He smiled as he swivelled the chair in front of her around and sat down, though she sensed danger in the curve of his lips. She tucked her feet under her chair. Even with the room between the seats his long legs ventured way too far into her space for her liking. ‘I have something I need to discuss with you, something that might work to our mutual benefit.’
Her eyes shuttered down. Yeah, right. ‘I told you I wasn’t here for you. I am here for Atiyah, nothing more.’
‘You have a suspicious mind.’
‘You have a transparent one.’
He shook his head. ‘This is not about bedding you.’ He hesitated there, and she wondered what had gone unsaid. ‘This concerns Atiyah.’
‘How?’
He leaned forward. ‘For reasons you don’t need to know about, I need to adopt Atiyah.’
She looked across at him blankly. ‘And how does that concern me?’
‘In order to adopt, under some quaint Qajarese law, I must be married.’
She swallowed down on a lurch in her stomach because this could in no way mean what crazy idea ventured first into her mind. ‘I repeat,’ she said, schooling her voice to level and wishing her heart rate would also take heed, ‘how does that concern me?’
‘It’s not for long, it’s just a temporary thing. A mere formality, really, and then in a matter of months we can be divorced.’
There was that lurch again, but this time there was no misreading his words. ‘We?’
‘Well, you and me.’
She blinked, hoping it covered the jolt to her senses that came with his answer. ‘There is no you and me.’
‘There doesn’t have to be, not in any real sense. All I need is a wife. Someone to play the role of Atiyah’s mother temporarily. Kareem tells me the marriage must last twelve months to ensure the adoption satisfies the laws of Qajaran, but that’s only if I decide to stay. Otherwise, it might be over within a week.’ He smiled, as if he were asking her nothing more than the time of day. ‘Like I said, it’s just a formality.’
‘But a year! There’s a chance I have to be married to you for an entire year!’
‘If it happens. But you would not need to stay in Qajaran all that time. Once the formalities were over, you could go home.’
She looked at the coffee he had poured for her. She liked coffee, but right now she felt the need for something a whole lot stronger.
She licked her lips. ‘Who are you?’
‘I told you. My name is Rashid.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I met someone called Rashid in a hotel bar. He was just a man. An angry man wanting to let off steam the way men do. But you—’ She looked around. ‘You fly in a plane with a golden crown for a crest, you have staff that bow and scrape and seem to wait on your every word and call you Excellency. So, Rashid, who are you, that you think it is perfectly reasonable to ask a near stranger to marry you so you can divorce them when it suits?’
His eyes left her face, to wander a scorching trail down her body, lingering on her breasts before venturing lower. He smiled. ‘Near stranger?’ he questioned, his voice husky around the edges, rasping against her very soul. ‘We are hardly strangers.’
She crossed her arms and legs to stop the tingling under her skin, relieved when his gaze once again found her face. ‘You don’t know me and I sure as hell don’t know anything about you.’
‘I am not asking the world, merely for a few weeks of your time and then you can go home.’
‘I said I wouldn’t sleep with you again and I sure as hell won’t marry you.’
‘Nobody said anything about sleeping with me. You served a purpose last night, but now I’m looking for something else.’
She laughed, not sure whether to be offended or not. It was so mad, she had no other option but to laugh. ‘Well, as attractive as you make your proposal sound, that I pretend to be your wife, no thank you.’ She glanced at the baby and assured herself she would be all right for a minute or two more, before she pushed herself up to stand. Maybe if she headed for the bathroom, it might put a stop to this ridiculous conversation. But Rashid rose too, stepping sideways and blocking her path. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I need to use the bathroom.’
‘Not yet. You haven’t heard what I’m offering in return.’
‘I don’t need to, to say no. You made it very clear when we were in Sydney that you didn’t want me to be here at all. You made it clear that you wanted nothing more to do with me and that’s fine, because I don’t plan on sticking around any longer than I have to in order to do this job. As soon as I hand this child over to whoever is going to be her carer in Qajaran—because I assume from your lack of interest it won’t be you—I’ll be heading home.’