Sarah Anderson – A Surprise For The Sheikh (страница 8)
“But you have reached your maturity,” Rafe noted. “You are not the same little sister he told me about when we were in university twelve years ago.”
She snorted. “Try telling him that. He still treats me like I’m sixteen and lost without my parents. But I’m not. I’m a grown woman now and I’m capable of running half the family business and...okay, so getting pregnant wasn’t my finest hour, but I can do this, Rafe.”
Rafe thought this over as the wine was served. Violet asked for a Sprite instead. “I must ask—your innocence?”
“Lord,” Violet said, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, and Rafe couldn’t tell if she was praying for strength or something else. “Fine. No, I was not a virgin. You?”
Rafe almost glared at her because this line of questioning was not something sheikhs had to endure. But as she watched him, he quickly realized that, to Violet, he was not primarily a sheikh. He was, first and foremost, a man to whom she would be forever tied. “No. And before you ask, I am not currently seeing anyone else. In fact, except for our evening together, I have been celibate for some time.”
Her lips quirked into something that was almost a smile. “Celibate, huh?”
He shrugged, trying to keep it casual. “I have been busy. My brother is the sheikh of Al Qunfudhah and I run the shipping business owned by our family. While our sheikhdom was originally founded on oil, we have diversified and my shipping business now accounts for thirty percent of the gross domestic product.”
“But celibate? You’re a sheikh,” she said, clearly puzzled. Then her gaze drifted over his face, his shoulders, and down his chest before she looked back at him. “And you’re gorgeous.”
Rafe felt his face warm. “So I have been told. But just because I could have any woman I want does not mean I should.”
“And modest,” she added in a mocking tone. But she smiled when she said it. “That’s a refreshing attitude, I have to tell you. Most men would take whatever they could get.”
“I am not ‘most men.’”
“No,” she agreed, her smile warming. “You’re not.”
Rafe was pleased. He should have been pleased because Violet was opening up to him and the more he drew her in, the more complete his revenge would be.
But that was not why he leaned forward and placed his hand on top of hers, stilling it in the middle of adjusting the precise placement of her soup spoon. “And you? Are you involved with anyone?”
“No,” she said in a breathy whisper. “Most guys don’t last too long before my brother scares them off.”
“That must be frustrating.”
She tried to shrug off both the sentiment and his hand and, given that they were in public, he had no choice but to sit back in his seat. “It is, but it’s also a blessing—I guess. If they can’t stand up to Mac, how could I expect them to stand next to me, you know?”
Rafe thought about this. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that standing against Mac would not be problematic. “Indeed.”
Their meals arrived along with Violet’s soda. She sipped at it gingerly and took small bites of her food. “Is it all right?” he asked, concerned. If she was expecting, shouldn’t she be eating more?
“It’s fine. I just—well, I’ve been dealing with morning sickness—which is a lie, by the way. My stomach’s most upset in the evening. And for a lot of people, it ends after the third month, but I think it’s actually getting worse.”
This news was alarming. “Have you seen a doctor yet? Do you think everything is all right?”
She looked at him, trying not to smile and not quite succeeding. “I’m fine. According to the internet, this is all normal. I scheduled an appointment with a doctor in Holloway and the quickest they could get me in was in two weeks.”
He set his knife and fork down a bit harder than he meant to, given how the beverages danced in their glasses and Violet’s eyes widened. “That is not soon enough. I can have a private doctor here tomorrow—Friday at the latest.”
“Rafe,” she said, her soft Texas accent caressing his name like a lover’s hands. She’d said Ben that way, but not Rafe. Not like that. It was enough to make him pause as he typed in the password to his phone. “It’s fine. There’s no danger.”
“I merely want what is best for you and the child,” he said, his voice getting caught somewhere in the back of his throat. And he was surprised to realize how very much he meant it.
“Yeah,” she said in that quiet voice, “about that. Okay, so I’m not seeing anyone and you’re not either. Which doesn’t mean that we’re together.”
“I would not make such presumptions,” he assured her.
“It just means that, for once, there’s one less complication to deal with.”
“Agreed. And I would not be outside of bounds if I asked you to refrain from starting a relationship with anyone else while you are carrying my child, would I?”
What started out as a smile progressed into a full giggle. There was simply no other word for it. Violet McCallum was giggling at him. “Out of bounds. Not outside.”
He should have been insulted that she was mocking him. What was it about this woman that made him not only accept her teasing, but crave it? “Ah, I see. Thank you. I shall remember ‘out of bounds’ in the future.”
“No,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “You are not out of bounds. Dating is a challenge in the best of times. Right now, I can’t see how it’d be anything but impossible. I am not looking to start a relationship right now.”
A new thought occurred to him as Violet settled down and sipped her soda. Rafe’s original plan, once he had realized that Violet was V, was to use and discard Violet much as Mac had done to Nasira. That was the ultimate revenge, a sister’s honor for a sister’s honor.
But now that Rafe was spending more time with Violet, he wondered if he would actually be able to do that to her. She was, after all, carrying his child—if she could be believed. And Rafe desperately wanted to believe her.
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