Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger: Saved by the Sheikh! / Million-Dollar Marriage Merger

“You won’t starve—not if you do what he wants.”

“No!” Tiffany clenched her fists, a steely determination filling her. “And I won’t starve, either.” She’d foolishly trusted Renate. But she intended to make the best of the situation. “I’m only a waitress tonight—and he still owes me a tip.”

Right now that tip meant tomorrow’s food, and when she walked out of there at ten o’clock with her shift money, it would be with a generous tip, too.

Rafiq found himself blocking out Julian Carling’s overloud voice as he focused on the archway to the right side of the bar where Tiffany and Renate had reappeared.

Tiffany wasn’t the kind of woman Rafiq would ever have expected to meet at a place like Le Club. Her face had a deceptive freshness … an innocence … at odds with the scarlet lipstick and the frilly, short black dress. He snorted in derision. It only went to show the ingenue act was exactly that—an act.

Yet as she neared the booth, Rafiq could’ve have sworn he saw her gulp.

She handed him a tall iced soda and stared at him with wary eyes.

“Thank you.” Rafiq’s body grew tight. He wasn’t accustomed to evoking that kind of look on a woman’s face. Usually there was admiration, a yearning for the worldly goods he could bestow. And a healthy dose of desire, too.

But Tiffany wore none of the too-familiar expressions.

Instead her pupils had dilated and transformed her eyes to dark holes in a face where her skin had lost its lotus-petal luminescence.

Apprehension. That’s what it was. A touch of fear. As though someone had told her he trafficked in human beings—or worse.

He switched his narrowed gaze to Renate. Had she told Tiffany something to result in that pinched expression?

While the statuesque blonde had instantly identified Sir Julian, who was something of a celebrity in Hong Kong, much to Rafiq’s relief she had not recognized him. Rafiq had wryly concluded that royal sheikhs didn’t have the same cachet as hoteliers. In fact, he’d been ready to call it a night as soon as he’d realized what kind of a place Le Club was. One celebratory drink with Julian out of politeness to seal the first stages of the proposal they’d put together for a hotel in his home country of Dhahara, and he’d intended to leave.

Then Tiffany had chosen water over fake champagne cocktails and he’d been intrigued enough to want to find out what kind of game she was playing.

Flicking his gaze back to her, he took in the stiff way she held herself. Only the tilt of her chin showed something of the woman he’d glimpsed before, the woman who had demanded more light in this tacky made-for-seduction booth.

Rafiq intended to find out what had disturbed her. Shifting a little farther into the booth to give her space to sit, he patted the seat beside him. She ignored the velvet upholstered expanse, and fixed him with the same dazed stare of a rabbit confronted by a hunting hawk.

His frown deepened.

She swallowed, visibly uneasy.

“Sit down,” he growled. “Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t bite.”

Her gaze skated away from his—and she blanched. He turned his head to see what had caused such an extreme reaction.

Renate was stroking a finger over Julian’s fleshy lips and the hotelier was nibbling lasciviously at the pad of her thumb. Even as they watched, Sir Julian took it into his mouth and sucked it suggestively.

Rafiq compressed his lips into a tight line. Only yesterday he’d been invited to Sir Julian’s home for dinner. The hotel magnate had proudly introduced his wife of almost three decades as the love of his life … and produced a daughter with whom he’d tried to match Rafiq.

“Nor do I devour thumbs,” he murmured to Tiffany. To his surprise, relief lightened her eyes. Surely a sucked thumb was tame for a place like Le Club?

For the first time he saw that her eyes were brown with gold streaks. Until now it had been her hair and peachy skin that had snagged his attention. Not that he’d been looking—he wasn’t interested in a woman who earned her living the way Tiffany did.

Abruptly, he asked, “Why do you choose to work here?”

“Tonight is my first time. Renate brought me—she said it was a good place to make cash.”

He withdrew imperceptibly at her confession. She’d come prepared to barter her body for cash? “You want money so desperately?” When she failed to respond, disappointment filtered through him like hot desert sand winnowing through his fingers, until nothing remained save emptiness. “You should leave,” he said.

A flush crept along her cheekbones. She looked down at the table and started to draw patterns on the white linen tablecloth with her index finger.

Rafiq looked away.

Across from them Julian’s hand had weaseled its way under the neckline of Renate’s dress, and Rafiq could see the ridges under the stretchy electric blue fabric where the other man’s fingers groped at her rounded breasts. Renate giggled.

This was what Tiffany was contemplating?

“Will it be worth it?” he asked her.

She didn’t answer.

He glanced down at her. Her attention was riveted on the couple on the other side of the table. She looked distinctly queasy.

“You’d let a man paw you for money?” He sounded harsher than he’d intended. “In front of a roomful of strangers?”

“I think I need the bathroom again.”

She looked as if she were about to throw up as she bolted from the booth. Good. His deliberate crudity had shaken her. She’d said tonight was her first night. Maybe he could still talk sense into her. Perhaps there was still a chance to lure her away from such a recklessly destructive course of action.

His mouth tight with distaste, Rafiq threw a hundreddollar note down on the table and rose to his feet to follow her.

Two

Rafiq was leaning against the wall when Tiffany emerged from the bathroom, his body lean and supple in the dark, well-fitting suit. He straightened and came toward her like a panther, sleek and sinuous.

Tiffany fervently hoped she wasn’t the prey he intended hunting. There were dark qualities to this man that she had no wish to explore further.

“I’m going to call you a cab.”

“Now?” Panic jostled her. “I can’t leave. My shift isn’t over yet.”

“I’ll tell whoever is in charge around here that you’re leaving with me. No one will argue.”

She assessed him. The hard eyes, the hawk-like features, the lean, whipcord strength. The way he had of appearing to own all the space around him. Yes, he was right. No one would argue with him.

Except her. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Something flared in those unfathomable eyes. “I wasn’t intending to take you anywhere … only to call for a cab.”

“I can’t afford one,” she said bluntly.

“I’ll pay for your damned cab.”

Tiffany started to protest, and then hesitated. Why shouldn’t he pay for her fare? He’d never coughed up the service tip she needed. Though the disquieting discussion with Renate had made it clear that tips in this place required more service than just a little company over drinks. Renate was clearly going to end up in Sir Julian’s bed tonight. For what? A visit to the races tomorrow … and a wad of cash?

Tiffany had no intention of following suit. She’d rather have her self-respect.

Yet she couldn’t afford to be too proud. She needed every cent she could lay her hands on. For food and accommodation until Monday. If Rafiq gave her the fare for a cab, she could sneak out the back while he was organizing it and hurry to her lodgings on foot. It wouldn’t be dishonest, she assured herself. She’d earned the tip he’d never paid.

“Thanks.” The word almost choked her.

He was suddenly—unexpectedly—close. Too close. Tiffany edged away and suppressed the impulse to tell him to stick his money. Reality set in. The cab fare, together with the miserly rate for tonight’s work, which she’d be able to collect in less than ten minutes, meant she’d be able to pay for her accommodation and buy food for the weekend.

Relief swept through her.

All her problems would be solved.

Until Monday …

Over the weekend, she’d keep trying her father. Surely he’d check his e-mail, his phone messages, sooner or later? Of course, it would mean listening to him tell her he’d been right from the outset, that she wasn’t taking care of herself in the big, bad world. But at least he’d advance her the money to rebook her flights and she’d be able to get back to help her mom.

“I’d appreciate it,” she said, suddenly subdued. Tiffany halted, waiting for him produce his wallet.

“Let’s go.”

His hand came down on the small of her back and the contact electrified her. It was the humidity in the club, not his touch that had caused the flash of heat, she told herself as she tried to marshal her suddenly chaotic thoughts.

Her money.

“Wait—”

Before she could finish objecting he’d propelled her past the bar, through the spectacular mirrored lobby and out into the oppressive heat of the night. Of course there was a cab waiting. For a men like Rafiq there always were.

“Hang on—”

Ignoring her, Rafiq opened the door and ushered her in and all of the sudden he was overwhelming in the confined space.

“Where to?” he asked.

He’d never intended to hand her cash. And she hadn’t had the opportunity to collect her earnings, either.

“I didn’t get my money,” she wailed. Then it struck her that he shouldn’t be sitting next to her with his thigh pressed against hers. “You said you weren’t coming with me.”

“I changed my mind.”

His smile didn’t reach his midnight-dark eyes. Then he closed the door, dousing the interior light. Tiffany didn’t know whether to be relieved or disturbed by the sudden cloak of darkness. So she scooted across the seat, out of his reach, trying to ignore his sheer, overwhelming physical presence by focusing on everything she’d been cheated of. Food. Lodgings. Survival.

She could survive without food until Monday. It wouldn’t kill her. When she went back to the embassy she wouldn’t let pride stop her begging for a handout for a meal. But she needed a roof over her head.

“I’m not going to be able to get that money back.” She hadn’t worked out her shift. “I doubt they’ll take me back tomorrow now.” There were strict rules about telling the management when you were leaving—and with whom. Tiffany had thought it was for the hostess’s protection.

“You don’t want to work there—find somewhere else.” Rafiq murmured something to the cabdriver and the vehicle started to move.

Tiffany didn’t bother to explain that she didn’t have a visa to work in Hong Kong, that she’d only turned up at Le Club for the night as a casual waitress. Worry tugged at her stomach. “I need the money for those hours I spent there tonight.”

“A pittance,” he said dismissively.

Anger splintered through her. “It might be a pittance to you but it’s my pittance. I worked for that money.”

“And for what do you so desperately need cash? An overloaded credit card after frequenting the boutique stores at Harbor City’s Ocean Terminal?”

His drawling cynicism made her want to smack him. Instead she tried to ignore him and huddled down into the corner as far away from him as she could get in the backseat. He was so overbearing. So certain that he was right about everything. Assuming she was a shopaholic airhead. Making decisions for her about where she should work, about when she should go home.

God help any woman silly enough to marry him—he’d be a dictator. Maybe he was already married. The thought caused a bolt of shock.

What did she care whether he was married?

That fierce, dark gaze clashed with hers. “I’m waiting.”

Trying frantically to regroup, she said, “For what?”

“For you to tell me why you’re so desperate for money.”

Tiffany cringed at the idea of telling him. “It makes me sound stupid.”

He arched an eyebrow. “More stupid than working at Le Club?”

She supposed he was right. So she hauled in a deep breath and said reluctantly, “I was mugged yesterday morning. My passport was stolen and my credit cards and my cash.”

It was mortifying. How many times had she been told to keep one card and a copy of her itinerary and travel insurance separate from the rest? How she wished she had. It would have saved a lot of grief. And a host of I-told-you-you-wouldn’t-survive-alones from her father, when she finally managed to locate him.

“All that I had left was twenty Hong Kong dollars that I had in my pocket and I used that for last night’s accommodation.”

“How convenient.”

The mocking note in his voice made it clear Mr. Arrogant Know-all thought she was lying.

“You don’t believe me.”

The seat gave as he shrugged. “It’s hardly an original story. Although I prefer it to a fabricated tale about an ailing grandfather or a brother with leukemia.”

He thought she was angling for sympathy. She stared across the backseat in disbelief. “Good grief, but you’re cynical. I hope I never become like you.”

In the flash of passing lights she glimpsed a flare of emotion in his eyes. Then it vanished as darkness closed around them again. “And I hope, for your sake, that you are not as naive as you pretend to be.”

“I’m not naive,” Tiffany said, annoyed by the nerve he’d unwittingly struck. He sounded exactly like her father.

“Then come up with a better story.”

“It’s true. Do you think I’d voluntarily make myself look like such an airhead?”

“The helpless, stranded tourist might work on some.”

She glared at him under the cover of night.

His voice dropped to a rasp. “Perhaps I’m the fool. I find myself actually considering this silly tale—against my better judgment.”

“Well, thanks.” Her tone dripped affront.

Unexpectedly he laughed aloud. “My pleasure.”

The sound was warm and full of joy. The cab pulled up at a well-lit intersection and the handsome features were flooded with light. Tiffany caught her breath at the sudden, startling charm that warmed his face, and somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach liquid heat melted. For a heady fragment of time she almost allowed herself smile, too, and laugh at the ridiculousness of her plight.

Then she came to her senses.

“It’s not funny,” she said with more than a hint of rebellion.

Rafiq moved his weight on the seat beside her. “No, I don’t suppose it would be—if your story were true.”

Rafiq’s brooding gaze settled on the woman bundled up against the door. If she moved any farther away from him, she’d be in serious danger of falling out. Was she telling the truth? Or was it all an elaborate charade?

The lights changed and the vehicle pulled away from the intersection. “Don’t you have anyone you can borrow money from?”

She turned her head and looked out into the night. “No.”

Frowning now, Rafiq stared at the dark shape of her head and pale curve of her cheek that was all he could see from this perspective, highlighted every few seconds by flashes from passing neon signs.

“What about your friend Renate? Can’t she help you out?”

She gave a strangled laugh. “Hardly a friend. I only met her today. She lodges at the hostel I’m staying at.”

Aah. He started to see the light. “There’s no one else?”

She shook her head. “Not someone I can ask for money.”

Rafiq waited for a heartbeat. For two. Then three. But the expected plea never came.

“You’re traveling by yourself.” It was a statement. And it explained so much, Rafiq decided, the reluctant urge to believe her growing stronger by the minute.

Tiffany shifted, and he sensed her uneasy glance before she turned back to the window.

She’d be a fool to tell him if she was. Or perhaps this was part of an act designed to make him feel more sympathy for a young woman all alone and out of her depth.

Had he been hustled by an expert? To Rafiq’s disquiet he wasn’t certain. And he was not accustomed to being rendered uncertain, off-balance. Particularly not by a woman. A young, attractive woman.

He was far from being an impressionable youth.

Three times he’d been in love. Three times he’d been on the brink of proposing marriage. And each time, much to his father’s fury, he’d pulled away. At the last moment Rafiq had discovered that the desire, the sparkle, had burnt out under the weight of family expectation.

Rafiq himself didn’t understand how something that started with so much hope and promise could fizzle out so disappointingly as soon as his father started to talk marriage settlements.

“So how much money do you need?” He directed the question to the sliver of sculpted cheek that was all he could see of her face.

This should establish whether he was being hustled.

A modest request for only a few dollars to cover necessities and shelter until she could arrange for her bank to put her back in funds would make it easier to swallow her tale.

“Enough to cover my bed and food until Monday.”

Rafiq released the breath that he hadn’t even been aware of holding.

As head of the Royal Bank of Dhahara he was familiar with all kinds of fraud, from the simplest ploys that emptied the pockets of soft-hearted elders to complex Internet frauds. Tiffany would not be seeing him again, so this was her only opportunity to try stripping him of a substantial amount of money and she had not taken it. She was in genuine need. All she wanted—and she hadn’t even directly asked him for it yet—was a small amount of cash to tide her over.

This was not a scam.

The first whisper of real concern for the situation in which she found herself sounded inside his head. He had a cousin who was as close to him as a sister. He’d hate for Zara to be in the position that Tiffany was in, with no one to turn to for help. Rafiq knew he would make sure Tiffany would be looked after. “Tell me more.”

“Except …” Her voice trailed away.

Every muscle in his body contracted as he tensed, praying that his instincts had not played him false.

“Except … what?“ he prompted.

She averted her face. Even in the dark, he caught the movement as her pale fingers fiddled with the hem of the short, flirty dress. “I’m not sure that I’m going to have enough available on my credit card to pay for the changes to my flight.”

“How much?”

Here it was. Rafiq forced his gaze up from the distraction of those fingers. She’d just hit him with the big sum—a drop in the ocean to him if she’d but known it—and he couldn’t even see her face to read her eyes as his hopes that she was the real deal faded into oblivion. The tidal wave of anger that shook him was unexpected.

It shouldn’t have mattered that she was a beautiful little schemer.

But it did.

Rafiq told himself it was because he wasn’t often wrong about people, that he’d considered himself too wily to be taken in by a pretty face. That was why he was angry ….

Because of his own foolishness.

Not because he’d hoped against all odds—

She turned her head toward him, and her gaze connected with his in the murky darkness of the backseat. He almost convinced himself that he sensed real desperation in her glistening eyes.

Anger overpowered him. Damn her. She was good. So good, she belonged in Hollywood.

How nearly had she hooked him with her air of innocence and lonely despair?

And so much smarter than Renate. He would never have fallen for the platinum blonde’s sexual promise of a one-night stand … but this woman … By Allah, he’d nearly bought everything she’d sold him. With her wide waif’s eyes, her hesitant smile … she’d suckered him. Like Scheherazade, she was a consummate teller of tales.

Rage licked at his gut like hot flames. He was wise to her now.

He would not be deceived again.

No one made a fool of him. No one. And he hadn’t fallen into her trap—he’d been fortunate enough to realize the truth before it was too late. No, not fortunate, he admitted, shamed. He’d almost been duped. A slip of a female had drawn him so close to the claws of her honeyed trap, and proven that he was not as wise as he liked to believe. He could still be taken in by a pair of heavily lashed eyes.

Tiffany had been a little too confident. The mistake she’d made had lain in her eagerness to reel him in too quickly.

“Where are we?”

The cab had slowed. Rafiq glanced away from her profile to the imposing marble facade lit up by pale gold light. “At my hotel.”

“I never agreed to come here.” Her voice was breathy, suddenly hesitant. Earlier he might have considered it uncertainty—even apprehension; now he knew it was nothing more than pretence.

“You never gave me any address when I asked.” He opened his door and hid his anger behind a slow smile as he consciously summoned every reserve of charm he possessed. “Come, you will tell me your problems and I will buy you a drink, and perhaps I can find a way to help you.”

This was the final test.

If she’d been telling him the truth, she would refuse. But if she was only after the money, she would interpret that smile as weakness, and she would accept.

Rafiq couldn’t figure why it was so important to give her a last chance when she’d already revealed her true colors.

She hesitated for a fleeting moment and gave him a tremulous smile designed to melt the hardest heart. Just as he was about to surrender his cynicism, she followed him out of the cab.

The taste inside his mouth was decidedly bitter as she joined him on the sidewalk. Rafiq hadn’t realized that he’d still had any illusions left to lose.

Inside the hotel, he headed for the bank of elevators. “There’s an open pool deck upstairs that offers views over the city,” he said over his shoulder as she hesitated.

Once in the elevator, Rafiq activated it with the key card to his presidential suite.

He brooded while he watched the floors light up as the car shot upward. A sweetly seductive fragrance surrounded him—a mix of fresh green notes and heady gardenia—and to his disgust his body stirred.

Rafiq told himself he wasn’t going to take her up on what she was so clearly here for—he only wanted to see how far she was prepared to go.

Yet the urge to teach Tiffany a lesson she would never forget pressed down on him even as the sweet, intoxicating scent of her filled his nostrils. When the elevator finally came to rest, he placed his hand on the small of her back and gently ushered her out.

Balmy night air embraced Tiffany as she stepped through frosted-glass sliding doors into the intimate darkness of the hotel’s deserted pool deck.

Overhead the moon hung in the sky, a perfectly shaped crescent, while far below the harbor gleamed like black satin beyond lights that sparkled like sprinklings of fairy dust.

Tiffany made for a group of chairs beside a surprisingly small pool, a row of lamps reflecting off the smooth surface like half a dozen full moons. She sank into a luxuriously padded armchair, nerve-rackingly conscious of the man who stood with his back to her, hands on hips, staring over the city … thinking God knew what. Because he was back in that remote space that he allowed no one else to inhabit.

When he wheeled about and shrugged off his suit jacket, her pulse leaped uncontrollably. He dropped into the chair beside her, and suddenly the air became thick and cloying.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked as a waiter appeared, as if that slice of time when he’d become so inaccessible had never been.

Tiffany rather fancied she needed a clear head. But she also had no intention of showing him how much he intimidated her. Her chin inched higher. “Vodka with lots of ice and orange.” She’d sip it. Make it last.