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The baby was awake, looking at him through his brother’s long-lashed blue eyes. Karim shook his head and put his finger to his lips.
“Shh.”
Wrong comment. The child’s mouth trembled. He made a little sound, not quite a cry but very close. Karim shook his head again.
“No,” he whispered. “Don’t. You must let Rachel sleep.”
The child’s mouth turned down. His small face darkened. Karim moved fast, lifted him carefully from the curve of Rachel’s arm and walked quickly into the sitting room.
Now what?
What did you do with a crying child? For that matter, what did you do with one that was not crying?
The boy blew a noisy bubble. Karim looked at him. What the hell did a bubble mean?
“Bzzzt,” the kid said.
Karim cleared his throat. He needed a translator.
Little hands waved. Small feet kicked. The round face screwed up.
“Okay,” Karim said quickly. “How about we, ah, we go downstairs for a while?”
Down the stairs they went.
The baby began to make little noises. Not happy ones.
“I don’t know what you want,” Karim said desperately.
God help him if it was a bottle of formula or, worse still, a diaper change.
The living room was lighter now; dawn was touching the soaring towers of the city. Karim went to one of the big, arched windows.
“Look,” he said. “It’s going to be a sunny day.”
More little noises. Karim had a yacht that sounded like that when it started up. Well, no. Not the yacht. The motor-boat that could be launched from it—
“Naaah. Naaah. Naaah.”
“Shh,” Karim said frantically …
Hell.
The kid was crying. Hard. Genuine tears were rolling down his plump cheeks. Karim looked for something to use to wipe them away. Dammit, how come he hadn’t thought to put on a T-shirt?
“Don’t cry,” he said. Carefully, he swiped a finger along the baby’s cheeks. A little hand grabbed his finger, dragged it to the rosebud mouth.
The noise stopped.
The tears stopped.
Teething. The kid was teething on his finger.
Karim smiled. He sat down in the corner of one of the curved living room sofas. Put his feet up on the teak and glass coffee table. Carefully arranged himself so there was a throw pillow behind him.
The kid was chomping away. And—thank you, God—this time the sounds he made were obviously ones of satisfaction.
“Good, huh?” Karim said softly.
That won him a bubbly smile. Karim smiled back. The kid was cute, if you liked kids. He didn’t. Well, no. That wasn’t true. He didn’t dislike them.
He’d just never spent any time around one.
The kid smelled good, too. Something soft. Not lemony, like Rachel; this was a smell even a man who knew zero about children would automatically associate with babies.
The baby cooed. Smiled around Karim’s finger. Karim grinned. And yawned.
The baby yawned, too.
The curving lashes drooped.
“That’s it, kid,” Karim said softly. “Time to call it a night. You doze off; I’ll take you back to Rachel …”
Ethan’s lashes fell against his cheeks and didn’t lift again.
Karim’s did the same.
A moment later, man and baby were sound asleep.
Karim woke abruptly, the baby still in his arms.
Asleep.
An excellent idea. Karim was desperate to do the same thing. Sleep for another couple of hours, then phone his P.A. and tell her to cancel his appointments for the day.
Why not? The guy from Tokyo, the one from India, both could wait until he’d finished dealing with Rami’s affairs and had a clear head.
Rami’s affairs, he thought, his mouth thinning. That was certainly what Vegas had been all about—his dead brother’s affair with a dancer, a stripper, whatever Rachel Donnelly was.
She was also a mother.
A good mother. Hell, an excellent one, from what he’d seen. Responsible. Caring. Determined.
It was surprising that Rami would have been attracted to such a woman. Party girls with boobs bigger than their brains had always been his type.
Not that Rachel lacked anything in that department.
Her breasts, all of her that he’d seen in that quick encounter in her bathroom, were lush and female …
And how many times had he told himself to stop thinking such things, dammit? Because what Rachel was or was not had nothing to do with him or what he had to do next.
Karim got to his feet, carried the baby back to the guest suite. Rachel was still curled in the big chair, asleep.
She looked incredibly beautiful. And innocent.
Amazing how deceiving looks could be.
Amazing how he hungered for her.
He turned away, carefully lowered the baby into the crib, pulled up the blanket, started from the room …
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
He went back to the crib, leaned into it and lightly stroked the boy’s soft fair curls.
“Sleep well, little one,” he whispered, and then, before he could succumb to the insane desire to go to Rachel and do the same thing, he strode out of the suite, down the corridor to his own rooms, phoned his P.A.—but not to cancel his appointments.
To make more of them.
He’d neglected business for far too long.
Besides, work would clear his head, he told himself as he made a second call, this one to his lawyer, and a third, to the testing laboratory, and cancelled both meetings.
Then he stripped off his sweatpants, got into the shower and let the water beat down on him,
Those things could wait. A day, two—even three.
Putting them off had nothing to do with Rachel.
Nothing at all.
Down the hall, in the guest suite, Rachel, who had awakened as Karim entered the room, opened her eyes only when she was sure he’d gone.
Nothing made sense.
Not the fact that the stern Sheikh had apparently been caring for Ethan while she slept, or that he’d handled the baby with something that could only be defined as tenderness.
And it certainly didn’t make sense that as she’d watched him from under her lashes she’d thought what it would be like if he came to her, touched her with those big, gentle hands …
“Fool,” she whispered, and she rose to her feet.
It was time to start the day.
And to start planning her escape.
Except escape wasn’t possible. There were always eyes on her.
Karim had a household staff.
Rachel knew that he’d told them something about her.
She had no idea what he’d said, but when she appeared in the kitchen that first morning, Ethan in her arms, a bosomy woman with flour-dusted hands had turned from the stove, a polite smile on her lips.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Mrs. Jensen, the Sheikh’s cook.”
And I’m the Sheikh’s prisoner, Rachel wanted to say, but she didn’t of course, she simply kept her expression neutral,
Karim was the enemy. So, then, was anyone he employed.
“And this is little Ethan. Oh, His Highness was right! He’s a beautiful child.”
Rachel was surprised.
“Is that what he said?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. He told us the baby was—”
“Us?”
“Ah.” Mrs. Jensen wiped her hands on her apron and pressed a button on the wall phone. “Sorry, ma’am. Prince Karim asked me to be sure and introduce you to the others.”
“What others?”
“Why, the rest of the household staff. There’s me. And the housekeeper, Mrs. Lopez. The prince’s driver—well, you met him at the airport last night. And we’ve an addition. My granddaughter Roberta. She’ll be here within the hour. To help with the baby,” the cook added, when she saw the puzzled look on Rachel’s face.
“I don’t need any help with my baby,” Rachel said quickly, drawing Ethan closer.
“You’ll like Roberta, ma’am. She’s a professional nanny and she adores babies.”
“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of Ethan myself.”
“Of course you are, Ms. Donnelly. But His Highness asked if my Roberta was available—just, you know, just to help you.”
“To keep an eye on me, you mean,” Rachel said coldly.
“No, ma’am. Certainly not. To help you, is all.” The cook’s tone was indignant. “He knows my Roberta’s an excellent nanny.”
Rachel’s voice turned frigid. “Oh, yes,” she said, the words heavy with sarcasm. “He’d surely know that.”
Mrs. Jensen eyed her with distaste.
“His Highness put Roberta through school, Ms. Donnelly. She’d floundered a bit and he paid for her to have a tutor, and then for her college tuition, until she decided she wanted to work with little ones, so he sent her to a school for nannies.”
“Because?”
“I don’t understand your question, ma’am.”
“Why would he do all that?”
