Brenda Jackson - Sleeping with the Sheikh - The Sheikh's Bidding / Delaney's Desert Sheikh / Desert Warrior

The door closed and a small light snapped on, revealing a man reclining against the rear plush, leather seat facing Andi. A man who was anything but a stranger to her—at least he hadn’t been at one time in her life. She stared at him for a long moment, her heart creating a furious cadence in her chest as if it wanted to escape as badly as she did. Yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak when her gaze made contact with his intense eyes.

He raked the kaffiyeh from his head as if to prove he was the man she’d known all those years ago. But he wasn’t quite the same. The changes were subtle, no doubt brought about by maturity, yet she couldn’t deny he was still beautiful, with the same thick, dark hair that curled at his nape, same masculine jaw, same wonderful mouth now framed by a shading of evening whiskers. Although his near-black eyes held the familiar elusiveness, they also looked weary, not bright and youthful as before. She imagined hers mirrored that disillusionment, only now they more than likely revealed her shock.

Andi struggled to stay strong in his presence. “What are you doing here, Sam?”

His high-impact smile appeared, gleaming white against his caramel-colored skin, revealing the single dimple creasing his left cheek. Yet he seemed to be fighting the smile as much as Andi was fighting her reaction to it. “It’s been a while since anyone has called me that.” He gestured toward the small built-in bar to his left. “Would you like something to drink, Andrea?”

Something to drink? He expected to waltz back into her life after all these years and ply her with pleasantries?

Andi welcomed the force of her sudden anger, the anchor it provided against the sea of emotions. “No, I don’t want a drink. I want to know why you’re here. I haven’t heard a word from you since Paul’s funeral. Not one word.”

He shifted in his seat and glanced away. “That was necessary, Andrea. I had obligations to fulfill in my country.”

And none to her, Andi decided. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a sheikh?”

He pinned her in place with his dark gaze. “Would that have made a difference? Would you have understood what that entailed?”

Probably not. It also didn’t change the fact that he’d disappeared without any explanation. Regardless of his status, she was hard-pressed to understand a concept as foreign to her as the clothes he now wore. “So why did you come back?”

“Because I couldn’t allow another day to pass without seeing you again.”

Andi hated the tiny flutter of her pulse, the glimmer of hope in her heart. “Well, that’s great. What did you hope to accomplish after all this time?”

He slipped out of his robes, the final garment that distinguished ordinary man from revered royalty, and tossed them aside, leaving him dressed in a white tailored shirt and black slacks. Try as she might, Andi couldn’t help but notice the breadth of his chest and the spattering of dark hair revealed at his open collar. In a matter of years he had gone from a boyishly handsome college student to a devastatingly gorgeous man. And she would be smart to ignore those differences, the heat coursing through her traitorous body.

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I need to know if what I have discovered is true.”

A stab of fear impaled Andi’s chest, making it almost impossible to breathe, to speak. “What would that be?”

He leveled his serious eyes on her. “I know that you’ve struggled with the farm, barely managing to get by. Several times over the years I’ve considered offering my help financially but decided you would have too much pride to accept.”

Relief replaced the fear. Maybe he didn’t know everything. “You are so right about that. I don’t need your help, financially or otherwise.”

“Are you certain about that, Andrea?”

“Positive. I’m doing fine.”

“But you’ve never married.”

“I’m not interested in finding a husband,” she said, when in reality no one had ever come close to being Samir Yaman’s equal. No one had ever affected her in the same way, with the same magic. She’d told herself time and again those were the fantasies of a young girl and they shouldn’t exist now that she was a woman. Yet no matter how hard she’d tried to convince herself to forget him, forget what it had felt like to be in his arms, it hadn’t worked. No man had ever measured up. No man probably ever would. Seeing Sam again brought home that painful truth. Knowing who he was, what he was, only cemented the certainty that she could never be a part of his world.

“I have another question for you,” he said quietly.

She was afraid of his questions, afraid of the hold he still seemed to have on her. “If this has to do with the past, I don’t want to go there. It’s over.”

“It’s not over, Andrea, no matter how much you wish it to be.” His voice, his expression, balanced on the edge of anger as he locked on to her eyes. She couldn’t look away even though she wanted to. “How is your son?”

The fear advanced once again. “How do you know about him?”

“I have the means to learn anything I wish about anyone.”

Damn his arrogance, his sudden appearance that could very well destroy her world once again. “My son is fine, thank you.”

“And his father?”

Bile rose in her throat. Terror closed off her lungs. Protectiveness for her beautiful child pushed it all away. “He’s my son. Only mine.”

“He has to have a father, Andrea.”

“No, he doesn’t. His father isn’t in the picture. He never has been.”

“Then he is mine, isn’t he?”

Oh, heavens, what was she going to do now? Had he returned to claim his child? She wouldn’t let him, not without a fight. “Believe what you will. This conversation is finished.”

“It is far from finished.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to know why you never told me about him.”

She released a mirthless laugh to veil her anxiety. “How would I have done that? You disappeared with no number to call, no way to get in touch with you.”

“Then you admit I am his father?”

“I’m admitting nothing. I’m saying it doesn’t matter, Sheikh Yaman. None of this matters. The past is over. I don’t want to dredge it up again.”

“It doesn’t matter what either of us wants, Andrea. What matters is our child. I’m determined to settle this. If not now, then later. And soon.”

Andi opened the door and tried to slide out, but not before he caught her hand and said, “I will be in touch.”

She responded with tingles where his fingers curled around hers, with regret when she saw a sadness in his expression that she’d only seen one other time. But that surprising display of vulnerability soon disappeared, and his eyes once again took on the mystery—deep, dark waters that threatened to suck Andi into their shadowy depths. Without breaking his gaze, he turned her hand over and slid a slow fingertip along her palm, reminding Andi of that long-ago night when his masterful touch had made her beg him to stop, beg him to never stop.

Andi yanked her hand from his grasp and hurried away to her truck, sprinted as fast as her heels would let her. She raced from the panic that he might intend to take her child away from her, ran from the love for him that had never died.

But in her heart she knew that no matter how hard she tried to get away, Andrea Hamilton could never escape Sam Yaman, even after he left her again.

Samir Yaman sat alone in darkness in the hotel suite, surrounded by the luxury he had known most of his life. He needed a drink and would welcome the bitter taste of whiskey on his tongue, but he didn’t dare give in to the craving, not when he needed a clear head. Truthfully, he hadn’t touched alcohol since that night—the night he had made two grave mistakes.