Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger: Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger. Charlene Sands
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ice he’d requested rattled against the glass.
“Thank you.” He inclined his head.
For one wild moment Tiffany got the impression that she was expected to genuflect.
Renate leaned forward, breaking her train of thought. “Here.”
Tiffany took the cell phone Renate offered, and gazed at the other woman in puzzlement. With two hands Renate mimicked taking a photo, and realization dawned. Tiffany studied the phone’s settings. Easy enough. By the time Tiffany glanced up, Renate had draped herself over Sir Julian, so Tiffany raised the phone and clicked off a couple of shots.
At the flash, Sir Julian came to life, waving his hands in front of his face. “No photos.”
“Sorry.” Tiffany colored and fumbled with the phone.
“Are they deleted?” Rafiq’s voice was sharp.
“Yes, yes.” Tiffany shoved the phone behind the wide leather belt that cinched in her waist, vowing to check that the dratted images were gone the next time she went to get a round of drinks.
“Good girl.” Sir Julian gave her an approving smile, and Tiffany breathed a little easier. She wasn’t about to get fired before she’d even been paid.
“Sit down, Tiff, next to Rafiq.”
The younger man sat opposite—alone—that ring of space clearly demarcated. Pity about the grim reserve, otherwise he would certainly have fitted the tall, dark and handsome label.
“Um … I think I’ll go see if anyone else wants a cocktail.”
“Sit down, Tiffany.” This time Renate’s tone brooked no argument.
Tiffany threw a desperate look at the surrounding booths. Several of the hostesses Renate had introduced her to earlier sat talking to patrons, sipping sham champagne cocktails. No one looked like they needed assistance.
Giving in, Tiffany perched herself on the edge of the padded velvet beside Rafiq, and tried to convince herself that it was only the gloom back here in the booths that made him look so … disapproving. He had no reason to be looking down his nose at her.
“They should put brighter lights back here,” Tiffany blurted out.
Rafiq raised a dark eyebrow. “Brighter lights? That would defeat the purpose.”
Puzzled, Tiffany frowned at him. “What purpose?”
“To talk, of course.” Renate’s laugh was light and frothy. “No one talks when the lights are bright. It’s too much like an interrogation room.”
“I would’ve thought the music was too loud to talk.” Tiffany fell silent. Now that she thought about it, it wasn’t quite so loud back here.
Rafiq was studying her, and Tiffany moved restlessly under that intense scrutiny. “I’m going to get myself something to drink.”
“Have a champagne cocktail—they’re great.” Renate raised her glass and downed it. “You can bring me another—and Sir Julian needs his gin and tonic topped up.”
Rafiq’s mouth kicked up at the side, giving him a sardonic, world-weary look.
He knew. Tiffany wasn’t sure precisely what he knew. That the hostesses’ drinks were fake? Or that the patrons would be billed full price for them? But something in his dark visage warned her to tread warily around him.
She edged out of the booth, away from those all-seeing eyes.
It was ten minutes before Tiffany could steel herself to return with a tray of drinks.
“What took so long?” Renate glanced up from where she was snuggled up against Sir Julian. “Jules is parched.”
Jules?
Tiffany did a double take. In the time that she’d been gone Sir Julian Carling had become Jules? And Renate had become positively kittenish, curled up against the hotelier, all but purring. Tiffany slid back into the booth beside Rafiq and thanked the heavens for that wall of ice that surrounded him. No one would get close enough to cuddle this man.
“That surely can’t be a champagne cocktail?” Rafiq commented.
She slid him a startled glance. Was he calling her on Le Club’s shady ploy to overcharge patrons?
“It’s water.”
That expressive eyebrow lifted again. “So where’s the Perrier bottle?”
“Water out of the tap.” Although on second thought, perhaps it might’ve been more sensible to drink bottled water. “I’m thirsty.”
“So you chose tap water?”
Was that disbelief in his voice? Tiffany swallowed, suddenly certain that this man was acutely aware of everything that happened around him.
“Why not champagne?”
She could hardly confess that she was reluctant to engage in the establishment’s scam, so she replied evasively, “I don’t drink champagne.”
“You don’t?” Rafiq sounded incredulous.
“I’ve never acquired the taste.”
More accurately she’d lost the taste for the drink that her mother and father offered by the gallon in their society home. The headache it left her with came from the tension that invariably followed her parents’ parties rather than the beverage itself.
An inexplicable wave of loneliness swamped her.
Those parties were a thing of the past ….
Yesterday she’d tamped down the fury that had engulfed her after speaking to her mother, and called her father. To have him wire her some money—even though the thought of asking him for anything stuck in her throat—and to give him a roasting for what she’d learned from her mother.
This time he’d broken her mother’s heart. He’d been tearing strips off that mutilated organ for years, but taking off with Imogen was different from the brief affairs. Imogen was no starlet with her eye on a bit part in a Taylor Smith film; Imogen had been her father’s business manager for years.
Tiffany liked Imogen. She trusted Imogen. By running off with Imogen, her father had sunk to a new low in her estimation.
But Taylor Smith could not be found. No one knew where he—and Imogen—had gone. Holed up in a resort someplace, enjoying a faux honeymoon, no doubt. Tiffany had given up trying to reach her father.
“What else don’t you like?” Rafiq’s voice broke into her unpleasant thoughts. For the first time he was starting to look approachable—even amused.
What would he say if she responded that she didn’t like arrogant men who thought they were God’s gift to womankind?
The diamond-cutter gaze warned her against the reckless urge to put him down. Instead she gave him a fake smile and said in dulcet tones, “There’s not much I don’t like.”
“I should have guessed.” His mouth flattened, and without moving away, he managed to give the impression that he’d retreated onto another planet.
Had there been a subtle jibe in there somewhere that she’d missed? Tiffany took a sip of water and thought about what he might’ve construed from her careless words. Not much that I don’t like. Perhaps she’d imagined the edge in his voice.
Across the booth Renate whispered something to Sir Julian, who laughed and pulled her onto his lap.
Conscious of the flush of embarrassment creeping over her cheeks, Tiffany slid a glance at Rafiq. He, too, was watching the antics of the other couple, his face tight.
What in heaven’s name was Renate up to?
The rising heat resulting from the crush of bodies in Le Club and