The Sheik's Virgin Lover (The Sisterhood) (5 page)

Emma shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t know why this guy attached himself to me like that but he’s terrifying.”

“And yummy!” Claire said, smiling brightly.

Emma laughed. “You can have him.”

She shook her head. “He wants you.”

“I don’t want him either.”

“Why not?” Claire interjected. “He seems like he would be a fantastic lover! Why don’t you just jump his bones and find out what it’s all about?”

“Maybe because that’s exactly what I’m trying to teach my girls at the Rec Center not to do?”

Darcy laughed and turned to Claire. “She has a point. And it’s not like you’ve gone out and found out what it’s all about,” she said, taking a sip of her tea and hiding her smile behind the cup.

“Look who’s talking,” Claire said and pushed her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose. “Besides, I would if I could find some guy who tempted me just a little. In my line of work, all I get are these geeky, boring types who have nothing better to do in their evenings that to play Dungeons and Dragons online.”

Emma and Darcy both grimaced at the thought and were silent for a long moment. Then Claire hit her head. “You did it again! You changed the subject and we’re not talking about us we’re talking about that hunky man who was foiling Charlie’s attempts to get you upstairs into one of his reserved suites for the rest of the afternoon.”

Darcy laughed. “The mayor doesn’t have a reserved suite of rooms, Claire. Don’t be so cynical. Just because he’s a politician and his wife
might
be having an affair,” she emphasized that she still wasn’t convinced, “that doesn’t mean he’s also trying to get down and dirty with his constituents.”

“Suite 1110, upstairs and it’s been reserved since the invitations went out two months ago. And no,” she said when Emma started to make an excuse for him, “he reserved it on his private credit card so it won’t be tracked by his campaign nor can he be accused of using campaign funds to do the deed with our little Ms. Emma here.”

Both Darcy and Emma stared at Claire. Emma was the first to speak and she shook her head. “You’re very scary, you know?”

“Yes, but I won’t get caught.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I have my ways, my dears. And I hacked into the FBI system and found their tracking software just to be sure I could avoid it.”

Darcy and Emma both started laughing at the same moment while Claire just sat there proudly. When they finally calmed down, Claire pointed at Emma. “You did it again. Which only leads me to wonder what’s really going on since you won’t tell us.”

“Go ahead and hack into my computer, Claire. There aren’t any mysterious e-mails or any odd funding patterns. There’s just nothing there.”

“You know I wouldn’t ever do something like that to my friends,” she said smoothly.

They sat at the table for the rest of the afternoon, eventually ordering burgers and laughing as they caught up on each other’s weeks. When the bill came, Darcy and Claire both looked at the total, then at Emma who was counting out her portion of the check by reading the menu prices.

Darcy looked at Claire, who looked back with a knowing grin. “So, there’s really nothing between you and that hunky babe from this afternoon?” Darcy asked.

“Nothing,” she said distracted as she pulled out the rest of her change to cover her share. “Why do you keep on asking me?”

“Because he paid our dinner tab with a note on the bottom.”

Emma looked across the table at her friends, then down at the meal tab Claire was holding, still confused. “What am I missing?”

Darcy handed her the check and sure enough, in bold scrawl, was a hand written note saying he hoped they’d had a good afternoon.

Emma sighed and tossed her money back into her purse. “That man just doesn’t know when to take no for an answer!”

“Why don’t you go upstairs and tell him yourself?”

Emma slapped her wallet closed and shook her head. “Not going to happen. He’s sneaky.”

Claire and Darcy exchanged another look. “I think you should let him be as sneaky as he wants, but that’s just my opinion.”

They all stood up and walked out of the hotel together, exchanging hugs and promising to call in the next few days.

Chapter 3

Emma drove back to her tiny apartment thinking about Dharran and how underhanded he was. Couldn’t he just leave things alone? She couldn’t do casual, she had to set an example with the kids. And she knew he didn’t do serious, so there wasn’t any middle ground.

Not that she was even interested, she reminded herself. She didn’t like him. She had to respect the man she had sex with. Any man who wanted a casual relationship, and who lived thousands of miles away, wasn’t someone she could grow to respect. That had to come from knowledge of one another, of mutual interests and hobbies. It came from relaxing over dinners, lunches and walks in the park with casual conversations. It definitely didn’t happen on fly by visits from one country to another for a quicky in between meetings.

It was after midnight before she finished all her paperwork for the day and, although she was exhausted, sleep simply wouldn’t come to her. She tossed and turned, wishing she could figure out a way to get that man out of her head. His touch this afternoon had gotten under her skin and she had thoughts now that were counterproductive. Like what it might be like to feel him touching her on areas other than her cheek. Or what he might feel like when she touched him. Or what he would taste like if he kissed her.

Emma threw the pillow across the room in frustration. The man was horrible! A womanizer and exactly the opposite of what she wanted from the man she chose to have sex with for the first time. She didn’t need to be married before becoming intimate with a man. But it damn well wasn’t going to be a one night stand. Or even worse, a torrid, dirty affair where she’s kept hidden away somewhere like a naughty secret, desperate and waiting for him whenever he felt the need to be with her.

She finally fell asleep around dawn the following morning but then dreamed about making love to the tall, dark stranger who made her feel things she’d never imagined possible.

Unfortunately, that pattern followed for the rest of the week. Groggy from lack of sleep several days in a row and in pain physically and mentally from trying to work herself into an exhausted state so she wouldn’t dream of Dharran one more time, she walked into the center Friday morning in a very grouchy mood.

She stomped into her office and slouched down on the plastic chair, grateful once again that it didn’t break and fall out from under her. The mail from the previous day had been dumped on her desk and she sighed, worrying about how she was going to stay awake through all of this.

Usually, she didn’t mind the paperwork, even enjoyed the routine nature of the forms and communication required of her position. But for some reason, it was just too much right now.

She sorted through the mail, putting the bills into one pile, solicitations into another pile and the junk mail into the recycling bin beside her desk. As she opened the envelopes, she quickly skimmed through the contents, cringing when a bigger invoice came out.

When she was finished with the bills, she moved on to the miscellaneous. The first envelope was the oddest, looking very professional with a seal on the side. She didn’t like the look of this one, she thought and worried that it might be from a lawyer’s office. Those were never good, and she knew from experience that she’d have to open this one first. Bad news and fish never got better with age, she told herself, remembering that comment from her mother.

As soon as she pulled the papers out, she gasped when she realized that the envelope hadn’t contained a legal complaint. Instead, sitting amid several other neatly typed pages, was a check. A very large check. Well, she supposed the actual check was a normal sized check but the number of zeros on the face of the check made it a very big donation. They received donations from private organizations and commercial enterprises occasionally but more often, she had to fight tooth and nail for government funding and grant money. She’d never received a donation this huge before and the papers floated out of her numb fingers.

Picking up the accompanying letter, she quickly scanned the document, trying to decipher where the unanticipated money had come from and why. Anger quickly replaced confusion in her mind as she realized that the extremely large donation was from Dharran. The man was trying to buy her!

Damn him! He had absolutely no respect for her and what she stood for if he thought he could simply buy her like this. What a complete jerk! What an outrage! Did he really see her as something he could purchase? A commodity?

Grabbing her purse, she rushed out of the office, ignoring calls for help from the other staff members. The kids were still in school at this time of the day so she didn’t have to be nice right now. She needed to burn off steam and the only person who was an appropriate target was the cause of her frustration and anger.

She stormed out of the building, and then stopped short when she looked into the parking lot. Gone was her trusty little VW Bug with all the rust patches and the broken side door. In its place was a sleek, brand new VW Bug in a dazzling green color. She knew exactly what it was because there was a giant white bow on the top.

With a blinding rage, she stomped over to the car, ripped off the ribbon and, ignoring the keys taped to the side of the car, almost ran the two blocks to the bus stop. She had additional frustration when she had to wait for the bus to arrive, which took almost fifteen minutes, time enough for her anger to zero in on exactly what she wanted to say to that obnoxious, offensive lout!

It was another thirty minutes to the hotel since she was on the bus which stopped at just about every corner to pick up or drop off people on its route. And at the appropriate intersection, she still had to walk another five blocks to reach the hotel so when she pulled open the steel and glass door, she was hot, sweaty, rumpled and more furious than she’d ever been in her life. Not even the cool blast of air from the hotel’s efficient air conditioning could calm her down.

At the front desk, she shocked the receptionist when she demanded to know the room number for “Prince Jerk of All Time”. The receptionist wasn’t exactly sure how to handle the request but the manager quickly came up behind her and asked if he could be of assistance.

“Where is that horrible, awful excuse for a human being?” she demanded once again, the giant white bow still in her hand, waved in the air like a weapon.

The manager, obviously worried about causing a scene, tried to calm her down. “If you’ll step into my office, perhaps I can better assist you,” he said.

Emma followed behind the simpering man, her temper boiling even higher now that she had to endure condescension from a weasel just to get at a ferret.

Once the door was closed, the manager turned to Emma and, in a patronizing voice, said, “Which of our guests were you trying to reach today?” he asked.

“Prince Dharran!” she stated once again. “I thought I made that absolutely clear out in the lobby,” she said, waving the giant bow in the air once again as if it were some sort of balloon that didn’t cause chaos each time the long ends moved around.

“Are you sure your friend is staying with us?”

Emma took a deep breath and tried to calm down. If she didn’t get hold of her temper, this man was just going to call security and….wait a minute, something on the end of the bow caught her attention. “What’s this?” she asked and pulled the note off the bow.

“Suite 2200. See you soon,” was all it said.

“Rrrrr!” she growled to the manager. “Never mind. I know where to find him.”

She turned and was about to storm out the door when the manager stepped in front of her.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to interrupt one of our guests in this manner, ma’am. I’ll have to call security if you don’t calm down.”

Emma was sick of men telling her what to do. “Listen here, little man. This bow? It was taken off of the car that your guest gave me. And this check? It was sent to me. So if you don’t get out of the way so I can…” she hesitated for a fraction of a second before snapping out, “thank him! In the best way I know how, and then he’s really not going to appreciate you protecting his privacy in this manner.”

The manager looked at her, clearly intimidated and not sure what to do. On the one hand, if he evicted his prime guest’s mistress, he could be fired. But if he allowed her to go up to his room, and she really was a crazed woman and uninvited, he could be fired. The seal on the letter looked very official but because this little woman was waving it around, he couldn’t get a good look at the stationary to be sure.

“How about if I call ahead and ask if it’s okay to send you up?”

“Fine!” she snapped, sure she wasn’t getting out of here without that phone call. If Dharran had to be fore-warned, that was more to her advantage, she supposed.

Five minutes later, she was banging on the door to suite 2200, the only door on the entire floor. When one of his body guards answered, she shoved the giant bow in his face and demanded, “Where is he?”