‘Are...are you there?’
‘I’m here. What do you want?’ The person responsible for this elaborate hoax would pay. Alexei was in no mood for games.
‘I rang to tell you I got married. I know my father led you to believe I was...available but he was wrong. A match between us isn’t possible.’ Her words were rushed, her breathing so uneven the words slurred together. ‘I should have told you my plans sooner. I’m sorry. But I was too... That is, I wasn’t thinking clearly when you rang. Pierre said I should have told you straight, and so did Mina, but I was too...’ She hiccupped as if holding back a sob. ‘I’ve tried and tried to call Mina but I can’t reach her. Is she all right?’
Alexei’s head spun. His pulse throbbed so hard it felt like a hammer against his temple.
He wanted to tell this stranger to quit wasting his time. But something stopped him. The suspicion this was no joke. That the impossible was about to become possible.
Twenty minutes later Alexei stared unseeingly across his desk, the phone silenced.
He’d got to the bottom of the situation all right. He’d taken some convincing, and more checking, but he was absolutely sure the woman on the phone was Carissa Carter.
He reeled at learning the truth. All this time he’d thought his guest was his employee’s daughter when she was Princess Mina of Jeirut, sister of the country’s Queen. A rich royal who’d played the part of Carissa, duping him.
Making a fool of him.
Alexei imagined the field day the press would have with this. What impact would that have on his business? He screwed his eyes shut and tried to focus his scrambled brain on damage limitation.
But focus was impossible. It was all he could do to accept the preposterous truth. The two women had conned him. And he, so wrapped up in the pursuit of vengeance and the need to act decisively, had made it easy, not bothering to check details.
This wasn’t business. It was far more personal. Briefly he acknowledged he’d made it so when he’d brought Carter’s daughter to his private retreat. But his actions didn’t sink to these depths of deception.
Alexei’s gaze drifted to the abandoned sketchbook on his desk. He turned it over, opening it at the very beginning, to the images he hadn’t viewed before. Why? Was he so desperate to believe, even now, that the woman in his kitchen was genuine? That the woman he’d come to care for was real, not some pretend persona adopted to dupe him?
Alexei stopped on the second page, on a series of intricate designs for a flask. They were exquisite. But it wasn’t the design’s beauty that caught his eye, it was the stylised calligraphy around the base. Calligraphy in Arabic. A talented artist could have copied the flowing script. Except there were also what looked like scribbled notes on the edge of the page in the same language.
Alexei turned the page. There was another bottle, again with scrawled notes in Arabic.
His mouth tightened. If he’d only taken the time to look, instead of being so caught up in that blaze of attraction for Carissa. ForMina, he corrected himself.
Despite Carissa Carter’s breathless, half-defiant, half-apologetic explanations, Alexei knew they’d made a fool of him.
He looked down to see he’d again reached the page where she,Mina, had drawn him sleeping. With new eyes Alexei realised it wasn’t tenderness revealed in the portrait. That wasn’t vulnerability in his sleeping features but weakness. She’d been laughing at him.
She’d sashayed in, daring him to make a pass at her, teasing him till he didn’t know which way was up. Pretending to be someone else, pretending to be honest and open and vulnerable. Had her virginity also been a lie?
Alexei shoved the book so hard it toppled off the desk as he surged to his feet and stalked to the window. It wasn’t the view he saw. It was himself, laughing with...Mina. Telling Mina about his past, his stepfather, because he’d actually considered extending their relationship into something else.
Relationship!
He snorted. They had no relationship beyond sex and lies.
The sex he could cope with, but not the lies.
He’d been conned as a kid and that had brought disaster.
He’d trusted Carter, had actually liked him, believing he and the older man shared an understanding. Till Carter knifed him in the back and stole his money.
Now Alexei found himself tricked again. By a slip of a woman with big brown eyes and a devious mind. A woman who’d burrowed her way into his—
Alexei yanked his thoughts to safer ground. To the blaze of anger searing his gut.
She’d made him reconsider his single status. She’d made him think about babies and belonging and all the while...
He swore, a mix of Greek and Russian that was far more potent for cursing than English.
Only when he had himself under control did he turn towards the door.