by Dani Collins
She didn’t go into detail about the kiss, but gave Trella a good laugh describing the scene as Kasim set off her panic button.
“He said it would be a treat to have dinner with him. I’ll show him a treat,” she muttered.
“It’s been a long time since you went on a date. Even longer since it was someone you were genuinely attracted to,” Trella noted.
There went any attempt at disguising from her sister how deeply Kasim affected her.
“I don’t know why I am! He’s not my usual type at all.”
“You don’t have a type. You go out with men who make you feel guilty if you turn them down, or sorry for them.”
“Well, there’s no feeling sorry for this one. He’s...” Indescribable. She was reacting to him from a completely different place than she’d ever experienced. He didn’t pluck her heartstrings as Trella suggested, or tweak her conscience. It was a way deeper reaction than that. He drew her to him.
And made her feel too transparent just thinking about him. She quickly mentioned she still owed Henri a call, but lingered to ask Trella, “Have you noticed... Is something going on with Henri and Cinnia?”
Trella tilted her head in consideration. “He hasn’t said anything to me, but now that you say it...”
Henri didn’t peep a word about anything unless he wanted it known, but if he did confide a secret, it was to Trella first. They were all close, but they each had their own special relationship with each other. It went all the way back to the day Angelique and Trella were born. Their twin brothers had been allowed to name their sisters and it had created a sense of responsibility in each boy for “his” baby sister.
Ownership, Trella and Angelique had often called it in a mutter to each other. Half the time the boys acted like their sisters were kittens picked up from the animal shelter, but it was a dynamic that had colored their entire lives. They all loved each other equally, but when it had come to holding a sister’s hand or pushing her on a swing, they had naturally divided into Henri and Trella, Ramon and Angelique. Oldest with youngest, middle with middle.
Which wasn’t to say that Henri was any less protective of Angelique than he was of Trella, or that Ramon was more. Trella’s kidnapping had sent the boys’ instincts off the scale. Their father’s death six years later, when the men were barely twenty-one, had added yet another layer to their self-imposed yokes of responsibility.
Thus both men would insist on an explanation for today’s false alarm.
Angelique hung up on her sister and placed the call to both brothers at once, opening with, “I can’t talk long. I have a date.”
Their identical faces stared back at her, Henri in the London flat that he often shared with Cinnia, Ramon in the corporate office in Madrid. They both gave her their full attention, but Henri’s expression was marginally more severe, Ramon’s a shade amused.
“Do you really expect us to believe the ‘looking at your necklace’ story?” Ramon asked.
“Do you really want a different one?” she challenged.
“Soyez prudent, Gili,” Henri said. “He doesn’t keep his women long and he has publicly stated that his father will choose his bride—a traditional virgin from Zhamair, no doubt. I wouldn’t recommend a romance.”
“Hear that, Ramon? Don’t get your hopes up.”
No smile out of Henri. He really was a grump these days. Angelique scanned behind him for Cinnia. She usually dipped into the screen for at least a quick hello.
“I have to go to Beijing for a week, but I’ll be back in Paris after that. You can explain properly then,” Henri stated.
Good luck, she thought, suppressing a snort, and took note of how permanent that sounded. Back in Paris after that. Henri usually divided his time between Paris and London with occasional popovers to New York and Montreal. More often than not he said “we,” meaning him and his companion of two years, Cinnia.
Ramon only introduced his lovers to the family if they happened to bump into each other at a public event. Women were a catch and release sport for him and he was forever on the run anyway, covering Spain, Portugal and all of South America for Sauveterre International. The men were actively working on acquisitions in Asia and Australia, but as Ramon sometimes joked, “We’re only one person.”
“Trella told me not to bring her tomorrow,” Ramon said abruptly, dark brows pulling into a frown. “Did she tell you that?”
“What? No!” Angelique was taken aback. “I just spoke to her. She said, ‘See you tomorrow.’ We’re going to finish Hasna’s gown and start packing everything.” Had she blocked her sister from airing some misgivings, too focused on herself and her date with Kasim?
“No, I mean she said she wants to travel to Paris alone. With guards, of course, but she doesn’t want me to come with her.” Ramon scratched his eyebrow. “It started because I said I was heading to Rio right after and that I had to be there until Sadiq’s wedding. She said I shouldn’t have to double back and she would go to Paris alone.”
“Go with her anyway,” Henri ordered. “I’ll change my schedule and come get her, if you don’t have time. Where is Mama?”
“No!” Angelique interjected. “Boys.” They were thirty, but sometimes calling them that was the only way to pull them out of their patriarchal tailspins. “We’ve always said that Trella has to be allowed to do things in her own time. That meant not pushing before she was ready, but it also means not holding her back when she is ready. You know how hard she’s trying.”
“Exactly why she shouldn’t push herself and trigger something. No. I don’t like it,” Henri said flatly.
“Neither do I,” Ramon said.
“Too. Bad,” Angelique said, even though her own heart was skipping and fluttering with concern for her sister. “I’ll be here,” she reminded. “It’s a couple of hours on the private jet. I do the trip all the time.”
“It’s different,” Ramon grumbled. “You know that.”
“Let her do this,” Angelique insisted, ignoring the sweat in her palms as she clutched her tight fists. “I’ll text her so she knows I can come get her if she changes her mind.”
She signed off with warm regards to both her brothers and finished getting ready for her date.
* * *
Angelique had to give Kasim credit. He did his homework—or his people did.
He chose a restaurant she and her family frequented for its excellent food and location atop the Makricosta, one of Paris’s most luxurious hotels. The staff was also adept at protecting her privacy, not forcing her to walk through the lobby, but willing to arrange an escort from the underground parking through the service elevator.
It always amused her that the most exclusive guests of fine establishments wound up seeing plain Jane lifts and overly bright hallways cluttered with linen carts and racks of dirty food trays.
To her surprise, Kasim was in the elevator when it opened. That instantly sent its ambiance skyrocketing. He was casually elegant in a tailored jacket over a black shirt that was open at the throat.
Her blood surged, filling her with heat. What was it about this man?
“I didn’t realize you were staying here,” she said, trying not to betray his effect on her as she and Maurice stepped in.
“I wasn’t. Until I had a date with you.” His gaze snared hers and held it.
A jolt of excitement went through her as the suggestiveness in his comment penetrated. Don’t act surprised. We’re very well matched...
She’d never progressed so fast with a man that she’d contemplated sex on a first date. In fact, her advancement to the stage of sharing a bed was so slow, she had only got there a couple of times. Each time she had arrived with great expectation and left with marginal levels of satisfaction.
Now her mind couldn’t help straying into sensual curiosity. What would it b
e like to sleep with Kasim? Their kiss had been very promising. She grew edgy just thinking of it.
“In case you wished to dine unseen,” he added almost as an afterthought, with an idle glance at the ever stone-faced Maurice, but with a hint of droll humor deepening the corners of his sex god mouth, like he knew where her mind had gone and was laughing at her for it.
Wicked, impossible man. He had made her think about sleeping with him. Deliberately.
She didn’t let on that his trick had worked, although her pink cheeks probably gave her away. “The restaurant is fine. I’m rarely bothered there.”
The maître d’ greeted her warmly by name and assured Kasim it was an honor to serve him. He showed them to a table at a window where a decorative screen had been erected prior to their arrival, enclosing them in a semiprivate alcove.
Kasim held her chair and glanced at the screen as he seated himself. “Apparently we dine unseen regardless.”
“Did you want to be seen with me? You wouldn’t be the first.”
“I wouldn’t be ashamed,” he said drily. “You’re very beautiful. But if you’re more comfortable like this, by all means.”
Angelique tried not to bask in the compliment as their drink orders were taken. She had freshened her makeup and vetted her outfit over the tablet with Trella, settling on an ivory cocktail dress with a drop waist that ended above her knees in a light flare. The sleeves were overlong and held a belled cuff while the entire concoction was embellished with some of Trella’s best work in seed pearls and silver beads.
Public appearances were always this fine balancing act between avoiding being noticed but wanting to show Maison des Jumeaux in its best light if she happened to be photographed, all while trying not to look over-or underdressed for the actual event.
“Judging by what you said today, I didn’t think there’d been recent threats. Is this just the vigilance against them that you spoke of?” He nodded at the screen.
“That’s me trying to maintain some level of mystery,” she joked, but her voice was flat. “Yet another reason I don’t bother dating,” she expanded. “You already know far more about me than I do about you...not that whatever you’ve read online is true.” She so hoped he knew that and wondered why it mattered so much.
“You haven’t stalked me?” His brows angled with skepticism. “Asked Hasna about me?”
“I rarely surf at all. Too much chance of running into myself. And no. I’m too protective of my own privacy to invade someone else’s.” She didn’t bring up that Henri had been more than happy to check him out on her behalf. “In my months of working with your sister, she only volunteered the information that you insisted she finish school in exchange for supporting her desire for a love marriage and that you refuse to sing at the wedding, even though your voice is quite good.”
He snorted. “It’s not. And she’s lucky our father is allowing any music at all, let alone a handful of Western tunes. That’s it?”
She debated briefly, then admitted quietly, “She told me you lost your brother a few years ago. I’m very sorry.” At least her sister was alive. She was grateful for that every single day.
Kasim looked away to the window as though absorbing a slap.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she murmured.
“It’s public knowledge,” he dismissed, bringing his attention back to her with his thoughts and feelings well hidden.
She instantly felt like a hypocrite for claiming she didn’t invade others’ privacy. She desperately wanted to know what he was thinking behind that stony mask. He fascinated her. That was why she had come to dinner. There. She’d admitted it to herself. She wanted to know more about him.
“It seems I do have the advantage.” He shot his cuff as he leaned back to regard her. “In my defense, even the weather and financial pages have click-bait links with your name in them. I can’t help but see whichever headline is making the rounds.”
“Which is why I look out the window to see if I need an umbrella and ask my doorman for the news. Thank you,” she murmured as their wine was poured.
When they were alone, he said, “The story was very compelling. I was about your brothers’ age. Hasna was yours. I couldn’t help feeling invested in the outcome. I suppose the entire world presumed it gave them a stake in your lives.”
The world had presumed a stake in their lives long before her sister was kidnapped. It was one of the reasons her family had been targeted.
She didn’t bother lamenting it aloud. Her family had learned to accept what couldn’t be changed. Identical twin boys born to a French tycoon and his Spanish aristocrat wife had been fairly unremarkable, but when a pair of identical girls had come along six years later, and the four together had won the genetic lottery on good looks, well, the children had become media darlings without being consulted. She had never been Angelique. She was “one of The Sauveterre Twins.”
Which she would never for a moment wish to change. She adored her siblings and wore the designation with pride. It was the attention they relentlessly attracted that exhausted her.
“It’s been fifteen years. I would have thought the fascination would have died down,” she said with a self-deprecating smile.
“With your sister living in seclusion? It only adds to the mystery.” He eyed her as though he wondered if it was a ploy to keep the attention at a fever pitch. “The free exposure can’t be hard on business.”
“You’re wrong,” she said bluntly, amused by the way his expression stiffened at being accused of such a thing. “Discretion is one of the most valuable services we offer our clients. The planning of a maternity gown for the red carpet, for instance, when the pregnancy won’t be announced until closer to the event. Or a wedding gown when the engagement is still confidential. Sometimes the wedding itself is a secret affair. Trella and I live under such tight security it’s fairly easy to extend that amenity to clients.”
She sent a pithy look at the screen beside them.
“Until a tourist wants a selfie with me like I’m a historic fountain. Or a shopkeeper wants instant publicity and posts the brand of toothpaste I prefer. And yes, I know I can stay in and buy online. That’s what Trella does. But I like to be human and walk in the sun, browse shops for housewares and books. Being followed and photographed while doing it is far more nuisance than benefit and just makes poor Maurice’s job harder.”
Kasim flicked his gaze beyond her to where she knew Maurice would have been seated at a table with a sight line on her. He was likely sipping a coffee while awaiting a light meal, gaze monitoring the restaurant’s employees and patrons.
“It’s the reason I don’t date,” she said, noting where he was looking. “Men don’t care to be watched while they attempt to romance a woman.”
“It would be a special predilection, wouldn’t it? One I don’t possess, I’ll admit.”
She had to chuckle at that, relieved he had a sense of humor about it.
“And if I were merely attempting something that had little chance of success, I might be self-conscious,” he added, gaze clashing into hers. “But I’m not.”
Oh.
“You’re a very confident man.” She allowed herself to lean into the fire, to let the heat of his interest warm her cheeks and glow in her eyes. “You come on very strong.”
“I didn’t expect to find you so intriguing.” He held her gaze without actually looking into her eyes. Instead he visually caressed her face, touching her loose hair with his dark gaze. She couldn’t look away as he studied her like she was a painting. “A meeting in your office would have sufficed if you’d been less...impassioned. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever encountered.”
She had expected another compliment on her looks. This was far more disarming. It made her feel like he saw within her, to the real woman inside, the one few noticed or unde
rstood. Plus it was an acknowledgment of something she’d had to work on most of her life: being unique from her sister and being comfortable with her own powerful emotions.
If she wasn’t careful, she would be seduced without realizing it. He was very good at it.
“I like your sister, you know. I wouldn’t want to hurt her. She’s delightful.” She waited a beat, deliberate with her timing as she added, “Not much like you at all.”
His mouth twitched and he took a thoughtful sip of his wine. His lashes were so thick and long, they were almost pretty, but he was undeniably masculine as he lifted them to regard her. There was nothing soft in the dangerous air he projected.
She held her breath.
“Feel privileged, Angelique. I’m letting you get away with a lot.”
She bit the inside of her lip, wondering if she should apologize. Was she ruining this little bit of rapport they’d arrived at?
“Hasna is a lovely person,” he agreed. “And you’re right. She and I are opposites. Women lead different lives in our country so they grow up with gentler personalities.” Something about that statement made him briefly pensive. “At least that’s what I’ve always thought made her so tenderhearted and me more practical and assertive.”
“Now you’re not so sure?” She tried to read his inscrutable expression. “Supporting her desire for a love marriage sounds rather sentimental, if you ask me.”
His cheeks hollowed as though he considered his words carefully.
“She was very upset about losing Jamal. I’m not incapable of compassion. I want her to be happy in her marriage and we’ve established that we both wish to protect our sisters from heartache, have we not? Is that how you came to open a fashion house with yours?”
She heard that as the shift in topic it was, which intrigued her because something about the way he was trying to compensate Hasna for their brother’s loss struck her as guilt. Or responsibility, maybe.
Because she was the sensitive, intuitive one. In some ways it was her burden, but she couldn’t deny that she often picked up on things others missed.