скачать книгу бесплатно
Gone for a little vacation with Lou! You girls be good until I send for you!
Luv you!
Lou had been Mama’s latest “beau.” That was what she always called her men-friends. She’d gone on “little vacations” before. A weekend. A few days. One scary time, when Rachel was ten and Suki was nine, she’d gone off for an entire week.
That morning in Pocatello Rachel had told herself that Mama would be back.
It never happened.
After three weeks she’d found a night job at Walmart but it hadn’t been enough to pay for their miserable room and put food in their bellies.
So she’d quit school.
One more year until she’d have had her diploma. It had killed her to walk away, but what choice had there been? She’d had to work to support herself and her sister.
“You stay in school, Suki,” she’d told her. “You hear me? One of us in going to graduate!”
In August, Rachel had moved the two of them to a bigger furnished room in a safer neighborhood. She’d used her Walmart discount for Suki’s school supplies and bought their clothes at Goodwill.
Suki wouldn’t wear them.
“Holy crap, how can you wear somebody’s old stuff?” she’d demanded. “And you’re wasting your money, buying me school stuff. I’m not going to go no more.”
When the first snow fell they got a card from Mama. She was in Hollywood. She knew someone who knew someone who was making a movie. She was going to get a part in it.
And then I’ll send for my girls!
More exclamation marks. More lies. They’d never heard from her again.
Or maybe they had. There was no way to know because by January Idaho was nothing but a memory.
Suki had taken off. No goodbyes, no explanations. Just a note.
See you, it said.
Just like Mama, except Mama had left those twenties. Suki had emptied the sugar bowl of the fifty bucks Rachel had kept in it.
Rachel moved to Bismarck, North Dakota. Took a job as a waitress. Moved to Minneapolis. Took another job wait-ressing. A couple more stops and she’d ended up in a Little Rock, Arkansas, diner.
Bad food, grungy customers, lousy tips.
“There’s got to be somewhere better than this,” she’d muttered one night, after a guy walked out without paying his bill, much less leaving a tip.
“Dallas is lots better,” the other girl working the night shift had said.
Right, Rachel thought now, swallowing a bitter laugh. And after Dallas came Albuquerque, and after that Phoenix.
Rachel had seen more than her share of the West.
Then Suki had called. Told her about Las Vegas.
In some ways Vegas had been an improvement. When customers were happy because they’d won at the slots they left decent tips. And once she’d swallowed her pride and taken the job she had now the tips had got even better.
She’d started taking classes at the university, planned a better life for herself, and then for herself and Ethan …
What time was it, anyway?
She wasn’t sure what time they’d left Las Vegas. Ten, eleven o’clock—something around there. They were moving fast but there was no feeling of motion, no sense that they were miles above the earth, going from one time zone to another.
Could that be disorienting? Could it explain …
No. There’d been no plane, no soaring through the sky that first time the Sheikh had kissed her.
Nothing but the man himself. The taste of him. The feel of him. The heat and hardness of his body.
It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t into what Suki called “hooking up.”
It drove Suki crazy
“My sister, the saint,” she’d sneered when Rachel had caught her drinking Southern Comfort after she knew she was pregnant. “Such a good girl. Always flosses. Always eats her veggies. Never gets laid.”
Rachel had snatched the bottle from Suki’s hand and dumped the whiskey into the sink.
“A little screwing would make you more human,” Suki had yelled after her.
No, Rachel had thought, it wouldn’t. It would just mark her as her mother’s daughter.
Sex had been her mother’s addiction. Her sister’s.
Not hers.
Sex was a trap. It robbed you of common sense, and for what? A few minutes of pleasure, or so she’d heard women say. She had no idea if that was true or not. She’d tried being with a man once or twice and all she’d ended up feeling was even more alone.
She didn’t need men, didn’t need sex, didn’t need anything or anyone. Well, except for Ethan. Other than the baby, she was content to be alone.
She was a cool-headed woman who thought things through. A pragmatist. A survivor.
And that was why she’d defeat the Sheikh at this game.
She was not handing control of her life to him.
She was not giving up her baby.
Rachel rose to her feet.
Half a dozen steps took her to the alcove where Ethan slept in his carrier. The flight attendant was sleeping, too; she sensed Rachel’s presence and jerked awake.
“What can I get you, miss?” she said quickly. “Something to eat, perhaps? There are sandwiches, fruit, coffee—”
“Nothing, thank you. I just wanted to see how my baby’s doing.”
“Oh. He’s fine. I changed him a while ago, fed him—”
“Yes. That’s great. I’m just going to take him back to my seat with me.”
Rachel picked up the carrier, took it down the aisle. It was impossible not to see Karim but her gaze swept over him without their eyes making contact.
He didn’t even know she was there.
He was talking on his cell phone. She heard a couple of words. “Suite.” “Accommodations for an infant.” Nothing more than that.
She sat down, put Ethan’s carrier on the seat next to hers, took a soft throw blanket from another seat and draped it over her lap.
She was cold. And, yes, she was hungry. But she didn’t want the Sheikh’s food.
What she wanted was to know his next move.
A stop at a law office or a laboratory, at this hour of the night?
She didn’t think so.
She thought about what she’d heard him say. “Suite.” “Accommodations for an infant.”
He was making hotel arrangements.
A suite for Ethan and her. A gilded cage where he could keep them prisoner while he arranged for that damned DNA test.
Until this minute she hadn’t had time to think about the test. Or tests. What would testing involve?
Some of Rami’s DNA, obviously. Easy enough to come by a strand of hair, she supposed, for a brother.
What if he wanted a DNA sample from her? She couldn’t imagine why he would. He’d never questioned whether or not she was Ethan’s mother, but what if he did? She knew little about DNA tests, only what she’d picked up from television and movies. Was her DNA the same as Suki’s? Was it at least similar enough to establish the baby as hers?
What if it wasn’t?
Bad enough that the test would confirm Rami as his father, but if it didn’t confirm her as his mother—
She couldn’t wait to find out.
She had to run. She’d failed the first time. But she wouldn’t fail again.
She’d be as devious as her enemy.
He was putting her in a hotel. He wouldn’t leave her on her own; he’d leave her with watchers. Flunkies to make sure she stayed put like an obedient dog.
Oh, she could read him like a book. But she had the one thing he didn’t.
Street-smarts.
If he left a guy in her suite, she’d put on an act of desperation.
I need diapers right away, she’d say. The baby’s made an awful mess!
That would get her watcher out the door.
And she’d take Ethan and run. Not to the lobby, because the Sheikh might have somebody there, too.
No problem. She’d worked in enough hotels to know there were other ways out. Fire exits. Delivery entrances. Basements.
When the Sheikh came for Ethan and her in the morning, all he’d find was an empty suite. And a note.
For the first time in hours Rachel almost smiled.
Goodbye notes were a Donnelly family tradition.
Several rows back, Karim watched Rachel through narrowed eyes.
He was good at reading body language. Years in the stuffy formality of the palace, followed by years of negotiating multi-million-dollar deals with some of the world’s toughest opponents, had given him that ability.
For the past hour he’d been reading hers.
For a long time she’d sat stiffly in her seat, her body almost quivering with anger.
She hated him for that kiss.
At first he’d been a heartbeat away from marching up the aisle, hauling her into his arms and carrying her to the small private bedroom in the rear of the cabin.
Two minutes alone and he’d damned well show her that he had not forced that kiss on her, that whatever dark and dangerous thing was happening between them involved her as much as him.
Thank God, sanity had prevailed.
He’d calmed down. So had she. Her shoulders had relaxed, if only a little, and then she’d gone to collect the child.
He’d watched her come down the aisle again, head up, eyes cold as they raked over his face.
Do not even think of touching me, that look had said, but he wouldn’t have anyway.
The sight of the baby had reminded him of what this was about—that taking her to New York had nothing to do with her or him; it had to do with Rami.
If the child was his brother’s, then it was also his.
He owed it to the boy.
Maybe he owed it to Rami, too.
What he’d thought about earlier, that maybe, just maybe, he’d missed the opportunity to help his brother turn his life around, had set him thinking.
Doing right by Rami’s son would go a long way toward doing right by Rami. It would leave a far better legacy than all those bills and chits.
