Engaged To The Sheikh

“A fine idea,” Kamar said grudgingly. He went to the galley, a space enclosed by walls at the side, but open to the stern. The front of the galley led, he knew, to a small sleeping area and a toilet.

Selina followed.

Oh, no. He’d be trapped with her in the tiny galley. He didn’t want to think about the possibilities.

Her grandfather also came in, and Kamar released a relieved breath. He needed a chaperon when around Selina.

Why did the most gorgeous girls have to be so utterly wrong? And why did he have to be so susceptible to their charms?

Selina knelt at his feet and glanced up at him, her lovely neck arching. He closed his eyes and thought about his father, the honor of his family and that boring desk job.

When he looked at her again, she’d found a small, cube-shaped refrigerator tucked beneath the counter. “Ooh, look, Grandpa Jerry. There’s iced tea, bottled water, juice and wine. You want iced tea, right?” Straightening, she poured for her grandfather, who took his glass to the deck.

Kamar smiled. Selina might be a mouthy American girl, but she knew her place: the kitchen. “What would you like?” he asked her.

“Um, a bottle of water, I think. The sun is very dehydrating.” She reached into the refrigerator at the same time Kamar bent to help, and their bodies collided in the small space.

The galley’s closeness intensified her scent. She smelled like sunscreen, perfume and the ocean breeze, and her slim body felt like paradise pressed against his, her skin satiny and slick. He dropped the heavy plastic bottle. It crashed onto her toes, left bare by her idiotic sandals.

She yelped, and he winced. What was it about this girl that turned him into a blithering idiot? First the potatoes, now his clumsiness with the water.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Leaning against the counter, she wiggled her toes. The bottle rolled away. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“Let me check.” He knelt in the small space, telling himself he wouldn’t be ensnared by Selina Carrington. She wasn’t so special.

She let the counter take her weight, so he could pick up her foot to examine it. He’d never before been fascinated by a woman’s toes, but hers were polished in an appealing, shiny orange that reminded him of the citrus candy that street vendors sold in Zohra-zbel.

Lime green and orange. Everything she wore made him think of eating. Devouring her.

There was a tiny white flower painted on Selina’s biggest toenail. It was enchanting.

He kissed it.

She gasped.

Remembering himself and the situation, he stopped himself from licking up the arch to her ankle and said, “You seem all right to me,” as brusquely as he could. He reached for the water bottle and stood, twisting off the cap for her. He took a bottle of juice for himself and went on deck. Before he sat, he tugged off his polo shirt and used it to mop the sweat off his forehead.

Selina stayed behind, clutching the water, then rolled the cool bottle along her cheek. No one had ever kissed her foot before, and she didn’t know what to make of it. She’d heard from other women about the various forms that lovemaking took, but no one had mentioned toe kissing. She’d read about that in racier magazines, but it wasn’t something that she had ever contemplated doing or having done to her.

The entire concept seemed yucky. Dirty. Gross.

But when Kam did it…a sensual heat flared through her body. She closed her eyes, reliving the moment.

He’d held her foot in his big, brown hand. Kissed it.

She’d judged him as arrogant, but did an arrogant man kiss a woman’s foot?

Stop it, she told herself. People magazine says that Kam is one of the sexiest men in the world. He kissed your toe because it’s sexy, not because he likes you, and not because he’s Mr. Humility.

She went outside, where Grandpa Jerry and Kam occupied the deck chairs, talking. He’d set his cell phone on a nearby table. Selina eyed it, then dragged another chair forward and joined them, placing her untanned self in the shade of an umbrella.

“It’s the perfect cover story.” Grandpa Jerry leaned back into his deck chair and sipped iced tea.

“What’s perfect about it?” Kam frowned, his eyebrows forming a dark bar.

“The reporter will want to chase Selina, not you and me,” Jerry said. “While we’re talking, she can distract the press by pretending to choose a dress and order flowers.”

“Gee, thanks, Grandpa Jerry.”

“Sellie, you have nearly two weeks off. I checked with your boss.” Jerry shook a finger at her. “You don’t have to be back in the office until a week from next Monday. You can take an afternoon or two to look at some catalogs.”

Selina scrutinized Jerry, who’d put her into an untenable position. Last night, she’d promised that she’d be nice to Prince Kamar, but at the time she hadn’t known what “being nice” would entail. If she didn’t cooperate, Jerry would think she was reneging. He’d guilt trip her all the way to Timbuktu and Kalamazoo.

“Okay, I’ll pretend to be his girlfriend—under one condition.” She pointed her water bottle at Kam. “You have to be nicer to people.”

“Me? I am perfectly nice to people. Everyone loves me.”

“You are not perfectly nice to people, and people don’t love you. I saw you with that bartender last night.”

“She was quite negligent.” Kamar sipped juice.

“She was not negligent, and you were an arrogant buffoon.”

“Selina!” Jerome looked scandalized.

Ignoring her grandfather, she went on. “I won’t be the girlfriend or fiancée, or whatever, of an arrogant buffoon.”

“You are calling a prince of the Zohra-zbel an arrogant buffoon?” His unibrow was now punctuated by two deep furrows above his nose.

“If you’re a prince of the Zohra-z-whatever, then yes, I guess I am.”

He sat back, clearly bewildered. “I am an arrogant buffoon? No other woman has told me that.”

“Maybe you never made a spectacle of yourself the way you did last night,” Selina said, “but I doubt it.”

“Me? A spectacle? How was I a spectacle?” He twirled the stem of his Matrix-style sunglasses.

Selina grinned. “How were you not a spectacle?”

“The bartender was a complete twit.” Kam’s stuffy British accent had become more pronounced.

“A twit? Did you actually call her a twit?” Selina laughed.

“Yes. As in nitwit.”

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