Inside it was a gold hoop earring with a line of diamonds down the front. It looked exactly like a pair she owned. They’d been a gift from her father for her fifteenth birthday—not something run-of-the-mill that showed up in every low-budget jewelry shop. Trella’s were similar, but that one was definitely the match to her own.
She took it to examine it more closely, trying to recall when she’d worn them last.
“Where—?”
“Caught under the pill—” he started to say in a tone that was very throaty with latent passion, but he cut himself off. Something in his expression grew sharp and arrested as he studied her face. Whatever lightness might have been in his mood became something accusatory as his gaze moved restlessly over her like he was searching for something he couldn’t find.
She knew that look, but refused to believe she was interpreting it correctly. It was far too outrageous to imagine—
“I knew if I walked away, he would approach you,” Kasim said, reappearing beside her.
Angelique startled, not exactly guilty, but defensive. No. She needed time to figure out what was going on with this stranger. She searched his blue eyes, now distinctly frosted with hostility toward Kasim. And her.
Kasim’s gaze cut to the earring in her hand, making her close her fist around it.
“Introduce us.” Kasim’s tone was lethal.
Angelique was distantly aware of people sidling by them, glancing their way.
Kasim’s expression was positively murderous and this stranger was shifting his gaze from her to Kasim, contempt curling his lip.
“I told you,” she insisted to Kasim in an undertone. “I don’t know him.”
Trella, you didn’t.
“My timing is inconvenient,” the stranger said, flicking a look to Kasim that was a silent warning. Be careful with this one.
It was so infuriatingly male, like they were lofty equals who came across tarts like her all the time, she instantly wanted to smack him. Both of them. How dare he show up and throw her under the bus this way. How dare he touch her sister! Her heart began to race, trying to assimilate how it could possibly have happened.
Was she crazy? Could he have been with Trella? How? When?
At the same time she was trying to work it out, she could see she was dropping like a free fall elevator in Kasim’s estimation. That hurt, damn it. How could he think this of her?
“If you’re going to accuse me of being a slut, at least tell me who you are,” she bit out.
“You picked that label,” the stranger shot back derisively. “And I don’t care that you’ve moved on, but those are real diamonds. I was going to send it by courier back to Paris, but I read that you were going to be here and I was in Berlin.” He shrugged a dismissal, looking distinctly bored as he glanced away. “My mistake. Carry on.”
But he stood there like he was waiting for Kasim to give up and leave, as if he wanted to continue talking to her.
“Back to Paris,” she repeated, reclaiming the stranger’s attention while hotly aware that Kasim was glancing away as though looking for an exit. “When exactly was I there with you? Wait. Let me guess,” she insisted, because it finally hit her. It was completely impossible, but she knew. “Last Friday night? The charity dinner for the Brighter Days Children’s Foundation?”
The stranger’s cheeks went hollow. “You know it was.”
“Kasim, where was I last weekend? All weekend?”
Finally she had his attention. His resentful, derisive attention.
“You are both aware I have a twin. Aren’t you?”
* * *
Kasim couldn’t say that he was relieved when Angelique cleared herself of cheating on him. He was still too gripped by residual possessiveness. Maybe his jealous rage had eased enough that he was capable of rational thought, maybe he’d ceased wanting to kill the other man acting so proprietarily toward Angelique, but he was still pulsing with adrenaline. The sheer force of emotion that had overtaken him as he identified a rival was paralyzing.
Unnerving.
“I’ll need your name and contact details,” Angelique said while signaling Maurice to approach.
“His Highness, Xavier Deunoro,” Kasim supplied stiffly. “Prince of Elazar.”
Angelique and the prince both turned raised-brow looks his way.
Kasim shrugged. “I asked when I walked away.”
“Another prince. Charming,” Angelique said scathingly.
Upset that he’d been mistrustful? She should look at the facts before him: they hadn’t been together all week, her sister was never seen in public and this man had brought her damned earring from what was no doubt his bed. Shared intimacy was the only reason he would want to return it personally.
“She said she was you,” the prince said as he reached to an inside pocket of his tuxedo. “The resemblance is remarkable, but there is something…” He narrowed his eyes. “I can’t put my finger on it, but the moment I saw you tonight, I knew something was different.”
That made Angelique stiffen and flash a wary glance at the man, but she recovered quickly and took the prince’s card, relaying it to her guard with a hand that shook.
“That explains the photos you were questioning,” she said to Maurice. “My brothers will want that, but wait until I’ve spoken to Trella. I’ll head upstairs to do that now.” With a hard glance at her sister’s lover, she said, “If you tell anyone it was her and not me, I will personally hunt you down and unman you.” She looked as gloriously provocative as she had the day Kasim had met her.
“You can try,” the prince drawled. “Give her my regards.”
Angelique turned away only to be confronted by a Hollywood starlet.
“I’m sorry,” Angelique said with tested graciousness, briefly clasping the actress’s hand. “I’ve been called away. I’m looking forward to our appointment next month, though. We’ll talk then.”
“My people will need a copy of the press release before it’s sent,” Kasim said, taking out his phone as he fell into step with her, winding toward the nearest exit.
“What press release?”
“The one clarifying her identity.”
“That won’t happen.”
He checked briefly, not faced with any physical obstructions, but walking into the wall of his own ego.
“You will,” he informed her. “Or I will.”
“Do not make threats in that direction, Kasim.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a statement. I can’t allow people to have a wrong impression.” His father would find Kasim’s means of putting Sadiq’s problem to bed rather crude as it was.
“After what you just thought about me, you might be surprised how little I care about how this reflects on you. I would rather the general public think the worst of me than know the truth, however.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Reasons.”
They approached the melee of reporters. He was forced to table his questions as they pushed their way through the chaos to the elevators.
Her guard efficiently plowed them a way and barred anyone from coming into the car with them, but Angelique still had the gall to look at Kasim like he was a hitchhiker who had hopped on from the highway.