Sheikh's Marriage of Convenience

by Ella Brooke

  She shook her head at her own need and walked into the office.

  It was going to be a long day.

  *

  Everything was fine for Faris until midmorning, when he realized that the offer he had been posted was entirely in Hindi, with no handy Arabic translation. With a scowl, he picked it up and walked into the small office attached to his own.

  He opened his mouth to explain the situation to Danielle, but then he froze.

  Since she had started working with him, she had worn dresses. They were better by far than the baggy tunics she had worn before he had gotten the formidable DuConte involved, and they were all bright and lovely. This one was cut to perfection, but he had never seen her in gray before The charcoal was just a few shades off from black, and it had the effect of giving the appearance of a ghost of some kind, pale above the high collar. Her hair was twisted into beautiful intricate braids that were then swept up high on her head, and when she turned a questioning look to him, the beauty of her gray eyes took his breath away.

  “Faris?” she asked softly, and some part of him, some ungoverned animal part, shivered. When she said his name like that, it made him think of her saying it in bed, when the lights were low and when she could reach over to him and stroke him. There was some kind of erotic promise in that voice, a hidden urging to stay and be touched, be kissed.

  Then she spoke again, and it had never been more clear that it was all in his head. There was no hidden longing in her voice. It was as if they had never touched at all, and some spark of temper lit off in his head.

  “Faris?”

  “The representatives from Kolkatta sent me this damned contract again, and they only sent it in Hindi,” he said, tossing the papers on her desk. “Every time I ask them to change it, they send it back to me in Hindi. At this point, I’m beginning to think it’s some kind of ridiculous power play. I want to make sure that I know what this says, and then I want to make sure that they understand what I am saying when I rip it apart.”

  Damn her, she was already nodding as if she knew what he wanted.

  “All right,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ll make sure that you have a copy of the contract in Arabic on your desk as soon as I can, and as I go, I’ll check to make sure that they have not added something to it that they should not have. I have the previous version of the contract on my computer, so I can check for discrepancies. Will that be all?” She looked up at him with that perfectly innocent expression, as if she had never cried out under his touch, and just then, he could have hated her a little bit for it.

  He must have been staring at her, because suddenly, she became nervous. Danielle’s hand came up to touch her hair, and a slight blush stained her cheeks.

  “Is that all?” she asked, a note of nervousness in her voice, and he nodded curtly.

  “Don’t be all day about it,” he said, and he turned around and strode out. He didn’t slam the door behind him, but it was a near thing.

  When Faris was alone again, he let out a long breath.

  What the hell am I doing? he wondered. He had been completely unreasonable. It was an unforgivable trait in a boss, let alone someone he had slept with.

  And wouldn’t mind sleeping with again, the rest of his body insisted, and he groaned, hiding his face in his hands. Whatever had happened to him when he slept with Danielle, he needed to make sure it did not affect the work they did together. He was a man of control. He did not like it when things became strange and unpredictable as they just had.

  He shook his head. Things needed to get back to normal.

  *

  After he left her office, Danielle’s cheeks burned with humiliation. Her first impulse was shame. What had she done to make him so angry with her? Had she been late with her work, or had the quality somehow slipped?

  It was then she learned that the new Danielle was not such a myth after all. This time, instead of rising with a tide of pleasure and passion, she could feel a surge of anger.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing at all. The work she had in front of her today was no different than the work she had been doing the day before. Yesterday, he had praised her for her work, and he had complimented her on how she had done it. Today, he had come in with a request, and instead of just assuming she would do it responsibly, he had snapped at her not to dawdle.

  Don’t be all day with it? Danielle wanted to ask. When have I ever taken that long?

  The only thing that had changed was the fact they had slept together, and Danielle blushed with anger this time. She had heard the stories, of course. She had heard that women who slept with other people in the office were often in trouble, and she had gone and slept with her boss.

  A part of wanted to die. She wanted to curl up in a quiet room to panic for a while, and she wanted to get on the first flight back to Dubai, perhaps on the first flight back to the United States. Everything her father had told her was right. She was too small, too weak, and of course far too fragile to defend herself in the world.

  The old Danielle might have done just that. She had run from far lesser challenges before. The new Danielle refused.

  I’m staying, she thought defiantly. I am going to do my job, and I am going to do it well, and I am not going to let someone who wants to criticize people for doing perfectly fine work bully me.

  She scowled as she reached for the contract. She didn’t know what was going to happen, but she knew that she refused to be harassed, and if Faris thought he was going to do so, she was going to make sure he regretted it.

  *

  Faris had all day to think about what he had done. In between calls and looking over contracts that he could actually read, he thought about Danielle and about what he had said and done. He knew with keen acuity that he had treated her badly, and it had everything to do with what had happened when they had slept together.

  What he didn’t understand was why. Why was it that this small, slender woman had caught his attention? What was so special about her? Was it simply because he had never met anyone like this before?

  Around midday, she knocked briskly on his door, and when he called to her to come in, she walked into his office with a brisk stride, her head held high and her eyes as sharp as daggers. She looked, he thought, like a queen entering her enemy’s territory.

  “This is the contract from the Kolkatta investors,” she said, laying the folder down on his desk. “There’s also a copy in there of the previous version of the contract, and yes, they have taken some liberties with which things made the leap and which did not. The differences are highlighted for you in red, and I have placed a copy on the office cloud, so if you want a clean copy, you can have that as well.”

  Faris took the folder from her hand, but he looked up at her face. There was something bright and determined there, a firm set to her jaw that hadn’t been there before. Somehow, it made her look more womanly than she had before, and he felt the delicate tendrils of that attraction grow.

  He must have stared too long because she cleared her throat.

  “Will that be all?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said, and when she walked back to her door, his eyes followed her.

  After another sleepless night, he knew that he could not let it lie. He knew that he needed to talk to her, to tell her that he hadn’t meant to be that sharp, that it had nothing to do with her.

  He was not a man who was really used to making apologies, and this time, there would be few things more inappropriate than giving her a diamond tennis bracelet and hoping that that would smooth things over.

  He got up early and made the drive into the downtown area, which was just waking up. When he returned to the manor, he had a white paper bag that was filled with enticing smells, and Faris hoped that he could make things at least a little better.

  For once, luck was on his side, and Faris caught Danielle just as she was leaving her rooms. She was dressed in dark gray again, this time a sharp suit, and her hair was up in an intricate knot o
f braids. For a moment, he felt a brief pang that he had never bothered to take her hair down when they were making love, never trailed it through his fingers and found out if it was slippery or coarse. Then he saw the wary look on Danielle’s face and straightened up.

  “Good morning,” she said cautiously, and he smiled at her.

  “Good morning,” he replied. “I was up early, and I decided that I wanted to get us breakfast.”

  “I usually get breakfast in the kitchen,” she started, but before she could turn him down outright, he continued.

  “Perhaps you would like to share them with me up on the porch?”

  “The porch?” she asked with surprise. “I didn’t think the manor had one.”

  “It does, but not in the usual place. Will you come see?”

  She was still suspicious, he could tell, but there was a streak of curiosity in her that made her follow him up the stairs.

  When they reached the top floor and he opened a small, seemingly innocuous door, she gasped with surprise and Faris grinned.

  The porch had once been a sitting room, but the walls had been knocked down and replaced with thick glass. The result was a perfectly sunny spot with a plain wooden floor and lush plants, some with flowers, some colorful simply for their brilliant leaves, growing up on all sides.

  “How beautiful!” Danielle said, and he warmed to hear something from her besides that coldness and that frosty voice. She was a woman of wonder and curiosity, and anything that made her that cold should not be tolerated.

  He showed her to the small and cozy seating area, where there were two comfortable chairs and a mosaic table. When she settled herself on one chair, he took the other and started parceling out the things inside the paper bag.

  “Oh, those are beautiful,” she said in surprise, and Faris smiled.

  “These are traditional Aswar pastries,” he told her. “They’re made from pounded wheat dough and stuffed with a number of things. Some of the sweetest ones are desserts, and there are some that are stuffed with things like pork and beans and cheese.”

  She admired the soft brown balls of pastry for another moment, and then Danielle looked at him quizzically.

  “How… do you tell which is which?”

  He laughed ruefully.

  “I ordered an assortment, and I know that the cashier said something about how to tell the difference, but I wasn’t listening.”

  For some reason, that made Danielle grin, and she looked more like herself and less like a very stern wraith.

  “Go ahead,” he said encouragingly. “I brought these to share with you before we had to get to work.”

  She hesitated for another moment, and then with a shrug, she plucked one pastry from the corner. She took a speculative nibble, appreciating the taste and flavor of the dough before taking a bigger bite that included filling.

  “Cheese and onion!’ she said with triumph. “Oh, this is good…”

  “Good!” he said with a laugh. “I am glad you like it!”

  He ate his share, but it was far less entertaining than watching Danielle experiment with the pastries. She liked the tremendously sweet ones less than he did, but she had an appreciation even for the more the esoteric pastries, ones that even he didn’t care for.

  “Bitter melon sure comes by its name fairly,” she said, making a face, “but it’s not terrible.”

  “You are the only person I know under the age of fifty who thinks so,” he said with a wry grin. “I have no idea why they even make it, to be honest.”

  “Because someone loves it,” she said warmly. “Because someone who comes in all the time, with an eager smile and friends that they have dragged there, would be disappointed if the staff told them that bitter melon was not on the menu at all.”

  Danielle said it with such conviction and such warmth that for a moment, Faris only looked at her. He must have looked at her a hair too long because she laughed.

  “I said something dumb, didn’t I?“ she asked ruefully. “You bought me breakfast, and here I am talking about the tragedy of bitter melon. I shouldn’t say anything about it; I’ve never had it before today…”

  “You handled it like a champion,” he said solemnly, making her laugh.

  He knew that the time had come to speak to her about his true reason for inviting her up to the porch, and he took a deep breath.

  “I had a reason for inviting you up to the porch,” he started, and he was saddened to see her eyes go distant and wary. She didn’t trust him anymore, and after what had happened yesterday, he could see why.

  “I wanted to tell you that I am sorry for the way that I treated you yesterday. I was demanding and I was cruel with absolutely no reason for being so. I swear to you that it is not going to happen again, and that I sincerely hope our relationship can return to what it was.”

  She was still for so long that he thought she simply might flee. His hard words the day before hadn’t made her quit, but perhaps his clumsy apology today would do so.

  He was relieved when he saw her expression gentle. Danielle nodded, meeting his eyes with a clarity that seemed to strike right at his heart.

  “I don’t understand what happened,” she said slowly, “and all things considered, I guess I don’t need to. What happened, happened, and we can’t go back to fix it or change it, not really.

  “All right, I accept your apology. Moving forward, maybe it would be best if we just pretended that nothing happened between us at all. We should just… forget it?”

  He could hear the question in her voice. It struck him all over again how young she was. He was almost eight years older than she was, and she was untried in so many ways.

  “We can do that,” he said, “however…”

  “However what?” she asked, and he couldn’t bear the tension in her voice.

  “It would be a shame to leave it at that,” he said, and when he saw the answering hunger in her eyes, he knew that she understood him.

  He waited for her to make the first move. For a moment, Faris thought that she wouldn’t be able to do it, that she would simply take his offer to forget about it all and leave. It would have been her right to do so. It would have been fair, even.

  Instead, she rose up on legs that seemed as wobbly as a fawn’s, and when she came over to him, he caught her up in his arms. He saw the mute need in her face, and then he lowered his mouth down to hers.

  They had kissed the night they spent together, he knew that they had. However, all of those kisses burned away with the light and the reality of this one. This kiss, bold and new, perfectly sensual and amazingly sweet, made him groan with need.

  When she parted her lips so sweetly for him, he plunged his tongue deep inside, tasting the pastries she had eaten and underneath that tasting the very essence of Danielle herself. There was something dark and warm about her mouth, something perfectly yielding and wild at once.

  Her arms went around him, clutching on to him, holding him close with a desperation that went straight to his hind brain. Her body was telling him that they could never let go, that the need that existed between them was all-important, all-consuming.

  In the silent and sunny world of the porch, the only thing that mattered was her, the way that she felt in his arms, the pleasure that he gave to her and took for himself.

  Then Danielle’s hands were on his shoulders, pushing him away instead of pulling him closer, and with a soft sigh, he let her go.

  “Was that enough for you?” she asked, and he looked at her, knowing that the answer would only anger her or frighten her.

  “Was it enough for you?” Faris asked, and he watched with fascination as she lifted her chin proudly.

  “It will need to be,” she said proudly. “We’re done here, then. Give me five minutes to get to the office, and then you follow me.”

  He started to protest, but then he realized that in their embrace, he had become more than a little aroused. Grimacing, he nodded, and she spun on her heel, walking through th
e plants with the sure-footedness of some shy and lovely deer living in the wilderness.

  He took a deep breath and then another. It was over now, for better or worse, no matter how much she fired his blood. Faris tried to tell himself it was for the best and failed dismally.

  *

  In her small office, for the first time, Danielle locked the doors, both the one to the hall and the one to Faris’s office. Even after she had made sure that no one could come in, though, she didn’t feel any safer.

  Why would I feel safer? Danielle asked herself viciously. I’m the one that I am afraid of, after all.

  She had known when he looked at her that he wouldn’t have forced anything on her. She was learning him more and more, day by day, and even if he could have a sinfully sharp temper, even if he would be cold and hot by turns, he would never have made her do anything that she didn’t want to do.

  Because of that, she had no illusions about what had happened. She knew that if she had wished to do so, she could simply have walked away. There was no need in the world to fall into his arms, to look up into his bright blue eyes, so startling against his dark complexion. There was no need to feel his lips on hers and his arms around her, but that was a lie. She needed to kiss him and to be held by him so intensely that it was almost hard to breathe. It was one of the most difficult things she had ever done, pulling off him and walking away. Some part of her was still incredulous that she had done it.

  She pressed her palms against her eyes, seeking some kind of rest in the darkness there. He said that everything should go back to the way it was before. She needed it to; otherwise, she would never be able to work with him.

  It was for the best.

  She kept telling herself it was, anyway.

  “What’s done is done,” she said out loud, and she could tell that there was something hollow about it. She could say it as much as she wanted to, but that didn’t mean that she would believe it. Danielle sighed.

  At this point, it didn’t matter what she believed. What mattered was what came next. She had a job to do, and Faris, whose skin she could still taste, whose body still longed for hers, was unimportant.