by Maisey Yates
She bit her lip, fighting against a wave of unresolved arousal, and tried not to think about how very much she’d wanted to cast off her inhibitions and live life like Alik, if only for one night.
Alik prowled the length of his office, his entire body on red alert, an adrenaline high on a level he’d never experienced outside of the battlefield.
What was wrong with him? And what was wrong with her? Clearly she’d wanted him, so what was the point in denying it? It made no sense to him.
He pushed his hands back through his hair and noticed that his phone was blinking. He snatched it up off his desk. “Vasin.”
“I expected to get voice mail.”
“I was awake. What is it?”
“This is Michael LaMont. We spoke a few weeks ago.”
“I remember,” Alik said, gritting his teeth. As if he would forget.
“I was wondering if you’d given any more thought to taking up my cause?”
“Your ailing company? Yes, I have.”
“And have you made a decision?”
“Not as of yet.” He looked out the window, down at the pool, and his body tensed.
“I would love it if you could come to Paris for a while. See the sights, my company, take in an opera. Bring your wife if you like, or bring someone else if you need a break.”
A break was exactly what he needed. Some time away. Parisian clubs and Parisian women. “Sounds like a plan, LaMont. I’ll be there tomorrow. It’s past time I got out of Attar.”
Past time he got away from Leena, Jada and all of the ways they upended his life. Past time he took another woman to his bed and purged his system of this…this unreasonable desire for Jada. She was under his skin, and he could not allow it.
They would stay here in Attar, and he would find the man he’d always been in Paris. Alone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“INSTRUCT THE SERVANTS on how to pack for you. We’re heading to Paris in two hours.”
The pronouncement seemed to shock Jada, but it shocked Alik a whole lot more. He had been planning on coming into the dining room to tell her that he would be gone for a week, and that she and Leena would stay here until his return. But that wasn’t what he’d ended up saying.
“Two hours?” Jada’s mouth, the mouth that he knew tasted like the most decadent dessert, rounded into a perfect O.
“Yes. I am on a time frame and you don’t want to stay out here in the middle of this godforsaken desert by yourself, do you?” Frustration at himself made him sound harsher than he’d intended.
“I don’t know. The alternative is going to your godforsaken bachelor pad in the middle of a French city, where you will also be—am I right?”
“You are coming with me. I am not leaving you here. It is an issue of safety.”
“How is it an issue of safety? We’re quite fine out here. All the modern conveniences. Light switches, even, as you pointed out.”
“I do not like the idea of leaving you alone.”
“Alik, you have a staff of about a hundred out here. I think we’d be fine.”
“Are you honestly arguing with me about going to Paris? No woman would do that. What is wrong with you?” She made no sense to him. Trying to get out of a trip to Paris, turning down sex when she clearly wanted sex. The woman was inscrutable.
“What is wrong with me? I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that this is my life, finally finding a routine, and now you want to uproot me.”
“The plan was never for you to stay here.”
“I know.”
“It was also the plan for you to come with me and be my date at business functions if it was required. It is now required and you will do as I tell you.” He was lying. And for some reason his conscience, which until thirty seconds ago he hadn’t known he possessed, twinged a bit.
“I did agree to that, Alik, you’re right. But I didn’t agree to submit to your every command, so you can get off your high horse and chill for a moment. If I have to be ready in two hours I’d better go figure out what I need now.”
“Never mind that…I will have the servants see to it. Did you just tell me to…chill?”
“Something wrong with your hearing? I did. And you need to.”
“No one talks to me that way.”
“Does anyone talk to you for longer than five minutes at a time, Alik? Anyone other than Sayid, who I’d venture to say could give you a serious run for your dominance and is probably not bothered by you in the least.”
“Not very many people do, and do you know why, Jada?”
She set Leena down on the floor, on her blanket and stood, arms crossed beneath her breasts. “Why, Alik? Please do enlighten me.”
“Because people who are smart are afraid of me. They know that even if I’m smiling at them, I could turn on them at a moment’s notice. If money passes into my hand and my allegiance is asked to be changed, it will be changed. That is why people are afraid of me. And they should be.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Alik.”
“I think you are.”
“You think wrong.”
“I don’t think wrong, Jada, I know you’re afraid of me. Oh, perhaps you aren’t afraid of me harming you in any way, and you should not be. For all my sins, I have never hurt a woman or child, and I never would. There is a line in the sand that even I won’t cross. But I think you’re afraid of what might happen if I get too close. Of what might happen if I touch you. Kiss you again.”
He took a step forward, watching as her pupils expanded, making her eyes appear darker, more seductive, watching her pulse throb at the base of her throat, revealing just how unnerved she was. Revealing just how turned on she was, he suspected.
“Yes, you’re afraid of that,” he said. “So afraid of my touch.” Nearly as much as he was coming to fear hers. What it did to him. But in keeping with his character, the more dangerous something seemed, the more he wanted it.
He extended his hand, intent on cupping her cheek, feeling her silken skin beneath his fingertips and Jada jerked back like she’d seen a snake.
Jada was mainly horrified that she’d wanted to lean into his hand, that she’d longed to feel his skin against hers again. That she wanted more than what she’d gotten last night when she should really hope nothing like it ever happened again.
He was wrong, though. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of herself.
“Just because I don’t want it, doesn’t mean I’m afraid.”
“You do want it, though,” he said.
“No.” She bent down and scooped Leena up into her arms. “I don’t. I have too much going on in my life, and frankly, so do you. We have a daughter. We have a daughter together. That means we have to be able to parent together.”
“I told you, I doubt I will be doing much in the way of parenting.”
“I think you will,” she said, challenging him. The way he’d challenged her. “I think you’re going to have to. Leena isn’t an accessory to add to your home. She’s not a vase that has been in your family for generations that you’re owed based on lineage—she’s your blood. Not a thing you hold rights to.”
“It is not for my own sake that I thought to avoid her, but for hers. Don’t ask why, because you know the answer.”
She did. She knew why. Alik said the worst things at the worst possible times, and that was when he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. He just seemed to be missing that place inside of him that should be filled with emotion and empathy. He was void there.
The realization, the image of an empty hole in his chest where his heart should be, made her own heart feel pain. It wasn’t fair. Alik had never had a chance. He had never had love or family. He’d grown into the man he was thanks to circumstances, but even though so much of it wasn’t his fault, it didn’t make it any less difficult for him to deal with. It didn’t make it any less real.
“I know you might not know this,” she said, “since you didn’t know your parents, but children are able to forg
ive a lot of shortcomings. Because they are born loving you, trusting you. At the moment, you have that love, that trust. No matter what you say, no matter what you intend to do, no matter how distant you want to be, you will be Leena’s father. And if you never try, she will have a lifetime of pain, disappointment and the breaking of that bond. Because she has that bond, Alik.”
“She doesn’t seem to like me,” he said, looking down on Leena’s head.
“She does. And she will more as she gets older. She’ll love you, Alik. You will be her hero. It’s how a little girl looks at her father. It’s how I looked at mine. He died when I was seventeen, and it was such a shock. He’d seemed invincible to me. Superman. I always felt safe with my father around.”
“How did he die?”
“My parents were older. I was a late-in-life surprise for them. I came sixteen years after their last child, my much-older brother. They were wonderful, and I didn’t get enough time with them. But my father…He taught me what to expect from a man in terms of treatment, simply by treating me like a princess. I would never have settled for less, because without words he showed me what it was I deserved. You have the chance to do that for her. Or not.”
“I need to go and ensure all is going as it should with the packing.”
“Of course,” she said.
Alik turned and walked out of the room, and a flood of emotion washed through her with such ferocity she was afraid it might bring her to her knees. She didn’t feel hopeless, though, not as hopeless as she had a moment ago.
Because when Alik had turned to go she’d seen emotion in his eyes. She’d seen fear. He didn’t want to let Leena down, and whether he knew it or not, he was on the road to loving her. And with that, more would follow. She had to hope so.
Right now, she just ached for him. For the man who was lost in a situation that made no sense to him. Alik was alpha, controlling and extremely capable. He had money and power, charisma to spare when he chose to apply it. But Alik didn’t understand love, and in this situation, that made him infinitely more helpless and less equipped than she was.
When it came to emotion, she held the power, while he stood, defenses down, with nothing.
She kissed the top of her daughter’s head and closed her eyes, repeating a promise in her mind, over and over again.
I will help your father learn to love you. Because you deserve nothing less.
She’d been on one of Alik’s private planes before, but that didn’t mean she was immune to the glamor of traveling in that kind of style. Not after a lifetime of flying economy. And after suffering, happily, with the inundation of luxury, brought on by having a bed available for a flight, she was completely floored by her first glimpse of Paris.
She’d been to India, with a stopover in Frankfurt, on a visit to see her in-laws once, but beyond that, she was hardly a world traveler. Seeing so many sights in person that she’d seen immortalized in movies was a truly surreal experience.
And after being treated to her first vision of the Eiffel Tower, she was shocked even further by the location of Alik’s town house. It was sleek and spare inside, the perfect foil for the view it afforded. Out one side was an alley, with a cobbled street and small, crowded shops. The patisserie, the boulange-rie and various cafés with pastries guaranteed to go straight to her hips. And on the other side was the tower itself, the base of the iron structure filling the view from the kitchen windows. And from the bedrooms, you could see the rest, glittering in the darkness, iconic and surreal.
No, not even the luxury of Alik’s private plane could have prepared her for it. As if a palace in Attar hadn’t been sufficient to prove what sort of man Alik was, to demonstrate the sort of power he had, the opulent home in the heart of Paris drove the point home.
“Your room is here,” Alik said, “Leena’s is down the hall. The master is on the top floor.”
“Only the master?”
“And my office, but yes.”
Alik was a man of total self-indulgence. That, also, should have been clear by now. For some reason, she was understanding it slowly, in increments. Perhaps because it was so very different from the way she did things. From who she was.
She should be disgusted by his attitude. Instead, she found she was fascinated by it. Not many people were so honest about how selfish they were. Alik owned it, enjoyed it. He’d made a life that was purely for himself and he seemed happy in it.
As happy as Alik could ever be.
That thought made her sad. Reminded her that sometimes having whatever you wanted didn’t add up to a satisfying life.
“So what are our plans while we’re here?”
Alik put a hand in his pocket and leaned against the door frame of the bedroom. “Tomorrow night my potential client is providing us with tickets to the opera, before I meet with him the following day.”
“Opera? I’ve never been.” And she shouldn’t want to go. Not with Alik. It was shockingly like a date. Because you couldn’t bring a one-year-old to the opera.
“Then it shall be a culturally enriching experience for you,” he said, his eyes not focused on her, but on a point somewhere past her head.
“What about Leena?”
“I have secured an au pair for the duration of our stay.”
“Have you?” she asked, anger—welcome, blessed anger—spiking in her. “And what are her references? Shouldn’t I have been consulted?”
“Adira took care of it, and I trust her as much as I trust anyone.” She noticed he didn’t say he trusted her completely. Simply as much as he trusted anyone. Because Alik didn’t trust. Another piece of him to add to her puzzle. She shouldn’t be working on an Alik puzzle.
No, she should be. Because she was trying to figure out how to help him have a real, positive relationship with Leena, and in order to do that she would have to understand him.
“Still, in the future, I would like to be consulted.”
“Of course, my princess, whatever you desire,” he said on a slow drawl, his tone mocking.
“She’s my daughter. I’ve rarely left her alone.” And she shouldn’t be leaving her now. She should tell Alik no. Tell him she didn’t want to go to the opera.
But she did. And it had been a long time since she’d been out. Since she’d done something she wanted to. Something for herself.
“She will be fine. She’ll be sleeping for most of the time we’re gone, as she is now.”
“I know,” she said. “I mean, I do know but…kids make you worry.”
Alik frowned. “Yes, they do. That is a universal feeling, then?”
“Yes. Everyone worries about their kids.”
A slow half smile curved his mouth. “And so do I.”
Even as they were preparing to leave for the opera, Alik wondered why he’d issued the invitation to her. He could have asked another woman. Could have gone to a club the night before and met someone to take out.
Better still, he could have given it a miss entirely. Opera wasn’t his thing. But he had asked Jada. And he found that he actually wanted to take her.
Maybe because he was sure it was something she would never do for herself. And she looked tired, something he was certain was partly his fault.
And no matter what she’d said to him, she hadn’t moved on. She was still grieving her husband; even he could see it, and he scarcely understood that emotion or any other.
That was how he found himself waiting at the base of the stairs in his town house, his heart beating a little faster than normal, waiting for her to join him. Waiting for his first sight of her in the dress he’d selected for her to wear.
That was another unusual thing. He’d never concerned himself with putting clothes on a woman before. In the past, he’d only been worried about taking them off. He was hardly a connoisseur of fashion, female or otherwise. But he’d seen the dress in a boutique window that afternoon on his way through the city and he’d known he had to have it for her.
As if on cue, he heard the s
ound of high heels on marble floor, and he looked up. And then it became hard to breathe. Hard to swallow.
The rich, crimson fabric made Jada’s golden skin glow, the strapless, scooped neckline of the dress revealing a teasing glimpse of her full, perfect breasts. Her waist was small, the gown fitted there before gently flowing away from her hips in waves of chiffon. And when she took her first step down the stair, the fabric parted and revealed its secret, and a hint of Jada’s shapely legs.
“The slit is too high,” she said, walking down toward him, her hair, glossy black and wavy, shimmering beneath the lights as she moved.
“It is not high enough,” he said, unable to take his eyes off her.
She stopped on the last step, the top her head still barely reaching his eyebrows. “I never wear clothes like this. It’s very revealing.”
“I know. And it’s perfect.”
“That’s a very male perspective.”
“I’m very male.”
She blinked. “Granted.”
“So then it should come as no surprise to you.”
“I would love to have refused to wear it on principle, but I don’t have other opera dresses lying around, and regardless of the fact that I feel like it puts far too much of me on show…I do like it.” A reluctant smile tugged on the corners of her full mouth.
“I knew you would. Or rather, I knew I would, and that was all I cared about.”
“So you dressed me for your own pleasure? A bit selfish, but then, that’s to type I suppose.”
“Feel free to enjoy me for your own selfish pleasure, Jada, if it helps.”
He didn’t think he imagined the slight coloring of her cheeks, the tinge of pink in her skin. She paused for a moment, her head cocked to the side, black hair sliding over her shoulder like an ink spill. “You look very nice. I’ve never seen you with a tie.”
He raised his hand to the knot of midnight-blue silk. “It is an opera,” he said, lowering it again.
“Yes, but you showed up at the courthouse in jeans.”
He turned around and opened the front door. “I changed before the hearing.”
