A smiling, gurgling Ethan.
Traitor, Rachel thought, as she stepped inside the elevator car.
Unless she was willing to walk away from her baby—and that would never happen—she was now, to all intents and purposes, the Sheikh’s prisoner.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOMEWHERE around three in the morning, even New York City finally slept.
Not Karim.
He stood at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in his darkened bedroom, bare-chested, wearing only gray sweatpants that were a leftover from his days at Yale. Behind him, the rumpled bed offered mute testimony to the hours he’d spent tossing and turning.
Ridiculous.
He should have been exhausted.
He hadn’t slept at all last night, and his day had started with the discovery that his brother had a child. Add in his confrontations with Rachel, the five-hour flight from Nevada to New York, the hours spent in his study, trying to catch up with the messages and emails on his cell phone and his computer …
He’d fallen into bed somewhere after midnight. Sleep should have come quickly.
It hadn’t.
Instead, he’d envisioned Rachel in a guest suite down the corridor. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Had her anger at him eased or was she still breathing fire as she had hours earlier, when she’d found out he wasn’t taking her to a hotel but to his home?
The memory almost made him laugh.
He’d never seen a woman so furious. And she hadn’t been shy about letting him know it.
He couldn’t think of another woman in his life who’d have objected to spending the night with him—but, of course, she wasn’t really spending it with him.
If she were, he wouldn’t be asleep now, either. He’d be in his bed with her in his arms …
“Hell!”
Karim strode into his bathroom, turned on the sink faucet, bent his head under the flow of cold water and took a long drink while the water cooled his face. He toweled off with impatient strokes and then went back to the window again.
He was not a man given to erotic imaginings. Why would he be, when there was always a woman eager to offer the real thing?
He wasn’t given to insomnia, either, no matter how long or difficult his day had been.
And yet he was standing here, wide awake.
Eighteen stories below, Fifth Avenue was deserted save for an occasional taxi or some unlucky dog owner being pulled along at the end of a leash. Central Park was a hushed dark green jungle on the opposite side of the street. Beyond the park, even the glittering lights of the Manhattan skyline seemed dim.
Wonderful, Karim thought grimly. The entire world was asleep except for him.
He’d never needed much sleep, four or five hours was more than enough, but he wasn’t fool enough to think he could get through a day of decision-making without some kind of rest, and tomorrow was going to be a day filled with decision-making.
After speaking with his P.A. he’d set up two meetings: breakfast with a Tokyo banker at the Regency, then midmorning coffee downtown, at Balthazar, with an official from India. At noon, he’d have lunch in the boardroom with his own staff.
He’d been away from his office far too long. He had business to conduct and he also needed to touch base with his people.
And then there was the rest.
Karim’s mouth thinned.
At two o’clock he’d meet with his attorney.
He and Rachel.
He knew it would not be easy to negotiate a custodial arrangement with her. She was going to be difficult.
What would it take to get her to give up her rights to the boy? She’d said she never would but that was talk. People always had a price. Women, especially.
Yes, they liked his looks. They liked his virility. But he knew damned well they liked his title and his wealth even more.
That was surely how Rami had caught Rachel’s attention. Money, a title …
But Rami hadn’t had money. The proof was in that desolate little apartment where he’d lived with her. As for the title … Rachel found titles laughable.
He found that amusing, because he wasn’t impressed by them, either. He had, at least, earned his own fortune, but he’d been born to the silly string of honorifics. He hadn’t done a thing to earn them but he’d grown accustomed to others not seeing things that same way.
Most people, especially women, heard who he was and began to act as if this was pre-revolutionary France and he was the Sun King. They gushed. They fluttered their lashes. He’d been on the receiving end of more than one curtsy and it always embarrassed the hell out of him when it happened.
The thought of Rachel gushing or fluttering or curtsying was laughable.
She’d made it clear that she was disdainful of his being a prince, a sheikh, heir to the throne of Alcantar. That he was almost embarrassingly rich didn’t win any points from her, either.
She treated him the way he suspected she’d treat anybody else. Anybody else she didn’t like, he thought, and he smiled.
Rachel was a very interesting woman.
She was a woman making it on her own, with a child to raise. That couldn’t be easy. His mother—his and Rami’s—had been a woman with all possible means and resources at her fingertips, yet her sons had been amusing at best and at worst an inconvenience.
He could not imagine Rachel ever feeling inconvenienced by the child.
So what?
Good mother or not, the baby would be better off with him. Being a prince was the child’s destiny. Rachel would get over losing him …
Dammit, why was he thinking about her at all?
His mouth thinned.
He knew why.
Sex.
He wanted Rachel in his bed.
He wanted her naked and moaning beneath him, wanted the taste of her on his tongue. He wanted her scent on him, her wet heat on him, he wanted to sink into her and watch her eyes blur as he made her come and come and come …
Karim cursed and rubbed his hands over his face. He was being a damned fool.
He’d kissed her but that would not happen again. Absolutely it would not. He certainly would not sleep with her—and standing here, thinking about it, was pointless.
He strode through his rooms, yanked open the door and headed for the stairs.
A brandy. Two brandies. Then he’d stop this nonsense, go back to his rooms, fall into bed—
What was that? A faint sound. The wind?
The sound came again.
It was the baby.
Rachel had said something about teething. Babies cried when they teethed; he’d heard that or read it somewhere.
Dammit, that was all he needed. A crying child …
The sound stopped.
Karim waited but it didn’t come again. Either the child had gone back to sleep or Rachel was soothing him …
Enough thinking about Rachel tonight.
Moonlight dappled the living room, lost itself high in the shadowy darkness of the fourteen-foot ceilings. He went straight to his study, to the teak shelves and a Steuben decanter of—
Hell.
The child was crying again.
He must have been wrong. Rachel wasn’t dealing with the boy, but that was her responsibility.
His was to gain custody, see to it the child was raised properly.
As he had been raised.
By tutors and nannies and governesses, so Rami’s son would learn to be responsible and not waste his life on frivolity or anything but meeting his obligations …
The crying was annoying.
“Dammit,” Karim growled, and he put down the glass, left the study, went quickly up the stairs and down a long corridor to the suite where Rachel and the boy slept.
The sitting room door was shut. He tapped his knuckles against it.
“Rachel?”
No answer.
Great.
She was fast asleep while he paced the floor.
He tri
ed again. Knocked harder, said her name more loudly. Still nothing.
A muscle in his jaw knotted.
“Dammit,” he muttered again, and he opened the door and stepped into the sitting room. She had to be in one of the two bedrooms that opened off it.
The noise had stopped but he knew it would start again. There was only one way to deal with it. He’d find Rachel and tell her to keep the child quiet.
He had a full schedule ahead and needed his rest.
He moved briskly through the sitting room. The first door was ajar. He hesitated, then pushed it open.
No crib. No stacks of baby gear—all the stuff he’d arranged to have delivered. He saw only a bed in the same condition as his own, blankets twisted and pushed aside as if the occupant had had difficulty sleeping.
It was Rachel’s room. Rachel’s bed.
There was the faint scent of lemon in the air. Rachel smelled of lemon. It suited her, that fresh, sweet-sharp tang. It was clean. Delicate.
Honest.
Who but an honest woman would have looked him in the eye when she admitted she’d hated the man who had been her lover?
Then, how had it happened? How could a woman like her have gone to the bed of a man she didn’t love?
Karim cursed under his breath.
He was here to deal with a crying baby. Nothing more, nothing less. That his thoughts were wandering was proof that he had to get some sleep if he was going to be able to function well enough tomorrow—actually, today—and put this mess behind him.
He strode back through the sitting room, went straight to the second door.
It, too, was ajar. He stepped inside.
Yes, this was the boy’s room. There was the crib. Boxes of baby stuff. The soft illumination of a lamp—what was that, anyway?
A lamp shaped like a carousel.
The work of his assistant?
He’d have to remember to thank her for her creativity, Karim thought wryly …
And then he saw Rachel.
She was asleep in a big wing chair, the baby in her arms. Her hair was loose, falling like a glossy rain over the shoulders of a high-necked white cotton nightgown long enough to cover her feet, which were tucked up under her.
Karim’s throat constricted.
He had seen this woman in glitter. In denim. He had seen her naked. She had been beautiful each time, but this, the way she sat now, so unselfconsciously lovely, so perfect and vulnerable, was almost enough to stop his heart.
Whatever the reason she’d been with Rami it didn’t matter.
What did matter was that he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any other woman.
He drew a long, shuddering breath.
But wanting was not the same as having. And he could not have her.
It would only complicate something that was already far too complicated. He had a responsibility. A duty. To his father, his people, his dead brother’s memory.
The boy.
That was what this was all about.
His mother had been focused on herself. So had Rami. But he was not like that. He never would be. He—
“Babababa.”
The baby was awake, looking at him through his brother’s long-lashed blue eyes. Karim shook his head and put his finger to his lips.
“Shh.”
Wrong comment. The child’s mouth trembled. He made a little sound, not quite a cry but very close. Karim shook his head again.
“No,” he whispered. “Don’t. You must let Rachel sleep.”
The child’s mouth turned down. His small face darkened. Karim moved fast, lifted him carefully from the curve of Rachel’s arm and walked quickly into the sitting room.
Now what?
What did you do with a crying child? For that matter, what did you do with one that was not crying?
The boy blew a noisy bubble. Karim looked at him. What the hell did a bubble mean?
“Bzzzt,” the kid said.
Karim cleared his throat. He needed a translator.
Little hands waved. Small feet kicked. The round face screwed up.
“Okay,” Karim said quickly. “How about we, ah, we go downstairs for a while?”
Down the stairs they went.
The baby began to make little noises. Not happy ones.
“I don’t know what you want,” Karim said desperately.
God help him if it was a bottle of formula or, worse still, a diaper change.
The living room was lighter now; dawn was touching the soaring towers of the city. Karim went to one of the big, arched windows.
“Look,” he said. “It’s going to be a sunny day.”
More little noises. Karim had a yacht that sounded like that when it started up. Well, no. Not the yacht. The motor-boat that could be launched from it—
“Naaah. Naaah. Naaah.”
“Shh,” Karim said frantically …
Hell.
The kid was crying. Hard. Genuine tears were rolling down his plump cheeks. Karim looked for something to use to wipe them away. Dammit, how come he hadn’t thought to put on a T-shirt?
“Don’t cry,” he said. Carefully, he swiped a finger along the baby’s cheeks. A little hand grabbed his finger, dragged it to the rosebud mouth.
The noise stopped.
The tears stopped.
Teething. The kid was teething on his finger.
Karim smiled. He sat down in the corner of one of the curved living room sofas. Put his feet up on the teak and glass coffee table. Carefully arranged himself so there was a throw pillow behind him.
The kid was chomping away. And—thank you, God—this time the sounds he made were obviously ones of satisfaction.
“Good, huh?” Karim said softly.
That won him a bubbly smile. Karim smiled back. The kid was cute, if you liked kids. He didn’t. Well, no. That wasn’t true. He didn’t dislike them.
He’d just never spent any time around one.
The kid smelled good, too. Something soft. Not lemony, like Rachel; this was a smell even a man who knew zero about children would automatically associate with babies.
The baby cooed. Smiled around Karim’s finger. Karim grinned. And yawned.
The baby yawned, too.
The curving lashes drooped.
“That’s it, kid,” Karim said softly. “Time to call it a night. You doze off; I’ll take you back to Rachel …”
Ethan’s lashes fell against his cheeks and didn’t lift again.
Karim’s did the same.
A moment later, man and baby were sound asleep.
Karim woke abruptly, the baby still in his arms.
Asleep.
An excellent idea. Karim was desperate to do the same thing. Sleep for another couple of hours, then phone his P.A. and tell her to cancel his appointments for the day.
Why not? The guy from Tokyo, the one from India, both could wait until he’d finished dealing with Rami’s affairs and had a clear head.
Rami’s affairs, he thought, his mouth thinning. That was certainly what Vegas had been all about—his dead brother’s affair with a dancer, a stripper, whatever Rachel Donnelly was.
She was also a mother.
A good mother. Hell, an excellent one, from what he’d seen. Responsible. Caring. Determined.
It was surprising that Rami would have been attracted to such a woman. Party girls with boobs bigger than their brains had always been his type.
Not that Rachel lacked anything in that department.
Her breasts, all of her that he’d seen in that quick encounter in her bathroom, were lush and female …
And how many times had he told himself to stop thinking such things, dammit? Because what Rachel was or was not had nothing to do with him or what he had to do next.
Karim got to his feet, carried the baby back to the guest suite. Rachel was still curled in the big chair, asleep.
She looked incredibly beautiful. And innocent.
Amazing how deceiving looks could be.
Amazing how he hungered for her.
He turned away, carefully lowered the baby into the crib, pulled up the blanket, started from the room …
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
He went back to the crib, leaned into it and lightly stroked the boy’s soft fair curls.
“Sleep well, little one,” he whispered, and then, before he could succumb to the insane desire to go to Rachel and do the same thing, he strode out of the suite, down the corridor to his own rooms, phoned his P.A.—but not to cancel his appointments.
To make more of them.
He’d neglected business for far too long.
Besides, work would clear his head, he told himself as he made a second call, this one to his lawyer, and a third, to the testing laboratory, and cancelled both meetings.
Then he stripped off his sweatpants, got into the shower and let the water beat down on him,
Those things could wait. A day, two—even three.
Putting them off had nothing to do with Rachel.
Nothing at all.
Down the hall, in the guest suite, Rachel, who had awakened as Karim entered the room, opened her eyes only when she was sure he’d gone.
Nothing made sense.
Not the fact that the stern Sheikh had apparently been caring for Ethan while she slept, or that he’d handled the baby with something that could only be defined as tenderness.
And it certainly didn’t make sense that as she’d watched him from under her lashes she’d thought what it would be like if he came to her, touched her with those big, gentle hands …
“Fool,” she whispered, and she rose to her feet.
It was time to start the day.
And to start planning her escape.
Except escape wasn’t possible. There were always eyes on her.
Karim had a household staff.
Rachel knew that he’d told them something about her.
She had no idea what he’d said, but when she appeared in the kitchen that first morning, Ethan in her arms, a bosomy woman with flour-dusted hands had turned from the stove, a polite smile on her lips.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Mrs. Jensen, the Sheikh’s cook.”
And I’m the Sheikh’s prisoner, Rachel wanted to say, but she didn’t of course, she simply kept her expression neutral,
Karim was the enemy. So, then, was anyone he employed.
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