she’d swallowed a couple of times, trying to work up enough saliva so she could talk, and then she’d said that she didn’t know where Dawn was.
Obviously, that wasn’t the answer the sheikh wanted.
“You don’t know,” he said, his voice mocking hers. His hand tightened on her shirt and he hauled her even closer, close enough so she was nose to chest with him. “You don’t know?”
“Dawn is—she’s out.”
“She’s out,” he repeated with that same cold sarcasm that was meant, she knew, to reduce her to something with about as much size and power as a mouse.
It got to her then. That he’d broken into her room. That he was on her turf, not his. That he was behaving as if this little piece of America was, instead, his own desert kingdom.
“Yes,” she’d answered, lifting her chin as best she could, considering that his fist was wrapped in her shirt, forcing herself to meet his narrowed, silver eyes. “Yes, she’s out, and even if I knew where she was, I wouldn’t tell you, you—you two-bit dictator!”
She knew instantly she’d made a mistake. His face paled; a muscle knotted in his jaw and his mouth twisted in a way that made her blood run cold.
“What did you call me?” His voice was soft with the promise of malice.
“A two-bit dictator,” she said again, and waited for the world to end. When, instead, a thin smile curved his mouth, she went from angry to furious. “Does that amuse you, Mr. Rashid?”
“You will address me as Lord Rashid.” His smile tilted, so she could see the cruelty behind it. “And what amuses me is the realization that if we were in my country, I would have your tongue cut out for such insolence.”
A drop of sweat beaded on Amanda’s forehead. She had no doubt that he meant it but by then, she was beyond worrying about saying, or doing, the right thing. Never, not in all her life, had she despised anyone as she despised Nicholas al Rashid.
“This isn’t your country. It’s America. And I am an American citizen.”
“And you are a typical American female. You have no morals.”
“Oh, and you’d certainly know all about American females and morals, wouldn’t you?”
His eyes narrowed. “I take it that’s supposed to have some deep meaning.”
“Just let go of me,” Amanda said, grunting as she twisted against the hand still clutching her shirt. “Dammit, let go!”
He did. His fist opened, so quickly and unexpectedly that she stumbled backward. She stood staring at the man who’d invaded her room, her breasts heaving under the thin cotton shirt.
For the first time, he looked at her. Really looked at her. She could almost feel the touch of those silver eyes as they swept her from head to toe. He took in her sleep-tousled hair, her cotton shirt, the long length of her naked legs…
Amanda felt her face, then her body, start to burn under that arrogant scrutiny. She wanted to cover herself, put her arms over her breasts, but she sensed that to do so would give him even more of an advantage than he already had.
“Get out of my room,” she said, her voice trembling.
Instead, his eyes moved over her again, this time with almost agonizing slowness. “Just look at you,” he said very softly.
The words were coated with derision—derision, and something else. Amanda could hear it in his voice. She could read it in the way his eyes darkened. There was more to the message than the disparagement of American women and their morality. Despite her lack of experience, she knew that what he’d left unspoken was a statement of want and desire, raw and primitive and male.
It was three in the morning. She was alone in her room with a man twice her size, a man who wore his anger like a second skin…
A man more beautiful, and overwhelmingly masculine, than any she’d ever imagined or known in her entire life.
To her horror, she’d felt her body begin to quicken. A slow heat coiled low in her belly; her breasts lifted and her nipples began to harden so that she almost gasped at the feel of them thrusting against the thin cotton of her T-shirt.
He saw it, too.
His eyes went to her breasts, lingered, then lifted to her face. Amanda felt her heart leap into her throat as he took a step forward.
“Sire.”
He moved toward her, his eyes never leaving hers. The heat in her belly swept into her blood.
“Sire!”
Amanda blinked. A little man in a shiny black suit had come into the room. He scuttled toward the sheikh, laid his hand on the sheikh’s muscled forearm.
“My lord, I have located your sister.”
The sheikh turned to the man. “Where is she?”
The little man looked at his hand, lying against the sheikh’s tanned skin, and snatched it back. “Forgive me, sire. I did not mean to touch—”
“I asked you a question.”
Abdul dropped to his knees and lowered his head until his brow almost touched the floor. “She awaits your will, Lord Rashid, in the office of the Dean of Students.”
That had done it. The sight of the old man, kneeling in obeisance to a surly tyrant, the thought of Dawn, awaiting the bully’s will…
Amanda’s vision cleared.
“Get out,” she’d said fiercely, “before I have you thrown out. You’re nothing but a—a savage. And I pity Dawn, or any woman, who has anything to do with you.”
The sheikh’s mouth had twisted, the hard, handsome face taking on the look of a predator about to claim its prey.
“Sire,” the little man had whispered, and without another word, Nicholas al Rashid had spun on his heel and walked out of the room.
Amanda had never seen him again.
He’d taken Dawn out of school, enrolled her in a small women’s college. But the two of them had remained friends through Amanda’s change of careers, through her marriage and divorce.
Over the years, her encounter with the sheikh had faded from her memory.
Almost.
There were still times she awoke in the night with the feel of his eyes on her, the scent of him in her nostrils—
“Mandy,” Dawn said, “your face is like an open book.”
Amanda jerked her head up. Dawn grinned.
“You’re still mortified, thinking about how Nicky stormed into our room all those years ago, when he was trying to find me.”
Amanda cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, I am. And you know, the more I think about this, the more convinced I am it’s not going to work.”
“What’s not going to work? I told you, he won’t remember you. And even if he does—”
“Dawn,” Amanda said, reaching for the purse she’d dropped on one of the glass-topped tables on the enormous terrace, “I appreciate what you’ve tried to do for me. Honestly, I do. But—”
“But you don’t need this job.”
“Of course I need it. But—”
“You don’t,” Dawn said, striking a pose, “because you’re going to make your name in New York by waving a magic wand. ‘Hocus-pocus, I now pronounce me the decorator of the decade.’”
“Come on, Dawn,” Amanda said with a little smile.
“Not that it matters, because you’ve found a way to pay your rent without working.”