Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger: Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger. Charlene Sands
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can’t be that late.”
He strode closer, brandishing the square face of his Cartier timepiece in her direction. “Look.”
The wrist beneath the leather strap was tanned, a mix of sinew and muscle. Oh, God, surely she wasn’t being drawn back under his thrall?
“I believe you,” she said hastily, her grip tightening on the bedcovers as she pulled them up to her chin so that no bare flesh was visible. Her stomach had started its now-familiar morning lurching routine.
“Will you please go?”
And then it was too late. Tiffany bolted from the bed and into the adjoining bathroom, where she was miserably and ignominiously sick.
When she finally raised her head, it was—horror of horrors—to find Rafiq beside her, holding out a white facecloth. She took it and wiped it over her face, appreciating the cool wetness.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
“You look terrible.”
This time her “Thanks” held no gratitude.
“I don’t like this. I’m going to call a doctor.” He was already moving away with that sleek, predatory stride.
“Don’t,” Tiffany said.
He halted just short of the bathroom door.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” She gave him a grim smile.
“Maybe it was something you ate.” Two long paces had him at her side. “You may need an antibiotic.”
“No antibiotic!” Nothing was going to harm her baby. “I promise you this is a perfectly normal part of being pregnant.”
His hands closed around her shoulders. “Oh, don’t try that tall tale again.”
“It’s the truth. I can’t help that you’re too dumb to see what’s right in front of your nose.” She poked a finger at his chest, but to her dismay he did not back away. Instead she became conscious of his muscled body beneath the crisply ironed business shirt. A body she’d touched all over the night they had been together.
She withdrew her finger as though it had been burned.
“I’m not dumb,” he growled.
Right. “And I’m not pregnant,” she countered.
“I knew you were faking it.”
The triumph in his voice made her see red. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
Tiffany broke out of his grasp and, slipping past him, headed for the bedroom. Grabbing her purse off the dressing table she upended it onto the bed and scrabbled through the displaced contents. Snatching up a black-and-white image in a small frame she spun around to wave it in front of his nose.
“Look at this.”
“What is it?”
Couldn’t he see? He had to be blind … as well as obtuse.
“A photo of your daughter.”
“A photo of my daughter?” For once that air of composure had deserted him. “I don’t have a daughter.”
She pushed the picture into his hands. “It’s an image from a scan. A scan of my baby—” their baby “—taken last week. See? There’s her head, her hipbone, her arms. That’s your daughter you’re holding.”
His expression changed. When he finally raised his head, his eyes were glazed with shock.
“You really are pregnant.”
Six
“No, I’m only faking it. Remember?”
Rafiq glared at Tiffany, unamused by the flippant retort—and the sharp edge he detected beneath it. He tightened his grip on the photo, conscious of a sense that his world was shifting.
“So how do you know it’s a girl? Can they tell?”
She stared down her nose at him in a way that made him want to kiss her, or throttle her. Then she said, “My intuition tells me she is.”
Her intuition? The ridiculous reply brought him back to reality, and he shut down the string of questions that he’d been about to ask. Rafiq almost snorted in disgust at how readily he’d crumbled. She was softening him up—and worse, it was working.
“You don’t think I’m going to fall for this?” He shoved the picture back at her. “This could be any man’s baby.”
Her fingers closed around the small framed image with great care. She slid it into the bag and walked back to the dressing table where she set the bag down. Her back to him, she said, “Doctors will be able to estimate the time of conception close enough to that night—”
“They won’t be able to pinpoint exactly. The baby could’ve been conceived anytime around then.” He paused as she wheeled around to face him. “It doesn’t mean it is my child.” He sneered. “I hardly met you under the most pristine conditions.”
The gold flecks in those velvet eyes grew dull. “I told you that it was my first night at Le Club.”
“I don’t know you at all.” He shrugged. “Even if it was the truth, who knows what’s behind it?”
Tiffany flushed, and the gold in her tawny eyes had brightened to an accusatory flame. She looked spirited, alive, and Rafiq fisted his hands at his sides to stop himself from reaching for her. Instead he said, “I want to have DNA tests done before I pay a dollar.”
“Have I demanded even one dollar from you since I got here?” she asked, her eyes blazing with what he realized in surprise was rage. Glorious, incandescent rage that had him blinking in admiration.
“I’m sure you intend to demand far more than that.”
“There’s no trust in you, is there?”
“Not a great deal,” he said honestly. “When you grow up as wealthy as I have there’s always someone with a new angle. A new scam.”
“Everyone wants something from you?”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
There was a perturbing perception in her gaze. As if she understood exactly how he felt. And sympathized. But she couldn’t. He’d found her in the backstreets of Hong Kong—hardly the place for someone who could have any insight into his world.
Crossing to the bedroom door that he’d left wide open, he paused. “I’ll arrange for the DNA tests to be done as soon as possible.” That would give him the answer he wanted and put an end to this farce.
“But you were going to take me to the airport.”
Rafiq’s gaze narrowed. Tiffany looked surprisingly agitated. “You’re not staying in Dhahara long. You’ll be on the first plane out once I have confirmation that your child is not mine. You’re not going to hold that threat over my head for the rest of my life.”
Once a week Rafiq met his brother Khalid for breakfast in one of Dhahara’s seven-star hotels. As the two men were heavily invested in the political and economic well-being of the desert kingdom, talk was usually lively. But Rafiq was too abstracted by the rapidly approaching appointment for his and Tiffany’s DNA tests that he’d arranged after their argument yesterday.
Before he could temper it, he found himself asking, “Khalid, have you ever thought what might happen if you get a woman who is not on father’s list pregnant?”
His brother’s mouth fell open in surprise. He looked around and lowered his voice. “I take great care not to get a woman pregnant.”
So did Rafiq. It hadn’t helped. He’d been a fool. “But what if you did,”