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The woman rushed down the steps and hurried toward them. She reached for the suitcase and diaper bag but Karim shook his head.
“Take the child.”
Rachel pulled back. The woman smiled reassuringly.
“He’ll be fine with me, ma’am. I’ll take him to the galley. I have diapers ready, food, a little carrier … His Highness saw to everything.”
Rachel blinked. “He did?”
“He did,” Karim said briskly. “Go on. Give the baby to Moira, or would you rather run the risk of dropping him?”
Rachel handed Ethan over. Then she stared at the Sheikh.
“When did you order all those things?”
“I had plenty of time to make phone calls while you were packing. There isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t take forever to pack.”
“I didn’t take forever. And are you always so sure of how things will work out? That I was packing at all? Just because you want something doesn’t mean it—” She gasped as he swung her up in his arms. “I can walk!”
“Yes. So you just demonstrated.”
He strode to the steps and climbed them. The two men—his pilots, she assumed—snapped to attention.
Rachel could feel her face burning. Maybe the Sheikh’s crew was accustomed to seeing their lord and master board his plane with a woman in his arms but this kind of dramatic entrance was new to her.
“I’ll see to those bags, sir,” one of the men said.
The Sheikh nodded.
“Fine. I want to get airborne ASAP.”
“Yes sir.”
One man went for the bags. The other made his way to the cockpit. Karim carried Rachel through what might easily have passed as someone’s handsome living room.
“Don’t they click their heels?” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
She pulled back as far as she could in his hard, encircling arms.
“I said, don’t they click their heels?”
“They do,” he said, “but only on state occasions.”
Her eyes went to his. Okay. It was a joke; she could tell by the look on his face. At least there was something human about him.
“You can put me down now.”
“Can I?”
“Put-me-down!”
His mouth twitched. “I heard you.”
“Then, dammit, put me—”
“That isn’t a very ladylike way of speaking.”
“I’m not a very ladylike lady. And I want you to—”
His arms tightened around her as the plane lifted into the sky.
“I know what you want,” he said gruffly, and he bent his head and kissed her.
She made a little sound of protest and he asked himself what in hell he was doing.
And then she made another little sound that had nothing to do with protest.
Karim traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue. He sank onto a leather loveseat, Rachel still in his arms. One hand swept into her hair; the other found the sweet swell of her breast. Her taut nipple pressed into his palm through her cotton T-shirt, and he shuddered.
“Rachel,” he whispered.
She moaned and her lips parted, giving him access to the honeyed sweetness of her mouth.
He drew her closer. Swept his hand under her shirt. Cupped her breast.
She put her arms around his neck.
He brought his hand to her face, cupped her jaw, rested his thumb in the delicate hollow of her throat. Her pulse leaped under his touch.
What in hell was he doing?
It was wrong. It was madness. And yet he wanted this, wanted her—
The plane hit an air pocket. It jumped, and so did Rachel. She jerked back in his arms, face pale, eyes wide and blurred. He blinked and let go of her.
She sprang to her feet.
“Do not,” she breathed, “do not ever touch me again you—you vile, arrogant, heartless, manipulative bastard! Do you always ignore the truth of what other people feel?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. A good thing, he thought as she stumbled to a seat far from his, because he didn’t have one.
Was she right?
Had he ignored what might have been Rami’s unspoken cries for help? Could he have saved him from his path of self-destruction? Could he have somehow turned his brother’s wasted life around?
And this.
What he’d just done.
Kissing Rachel. Forcing his kisses on her. An ugly way to describe it, but wasn’t that what he’d done? Kissed her until she’d kissed him back, until her sighs, the sweetness of her mouth were proof that she was in danger of succumbing to the same hot darkness that threatened him?
Only one thing was certain.
It was too late to do anything about Rami.
But he could do something about the child. Raise him to be the man Rami might have been.
And he could do something about Rami’s woman.
He could never touch her again.
Never, Karim told himself, and he turned his face to the window as the plane gained speed and altitude until, at last, the glittering lights far below were no more substantial than a mirage.
CHAPTER SIX
RACHEL was shaking with anger.
Bad enough the Sheikh had walked into her life and seized control of it.
Ordering her around. Making assumptions.
And this. Man-handling her as if—as if she existed for his pleasure.
She knew what he thought of her.
Rami had treated Suki like a slave. Bring me this, hand me that, don’t argue when I say something …
He’d tried that with her, too, but it hadn’t worked.
“Maybe that’s how men deal with women where you come from,” she’d told him, “but this is America.”
America. Where a woman like her wore a costume that made her look like a whore because management said she had to. Where a man judged her by the damned costume, or maybe by the belief that she’d been his brother’s mistress.
She’d told him she hadn’t been Rami’s mistress. He hadn’t believed her. Now she wanted to tell him she hadn’t been his lover, either.
She wanted to say, I’d sooner have lived on the streets than have slept with your horrible brother.
But she couldn’t say it. She had to play out this charade because all that mattered was Ethan.
Okay. She had to calm down. Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Take another …
“Goddammit,” she said.
How could she calm down? How?
“You gotta go with the flow,” Mama had always said.
Mama hadn’t just gone with the flow, she’d ridden it like a surfer on a wave.
Rachel snorted.
Mama used to say a lot of things. Folksy crap. Stupid nonsense.
Not so stupid anymore.
Go with the flow. And that other old bromide.
“First impressions count.”
That had always made Rachel cringe, because Mama had probably said it a hundred times, always in a cheery voice, always as she stood in front of a mirror primping for her first date with the latest jowly, sweaty-faced fool who’d come sniffing at her heels.
Turned out Mama had been right about that, too. First impressions did count. The Sheikh had judged her on how she’d looked. And she’d hadn’t helped the situation, letting him bark out commands—
Letting him kiss her in the bathroom and kiss her again, here on his plane. Sure, she’d fought back, but then—but then—
Come on, Rachel. Be honest, at least with yourself.
She’d fought about as hard as a poker player fought against ending up with a Royal Flush.
He’d kissed her.
And after a token kind of resistance she’d kissed him back.
That was the awful truth.
He was every miserable thing a man could be. Too rich, too good-looking, too egotistical to tolerate. Dammit, he was a man, and that was enough.
Until he’d kissed her and her brain had turned to mush.
How could such a thing have happened?
Yes, he was good-looking. Hell, what he was, was sexy.
But she wasn’t into sexy.
She wasn’t into sex.
She wasn’t into anything that might interfere with the life she wanted, the life she’d been planning ever since she woke up in a lumpy bed in a cheap room in Pocatello, Idaho, the morning of her seventeenth birthday. Sixteen-year-old Suki had been asleep next to her, mouth hanging open, each exhalation stinking of beer.
“Mama?” Rachel remembered saying, with a kind of awful premonition.
She’d sat up, pushed away the thin blanket—and had seen the birthday card propped on the table near the bed. A big, garish thing with purple and yellow balloons drawn all over it.
Happy Birthday! it said.
Inside were two crisp twenty dollar bills. And a note.
