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And as for Rafe...okay, she was still working on that part of the plan. She’d done another quick internet search on his country, Al Qunfudhah. The Wikipedia article had stressed that, compared to some of the neighboring countries and kingdoms, women enjoyed a great deal of freedom in Al Qunfudhah, but the article had hit Violet funny. Why would anyone make such a big deal about women being able to drive as if it were some wondrous gift?
She did not know what Rafe intended to do. He really was, according to that same article, a sheikh. His brother ruled the country. His father had died a few years ago. But beyond that?
It had been bad enough when she’d been pregnant with some random stranger’s baby. But a sheikh’s baby?
She was getting ahead of herself. Dinner first. And that meant she needed to put on clothes.
She finally settled on one of her few dresses—the fanciest dress she’d owned, until she’d bought the black one on a whim. It was an olive-green cotton dress with tiny pink flowers printed on it, and it had a pink satin bow at the scoop neck. It was just a little bit girlie but also, due to the darker color, not so girlie. Plus, it was a forgiving cut and it still fit. She paired it with her jean jacket and her nice pair of brown boots, the ones with the pointed toe. She twisted her hair up and pinned it into place, but she decided against dangly earrings. This wasn’t a date. This was a...negotiation, really.
That didn’t stop her from putting on small hoops, as well as mascara and a little blush, though. Not enough that it looked like she was trying, but every little bit helped.
At least Mac wasn’t here. If he saw her in any dress at all, he’d start asking questions. Outside of weddings and Easter services, she was not known for busting out the dresses.
She was debating the merits of her regular tinted lip balm versus actual lipstick when the doorbell rang. Crap. Violet started to hurry, but then thought better of it. She was not at Rafe’s beck and call. She was pregnant. She would not hurry to accommodate him. He’d better get used to doing the accommodating around here. She slowly applied a light layer of a deep pink lipstick and then grabbed her jacket. She was cool, calm and collected. No reason to be nervous, right? Just dinner with the father of her child. Easy peasy.
But by the time she got downstairs, she was on shaky legs and it only got worse when she opened the door to find Rafe standing there, a devilish grin on his face and a single red rose in his hands. And then he took her in, her dress and her boots and her jacket, and she wished in that moment she’d tried a little harder to get the zipper up on her black dress.
“Ah,” he said in a voice that sent a shiver through her. The voice was so unlike the way he’d spoken to her yesterday that she stared at him. This was the man she’d met in a bar. This was the man who’d taken her to bed.
“Hello,” she said, feeling unsettled because it was so hard to reconcile this man with the one who’d sat in the living room yesterday and looked at her as if she were a deer and he were a wolf.
He still looked as though he wanted to devour her, but the difference was so startling that she was helpless to do anything but stand there, gaping.
He held out the rose. “A beautiful flower for a beautiful woman.”
She couldn’t help it: she wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to feel the way he’d made her feel, beautiful and sensual and desirable. But now that they knew who the other was, she didn’t think chasing that little bit of happiness was the best idea. “Look—is this a date? What is this?”
There was that hardness in his expression again and she had to fight the urge to step back. She was not imagining that. “I would never force you to do something against your will, Violet. If you would like to go to dinner as friends, then we may do that. If you would like to consider this a more romantic evening...” His voice trailed off as his eyes warmed.
She took the rose and set it down on the foyer table. “The last time we had a romantic evening, things went wrong.” Two-positive-pregnancy-tests wrong. “I think we should get a few things settled before we do anything else.”
“Yes, that is a wise choice. It would be too easy to...well.” She could be seeing things but he might have actually blushed. “Shall we? I made reservations at Claire’s.”
“Oh.” Claire’s was one of the nicest restaurants in town and she was wearing a jean jacket. Crap. She looked down at her outfit. “Maybe I should change?”
“You look beautiful,” he said, stepping toward her. Before she could react, he had cupped her chin in his hand and lifted her face. “You were beautiful that night and you are beautiful now. And anyone who would deign to criticize you will face my wrath.”
Wow, that was the sexiest-sounding threat she’d ever heard. Violet was speechless. Even if she could talk, she had no idea what might come out of her mouth. Something impulsive? Something stupid? Both?
Or, worse, would she tell him how much she’d missed him, how much she’d savored their night together?
Because it would be terrible for him to back her into this house and carry her up the stairs the way he’d carried her down the hall of his hotel. It would be awful if he laid her out on her own bed and did all those things he’d done before.
Yup. It would simply be the worst.
“Ah,” he breathed, so close to her that she could have tilted her head just a little and brought her lips against his, “you asked me what this evening is about. But now I ask you—what is it you want this evening to be?”
Violet was used to dealing with men. She did a man’s work, day in and day out. She dealt with cowboys and her brother, and didn’t spend a hell of a lot of time in a beauty salon, gossiping with other women. She could more than hold her own when some jerk got it into his head that she, a delicate female, shouldn’t be fixing fences or branding cattle or any of those manly things men liked to think they were the only ones capable of getting done. Men who decided they were alphas and she had to fall into line either got their metaphorical butts handed to them on a platter or a black eye as a souvenir of the experience.
So, really, Violet should not have felt this urge to give in to Rafe, to tell him that whatever he wanted, she wanted. But she was tempted. The masculinity coming off him was so strong, so potent, it was almost as if she could see the air shimmering around him, like heat off a highway.
All those men before—they’d been all talk. They had to tell people they were the boss because otherwise, no one else would know it. But Rafe? Jesus, he was in a different class. This was not just an alpha man, this was a man born to power, a man who breathed it as easily as he breathed air.
This was a sheikh. Her sheikh.
But just as she was about to succumb to his sheer machismo, she remembered their situation.
So she forced herself to lift her chin out of his grasp and she forced herself to stare into his eyes—dark and warm and waiting on her to say the word so he could strip her right out of her dress—and she said, “I want to figure out how we got here and what we’re going to do next.” Dang it all, her voice came out as something closer to sultry than businesslike.
Rafe heard it, too, and his lips curved into a knowing smile. “Ah, yes. How we got here. I seem to recall carrying a beautiful, mysterious woman to my room and—”
“No, stop.” Heat flushed her body, but she was not going to fall for him a second time. She had enough going on right now. “I mean more along the lines of what happened afterward. I’m pregnant. We need to be taking this seriously.”
That worked. Rafe straightened and, sighing, nodded. “Would you like to discuss this over dinner or somewhere more private?”
Private was good. Private was great. But private also meant more of those smoldering looks and hot touches from this man and again, she was totally going to blame the hormones on this one, but she didn’t know how strong she could be if she had to fend off those sorts of advances all evening long. “Dinner,” she said decisively.
Rafe, to his credit, didn’t use all of his innate power to overrule her, just as he hadn’t coerced her into doing anything she hadn’t wanted that night. Instead, with a nod of his head that veered closer to a bow of respect than anything else, he said, “Dinner, then.”
Three
Rafe and Violet were shown to a secluded table tucked into a small alcove in the back of the restaurant. Perfect.
He needed this dinner to be in the public eye because he had little doubt that word of it would make its way back to Mac, and Rafe wanted everyone to see him acting like a gentleman. But he also needed to be hidden away enough that he and Violet could discuss things like pregnancy and plans without being overheard.
He held Violet’s chair for her, which gave him the opportunity to admire her from the back. There’d been a moment earlier this evening when he’d wanted nothing more than to sweep her off her feet and carry her to a bedroom. Any bedroom would do. In this outfit, she was not the seductress V had been all those months ago, but she was also not the angry cowgirl who, just yesterday, had informed him she was carrying his child.
Yesterday, she had not been so very hard to resist, between her shell-shocked appearance and her perhaps justifiable anger. But today?
As she sat, Rafe had to physically restrain himself from leaning down and pressing his lips against the exposed nape of her neck, right next to where a tendril of hair had escaped her updo and lay curled against her fair skin like an invitation.
He managed not to kiss her there, but he must have stood too still for too long, for Violet turned and looked up over her shoulder at him and said, “Yes?”
Rafe didn’t answer immediately. He took his time circling the table and taking his seat. “I do not think I have told you how glad I am to see you again.”
Violet notched an eyebrow at him. “Seriously? You didn’t act all that glad yesterday.”
“True. But I think that, given the surprising nature of our reunion, we can both be forgiven for being less than enthusiastic at first.”
Her eyes narrowed and he got the feeling he’d said the wrong thing. “Oh, really?”
This called for a tactical retreat. A fast one. “Let us plan, as you have requested. How long have you been aware of your impending blessing?”
Because he needed to know that she was being honest—that not only was she expecting, but that it was his child. The four months between that evening and this one left plenty of time for her to have taken other lovers.
Her cheeks colored. “Well, since yesterday. I was in the process of peeing on a stick when Mac came to tell me you were in the living room.”
Rafe coughed over her coarse language, which made her eyes narrow again. “I did not realize,” he said. “Just...yesterday?”
“Yes.” After a pause, she said, “I had been feeling a little off for a while—super tired all the time, gaining a little weight. I had thought maybe I just had a stomach bug that was hanging on, but then my friend Clare started asking about how I was feeling and suggested...” She swallowed, staring at her water glass. “And I bought a test. A three-pack, just in case, you know?”
“I see,” he said, although he was not entirely sure he did. “How many tests were positive?”
“Two. I didn’t believe the first one. But two that said the same thing...” Her voice trailed off sadly. “I guess I was maybe a little rude yesterday, but I had gone from suddenly realizing I was pregnant and wondering how the heck I was ever going to find you and tell you, to walking into the living room and finding you. Except you weren’t who you said you were.”
“Yes,” he said sympathetically. “I can see why that would have been a bit of a shock. It was quite unexpected to see you again.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Why did you say your name was Ben that night?”
This was dangerous territory because the truth would endanger his scheme. So he turned her question back on her. “Why did you go by V?”
She did not answer immediately and then, just as she opened her mouth to respond, the server came up to take their orders. Rafe did not often drink. In fact, he had not drunk wine since that night. Perhaps that was why he had taken V to bed, because his inhibitions had been lowered.
But tonight, he decided he needed a glass of wine to get through this evening. Otherwise, he might overreact the way he had to Violet’s announcement yesterday and if he enraged her again, it would put his whole scheme in danger of collapsing.
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 just means that, for once, there’s one less complication to deal with.”
“Agreed. And I would not be outside of bounds if I asked you to refrain from starting a relationship with anyone else while you are carrying my child, would I?”
What started out as a smile progressed into a full giggle. There was simply no other word for it. Violet McCallum was giggling at him. “Out of bounds. Not outside.”
He should have been insulted that she was mocking him. What was it about this woman that made him not only accept her teasing, but crave it? “Ah, I see. Thank you. I shall remember ‘out of bounds’ in the future.”
“No,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “You are not out of bounds. Dating is a challenge in the best of times. Right now, I can’t see how it’d be anything but impossible. I am not looking to start a relationship right now.”
A new thought occurred to him as Violet settled down and sipped her soda. Rafe’s original plan, once he had realized that Violet was V, was to use and discard Violet much as Mac had done to Nasira. That was the ultimate revenge, a sister’s honor for a sister’s honor.
But now that Rafe was spending more time with Violet, he wondered if he would actually be able to do that to her. She was, after all, carrying his child—if she could be believed. And Rafe desperately wanted to believe her.
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