sighed. “No, it would have been a whole lot easier to deal with if he had been. To make a long, sad story short, a month before the wedding Bart met my younger sister, Annette, for the first time. It was a classic case of love at first sight for them both. Bart married her instead of me.”
Driven by a need to console her, Hassan reached out and pulled Kali’s slender body against his, holding her comfortingly close.
“That must have been rough,” he finally said.
Kali closed her eyes as she savored the feel of his hard body pressing into her much-softer curves. He felt so good. So solidly reassuring, and he was showing far more empathy than her short acquaintance with him would have led her to believe he possessed. A fact that pleased her since it argued well for the success of their marriage.
Stepping out of his arms, she said, “I was pretty upset about Bart’s defection at the time, but that was almost two years ago. I’ve long since gotten over him. In fact, these days I find him a bit of a bore. The problem is that my family thinks I’m harboring this great unrequited love for him. When I try to tell them that I could care less, they just smile and tell me that I’m being so brave.”
Hassan chuckled at her indignant expression, and the warm sound rolled through Kali, drowning her annoyance. She’d never heard Hassan chuckle before. It was the most sexually enticing sound she’d ever experienced. And the most distracting. She fought to keep her focus on what she wanted to say and not on how she felt.
“So I thought that if I were to take you with me to the christening of Bart and Annette’s baby tomorrow and introduce you to my family, they’ll realize that I’m not still hankering after Bart.
“And you did say that we’d go out and meet them when you got back,” she added when he didn’t respond.
Now what? Hassan wondered in dismay. This was hardly the time to tell her that not only wasn’t he Karim, but Karim had changed his mind about marrying her. She’d be humiliated when she had to go home and tell her family that she’d been rejected by yet another fiancé.
Hassan stared down into her soft, brown eyes and felt a surge of tenderness at the uncertainty he could see there. He couldn’t do it to her. Not without some warning. And his bad news could easily wait until after the christening. In fact, it would probably be better to tell her then. That way she’d have some time to figure out the best way to tell her family about Karim’s defection.
And he did have the weekend free. He didn’t have to be back in Boston until Monday morning.
But to impersonate his brother…That was the kind of impulsive behavior that had always characterized Karim, not him. He was the cautious twin. The one who could always be counted on to do the right thing.
But wasn’t minimizing the impact Karim’s defection had on Kali the right thing to do? Or was he simply rationalizing his inexplicable desire to see more of her even though he knew perfectly well that nothing could ever come of it.
His motives were irrelevant, he finally decided. His family owed Kali a fiancé for the weekend. Since he was the only one in America at the moment, it was up to him to pay the debt.
“I’ll go,” Hassan blurted out and then winced at the curt sound of his acceptance. He’d sounded as if he were agreeing to something he didn’t want to do, and it wasn’t like that at all.
“Thanks, Karim. Um…Hassan. Why do you want to be called Hassan all of a sudden?” she asked.
“It’s my nickname in the family,” he lied. “And I much prefer it to Karim.”
“Oh,” Kali muttered, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned his preference of names when she’d accepted his proposal. Although there hadn’t been much opportunity for him to tell her anything so far, she reminded herself. The only time they’d had together was that one rushed evening before he’d had to fly to Australia. This really was the first chance he’d had.
Hassan shifted from one handmade shoe to the other as he quickly sifted through his mind, looking for another topic of conversation. One that didn’t have any hidden dangers to it. Not only did the thoughtful expression on her face make him very uneasy, but he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go back to Karim’s empty apartment. He wanted to stay here and listen to the seductive sound of Kali’s voice.
He wanted to do a whole lot more than talk to her, he admitted. His eyes instinctively homed in on her luscious lips. He wanted to pull her back into his arms and cover her mouth with his. He wanted to taste the essence of her. He wanted to breathe in the luxuriant floral scent that clung to her. She was like an erotic gift that a benevolent deity had packaged for some lucky man.
A gift! He suddenly remembered that one took a present to christenings.
“What did you buy for the baby?”
“Nothing yet,” Kali said. “I was going to pick something up during my lunch hour yesterday, but like most Fridays I wound up running late and never got around to it.”
“Why don’t we go and buy something now?”
The sudden spurt of pleasure that shot through Kali at the thought of spending the afternoon with him caught her by surprise. But why shouldn’t she find pleasure in his company? She was going to marry the man. It was probably just the thought of spending tomorrow, with her sister giving her guilty looks, that had unsettled her. Once the christening was over, things would return to normal.
“I’d love to. I—” Kali paused as she suddenly remembered something. “Did you bring my boomerang?”
“Boomerang?” he asked cautiously.
“You forgot to get it.” She gave him a ruefully exasperated look that made him want to kiss it off her lips…and then to keep on kissing her until she couldn’t remember the first thing about boomerangs.
“I just forgot to bring it with me,” Hassan said, hastily improvising. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow.
“Would you mind if I used your bathroom before we go shopping?” As soon as he asked, he wished he hadn’t. He had no idea where her bathroom was, and his brother would surely have known.
“Help yourself.” Kali made a faint gesture toward the hallway at the back of the living room.
Hassan walked toward it, trying to look more sure of himself than he felt. To his relief, the bathroom door was ajar.
Slipping inside, he hastily closed the door behind him. He turned the water on full force to hide the sound of his voice, hurriedly dialed his father’s consulate on his cell phone and asked for the consul, Mohammed. A minute later, Hassan had arranged for a boomerang to be delivered the following morning to Karim’s apartment.
Deep in thought, Hassan left the bathroom. Now, if he were buying Kali a gift it certainly wouldn’t be an oddly shaped piece of wood. It would be something very personal and highly feminine. Something like jewelry. Maybe emeralds to highlight the tawny tints in her hair. Yes, that was it. He’d buy her a necklace with an emerald suspended from a long golden chain. Long enough so that the jewel would rest in the cleft between her breasts. He felt his guts clench as his mind pictured her wearing such a necklace and nothing else.
“Ready to go?” Kali’s voice dragged him out of his delightful daydream.
What was the matter with him? he wondered uneasily as he walked toward the front door with Kali. He hadn’t fantasized this much about a woman since he’d been an adolescent and his every second thought had been of sex. Now he was a grown man, a highly trained pediatrician, who knew that sex without commitment had no place in his life. And who also knew that he couldn’t make a commitment to any Western woman. For her sake.
He tried to ignore the sense of loss that filled him at the thought of never making love to Kali.
“What are we going to buy the child?” Hassan asked, once they were in the elevator.
“Well…I’m not