He did not know if Violet was his friend or his enemy. What she was, at this point, was a former lover, and those relationships could go either way. But no matter how this played out, Rafe knew he needed to keep her close.
So he ordered a bottle of sauvignon blanc to accompany his filet mignon and her chicken dish. In the past several months, he had grown quite fond of Texas beef. Even the barbecue was delicious and quite unlike the way beef was prepared in his country.
But when he placed their orders, Violet narrowed those beautiful eyes at him again. It was only when the server was safely out of earshot that she leaned forward and said in a tense whisper, “I can’t drink.”
“Oh?”
“Because I’m pregnant?” she said, although it was clearly not a question. “I’m not supposed to drink.” A look of panic flared over her face. “Do you know anything about pregnancy? About babies?”
Rafe rolled his hand. “Of course not. I do not have any children and, if I did, we would have nannies to care for them. That is how I was raised.”
Had he thought this declaration would relieve her anxiety? If so, he had guessed wrong. The color drained out of her face and, if anything, she looked more worried than before. “Nannies? As in, plural? I didn’t—I mean, that’s not what I had been thinking for our child.”
“Let us not get ahead of ourselves,” he cautioned, because that look of terror on her face made him strangely uncomfortable. He should be reveling in her panic—thrilled, even, that he was striking such a blow against Mac’s sister. This was revenge at its finest.
And yet, it wasn’t. If her pleasure had once been his, her terror was also his. It was a weakness he did not like because weaknesses could be exploited.
“Okay,” she said softly.
“Let us start at the beginning,” he went on, more gently than he had planned to. But it worked because she took a deep breath and sat back in her chair, looking almost calm. “I did not realize who you were that night. And I assume, based on your statement earlier that you were wondering how you’d find me, you did not know who I was?”
“No, I didn’t. No names. That was the deal.” She cleared her throat and began to fiddle with her silverware, arranging the knife and the fork in perfect alignment. “I was V for the same reason I was out in Holloway instead of Royal. I wanted a night out where word wouldn’t get back to Mac.” She looked up and he could see in her eyes that she was pleading with him. “He wants what’s best for me, I know that. But sometimes...he can be suffocating. I mean, he doesn’t think this is a date because he asked you to keep an eye on me, didn’t he?”
“This is true,” Rafe confirmed.
She exhaled heavily. “That’s how he is. Every man is either a threat to my innocence or a babysitter.”
“But you have reached your maturity,” Rafe noted. “You are not the same little sister he told me about when we were in university twelve years ago.”
She snorted. “Try telling him that. He still treats me like I’m sixteen and lost without my parents. But I’m not. I’m a grown woman now and I’m capable of running half the family business and...okay, so getting pregnant wasn’t my finest hour, but I can do this, Rafe.”
Rafe thought this over as the wine was served. Violet asked for a Sprite instead. “I must ask—your innocence?”
“Lord,” Violet said, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, and Rafe couldn’t tell if she was praying for strength or something else. “Fine. No, I was not a virgin. You?”
Rafe almost glared at her because this line of questioning was not something sheikhs had to endure. But as she watched him, he quickly realized that, to Violet, he was not primarily a sheikh. He was, first and foremost, a man to whom she would be forever tied. “No. And before you ask, I am not currently seeing anyone else. In fact, except for our evening together, I have been celibate for some time.”
Her lips quirked into something that was almost a smile. “Celibate, huh?”
He shrugged, trying to keep it casual. “I have been busy. My brother is the sheikh of Al Qunfudhah and I run the shipping business owned by our family. While our sheikhdom was originally founded on oil, we have diversified and my shipping business now accounts for thirty percent of the gross domestic product.”
“But celibate? You’re a sheikh,” she said, clearly puzzled. Then her gaze drifted over his face, his shoulders, and down his chest before she looked back at him. “And you’re gorgeous.”
Rafe felt his face warm. “So I have been told. But just because I could have any woman I want does not mean I should.”
“And modest,” she added in a mocking tone. But she smiled when she said it. “That’s a refreshing attitude, I have to tell you. Most men would take whatever they could get.”
“I am not ‘most men.’”
“No,” she agreed, her smile warming. “You’re not.”
Rafe was pleased. He should have been pleased because Violet was opening up to him and the more he drew her in, the more complete his revenge would be.
But that was not why he leaned forward and placed his hand on top of hers, stilling it in the middle of adjusting the precise placement of her soup spoon. “And you? Are you involved with anyone?”
“No,” she said in a breathy whisper. “Most guys don’t last too long before my brother scares them off.”
“That must be frustrating.”
She tried to shrug off both the sentiment and his hand and, given that they were in public, he had no choice but to sit back in his seat. “It is, but it’s also a blessing—I guess. If they can’t stand up to Mac, how could I expect them to stand next to me, you know?”
Rafe thought about this. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that standing against Mac would not be problematic. “Indeed.”
Their meals arrived along with Violet’s soda. She sipped at it gingerly and took small bites of her food. “Is it all right?” he asked, concerned. If she was expecting, shouldn’t she be eating more?
“It’s fine. I just—well, I’ve been dealing with morning sickness—which is a lie, by the way. My stomach’s most upset in the evening. And for a lot of people, it ends after the third month, but I think it’s actually getting worse.”
This news was alarming. “Have you seen a doctor yet? Do you think everything is all right?”
She looked at him, trying not to smile and not quite succeeding. “I’m fine. According to the internet, this is all normal. I scheduled an appointment with a doctor in Holloway and the quickest they could get me in was in two weeks.”
He set his knife and fork down a bit harder than he meant to, given how the beverages danced in their glasses and Violet’s eyes widened. “That is not soon enough. I can have a private doctor here tomorrow—Friday at the latest.”
“Rafe,” she said, her soft Texas accent caressing his name like a lover’s hands. She’d said Ben that way, but not Rafe. Not like that. It was enough to make him pause as he typed in the password to his phone. “It’s fine. There’s no danger.”
“I merely want what is best for you and the child,” he said, his voice getting caught somewhere in the back of his throat. And he was surprised to realize how very much he meant it.
“Yeah,” she said in that quiet voice, “about that. Okay, so I’m not seeing anyone and you’re not either. Which doesn’t mean that we’re together.”
“I would not make such presumptions,” he assured her.
“It