“Why did you do that?” He truly wanted to know. She’d gone to school for one thing and ended up doing another.
She shrugged. “I enjoyed architecture, but it wasn’t as fun as party planning. I like organizing things, making people happy. Preserving old buildings takes time, but making people happy with food and fun is instant gratification.”
“Which explains why you spend so much time in the kitchen. I enjoyed the lotus-shaped napkins, by the way.”
She smiled at him, a genuine smile for once, and his heart did that little hitch thing again. “I’m glad. I’ll show them ferns next. Then maybe some swans.”
“No swans at the state dinner, I beg you.”
She laughed. “Fine, no swans.” But then her smile faded and she slumped against the back of the chair. “Will I get to attend these functions, or am I to be kept shut away like that cousin you can’t trust not to drink too much and dance on the tables?”
The way she said things amused him. “Do you drink too much or dance on tables?”
“Not since college.” He must have looked surprised because she laughed again. “I’m kidding. I danced on the tables without drinking. Because it was fun sometimes to let loose.”
He tried to imagine her on top of a table, dancing and having fun. “Do you let loose often?”
She hesitated a moment. “Too often where you’re concerned.”
The words hung in the air between them. He could feel his body hardening, and she hadn’t said anything provocative. Or done anything provocative. But he knew how she tasted, how she felt, and he wanted to unwrap her and taste and feel her again.
And again.
“We’ve only been together twice,” he pointed out.
“And if you hadn’t avoided me for so long, I imagine it would have been far more often than that. Though I suppose it’s a very good thing you did.”
Okay, he was seriously hard now. Ready to walk over there and take her in his arms. “You say the most unexpected things.”
“I’m too honest for my own good sometimes. I’ve always been this way, but I like it because it beats keeping things inside.”
“But you do keep some things inside.” He was thinking of her sister and the way she defended the other woman’s weaknesses even when they affected her life. He wondered why she did that, but he supposed he didn’t really have to ask. When he’d been a kid, he’d done everything he could to keep Kadir insulated from their father’s wrath. It hadn’t always worked, but he’d tried.
She bowed her head. “I suppose I do. But everyone needs a few secrets, right?”
Who was he to contradict her? He had secrets of his own. “I don’t know if needs is the right word. But yes, I know what you mean.”
Her blue eyes gleamed. “I’m still angry with you. But if you walked over here and took me in your arms, you could make me forget it all for a few hours.”
He was poised to do just that when she continued.
“But I’m asking you not to.” She shook her head. “I need time to process this, Rashid. I need time to figure out how to fit my life into this box you’ve handed me. I can’t do that if you confuse me with sex.”
SHERIDAN’S HEART POUNDED as she gazed at the handsome sheikh standing across the room. Just a word from her and he would cross the distance separating them and make her feel as if she were the most important, wonderful thing in his life for a few hours.
But she couldn’t let it happen again. Not after the way she’d felt this afternoon when they’d made love so urgently against a wall. After, when she’d felt shattered by the emotions he stirred inside her, when she’d needed tenderness and closeness, he’d pushed her away. Every effort she made to be close to him, he rebuffed. So why did she keep doing it?
And now she had to marry him. She didn’t know how she was going to survive if she had to keep navigating a sexual minefield with him. They’d done everything backward. Baby, sex and now marriage, and she couldn’t keep going down the same path without knowing who he was. Really knowing.
“The sex doesn’t mean anything to you,” she said. He did not contradict her, and her belly squeezed a little tighter. “And it doesn’t mean anything to me either, but it could start to mean more than it should just because I feel so out of place here.”
That was what truly frightened her. She was a stranger in a strange land, wholly dependent on this man, bound to him by ties greater than any devised by law. She had to keep her feelings grounded in reality. To do that, she couldn’t fall into bed with him every time he came near her.
He shoved his hands into his pockets—God, he was delicious in faded jeans—and adopted a casual pose that belied the tension in the set of his shoulders. He was a man poised on the edge of action. Always. That he would attempt to hide that from her was encouraging.
Because they both knew who had the true power. That he would allow her to have her own both stunned and warmed her. It was progress.
“I am not trying to place you in a box. You seem not to realize how very privileged your life is about to become.”
“A gilded box is still a box.”
He rubbed a temple and came around to sink down on the cushions of a settee. “I do in fact know this.” He leaned back and gazed up at the domed ceiling above them. “I hated living in this palace as a child. It was hell in many ways.”
She came around the chair and perched on the edge of it, her heart in her throat and a dull pain stinging her eyes.
He shrugged. “My father was a harsh man, habibti. He did not believe in sparing the rod, so to speak.”
She swallowed. Was he actually sharing things with her? Or was this an anomaly? “I heard that you only recently returned to Kyr. Is that why?”
His eyes glittered. “The palace is full of information, it would seem.”
“The person I heard it from seemed rather terrified to impart it. As if you would be angry. As if you are a tyrant who punishes people for slights.”
He looked rather stunned at that revelation. “I am a king, and I must be harsh at times. But I am not a tyrant. The only people who feel my wrath are the council and my immediate staff. I have no need to terrify maids or cooks, I assure you.”
“Honestly, I didn’t think you did.” Because the people she’d met seemed happy to have him as their king, though they were also more than a little awestruck by him. He didn’t speak much, they said. He kept to himself. He was serious and responsible and he didn’t smile.
But he was fair. No one had yet claimed he wasn’t.
One dark eyebrow arched as if he didn’t quite believe her. “Really? I would imagine you were my greatest critic. Did I not kidnap you and force you to come to Kyr? Am I not forcing you to marry me against your will?”
She clasped her hands together in her lap. “Well, those things are pretty bad and you should feel quite ashamed of yourself. But you haven’t been cruel. Exasperating and arrogant, but never cruel.”
He held her gaze steadily. “I am intimately acquainted with cruelty, and therefore I have striven never to be the kind of man who resorts to it in order to achieve his aims.”
Again, her heart twisted for the child he’d been. “I believe you.”
He blew out a breath. “Well, we have progress, then.” He stood suddenly.