was a far better target than herself or Omar’s terrifying brother, who, Sterling was well aware, could show up at any moment and destroy everything.
As far as she’d ever been able to tell from reading between the lines of Omar’s staunchly loyal stories, that was pretty much all the sheikh did.
“How did you get this job?” she demanded, focusing her temper and her fear on the stranger before her. “Because I don’t think you’re any good at it. You do realize you’re supposed to open the door for your passengers, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” he said then, and Sterling was so startled by that rich, low, deeply sardonic voice that she curled a hand around her big, low belly protectively even as her throat went alarmingly and suddenly dry. “My mistake. It is, of course, my single goal in life to serve American women such as yourself. My goal and my dream in one.”
Sterling blinked. Had he said that in another way, she might have ignored it. But the way he looked at her. As if he was powerful and hungry and ferocious and was only barely concealing those things beneath his civilized veneer. It arrowed into her, dark and stirring.
It reminded her, for the first time in a very long while, or maybe ever, that she was a woman. Not merely mother to her best friend’s child, but entirely female from the top of her head, where that look of his made her feel prickly, all the way down to her toes, which were curling up in her shoes where she stood on the curb.
And entirely too many places in between.
The baby chose that moment to kick her, hard, and Sterling told herself that was why she couldn’t breathe. That was why her entire body felt taut and achy and very much like someone else’s.
“Then yours must be a life of intense disappointment,” she told him when she could breathe again, or anyway, fake it. “As you fall so far short.”
“My apologies,” the driver replied at once, his voice smooth, but with that hard undercurrent in it that made Sterling’s head feel light. “I forget myself, clearly.”
He straightened then and that didn’t make it any better. He was tall and broad at once, a sweep of black that took over the entire world, and she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d snatched her up, belly and all, in one powerful fist—
But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He reached over and wrapped his hand over the top of the door instead, then inclined his head toward the SUV’s interior as if it was his car and he was the one doing her a great favor.
Impossible images chased through her head then, each more inappropriate and embarrassing and naked than the last. What was wrong with her? Sterling didn’t have thoughts like that, so yearning and wild. So…unclothed. She didn’t like to be touched at all, much less…that.
“Well,” she said stiffly after a tense, electric moment she could feel everywhere, even if she couldn’t understand it. She felt weak and singed straight through and she couldn’t seem to look away from him when she knew that he was causing this. That it was him. “Try not to do it again.”
His dark gold eyes got more intense, somehow, and that stunning mouth of his shifted into something that could only be described as mocking. She ordered herself not to shiver in response, but she felt it wash over her anyway, as if she had.
“But we really do have to get moving.” She made her voice softer then. Placating, the way she’d learned to do with all kinds of men—all kinds of people, come to think of it—over the years. She’d made it her art, and no matter that her life with Omar had tempted her to believe she wouldn’t have to live like that any longer. That she could turn it on or off for fun, as she wished. There’s no such thing as a happy ending, she reminded herself harshly. Not for you. “I have a long way to go and I’m already behind schedule.”
“By all means, then,” he said invitingly, the way a wolf might have done, with the suggestion of claws and the hint of fangs yet nothing but that sardonic smile on his shockingly sensual, infinitely dangerous mouth. “Get in. I would hate to inconvenience you in any way.”
Then he reached out and took her hand, ostensibly to help her into the SUV.
And it was like fireworks.
It was pure insanity.
Sensation galloped through her, shooting up from that shocking point of contact like wildfire, enveloping her. Changing her. Making the city disappear. Making her whole history fall out of her own head as if it had never happened. Making her body feel tight and restless and dangerously loose at once. Making her wonder, yearn, long—
She wanted to jerk her hand away from his, the way she always did when someone touched her without her permission, but she didn’t. Because for the first time in as long as she could remember, Sterling wanted to keep touching him more than she wanted to stop.
That astounding truth pounded through her like adrenaline, a sleek and dizzying drum.
“I cannot serve you if you do not enter the vehicle,” the driver said after a moment, his gaze narrowing in on hers in a way that made her breath go shallow. And his voice seemed to stoke the fires that raged in her, as if the way his hand wrapped around hers was a sexual act. A whole lot of sexual acts. “And that would be a tragedy, would it not?”
Sterling couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe—and she was terribly afraid that the edgy feeling swamping her just then wasn’t panic at all. She knew panic. This was deeper. Richer.
Life-altering, she thought in a kind of awe.
But the only thing she could let herself think about right now was her baby, so she shoved all the confusing sensations away as best she could—and tried to get into the car and get away from him before her legs simply gave out beneath her.
Or before she did something she’d truly regret, like moving closer to this strange man instead of away.
* * *
There were a number of things Rihad al Bakri—reigning sheikh, Grand Ruler and King of the Bakrian Empire—did not understand.
First, how his late brother had neglected to mention that he had impregnated his mistress and quite some time ago, if her current condition was any guide. Or how this one delicate American woman had managed to elude his entire security force and was now sashaying out into the city as if she was still on the sort of catwalks she’d frequented when she’d been, by all accounts, a feral teen. Finally, he was arrogant enough to wonder how on earth she could possibly have mistaken him—him—for a livery driver, of all things.
And that was not even getting into his unending grief that his brother was gone. That after wasting so many years of his life gallivanting about with this unsuitable woman, Omar could have disappeared so senselessly in the space of a single evening.
Rihad could not come to terms with it. He doubted he ever would.
Yet all of that faded when Rihad took her hand, meaning only to help her into the SUV as any decent servant might. He had enough of them. He should know.
The loud, brash, concrete city all around them seemed to skip its groove like an old-fashioned record, and go still.
So still it was like a quiet agony, reverberating inside of him.
Her hand was delicate and strong at once, and Rihad didn’t like that. Nor did he like the way her mouth firmed as she looked at him, as if she was pressing her lips together to disguise the way they trembled, because he had the wild, nearly ungovernable desire to taste that theory.
Surely not.
Her strawberry blond hair should have appeared messy, twisted back in a riot of smooth gold and copper strands, but instead made her look fresh. She wore a stretchy sort of tunic dress over skinny jeans and absurdly high heels, quite as if she wasn’t so heavily pregnant that it looked as if she’d shoved a giant ball underneath her clothes.