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He had overpowered her.
Not just physically.
Mentally.
How else to explain that infinitesimal moment when his mouth had gentled on hers, when his touch had eased and she—and she—
Rachel swallowed dryly.
Never mind that.
His actions had all been deliberate. Terrifying her with a display of strength, the old I-am-Tarzan-you-are-Jane thing.
She knew how that went.
It was a typical male ploy.
The men she dealt with when she waited tables. The ones who were her bosses now in the casino. The players. They were the worst of all. They tossed around their money, showed off their power, stank of cologne …
He hadn’t.
Karim.
The Sheikh. The Prince. Whatever he liked to call himself.
No cologne on him. Just the clean scent of himself. The hot scent of a man who wanted a woman
And yet he’d let her go.
Rami would not have done that.
She’d always sensed it in him, the need to dominate, to take what he wanted and to hell with anyone else …
Rachel thrust her fingers into her wet hair and drove it back from her face.
She wasn’t dealing with Rami; she was dealing with his brother—and now that she’d had a minute to think, she could see that the brother was a much more wily adversary.
She understood what he’d done. Taken her in a deep, hard kiss and then suddenly turned it into something that was soft, seductive and almost tender.
He’d wanted to confuse her. And he had. That last instant when he’d been kissing her, when she—when she’d had some kind of response to the feel of his mouth on hers …
No. No!
Rachel took a deep breath.
She hadn’t responded. Not the way he’d wanted. Her reaction had been intuitive. Instinctive. Whatever you wanted to call it.
The I-can-survive-anything woman who lived inside her had taken her straight to automatic pilot.
Let the kiss happen. Stop struggling. That was all she’d done.
She wasn’t like Suki.
Money, power, good looks didn’t turn her on.
Rachel rose to her feet. She felt better. In fact, she felt fine. Strong. In control.
She even had a plan. Well, a plan of sorts.
And she was wasting precious time, dissecting the ugly little scene as if it mattered when she knew that it didn’t.
Karim, the Sheikh of All he Surveyed, would be back.
She didn’t have any doubt about it.
Her make-up bag was on a shelf over the sink. Quickly, she opened it, opened the tiny medicine cabinet, swept lipsticks, mascara, eyeliner, aspirin, everything that was there straight inside.
Of course he’d be back, she thought as she pulled a comb through her hair, then secured it in a ponytail.
The man was a lot of things but he was far from stupid.
She knew that he’d seen straight through her lies. Not the one she’d acted out, as if she’d kissed him back when she damned well hadn’t.
The other lie. The bigger one.
Not admitting that Ethan was his brother’s child.
He knew that he was.
She’d seen it in his cold-as-ice eyes. He didn’t have proof yet. That was the only reason he hadn’t pushed the conversation further—but he knew.
What he didn’t know, couldn’t possibly know and absolutely must never know, was that Ethan was not hers.
On the face of it—with Suki gone who knew where and Rami dead—she had as much of a claim to the baby as the Sheikh.
She was his aunt.
He was his uncle.
It should have been a draw—but it wasn’t. He had unimaginable wealth. She worried about next month’s rent. He had power over a kingdom. She had the power to choose which shift she worked at the casino.
Rachel hurried into the bedroom, pulled open dresser drawers, yanked on a bra and panties, T-shirt, jeans, socks and sneakers.
She had to get out of town, and fast.
The baby was still sleeping. Thank God for small favors. She’d let him sleep until she was ready to leave …
Her breath caught.
The door. The front door. Maybe the Sheikh had only slammed it shut to fool her. Maybe he was still here. And even if he’d left, so what?
He had that damned key.
She flew through the tiny apartment, breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the living room was empty, secured the lock, grabbed a wooden chair from beside a rickety table and jammed it under the knob.
Let him try and get past that.
A sheikh. A prince. An egotistical anachronism who thought the world had stood still for the last few hundred years and that he could do anything he wanted.
Anything.
Like take her baby.
“Wrong,” Rachel said aloud as she went back to Ethan. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Dead wrong.”
The baby was hers.
Nobody was going to take him from her.
By now, Ethan was awake and fretful. He’d been out of sorts lately; there was a tiny pale spot visible in his pink gums where he was cutting his very first tooth.
Ordinarily she’d have taken him in her arms, settled into the old rocker she’d bought at a Goodwill thrift shop and talked to him—he liked being talked to—but time was a priority now.
“Hey, little man,” she cooed as she leaned over the crib, “guess what we’re going to do?”
The look he gave her—mouth down-curved, eyes scrunched—said that he didn’t much care. Rachel plucked a soft plastic teething ring from the foot of the crib and held it out. The baby’s plump fingers closed around the ring and brought it to his mouth.
Good.
She’d bought a few minutes of peace. That was all she needed.
Her suitcase was in the rear of the closet. She took the case out, tossed it on the bed and unzipped it.
Okay.
She packed another pair of jeans. A handful of Ts. Bras. Panties. Socks. A sweater. A zippered hoodie. It all went into the suitcase.
“Ta-da,” she told Ethan, still chomping on the brightly colored teething ring. “See how quick that was? Now it’s your turn. Any thoughts about what you feel like wearing for our trip? You mean I didn’t tell you the surprise? We’re going traveling. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
The baby made a rude sound.
“Okay. Maybe not.” Rachel pulled open the drawers that held Ethan’s clothes. Sleepers. Onesies. Socks. Tiny shirts and sweaters, a pair of grown-up-looking overalls she hadn’t been able to resist. “I admit I used to hate it when Mama told me we were going on a trip. She’d take us out of school, Suki and me, just when we’d finally settled in.” What else? Diapers, of course. A couple of crib blankets. “Well, I’ll never do that to you, little guy. I promise.” What was she forgetting? Ah. Formula. Bottles. Little jars of strained fruits and veggies. A quick detour to the kitchen, then back to the bedroom. “I’ll find us a place where we can settle down and have a garden and maybe even a kitten.”
Rachel paused.
Was that even anywhere near true?
Her mother had run from bill collectors and scandal, but somehow or other those things had always managed to find her anyway.
This was different.
She was running from a prince with the resources of the world at his fingertips.
Rachel shuddered. She wasn’t going to think about that now.
Other things were more vital.
Should she head for the airport and blow a stack of cash on a plane ticket, or head for the bus terminal and the first bus out of town?
No contest.
The airport.
She could get away faster and farther, and speed and distance were of paramount importance.
She’d put half her money on a ticket to wherever, half in reserve for when she and Ethan got there. She had a credit card, too. It was pristine; she’d kept it for emergencies and if this wasn’t an emergency, what was?
She’d go as far from Vegas and Rami’s brother as that combination of cash and credit would take her. San Francisco, maybe. Or Biloxi, where there were riverboat casinos.
Then she’d get a room, a cheap one, and give herself a couple of days to figure out her next step.
“Ffft,” Ethan said.
It made her laugh. Her baby could always do that; he was the one bit of joy she could count on.
“Well, maybe,” she said, “but at least it’s a plan.”
Not much of a plan, but it was a start.
Suki had always teased her about what she’d called “Rachel’s obsession with planning” but without some kind of blueprint you could end up like Mama or Suki or half the women in this town.
And that—being kept, living on a man’s largesse, being a … a possession—was never, ever going to happen to her.
As for leaving Las Vegas …
She was ready. More than ready.
Vegas had never been more than a stop on the road to something better. She’d only come here after Suki had called, babbling with excitement as she told her that two of the casinos were hiring new dealers.
“It’s a great job,” Suki had said. “They’ll train you and then you can make a lot of money.”
Maybe once. Not anymore. The economy was in the toilet. The need for new dealers had gone with it. Rachel had ended up waiting tables, then working the room at the casino—and wondering how she could have been so stupid as to have listened to her sister.
For one thing, if anybody had been hiring dealers why hadn’t Suki applied?
For another, Suki hadn’t bothered mentioning that she was living week-to-week in a furnished room.
The real reason she’d wanted Rachel to come west was because she’d known Rachel would be resourceful, find a job and an apartment, and she could move in.
