Sarah Anderson – A Surprise For The Sheikh (страница 2)

Violet may have had only a couple of boyfriends, but V was knowledgeable and experienced. She could not only handle a man like Ben, she could meet him as an equal. And so help her, no one was going to give her the let’s-be-friends talk tonight. “Why don’t we find out?”

He growled against her neck.

A door opened. “What’s—” an older man, voice heavy on the Texas accent, said.

Ben stopped and, without putting Violet down, turned to stare at the old man in the open doorway. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make a menacing gesture. He just stared down the other man.

“Ah. Well. Yes,” the older man babbled as the door shut.

“Whoa,” Violet said, giggling again. “Dude, you are—wow.” So this was what exuding masculinity looked like.

“‘Dude,’ eh?” Ben said with a sexy chuckle as he began walking down the hall. Every step made Violet gasp as Ben’s hard length pressed against her sex. “For a woman as beautiful as you, you often talk like a man.”

“I don’t always wear little black dresses.”

Ben stopped in front of another door. “Hmm,” he said as his hands stayed on her body as he set her down, which effectively meant he hiked her dress up. “Are you sure you won’t tell me your name?”

“No,” she said quickly. She didn’t want this fantasy night of perfection to be ruined by something as mundane as reality. “No names. Not tonight.”

He got his key out and opened the door. Then his hands were back on her body, walking her backward into the room. “Who are you hiding from? Family?” He pulled her to a stop and turned her around. His fingers found her zipper and pulled it down, one slow click after another. “Or another lover, hmm?”

“I’m not hiding from anyone,” she fibbed. It was a small fib because, no, she did not want Mac to know she’d done something this wild, this crazy. That’s why she was in Holloway instead of Royal.

“We are all hiding from something, are we not?” Ben began to pull the dress down, revealing the black bra with the white embroidery that she wore only when she was feeling particularly rebellious. Which, in the last few months, was almost every day.

“I just—look,” she said in frustration, taking a step back and pulling free of his hands. “I won’t ask about you, you won’t ask about me, and we use condoms. That’s the deal. If that doesn’t work for you...” She grabbed the sleeves of her dress and tugged them back up.

Ben stood there, his sinfully delicious lips curved into a smile. Oh, no—he wouldn’t call her bluff, would he? Because she wanted to strip him out of that suit—and she didn’t want to walk out of this room until she was barely able to walk at all.

“I just need a night with you,” she said, the truth of that statement sinking in for the first time since she’d walked into the bar at the Holloway Inn and laid eyes on this tall, dark and handsome stranger. She’d thought she just needed a night out, but the very moment Ben had turned to her, his coal-black eyes taking in her lacy black cocktail dress, her wavy auburn hair, her stockings with the seam up the back—then she’d needed him. And she wasn’t going to rest until she had him. “That’s all I’m asking. One night. No strings. Just...pleasure.”

Ben stepped into her, cupping her face in his hands. “That is really all you want from me? Nothing else?”

The way he said it, with a touch of sadness in his voice, made her heart ache for him. She didn’t know who he was or why he was here—he wasn’t local, that much was obvious. But she got the feeling that in his real life, there were always strings.

She knew the feeling. And for tonight, at least, she didn’t want to be hemmed in by other people’s expectations of her. Good idea or not, she was going to take Ben to bed. There would be no regrets. Not for her. “No. Your pleasure is my pleasure,” she whispered against his lips, turning his words back to him.

“Kiss me,” he said against her skin.

So she did. She tangled her hands in his hair and pulled him roughly against her mouth, and then they were flinging each other’s clothing off and falling into bed and she couldn’t tell where her pleasure began and his ended because Ben was everything she’d ever dreamed a lover could be, only better—hotter, sweeter.

She fell asleep in his arms, listening to him whisper stories to her in a language she did not know and did not understand, but it didn’t matter. She was sated and happy. She’d started this night desperate to do something fun, something for herself.

Ben—no last name, no country of origin—was an answer to her prayers.

One

Four months later

This was not happening.

Dear God, please let this not be happening. Violet stared down at the thin strip of plastic. The one that said in digital block letters, PREGNANT.

Maybe she’d done it wrong. Peed on the wrong end or something. Yeah, that was it. She’d never taken a pregnancy test before. She hadn’t even studied. She’d failed due to a lack of preparation, that was all.

Luckily, Violet had bought three separate tests because redundancy wasn’t just redundant. It was confirmation that her night of wild passion four months ago with a stranger named Ben had not left her pregnant.

Crouched in the bathroom off of her bedroom, Violet carefully read the instructions again, trying to spot her mistake. Remove the purple cap: check. Hold the other end: check. Hold absorbent tip downward: check. Wait two minutes: check.

Crap. She’d done it right.

So she did it again.

The next two minutes were hell. The panic was so strong she could practically taste it in the back of her throat, and it was getting stronger with every passing second.

The first test was just a false positive, she decided. False positives happened all the time. She wasn’t pregnant. She was suffering from a low-grade stomach bug. Yeah, that was it. That would explain the odd waves of nausea that hit her at unexpected times. Not in the morning either. Therefore, it wasn’t morning sickness.

And the low-grade bug she was fighting—that’s what caused the positive. It had absolutely nothing to do with that night in the Holloway Inn four months ago. It had nothing to do with Ben or V or...

PREGNANT.

Oh, God.

One was a false positive. The second? Considering that she’d had a wild night of passionate sex with a man in a hotel room?

What the hell was she going to do?

She didn’t have a last name. She didn’t have his number. He’d been this fantasy man who had appeared when she’d needed him and been gone by morning light. She’d woken up in his room alone. Her dress had been cleaned and pressed and was hanging on the bathroom door. Room service had delivered breakfast with a rose and a note—a note she still had, tucked inside her sock drawer, where Mac would never see it.

Your pleasure was my pleasure. Thank you for the night.

He hadn’t even signed it Ben. No name, no signature. No way to contact him when she had a rapidly growing collection of positive pregnancy tests on the edge of her sink.

She was screwed.

Okay, so contacting Ben was out, at least for the short term. She might be able to hire a private investigator who could track him down through the hotel’s guest registry, but that didn’t help her out right now.

“Violet?” Mac called out from downstairs. “Can you come down here?”

She was going to be sick again, and this time she didn’t think it was because of morning sickness.

How was she supposed to tell her big brother that she’d done something this wild and crazy and was now pregnant? The man had dedicated the past twelve years of his life to keeping her safe after their parents’ deaths. He would not react well.

“Violet?” She heard the creak of the second step—oh Lord, he was on his way up.

“Give me a minute!” she called through the door as she grabbed the two used tests and shoved them back in the box. She hid everything under the sink, behind her maxi pads. Mac would never look there.

She needed a plan. She was on her own here.

Violet stood up and quickly splashed some cold water on her face. She didn’t normally wear a lot of makeup. She had no need to look pretty when she was managing the Double M, their family ranch. The ranch hands she’d hired had all gotten the exact same message, no doubt—hitting on Mac McCallum’s little sister was strictly forbidden. Which irritated her. First off, she wasn’t hiring studs for the express purpose of getting it on in the hayloft. Second, she was the boss. Mac ran McCallum Enterprises, the energy company their father had founded, and Violet ran the Double M, and the less those two worlds crossed, the better it was.

Because Mac did not see a ranch manager, much less a damned good ranch manager. He didn’t see a capable businesswoman who was navigating a drought and rebuilding from a record-breaking tornado and still making a profit. He didn’t see a partner in the family business.

All he saw was the shattered sixteen-year-old girl she’d been when their parents had died. It didn’t matter what she did, how well she did it—she was still a little sister to him. Nothing more and nothing less.

Violet had wanted so desperately not to be Mac’s helpless baby sister, even for a night. And if that night was spent in a stranger’s arms...