“Yes.” He caught her eyes as he rounded the tree again. “Our country is filled with many faiths, and we honour them all respectfully. My brother and I have always had a soft spot for the holidays that involved presents or confectionary.”
She smiled. “Me too. You have a brother?”
“Yes. Zami.” He finished wrapping the lights and stood back to admire his handiwork.
“Are you close?”
“We are now. For a great many years there was a lot of tension between us. It’s resolved now.”
“Wow. That’s amazing. I can’t imagine ever speaking like that about my parents.”
He shrugged. “Our dispute was not his fault. It was mine. He has been magnanimous enough to forgive me, and I have apologised authentically. Perhaps if your parents were contrite and remorseful for their past decisions, you might find it in your heart …”
“Probably.” Her smile was lopsided. “And I can’t imagine you ever doing anything to upset anyone.”
Tell her. He pushed the voice back down, deep inside of him. If he told her, this would be over. No matter how insane their sexual chemistry, she would walk away from him faster than he could say reformed-junkie.
“When my brother and I were young – not much older than Jordan – our mother died.” He reached for a box of decorations but her hand on his wrist stilled him.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, her eyes locked to his. “What happened?”
He had been to a lot of therapy over the years, and he could speak of the events now as though they had happened to someone else. “She was killed in a car accident, on her way to … work.”
“Oh, Ra’if.” She took the decorations from him and put them on the table. “You must have been devastated.”
“Yes,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes. She wrapped her arms around his waist, holding him tight to her body, wishing she could offer comfort. “But it was harder on Zami. He was younger, and always very close to her.”
“And you? You were older and stoic?”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Something like that.” Except he hadn’t been. He’d taken the easy way out, by obliterating his pain when it became too intense.
She sighed softly and pressed a kiss against his cheek. She had to stand on tiptoes to reach and her breasts were pressed tantalisingly close.
“So your dad raised you?”
Ra’if nodded. How could he tell her that he had been raised in a palace by an army of nannies and nurses that reported to his father? He couldn’t. Not without tipping her off to his identity. And how easy would it then be for her to Google him and discover the truth of his past? Actually, not that easy, he thought with a sense of luck. Zamir had worked tirelessly to keep the worst of Ra’if’s exploits out of the press. A few wild misadventures had been reported, but the truth of his removal from the line of succession had been kept a closely guarded secret. And yet even the truth of his birth right would surely be off putting to someone like Melinda?
“More or less.” He cleared his throat and stepped out of her arms. “Now, if we don’t keep moving, we’re not going to get anything done.”
“Forget the tree,” she said quietly. “I can think of better ways to spend the time we have left.”
His eyes flared at the inference.
“Melinda …”
“I want to do this,” she said quietly, staring at him as she lifted the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head. She was only wearing a cream vest underneath, and the pattern of her bra showed through the fabric.
Ra’if’s eyes dropped to it. He was gone.
The tiny bit of resolve he had to keep this light had evaporated.
“I presume there’s a bedroom in this enormous place?”
His smile made all the butterflies in her belly flutter their wings. “Several.”
“I think we just need one, for now.”
He shook his head, trying one last time to steady the tilting ship of resolve. “We were going to go slowly. To remember this is just a bit of fun.”