanted to pull her back into his arms and cover her mouth with his. He wanted to taste the essence of her. He wanted to breathe in the luxuriant floral scent that clung to her. She was like an erotic gift that a benevolent deity had packaged for some lucky man.

A gift! He suddenly remembered that one took a present to christenings.

“What did you buy for the baby?”

“Nothing yet,” Kali said. “I was going to pick something up during my lunch hour yesterday, but like most Fridays I wound up running late and never got around to it.”

“Why don’t we go and buy something now?”

The sudden spurt of pleasure that shot through Kali at the thought of spending the afternoon with him caught her by surprise. But why shouldn’t she find pleasure in his company? She was going to marry the man. It was probably just the thought of spending tomorrow, with her sister giving her guilty looks, that had unsettled her. Once the christening was over, things would return to normal.

“I’d love to. I—” Kali paused as she suddenly remembered something. “Did you bring my boomerang?”

“Boomerang?” he asked cautiously.

“You forgot to get it.” She gave him a ruefully exasperated look that made him want to kiss it off her lips…and then to keep on kissing her until she couldn’t remember the first thing about boomerangs.

“I just forgot to bring it with me,” Hassan said, hastily improvising. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow.

“Would you mind if I used your bathroom before we go shopping?” As soon as he asked, he wished he hadn’t. He had no idea where her bathroom was, and his brother would surely have known.

“Help yourself.” Kali made a faint gesture toward the hallway at the back of the living room.

Hassan walked toward it, trying to look more sure of himself than he felt. To his relief, the bathroom door was ajar.

Slipping inside, he hastily closed the door behind him. He turned the water on full force to hide the sound of his voice, hurriedly dialed his father’s consulate on his cell phone and asked for the consul, Mohammed. A minute later, Hassan had arranged for a boomerang to be delivered the following morning to Karim’s apartment.

Deep in thought, Hassan left the bathroom. Now, if he were buying Kali a gift it certainly wouldn’t be an oddly shaped piece of wood. It would be something very personal and highly feminine. Something like jewelry. Maybe emeralds to highlight the tawny tints in her hair. Yes, that was it. He’d buy her a necklace with an emerald suspended from a long golden chain. Long enough so that the jewel would rest in the cleft between her breasts. He felt his guts clench as his mind pictured her wearing such a necklace and nothing else.

“Ready to go?” Kali’s voice dragged him out of his delightful daydream.

What was the matter with him? he wondered uneasily as he walked toward the front door with Kali. He hadn’t fantasized this much about a woman since he’d been an adolescent and his every second thought had been of sex. Now he was a grown man, a highly trained pediatrician, who knew that sex without commitment had no place in his life. And who also knew that he couldn’t make a commitment to any Western woman. For her sake.

He tried to ignore the sense of loss that filled him at the thought of never making love to Kali.

“What are we going to buy the child?” Hassan asked, once they were in the elevator.

“Well…I’m not sure. I doubt that Eddie needs anything. My mother started buying things when she found out my sister was pregnant, and she hasn’t stopped since.”

“How about the traditional silver porringer?”

“What’s a porringer?”

“I think it’s a bowl that you put cereal in, but I wouldn’t give you odds on it.”

She grinned at him. “How can I ask to see something when I’m not even sure what it is?”

“Easy. You simply walk into a jewelry store, stare down the length of your nose at the clerk and demand to see a silver porringer.” He mimicked one of his father’s imperious looks to demonstrate.

Kali felt a chill sweep through her as her gaze moved up over his clenched jaw and tightly compressed lips, but her sense of apprehension dissolved when she reached his eyes and saw the devilment dancing in their dark depths. It totally dispelled the autocratic expression he was trying to create.

Smiling she reached up and ran her fingertips along his jawline. “No one who looks into your eyes is ever going to buy your impersonation of a despot.”

Hassan felt a tiny muscle beneath his left eye twitch at the tantalizing sensation of her fingertips moving over his skin. Instinctively he captured her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm.

Her skin felt warm and infinitely intriguing. His tongue darted out to taste it, and a sense of satisfaction filled him as he saw her eyes widen in reaction. Whatever it was that he felt when he was around her, she obviously felt something, too. Or was it that she was reacting to him because she thought he was Karim? The appalling thought effectively doused his ardor, and he dropped her hand as if burned.

“Are you the baby’s godmother?” Hassan clung to the relatively safe subject of the christening like a lifeline.

Kali gulped in air, trying to get enough breath to answer him. She felt as if his kiss had seared her, leaving a permanent imprint of his lips on her skin. Despite the fact that she knew her reaction was highly illogical, it didn’t change the way she felt.

Worry about your strange reaction later, she told herself. For now she needed to concentrate on treating him as she always had. As a mildly sexy, highly intelligent, very likable man. Whom she was going to marry. The tantalizing thought did nothing for her already-shaky composure.

“I’m not the godmother,” Kali finally answered him. “If you can believe it, my mother told me that Bart feels it would be too painful for me. I swear, sometimes I want to grab Bart by one of his appalling ties and shake him until his sense of overweening importance falls out!”

“Are they?”

Kali blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Are his ties appalling?”

“Yes. Clashing splotches of color, not tastefully modern like—” Her voice faded away when she noticed the somber magnificence of his navy-and-green striped silk tie.

Uh-oh, Hassan thought. He’d completely forgotten Karim’s penchant for avant-garde neckwear. “This is my old school tie,” he hurriedly offered an explanation, hoping she wouldn’t know what the Eton tie really looked like.

Kali nodded, although the thoughtful look in her eyes made him uneasy.

Just how smart was she? he wondered, trying to remember what Karim had said about her. It hadn’t been much. Just that she was a psychologist, which meant she was used to looking beneath the surface of things. And if she were to look at him too closely.

It wouldn’t matter, he assured himself as he followed her out of the building. His impersonation wouldn’t last long enough for her to figure out that he wasn’t Karim. By tomorrow evening he’d have told her the truth and. His mind shied away from the thought of what would follow.

“There’s a taxi.” Kali waved madly to attract its attention, and Hassan determinedly banished his worries.

“Where to?” the driver demanded, when they were in the taxi.

“Blackwells over by Times Square.” Hassan gave him the name of his mother’s favorite jewelry store. “If anyone in New York City has a porringer it’ll be Blackwells,” Hassan told Kali.

When they reached the jeweler’s, Kali climbed out of the cab and examined the display windows while Hassan paid the fare. The elaborate ruby-and-diamond necklace casually draped across a piece of black velvet gave her doubts about the wisdom of going inside. That necklace looked as if it had come from the Hermitage’s collection of the Russian royal family’s jewelry.

“Hassan,” she said when he joined her, “I don’t know what the Institute pays you, but I get the impression I don’t make enough to shop in this place.” She glanced down again at the beautiful necklace. “In fact, I could get an inferiority complex just window shopping here.”

Hassan studied her uncertainly, wondering if she were serious. She seemed like such a self-possessed woman. So sure of herself and her place in the world that it was hard for him to believe she could suffer from some of the same social insecurities that he did.

He frowned as he suddenly realized the full implication of her words. She thought Karim was dependent on what he earned as a research scientist. Obviously Karim hadn’t told her that their father ruled a very oil-rich country in the Middle East. So rich that Saad Dev’a’s citizens enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world.

Why hadn’t Karim told her? Hassan wondered. Because he hadn’t wanted Kali’s decision to marry him to be based on his wealth? Or had he been afraid that Kali might turn him down if she realized just how different their backgrounds were?

Hassan didn’t know, but he did know that Karim knew women far better than he could ever hope to. If Karim hadn’t wanted Kali to know his financial worth, then he’d keep it a secret, too.

“I have a thrifty nature,” he finally said. “So that when I do want to splurge a little, I can afford to.”

“But I can’t let you pay for Eddie’s gift.”

“Oh, yes, you can. We’re engaged, remember.”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing,” Hassan pulled open the door. “Come on.”

Reluctantly Kali followed Hassan into the elegant store.

“Good afternoon.” The middle-aged clerk gave Kali a practiced smile before his gaze moved to Hassan. He instantly priced the hand-tailored perfection of Hassan’s suit, and his smile widened. “Sir. How may I be of service to you this afternoon?”

“We would like to see a christening gift,” Hassan said.

“Certainly. If you and,” the clerk’s eyes dropped to Kali’s ringless fingers, “the lady will sit down, I will be glad to show you some appropriate gifts. Or did you already have something in mind?”

Hassan waited until Kali sat in one of the chairs the clerk had pointed to before he sat down beside her.

“We want a silver porringer,” Hassan said.

“Ah! A traditionalist after my own heart.” The clerk beamed at him. “Just a moment while I check our stock. I’ll be right back.”

Kali watched the man disappear into the back and then whispered, “I don’t believe it. He really does have a porringer.”

True to his word, the man was back almost immediately carrying a black lacquered tray holding three dark blue velvet bags. “We have several porringers in stock. These—” he pulled two of them out of their protective bags and set them on the counter in front of Kali “—are strictly traditional.

“This one,” he pointed to the fairly plain one, “is a copy of one that George IV of England gave to the Marquis of Londonderry at his christening in 1821. While this one—” He held up an ornately cast one “—is a copy of one from an earlier period. As you can see, it has a more baroque feel to it.”

“They’re beautiful,” Kali said, wondering if the unknown Marquis had really eaten his cereal out of anything that valuable.

“Nice, but we wanted something a little more ostentatious,” Hassan said, and Kali suppressed a groan. Much more ostentatious and between them they wouldn’t be able to pay for it.

The clerk unexpectedly grinned, looking far more human. “In that case, I have exactly the thing for you. It was a special order that was unfortunately canceled. It is most definitely impressive.”

He picked up the last velvet sack and pulled out a small gold bowl which he set reverently in front of Kali. “As you can see from the luster, it is almost pure gold. Which of course means that it is nowhere near as sturdy as the silver ones. It is meant strictly for display.”

“It’s beautiful,” Kali breathed, “but far too impractical,” she hurriedly added at Hassan’s speculative expression.

“We’ll take it,” Hassan said, ignoring Kali’s indrawn hiss. He was determined she was going to have a gift to take that would impress the hell out of her ex-fiancé.