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His words hurt.
Exhaling slowly, trying to stop the rush of pain, she got to her feet, took a step, and then another, until she was walking around the pool. For several minutes she just made herself move. It was easier when she was moving not to feel so much. Not to hurt so much. Easier to work through his bruising disdain.
And then finally, when she’d walked herself to a place of quiet and calm, she was able to tell herself that the sheikh had overreacted.
It was a kiss, just a kiss, nothing more. He might be upset but there had been no great impropriety. They hadn’t undressed, they weren’t lying down, hadn’t touched intimately.
And yet …
She stopped, ran a hand along her neck and down to the valley between her breasts. It had been a hot, explosive kiss. A kiss that had seared her, burned her, made her understand what she wanted from a man.
Hunger. Fire. Passion. All the things she’d been taught to believe were bad, wicked … and yet when she was in his arms, it hadn’t felt wicked. It had felt sweet.
She’d felt good. Beautiful and strong and lovely. Emmeline rarely felt lovely. The world heralded her as her generation’s great beauty but she didn’t feel beautiful. She’d never felt like anything special until just now …
Biting her lip, she turned away, confused. Conflicted.
How could something that felt so good be wrong?
When she’d been in Makin’s arms she hadn’t felt any shame, any guilt, nothing but pleasure. And she refused to feel shame now. She wouldn’t let the kiss become ugly, wouldn’t let the dizzying pleasure turn to disgust.
Swallowing hard, she smoothed the silky chiffon hem of her dress over the heated skin of her upper thigh. Just the whisper of fabric against her sensitive skin made her insides turn over and her breasts tighten as she was flooded with another scalding rush of desire.
This is how good girls go bad, she thought ruefully, slipping one gold high-heeled sandal off, and then the other. This is how eligible ladies ruined their chances. Not on men like Alejandro, men who kissed too hard with their jaws and tongues, but men like Makin who could make a woman feel wonderful and beautiful inside and out.
And even though Makin Al-Koury had hurt her after with his harsh rejection, the kiss itself had been amazing.
The kiss had made her feel amazing. As though she’d actually mattered.
Smiling wistfully, she picked up the shoes by the thin gold straps and rose. Leaning across the table, Emmeline blew out the candles, one by one, and then, shoes in hand, headed into Hannah’s apartment.
She was sliding the glass doors closed when the doorbell chimed. Had Makin returned?
“Good evening, Miss Smith,” the uniformed kitchen staff greeted her as she opened the door. “Sheikh Al-Koury is taking his dinner in his own room, but said you’d want something to eat.”
Emmeline’s smile slipped.
That was the moment she remembered that the kiss, so good and melting and bittersweet, hadn’t been meant for her. Makin thought he’d kissed Hannah Smith.
The kiss—the one he’d regretted—had been for Hannah. But if he regretted kissing Hannah, his perfect secretary, how would he react if he knew he’d kissed Emmeline d’Arcy, the princess he despised?
Emmeline choked back a strangled laugh. Her eyes stung and burned. She swallowed once and again. And then she did what she’d been taught to do her entire life—she arranged her features into a formal but polite smile—and graciously thanked the kind kitchen staff for bringing her dinner.
That kiss, he thought, that kiss …
It was two-thirty in the morning and Makin was still up, his thoughts unusually chaotic, and he climbed from bed, giving up the illusion of trying to sleep.
He was angry he’d kissed her, angry with himself, angry with his loss of control.
He never lost control.
And that kiss.
It threatened to change everything. It had made him feel things he didn’t feel. Hadn’t thought he could feel. Holding her, tasting her had been intoxicating. He’d felt like someone else. Someone different.
He’d felt.
And suddenly he didn’t want to send her away, on to London and a new position, but he wanted to keep her here, for him, with him. Not as his assistant but as his woman.
But he had a woman. He had Madeline. And until tonight he’d been happy with her as his mistress.
Had been, he silently repeated, brow furrowing, his expression darkening as he paced the length of his bedroom once and again.
Why was he so tempted by Hannah? Was Madeline not enough for him anymore?
Skin hot, emotions hotter, Makin opened the tall glass doors and walked out onto his balcony. Moonlight turned the garden below silver and white. A fountain splashed and he leaned against the elegant iron railing, aware that his attraction to Hannah was stronger than anything he’d ever felt for Madeline or Jenny or any woman in years.
But then, he’d always deliberately chosen beautiful women who were cool and calm … composed. His mistresses accommodated him, never challenging him or disturbing his focus.
Everything about Hannah disturbed his focus.
He shouldn’t like it, shouldn’t allow it. He’d never wanted fire or intensity with his women before. He was too practical. He wanted convenience, companionship and satisfaction. And he had all that with Madeline. When in Nadir he saw her two, maybe three times, a week. If she chafed at their limited time together, she never said so. She greeted him with smiles and easy warmth, and there was never pressure to be anything but present. It was enough. Enough for her, enough for him.
He liked their routine in Nadir. He’d join her around nine or ten in the evening. They’d have dinner, a little conversation, sex, and then he’d return home. He never stayed the night. He never wanted to. And it was the kind of relationship that worked for him.
What kind of mistress would Hannah be? He pictured installing her in a beautiful house overlooking the royal gardens in Nadir, pictured working all day then going to her at night. Pictured her opening the door, wearing something orange and filmy, or perhaps a sleek black satin evening gown with a thigh-high slit up the front. Makin hardened.
He wouldn’t want dinner. Or talk. He’d want her. Immediately. He’d want to take her there in the hall, slip his hands beneath the fabric and find her soft sensitive skin and make her shudder and whimper against him.
And then he’d want her again in the bedroom, beneath him on the bed, pale thighs parted, her breasts rising and falling as he rose up over her, plunging slowly, deeply into her, filling her, making her cry out his name.
Body aching, shaft throbbing, Makin turned, leaned against the railing and gazed into his bedroom glowing with yellow light, wishing Hannah were in his bed now. He wanted her now. Needed her, needed release.
His hand slipped down his belly, reaching into his loose pajama pants to grip his heavy erection. He palmed himself once, twice, his grip firm as he pictured her blue eyes, the curve of her lips, the firmness of her breasts and the ripeness of her hips and ass.
He would take her from behind, and then flip her over, and take her again, this time drawing her down onto his shaft so that he could watch her face as he made her come.
He wanted to make her come. He wanted to make her come over and over.
Madness.
This was exactly why he had to send her away. He didn’t want to feel this much for a woman, didn’t want to become emotionally involved. He had a job to do, a plan for his future, a plan that didn’t include sex in hallways and restless nights and hot, erotic thoughts.
He liked cool women, cool, calm, sophisticated women. Women who didn’t provoke or challenge or arouse him to the point he couldn’t think or sleep.
As she had tonight.
He’d been with Madeline for three years and yet he’d never once lost sleep thinking of her. But tonight he felt absolutely obsessed with Hannah.
Thank God she’d be gone in the morning.
The sun poured through his office window, casting a glare on the computer screen, making his eyes burn.
Makin felt like hell.
It had been a rough night. A long night. He’d ended up going to bed just hours ago, and then sleeping badly, and now he was back at his desk at seven drinking cup after cup of coffee, hoping to wake up, gain some clarity and, with any luck, shake his sense of guilt and shame.
He’d treated Hannah badly last night and he was still angry with himself for losing control, for allowing lust and desire to cloud his thinking. He shouldn’t have kissed her, shouldn’t have reached for her, but that wasn’t her fault. It was his.
He’d apologize to her later, just before he put her in the limousine on the way to the airstrip. And then he’d move forward. He wouldn’t look back.
It was good. Everything was good. Hannah would be off after breakfast, his guests would arrive midafternoon, and he had sorted out his priorities.
Ringing for a fresh pot of coffee, Makin woke up his computer and checked the headlines of the various international papers for world news. He usually devoted an hour to reading his preferred papers every morning, and was reading the online version of The New York Times when he came across a link with the heading Argentine Polo Star in Fatal Crash.
Alejandro’s accident had finally hit the newswire.
Curious to see if there was an update on Alejandro’s condition, Makin clicked on the link and pulled up the article. He skimmed the piece but the article didn’t cover anything new.
Makin looked at the three photos accompanying the story next. The first was one of Ibanez on his horse on the field, one posing with his team at the recent Palm Beach tournament, and one in which Alejandro was snapped talking with the Princess Emmeline of Brabant.
He ignored the first two photos, intrigued by the last. It was a recent photo, he saw, taken a week ago in Palm Beach at the polo tournament he’d hosted and Hannah had organized.
It wasn’t the most flattering photo of either Ibanez or the princess, and Makin suspected they probably weren’t even aware they were being photographed. Alejandro looked angry and the princess was in tears. It didn’t require a lot of imagination to figure out what the fight was about. Perhaps the princess had discovered that there were other women? Women like Penelope. Women like Hannah.
Thinking about Hannah, Makin clicked on the photo, enlarging it. He felt a flicker of unease as he studied the princess.
She looked far too familiar, as if he knew her, but how could that be? He’d only been in the same room with Princess Emmeline once and yet looking at this picture, he felt as if he knew her … intimately.
Impossible.
He studied the photo intently, drawn by Emmeline’s eyes and her expression.
He knew that expression. He knew those eyes.
His uneasiness increased.
He copied and pasted the photo onto his desktop and enlarged the picture once more, studying it carefully, analyzing the princess’s slender frame, the tilt to her head, the twist of her lips.
She was clearly desperately unhappy. And while that wasn’t his problem—the princess was most definitely not his problem—he recognized that face. It was the face he’d seen all night in his troubled dreams.
Hannah’s.
A thought came, unbidden, and it made him even more uncomfortable than before.
Holding his breath, Makin opened the photo folder on his computer, pulled up the photo taken in Tokyo last year at a business dinner. It was a photo of Hannah accepting a ceremonial kimono. The shot had been taken at an angle, just like the photo of the princess talking to Ibanez. Hannah’s hair had been pulled back in a low ponytail, much like the princess’s chignon at the polo match.
He enlarged Hannah’s photo and dragged it next to the shot of the princess.
The resemblance was uncanny. Their profiles were so similar. The chin, nose, brow. Even the eye color. Change the hair color, and they could be the same. Maybe identical. And to think they’d come so close to meeting each other in Palm Beach. They’d both been there at the polo field … they’d both attended Sunday.
Could they … could Hannah be.
No. No. It was too incredible, too impossible. People didn’t switch places … that was a ludicrous idea, something that only happened in Hollywood movies.
And yet, when he glanced from the photo of Emmeline to the one of Hannah and back again, comparing the faces, the profiles, the lavender-blue eyes, he thought, It could be done.
Change the hair, swap the clothes, mask the accents and Hannah and the princess could easily pass for each other. Makin was rarely truly shocked by anything but he was blown away now. Dumbfounded, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared through narrowed eyes at the computer screen.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? Why hadn’t he picked up on the differences … the changes? Hannah’s sudden extreme thinness. Her fragile beauty. The emotion in her eyes.
Hannah, the Hannah with him here in Raha right now, wasn’t Hannah at all. She was Princess Emmeline d’Arcy, the twenty-five-year-old royal from Brabant engaged to King Zale Patek of Raguva.
Which meant he hadn’t kissed Hannah, but Princess Emmeline.
It hadn’t been Hannah who had captured his imagination and turned him on, it was Emmeline.
It was Emmeline he’d wanted. Emmeline who had created a night of hot, erotic thoughts.
Unbelievable.
He drummed his fingers on the desk.
Unthinkable.
He didn’t know what game she was playing, but he’d soon find out.
Unforgivable.
He slapped his hand down hard on the desk and got to his feet. Time he paid a call on the princess.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_e80e84b5-a0a3-5681-9360-2eb1c80b7b4d)
EMMELINE answered the knock on her door, hoping against hope it was breakfast as she’d rung for eggs and toast a half hour ago, but it wasn’t anyone from the kitchen on her doorstep. It was Makin Al-Koury, looking elegant and polished, if a tad forbidding in his black trousers and black shirt.
He must have just showered and shaved because his dark hair still gleamed, the skin on his bronze jaw was taut and smooth and she caught a whiff of his spicy sandalwood cologne. “You’re up early,” she said, her pulse racing, her stomach a knot of nerves.
“We’re usually working by seven-thirty,” he answered. “You’ve been taking it easy and sleeping in.”
There was something rather chilling about his smile this morning and her heart faltered and plummeted, making a dramatic swan dive right to her feet.
Locking her knees, she forced herself to look up and meet his gaze head-on. His eyes were light and glacier-cool, like mist rising office.
Last night the kiss had felt so good, but now, in the clear light of day, she knew it had been a dreadful mistake. Sheikh Makin Al-Koury was too big, too powerful, and far from civilized. He might have millions and billions of euros, and expensive toys and homes scattered across the globe, but that didn’t make him easy, or comfortable or approachable.
“No wonder you’re sending me away. I’ve become unforgivably lazy,” she answered lightly, forcing a smile as she placed an unsteady hand over the narrow waistband of her ivory lace skirt, hoping he’d be fooled by her bravado.
“No one can be perfect all the time.” He smiled at her. “How are you this morning?”
