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Irene gave an intake of breath, then set down her forkful of fruit salad. She lifted her tremulous gaze. The hard lines of his face held no emotion.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “What...happened?”
“His mistress turned the gun on herself. She died at once. My father bled out on the terrace and died ten minutes later. In my mother’s arms.”
It was all so horrible, Irene felt sick inside. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, helplessly. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.” His mouth pressed into a grim line. “At boarding school in America. A teacher pulled me out of class. Two men I’d never met before bowed to me, calling me the emir. I knew something must have happened to my father but it wasn’t until I arrived back at the palace that I discovered what it was.” Reaching out with an unsteady hand, he poured a bottle of springwater into one of the glasses. He drank it all in one gulp, then looked away. “It was a long time ago.”
She felt awful, needling him about bodyguards when his own father had died in a situation every bit as apparently safe as this. “I’m sorry...you...I’m such a...I can’t even imagine...”
“Forget about it.” Sharif looked at the rest of the wedding party farther down the meadow. “As you said, today is a day for celebration. What’s this?” Reaching into the basket, he pulled out a bottle of expensive champagne. “And still chilled.” His lips curved as he looked at the label. “Now, this is the right way to endure a wedding.”
Endure? She wondered at his choice of words. Then, she could hardly blame him for thinking so ill of romance, love or marriage, when his own parents’ marriage had ended as it had.
He looked up, his dark gaze daring her to ask him more about it. Her mouth went dry.
“It’s a little early for champagne, isn’t it?” was all she could manage.
Without answering, Sharif popped the bottle open and poured it into two crystal glasses. He held one out to her, with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
“Surely you, Miss Taylor, with your romantic nature,” he drawled, “would not refuse a glass of champagne to celebrate your dearest friend’s happy day?”
When he put it like that... “Well, no.” She took the glass. “And for heaven’s sake. Call me Irene.”
Sharif looked down at her across the blanket.
“Irene,” he said in a low voice.
Sensuality and power emanated from him in a way that fascinated her. In a way that was dangerous. Her eyes fell to his lips. To the slight shadow of scruff on his sharp jawline. To his neck.
Forcing herself to look away, she drank deeply from her glass. She’d never tasted champagne before, and it was every bit as delicious and bubbly and intoxicating as it looked in the movies. Sitting here in the meadow, beside a sexy Makhtari emir, overlooking a two-hundred-year-old Italian villa with the blue sparkling lake beyond, Irene felt as if she, too, had been transported into a movie, or a dream.
They ate in silence. With no words to fill the air, she was even more aware of Sharif’s every movement. She looked at him sideways through her lashes, at the gleam of golden sunlight against his tawny skin. The thick shape of his throat above his white collar and blue tie. His long, muscled legs beneath the well-tailored trousers. She felt a cool breeze on her own overheated cheeks and the bare legs peeking out from her dress. But just as she was desperately trying to think of something to talk about, he abruptly spoke into the silence.
“So, you live in Paris?”
It was such a small-talk sort of salvo, it surprised her. Irene suddenly wondered if, in spite of Sharif being a powerful, rich sheikh, he might also be a person, who himself might have been trying to think of conversation, just as she had been.
“I had a job there. As a nanny for the Bulgarian ambassador’s children.”
“Had?”
She ate some fruit salad. “I was, um, fired.”
He looked shocked. “You?”
“I loved the children, but...their parents and I had some creative differences.” She took a big bite of sandwich and chewed slowly, but after she swallowed, he was still waiting patiently for her to continue. She sighed. “I’ve never been good at holding my tongue. I felt the parents were spending too much time at parties and entertaining, and were neglecting the emotional needs of their girls and needed to get their priorities straight.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “And you—said this—to them?”
“I’ve always had a problem with telling the truth.”
“You mean the problem is that you actually tell it?” He gave a low laugh, and she loved the sound. So sexy. So warm. It made his dark eyes light up in a way that melted her inside.
