Tessa Radley - The Kincaids - Private Mergers - One Dance with the Sheikh

No. 2 Wear red lipstick . Check.

No. 3 Flirt with a stranger . Check. She’d done that with vengeance … and look where it had gotten her. Now she was marrying him. Even though she hadn’t even kissed him yet….

Laurel was smiling when she read the next item.

No. 4 Eat ice cream in bed . An absolute taboo in the Kincaid household. And last night when Rakin had ordered ice cream for dessert, she’d immediately thought of her list … and the visions that had flashed through her head had been dangerously X-rated. All too easy to imagine herself doing plenty of things she shouldn’t even be considering with the dark stranger to whom she was growing curiously addicted.

Well, she certainly wouldn’t be eating ice cream in bed with Rakin any time soon….

No. 5 Gamble all night .

Laurel read the entry again. Last night she’d proved—forever—that she had no need to gamble all night. It gave her a curious sense of peace. She was a winner in her own right.

No. 6 Travel to far-flung places .

Check. She would be going with Rakin to Diyafa. There would be more journeys beyond that. The passport she carried with her was about to be put to plenty of use.

Her face broke into a smile as she glanced down the remaining items.

She was well on track … even though the tasks grew tougher toward the end.

Laurel placed the list back on the nightstand. By contrast, the much-folded paper that her father’s letter was written on had the texture of tissue paper between her fingertips. Laurel unfolded it, her eyes immediately drawn to the salutation and the first line.

My dearest Laurel,

If you are reading this, I am no longer with you.

Even though she knew the contents by heart, the words still had the power to clog her throat with emotion.

Her father had been gone for nearly five months, yet it was still hard to accept that she would never see him again. She read the letter through to the end, then set it down with a profound wish that they’d never discovered that her father possessed feet of clay. Discovering her father’s secret life with Angela while he was still married to her mother had turned her belief in their happy marriage on its head. Had everything she believed about her parent’s love simply been a lie?

Rakin might not be offering her love … but at least he was offering her honesty.

The benefits would be very real.

What he was offering would tick off the boxes of the shopping list of wants she’d scrawled before jilting Eli.

By marrying Rakin, she’d be actively fulfilling more of her dreams. At the same time, she’d also be able to source leads for new business to refer to her brother, Matt. That way she’d also be working actively on No. 9 on the List: Help save TKG . Rakin would be getting something he wanted—needed—out of the deal, too.

She had nothing to lose.

At the marriage license bureau it took only minutes of standing in the queue before Laurel found herself signing the application in the space beside the bold slash of Rakin’s signature. She stared at the word printed in bold type below her signature: BRIDE .

Bride? For one wild second panic surged through her. A month ago she’d been engaged to her best friend. Someone she knew. Someone she was fond of. Someone she understood. She’d certainly never had any intention of marrying a man she’d only just met—and a sheikh at that.

Then her nerves steadied.

She liked Rakin. She trusted him. He needed a bride; the Kincaid Group needed more business. And he was going to help her become the woman she’d always wanted—secretly—to be.

Her pulse slowed down as the panic subsided. Behind the counter, the clerk handed Rakin a duplicate form.

“Cheapest place to get married is the Office of Civil Marriages. It’s on Third Street, on the right-hand side, only a short walk away.”

“We’ll do a bit of research—but thank you for your help.” Rakin flashed her an easy smile.

“Some of the hotels on the strip are mighty expensive.” The clerk gave Rakin a once-over. Then she gave a wistful sigh. “But maybe that won’t matter.” The look she cast Laurel held a glint of envy. “Have a wonderful wedding … and good luck.”

Laurel smiled back. “Thank you.”

They exited through smoked glass doors.

Laurel caught sight of the signboards for lawyers and paused. It started her thoughts down a path not easily stopped. What would her family make of her impulsive wedding? Before she’d told Eli she couldn’t marry him, she’d spent months talking to her family’s attorneys negotiating a prenuptial agreement that the lawyers were confident protected both her and The Kincaid Group. Eli’s lawyers had worked equally hard to ensure that the prenup was fair to him, too.

If her father were alive, he’d be having a stroke at the thought of any of his daughters marrying a man the family hadn’t inspected, without a prenup, exposing The Kincaid Group to all manner of risks. No prenuptial agreement was a sin worse than unprotected sex—and that was calamity enough—in her father’s opinion.

So she slid Rakin a sideways glance. What did she really know about him—beside the fact that he was Eli’s friend? And she liked him. A lot. He could be a gold-digger—a gigolo—for all she knew. Quickly, she checked her thoughts. Told herself she was being ridiculous.

Rakin Abdellah was clearly a very rich man. Even the clerk had noticed the patina of wealth that glossed him, separating him from the average romantic swain who turned up in the marriage license bureau.

But the lessons of a lifetime caused her to say, “We should’ve signed a prenup. My family will kill me when they find out….” Her voice trailed away as Rakin took her elbow. “Where are we going?”

“To see if we can find a lawyer. I don’t want you having any sense of guilt, or any reservations about this.”

“I must sound like the biggest party pooper ever.”

“Never.” He was smiling down at her, and it eased the butterflies fluttering around in her stomach. “How could I think that? I admire you for being so clear-sighted—for thinking about protecting your family—and their livelihood.”

In some childish, hidden corner of her heart, Laurel wished that he’d dismissed the caution she’d voiced, and swept her up in his arms, then charged into the Little Red House of Love to rush through their temporary vows.

At least, that way, she wouldn’t be held accountable for what happened next…. That way she could blame him for whatever the outcome was.

And maybe the disturbing little niggle of doubt that had taken hold would’ve evaporated in a puff of smoke….

They caught the lawyer closing up his offices.

The slight, dark-suited man started to object, but one glance at Rakin’s determined face convinced him to welcome them instead. A raised hand stayed the last-remaining paralegal who was about to slip out a side door.

With the recent negotiations with Eli so fresh in her mind, it didn’t take Laurel long to explain what she needed. Rakin took even less time to get his requirements across. It reinforced what Laurel was starting to realize—under the handsome, charming facade lurked a tough negotiator.

A tiger, rather than a pussycat. With a tiger’s feral instincts. Something she would do well to remember.

“You need to be aware that a prenuptial agreement entered so near in time to a wedding date can be held to be void for duress,” the lawyer told them once they were seated around a conference table with plush, padded chairs in the privacy of his offices.

It was hardly the time for Laurel to confess that Rakin had proposed a temporary marriage—a mad adventure for her with some fringe benefits for her family’s business thrown in—and a sane solution to Rakin’s problems.