by Dani Collins
“Back to Paris,” she repeated, reclaiming the stranger’s attention while hotly aware that Kasim was glancing away as though looking for an exit. “When exactly was I there with you? Wait. Let me guess,” she insisted, because it finally hit her. It was completely impossible, but she knew. “Last Friday night? The charity dinner for the Brighter Days Children’s Foundation?”
The stranger’s cheeks went hollow. “You know it was.”
“Kasim, where was I last weekend? All weekend?”
Finally she had his attention. His resentful, derisive attention.
“You are both aware I have a twin. Aren’t you?”
* * *
Kasim couldn’t say that he was relieved when Angelique cleared herself of cheating on him. He was still too gripped by residual possessiveness. Maybe his jealous rage had eased enough that he was capable of rational thought, maybe he’d ceased wanting to kill the other man acting so proprietarily toward Angelique, but he was still pulsing with adrenaline. The sheer force of emotion that had overtaken him as he identified a rival was paralyzing.
Unnerving.
“I’ll need your name and contact details,” Angelique said while signaling Maurice to approach.
“His Highness, Xavier Deunoro,” Kasim supplied stiffly. “Prince of Elazar.”
Angelique and the prince both turned raised-brow looks his way.
Kasim shrugged. “I asked when I walked away.”
“Another prince. Charming,” Angelique said scathingly.
Upset that he’d been mistrustful? She should look at the facts before him: they hadn’t been together all week, her sister was never seen in public and this man had brought her damned earring from what was no doubt his bed. Shared intimacy was the only reason he would want to return it personally.
“She said she was you,” the prince said as he reached to an inside pocket of his tuxedo. “The resemblance is remarkable, but there is something...” He narrowed his eyes. “I can’t put my finger on it, but the moment I saw you tonight, I knew something was different.”
That made Angelique stiffen and flash a wary glance at the man, but she recovered quickly and took the prince’s card, relaying it to her guard with a hand that shook.
“That explains the photos you were questioning,” she said to Maurice. “My brothers will want that, but wait until I’ve spoken to Trella. I’ll head upstairs to do that now.” With a hard glance at her sister’s lover, she said, “If you tell anyone it was her and not me, I will personally hunt you down and unman you.” She looked as gloriously provocative as she had the day Kasim had met her.
“You can try,” the prince drawled. “Give her my regards.”
Angelique turned away only to be confronted by a Hollywood starlet.
“I’m sorry,” Angelique said with tested graciousness, briefly clasping the actress’s hand. “I’ve been called away. I’m looking forward to our appointment next month, though. We’ll talk then.”
“My people will need a copy of the press release before it’s sent,” Kasim said, taking out his phone as he fell into step with her, winding toward the nearest exit.
“What press release?”
“The one clarifying her identity.”
“That won’t happen.”
He checked briefly, not faced with any physical obstructions, but walking into the wall of his own ego.
“You will,” he informed her. “Or I will.”
“Do not make threats in that direction, Kasim.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a statement. I can’t allow people to have a wrong impression.” His father would find Kasim’s means of putting Sadiq’s problem to bed rather crude as it was.
“After what you just thought about me, you might be surprised how little I care about how this reflects on you. I would rather the general public think the worst of me than know the truth, however.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Reasons.”
They approached the melee of reporters. He was forced to table his questions as they pushed their way through the chaos to the elevators.
Her guard efficiently plowed them a way and barred anyone from coming into the car with them, but Angelique still had the gall to look at Kasim like he was a hitchhiker who had hopped on from the highway.
“I’m going to my room to call my sister. You’re not invited,” she said.
“It’s my room,” he stated.
She shot a look to Maurice who was instantly alarmed. “That shouldn’t happen,” her guard said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call—”
“I know the owners,” Kasim said tightly. “I pulled strings to take over the reservation. It’s fine.”
“It really isn’t.” Angelique sailed out the doors as they opened, striding down the hall with her elegant dress trailing behind her like a visible whorl of her cloud of fury.
One of Kasim’s own guards had joined Maurice’s partner at the door to the suite, leaving Kasim’s bag just inside on the floor. Angelique gave both a baleful look and walked straight through the lounge into the bedroom where she quickly shut the door. Seconds later Kasim heard the dull ring of her placing a call and a greeting in a muted voice that held a tone that sounded much like her own.
He took out his own phone and searched for the most recent photos of Angelique Sauveterre. Most were from tonight, first the ones of them greeting each other outside the ballroom, then mingling within. A few showed her onstage, and one grainy snap across the restaurant last weekend was obviously a belated effort to pile on tonight’s revelation that they were dating.
Then there were a handful of images that showed her—it damned well looked exactly like her—in a clinch with the Prince of Elazar in a ballroom in Paris.
And someone had managed to snap her very tense expression as she had defended herself against two-timing right before they’d come up here.
Kasim gritted his teeth as he weighed Sauveterre security protocols against his own reputation. He could spare Angelique an hour to address this scandal in her own way, he allowed generously. After that, he would turn down the heat on this particular conflagration himself.
Twenty minutes later, Angelique emerged from the bedroom, cheeks flushed, brows pulled into a distraught line. Opening the door, she said, “Maurice, can you send a snapshot of that card I gave you to Trella? Merci.”
She closed the door firmly and turned to glare at Kasim.
“Does she do this often?” Kasim asked.
She pursed her lips as though deciding whether to answer. Then she huffed out a breath and crossed her arms defensively, but her shoulders fell a notch.
“It’s something she’s tried a few times in the last year, basically since she knew Sadiq was getting married. She wants to attend the wedding and is determined to get over...” She stopped herself. Sighed again. “It’s a way for her to test the waters of moving in public again. If she appeared as herself, the press would go stark raving mad. If she poses as me, however, and goes to Ramon’s race with Henri and Cinnia or something like that, it’s run-of-the-mill attention.”
Tonight was run-of-the-mill?
“Shouldn’t she get it over with? Coming out at my sister’s wedding is liable to take attention away from the bride and groom. Has she thought of that?”
“It will be a closed ceremony and don’t judge how she’s doing this.”
“Her actions deserve to be judged. I look like a fool. If you had had an actual affair with that man last year, I wouldn’t care.” That was a small lie, but he would be able to convince himself he didn’t care. “The fact you’ve been photographed with both of us in the same week makes all three of us look bad.”
“We’re all going to have to grin and bear it, aren’t we?”
“No,” he told her sternly. “You warned me about atte
ntion. You didn’t say your sister would ridicule me. I will give her the chance to come clean. If she doesn’t, I will make the completely true statement that you were with me in London all of last weekend.”
“No!” Her fists hit the air next to her thighs, arms straight and angry. “Don’t do that to her.”
“I didn’t take the photographs, Angelique. She’s bringing this on herself!”
“It could do so much damage, you can’t even comprehend.” She paced with agitation across the lounge. “The press was horrible to her for years after the kidnapping, printing every lurid scrap, fact or fiction, on what happened while she was captive. True or not, those things assaulted her every time, victimizing her again and again. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they called her unstable and a drug addict and fat. She was barely a stone heavier than me, but there was this magnifying glass on her so she couldn’t buy a stick of gum without it being a cry for help, or a sign she was suicidal... It drove her to go the other way, until she was underweight and we were scared she would disappear completely. I’ll tell you, if anything is designed to break a person’s spirit, it’s that sort of relentless, vicious criticism.”
She paused to take a few panting breaths. Her face contorted in a wince of distant memory.
“Then, after my father’s funeral... I guess we finally looked like young women by then. It’s not like we were dressed for clubbing, you know, but photos circulated of us at the service and men stalked both of us online after that, saying the most disgusting things. Sending us—” She waved a hand toward her crotch. “Those sorts of pics. It was even worse for Trella. She knew what men like that are capable of.” Her voice broke on the last words, eyes haunted.
“Angelique,” he breathed, and started toward her.
She bent to unfasten her shoes and kick them away, then kept moving, restless with heightened emotion, dress swirling like a cape each time she turned.
“She started having panic attacks because of it. That is not public knowledge.” She pointed at him as though warning him not to speak of it. Then she whirled away again. “She was terrified all the time. It was horrible for her. For all of us. It was like watching someone who is depressed to the point of being suicidal, or in chronic pain, and listening to them scream. You can’t do anything except sit there and watch. She spent, God, a good two years stoned on medications, trying to get it under control. Finally she left the public eye and it took a while, but she was able to stabilize. That was so hard-won, none of us rocks the boat. We don’t want to throw her off again.”
She hugged herself, gaze fixed on the past.
“For years, one of us has always been with her, never farther than the next room. We all know it’s not healthy. We want a normal life for her. Our version of normal, anyway,” she muttered, then waved with exasperation toward the guards in the hall.
“Even Trella is balking at how she lives. I just asked her how this happened and she told me she feels like she’s been doing time on a prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit. What did she do wrong, Kasim? Are her kidnappers half so tortured? They might be in jail, but have they suffered one-tenth as much as she has? And even through all of what she has faced, she tries.”
Her eyes were wet and gleaming. She was visibly shaking with intense emotion, making his heart feel pinched and tight.
“She’s been trying so hard to get over all her mental blocks. She flew to Paris alone. You have no idea what a big deal that was for her. And then, when she realized you and I were keeping out of the spotlight and I was expected at that dinner, she stole the chance to go out as me. To see how she felt going out alone. It was a spur-of-the moment thing, which is exactly like her when she’s at her best. In certain ways this is such thrilling news.”
She began pacing again, her dress flaring around her as she pivoted, but halted to press a hand to her brow.
“Not the part where she went home with a stranger, of course. I asked her how that happened, but she didn’t want to talk about it, only apologized for not telling him who she really was. My brothers are going to kill me for not being there to stop her.”
Kasim folded his arms, observing drily, “She took acting like you to the highest level, didn’t she?”
Angelique jerked her head up, eyes narrowed with antipathy. “I had dinner with you first!”
They hadn’t even finished their drinks, let alone started on the appetizers, but okay.
“That has to be me in those photos, Kasim. If the press gets wind that it was her...” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Trella is a tiny baby sea turtle making her way to the water. If we can just give her time to get there before unleashing the crabs and gulls...”
He snorted. “Laying it on pretty thick, aren’t you?”
“What do you want me to say? That it’s okay if you traumatize my sister by causing the hell of public attention to rain down on her again? It’s not.”
“What do you want me to say? That it’s okay if the world thinks you’ve slept with both of us? It’s not.”
“Who cares so long as you’re the one in this room with me tonight? Or, wait, am I invited to stay in the room I booked for myself?”
He scowled. “Don’t get bent out of shape about that. I don’t book weekends with women then ask them to foot the bill.”
“I see. That’s interesting.” She gave a considering nod, shoulders setting in a stiff line. “You realize that by mentioning these legions of other women for whom you have paid hotel bills, you’re saying it’s okay that you have a past, but not me. Is that what you were doing this week, by the way? When you were not texting me? Paying for hotel rooms with other women? Just because no one returned a cuff link downstairs doesn’t mean you weren’t making a fool of me, but do you hear me complaining? No. Because I’m well aware we haven’t made any commitments to each other—”
“Enough,” he cut in. “I paid for the room because I will put up with your pain-in-the-ass security protocols, but you will stay in my room. I will not ask permission from your guards to enter. As for the photos, I don’t want people to think that’s you because I’m jealous. All right? Is that what you need to hear?”
Her shoulders went back, but he could see he had finally pulled her out of her own interests into theirs.
“Which I might have hesitated to admit if you weren’t acting like a green-eyed shrew yourself. No, Angelique, I was not sleeping with other women. I was working. Nonstop. So I could come here and be with you. Future or not, we are damned well exclusive to one another until we’re over. Is that clear? Now, go warn your sister I won’t be so forgiving if she does this to me again.”
The line of her mouth softened. “You’re not going to expose her?”
“Do I look like someone who takes pleasure in feeding baby sea turtles to the gulls?”
She threw herself at him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANGELIQUE GLIMPSED THE velvet box on the romantically set table when she arrived at Kasim’s Paris penthouse.
She was getting to know him very well, but wouldn’t have pegged him as a man who celebrated a one-month anniversary. His sentimentalism touched her. It told her he valued what they had as deeply as she did.
“We’re staying in tonight?” she asked as she kissed him without even taking off her jacket or setting down her purse.
He had already shed his suit jacket and tasted faintly of Scotch and...tension? He lingered over their kiss, drawing it out with a quest for her response, waiting until they were both breathless and hot before drawing back.
“Do you mind?”
“No.” She tossed her purse toward the sofa then hugged her arms around his waist again. Nestled her mons into his hardness, pleased with the evidence his desire wasn’t letting up any more than hers. “It’s been a long week. I missed you. I’d rather have you all to myself.”
“Me, too.” His voice was sincere, but...off. He started to pull her into another kiss.
She hesitated. “Are you angry?”
A flash in his eyes, then, “Not at you.”
He combed his fingers into her hair and gently pinned her head back, so her neck was arched, her chin tilted up for the press of his damp lips. The stamp of hot kisses went down her throat, making her skin tighten and tingle.
“And you can’t talk about it so you want to forget it. Perhaps I can help with that,” she allowed with another press of her hips into his groin. It was her cross to bear that she was the lover of a man with great responsibilities.
His breath hissed in and he straightened to his full height, seeming to wage an inner debate. He bit out a soft curse and his hands fell away from her.
“We will have to talk about it,” he said, twirling his finger to indicate she should turn and let him help her with her coat. “Much as I’d rather make love to you first, you probably wouldn’t forgive me if I did. Let’s get it over with.”
Wary now, she watched him drape her jacket over the back of the sofa and move to the chilled wine in the bucket.
“A votre santé,” she said when he brought her a glass.
He only made a face of dismay and said bluntly, “You can’t come to the wedding.”
Angelique held the wine in her mouth until it was warm and sour. She swallowed.
“Sadiq and Hasna’s wedding?” Obviously, but she couldn’t process how he could say such a thing. “I know we can’t...be together when I’m there. I wasn’t expecting—” To stay in his room. Maybe she’d fantasized about it. “I mean, I thought I’d stay with my family and you and I could...” She shrugged. “Dance?” Steal time somewhere? They were very adept at that.
“My father is inviting the woman he would like me to marry. It would be awkward and disrespectful for my mistress to be there.”
And the hits just kept on coming.
His marriage was supposed to be some far-off thing that would happen one day, but in the mists of a distant future, like death. Unavoidable, but not something the average person worried about as an immediate concern.
