LITMIR.BIZ

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was speaking shortly. Irritably. Like he was upset, she thought drily.

      “Something about the bracelet bothered you. Did you recognize it?” She was intuitive that way. She just was. “You can tell me what it was, or I can make up stories of my own to explain your reaction.”

      “I’ve never seen it,” he said flatly, setting out two wineglasses. “But the workmanship reminded me of Jamal’s. He designed jewelry.”

      He wound the screw into the cork with a little squeaking noise and pulled it out with a pop, movements jerky, facial muscles still tense.

      “My father hated it. He took it as a reflection against his own masculinity. An insult. He was ashamed to have a son who was…artistic,” he pronounced with disdain. “My mother used that to her advantage.”

      “What do you mean?”

      He poured, steadying the bottoms of each glass with two fingers as he did.

      “Jamal is—was Fatina’s son. My father’s second wife. My mother…”

      He set aside the bottle. For a moment he was a man on the verge of exploding, wrapped tightly, but packed to the eyebrows with dynamite, fuse burning in his eyes.

      “Children should not be used as weapons, but my mother loved to find fault with him. To his face, to my father, in public. However she could humiliate him and Fatina, she did it. In sly ways, though. Small little stabs. Death by a thousand cuts,” he said grimly.

      “That’s horrible.”

      “It was. And my father was determined to turn him into something he could be proud of. That was his way of countering my mother’s attacks, by telling Jamal he was to blame for her criticisms. If he only changed, we would all have peace. I’m furious every time I’m reminded of how it was for him.”

      “You couldn’t make your father see reason?”

      He snorted. “This?” He lifted his glass and touched it to the rim of hers. “I don’t care one way or another for alcohol, but it is completely outlawed in Zhamair. It’s not a religious restriction. We have as many citizens who are Christian or Jewish as we do Muslims in our country, but my father’s word is rule. My father is a dictator in the way that political scientists define one.”

      “But you do what you want when you’re away,” she noted with a glance at his Western clothes. “Couldn’t your brother have done that? I’m sorry, I know it’s very easy to say that he should leave his country and turn his back on his father. It’s not something anyone would do without deep struggle, but…”

      “No,” Kasim agreed in a hard, grim voice. “It’s not. Especially since it meant leaving his mother and the rest of his siblings. Fatina has four younger children, as well. And he felt my father’s rejection very deeply. He wanted desperately to earn his respect. It was an impossible situation for him.”

      “That’s so awful.” Her heart ached for not just his brother, but for Kasim. No wonder he wanted to take the reins from a man who possessed no hint of compassion or empathy. No wonder he had fought so hard for Hasna to have a love marriage.

      “How did he die?” she asked softly, then clutched where the pang in her chest had intensified. She could see the anguish still fresh in Kasim’s face. “It wasn’t suicide, was it?”

      Kasim didn’t speak, only stared into his wine for a long moment. His fingernails were so white where he clutched the stem of his glass, she though he would snap the crystal. His gaze came up and she thought he looked about to say something.

      In the next second, he shut down, mouth flattening into a sealed line before he finally said in a neutral, almost practiced, voice, “It was a car crash. We were in Morocco on business. He was out on his own along a stretch of road near the ocean. He wasn’t reckless by nature, but he was under a lot of pressure from my father to give up the jewelry design, work with me full-time and marry suitably.”

      His expression was filled with perturbed memories.

      “The car went through the guardrail into the rocks below. Calling my father with the news was hard, but facing Fatina and Hasna, and my younger brothers and sisters…”

      The torment in his expression was too much to bear. So much guilt, but how could he have prevented it? It was just a terrible accident. He shouldn’t blame himself.

      She set aside her glass and came around the bar to slide her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry.”

      “Why? You had nothing to do with it.” He continued to hold his glass, his other arm hanging at his side, stiff and unresponsive to her embrace. He looked down his nose at her.

      “I shouldn’t have forced you to revisit his loss.”

      She felt the flinch go through him. He sipped, stony as a column of marble that didn’t give under the lean of her weight, only supported her with cold, indifferent strength. “The bracelet did that.”

      “And you wanted me to help you think of nicer things.” She traced her fingertips up the line of his spine through the back of his shirt, trying to reach him through physical contact since he seemed to have shut her out emotionally. “Now I will. If you like.”

      “What about your great explore?” He didn’t bend at all.

      “I’ve seen a flat just like this one. But this…” She brought her hands around to climb his chest and brush his suit jacket open, nudging it to fall back off his shoulders. “This territory is still new to me.”

      She was trying to be bold, to find the affinity they had shared in Paris, but was highly unsure when he failed to respond. Self-doubt, her great nemesis, twisted through her.

      “I plan to be very thorough in my mapping of it,” she said, voice wavering as she became convinced he was about to reject her.

      “You’re liable to see nothing but this ceiling for the next hour,” he warned, setting aside his glass and clasping her hips in heavy hands.

      “Maybe that’s all you’ll see,” she said with a tremble of relief. “Did you think of that?”

      * * *

      Kasim had almost told her the truth about Jamal. It was a stunning break in his normal vigilance against any woman’s intrusion into his inner world.

      Idly caressing from the back of her thigh over the curve of her buttock to the hollow in the small of her back, he wondered how this smooth golden skin had come to get so far under his own in such a short amount of time.

      He didn’t regard women as a Western indulgence he allowed himself when he traveled, but he did treat his sexual relationships much as he did his business ones. Some were brief transactions, some longer term, but they were exchanges and trades, always agreements with clear parameters. Paramours didn’t cause him to rearrange his life and they rarely stimulated more than his libido.

      This one, however… He had made a ridiculously large transfer this morning so he could protect their privacy, mindful of her request last night to keep the world from cheapening their association.

      Why? What did he care if their association was known or in what context? He would eagerly show her off. The idea of staking a public claim held a great deal of pleasure for him, in fact.

      He very carefully blocked the vision of any other man thumbing into the small dimples at the top of each of her firm, round cheeks, then he lightly traced the line that separated them, fingertips claiming Angelique’s backside along with the rest of her, sweeping the back of her thigh and taking possession of her calf.

      He had grown up watching his father deal with the fallout of indulging unfettered lust. Every person was susceptible to being attracted to the wrong person—or rather, an inconvenient person in relation to the life they led. Giving in to that desire was the root of whatever problems arose.

      Kasim had always regarded himself as superior to his father and brother.

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