he start to get curious? Mention it to her father? Her fiancé?
The ice chips in her stomach seemed to be forming into a solid block.
The gallery was located near Grant Park, the end building in a row of refurbished warehouses. It was a mid-size structure, four stories tall. The original second floor had been removed in order to create the high ceilings. The top two floors were used as offices and storage, the gallery occupying only the ground level. The main salon dissected into dozens of spaces that could be widened or narrowed depending on what was being exhibited at any given time. There were also several intersecting rooms that allowed a steady stream of foot traffic to pass through without causing a bottleneck.
Miah need not have worried about that this afternoon. She seemed to have the place almost to herself. Her spike heels clicked on the tiled floor, echoing the quick, fearful thud of her pulse in her ears. She’d cut this close. Too close. Was the blackmailer here already? Struggling to swallow, she picked up her step and hurried through the salon toward the interlocking rooms, her destination the back exit. She raced past exhibits by the newest up-and-coming artists, through the room displaying paintings by established favorites, and one full of antique weaponry, guns and swords.
Toward the back of the building, near the public bathrooms, she stopped and glanced around, making sure no one was watching or paying particular attention to her. But she seemed to be alone, the eerie silence broken only by her footfalls. How she’d love to be able to ram one of her pointed heels into the extortionist’s shin. She ducked into a narrow hallway, striding to the single waste bin near the door. She plucked the envelope from her purse and dropped it into the bin.
Divesting herself of the money seemed to suck the air from her lungs. She tried to inhale, but it was as if her throat had closed. A panic attack? She glanced up at the exit door. No. Going out this way would probably set off the security system. A prickling sensation hit her neck—that uneasy sense that someone was staring at her.
The blackmailer.
She spun around. A woman stood at the end of the hall, eyeing her questioningly. She wore a security uniform. “Can I help you, miss?”
“No.” Miah was amazed she could find her voice, but the woman seemed to have startled away her panic. She tucked her purse under her arm, gesturing toward the trash bin. “I—I was just throwing out a tissue.”
Though the panic didn’t return, the sense that she was being watched lingered as Miah retraced her path back to the main salon. She cast periodic glances over her shoulder, studied the faces of those she passed. Was he nearby? The nasty puke who seemed to know details about her life that were no one else’s business—such as the fact that her recently opened checking account contained enough money to pay the exorbitant amounts he demanded for his silence?
Outside, the heat struck her with the force of a blow, and she realized she was so tense that a light breeze could probably blow her over. She needed some TLC. Needed Cailin. Her best friend.
Needed a tall thirst-quenching beer. Needed one last afternoon to be the wild woman she’d been before January. Tomorrow, her life changed forever. Today, she could indulge some of her favorite things, could forget a blackmailer’s demands. His threats. Could bank the fires of worry about her mother. Stave off the apprehension she felt about the marriage.
She instructed Mehemet to leave her at Finnigan’s Rainbow—a family-owned and operated bar and grill—on Michigan Avenue in the heart of the shopping district, and take the rest of the day off.
Cailin was working the bar with her brother, Rory. Both wore Kelly green polo shirts and black pants. He grinned at Miah and hollered above the din, “Princess, what brings you slumming on the eve of your wedding?”
Princess. Miah slid onto a bar stool. She had to admit that aside from the money for her mother, the fact that she would be an honest-to-God princess after saying “I do” touched a chord inside her, as though something internal had aligned, connected.
Cailin snapped her brother’s backside with a bar towel. “She’s not officially a princess until tomorrow, you doof.”
The Finnigans all had fiery red hair and mischievous blue eyes. Cailin was the only girl, a natural beauty. She greeted Miah with a smile. “Hey, girlfriend, nice to see you looking like your old self.”
“Thanks.” Miah caught her friend’s gaze darting to the door. Bobby “The Buzzard” Redwing, Cailin’s ex-boyfriend, had been hassling her. Miah had no more interest in encountering the Buzzard than Cailin; he was a reporter for the very tabloid to which she feared the blackmailer would sell his story of Grant Mohairbi.
She drew a shaky breath. She had to lose this mood. Quit thinking about the blackmailer. Determined to do just that, she forced a smile. “Hey, Rory, can ‘almost royalty’ get an ice-cold one and a slice of pizza in this dive?”
Cailin laughed and drew the attention of a couple of men at the end of the bar. She had a knockout figure, round where Miah was lean, skin like peaches and cream. Rory set a frosted mug of foaming beer before Miah, then went to fetch her pizza, leaving Miah and Cailin to chat. But the first thing out of Cailin’s mouth was “Uh-oh.”
Her gaze fixed on something over Miah’s shoulder.
Miah tensed. “Is it ‘The Buzzard’?”
“Nope. This one’s all yours. The Gorgeous One.”
Miah’s heart thumped. Talk about stress-inducing. He would not be happy to see her dressed like this. She gathered her poise and glanced around at her fiancé. Six feet of gorgeous male animal, the most handsome man she’d ever encountered. Hollywood should have come knocking on his door years ago. Prince Zahir Haji Haleem. His dark, heated gaze landed on her like a sensual stroke played over her body. There was something possessive in that look, something that sent heat into her belly and fire through her blood.
She swallowed hard against the knot forming in her throat. It scared her, this heat she felt every time he was near. If his look, his casual touch could make her this flustered, this hot, he might just burn her up during serious intimacy. And she didn’t doubt for a minute that this man—who had, before their engagement, been linked in tabloids with several of Chicago’s top socialites, married and single, and who had so obviously majored in Pleasing Women 101—would be more than proficient at lovemaking.
Miah was no prude herself, no innocent. But she felt such shyness around this man. This stranger. Could she actually go through with marrying him? The thought brought an image of her mother’s smiling face, and Miah knew she not only could, she would. Nothing must cause her mother’s smile to vanish.
She took a swig of the beer, then thumped the mug onto the bar, slipped off the stool and, on her three-inch sandals, crossed to where he waited as though he’d sent her a silent command to come to him.
“Hello, Zahir.”
“Miah.” His gaze did a lazy climb from her gaily painted toenails, up the strappy heels and skimpy clothing to her face. She clenched her hands against the blush his sexy perusal brought to her flesh, lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. “Like what you see?”
He smirked. “Every man in the bar seems to.”
“And you object to that?”
“I believe objections, were I to have any, would fall on deaf ears.” He wore a black, Armani three-piece suit. His raven hair curled against the virgin white of his shirt collar. He smelled of a spicy autumn afternoon, and seemed somehow able to defy the heat.
“I like color,” she said. If he had his way, she’d be covered from head to toe in flowing veils all fit for a funeral. But that she would never do.
“Color likes you back.” He caught her chin in his big hand, startling her.
The blush swept her body again, gaining heat this time as it reached her face. She could pull away, but sensed the room watching them. She whispered, “What are you doing?”
He leaned closer, as though to