Page 15 of The Sheikh's Temporary Girlfriend

Thiswas the woman Basam wasn’t attracted to and didn’t want to marry?

Was he for real?

Maram was exquisite.

The woman turned her liquid dark eyes Amber’s way, a gleam of something hostile for a moment showing itself before her shields went up and she smiled sweetly. “You must be Amber. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“News travels fast,” Amber murmured.

“It certainly does,” Maram said with a husky voice. “But not as fast as the rate you two apparently fell in love.”

Apparently?

Basam put his arm around Amber and drew her closer. “I was never a believer in love at first sight, until it happened to me. Now I can’t help but wonder if it was fate that conspired to push us together.”

Amber blinked at him. “Fate has the weirdest sense of humor for me to have to spill drinks on you to get my attention.”

“I was aware of you long before the drinks scenario,” he said throatily, his arm moving up and down her back in an intimate caress. “I just used the accident as an excuse to get to know you better.”

Amber ignored the electricity of his touch as she gazed adoringly up at him while he said the sweet words of nothing, which reallyweresweet words of nothing. She only hoped her acting was as strong as the yearning that filled her from the inside out. What would it be like to have something like Basamreallyfall in love with her?

A man who could have any woman he wanted. A man so good looking and powerful—and not just because of his wealth, he carried himself with a confidence that was mesmerizing—it was like standing near the sun and becoming part of his radiance.

“If only I’d known being clumsy could be such an attractive trait perhaps I would have spilled something on you too?” Maram said sweetly, but with such venomous undertones her father cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.

“Now, now, Maram. I’m sureyourMr. Right will sweep you off your feet when you least expect it.”

“Perhaps he’ll have to mop around my feet instead?”

Her father winced, then turned narrowed eyes back to Basam. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Sheikh Basam. You could have had everything.”

“Idohave everything,” Basam said evenly, his voice as neutral as his expression.

Maram’s fists clenched by her sides. “Wait until the real Amber is exposed,” she said icily. As she walked away with her father, she said over a shoulder, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Amber frowned. “Well that was pleasant.”Not.She looked at Basam. “And what does she mean by exposing the real Amber?”

Basam sighed. “Maram’s family owns a publishing house, which includes a major newspaper. My guess is she’ll use one of the reporters to dig a little into your past and try to expose anything she can find about you.”

Amber gaped, her insides freezing. “She can’t do that, can she?”

“She might be full of hot air and grievances,” he conceded, her tension easing the smallest bit. “But knowing Maram,” he added, “she’ll go through with her threat and try to find anything she can on you to discredit our relationship.”

Amber’s tension returned full force and Basam clasped her hand in his and drew her toward the bar. “I think a drink might be in order.”

Chapter Seven

Amber had never been much of a drinker, she refused to touch the stuff most of the time, but she needed something strong after the brief but unpleasant meeting with the woman Basam didn’t want as his wife.

She accepted the date liquor and gulped it down, enjoying the way it burned all the way down her throat.

“Would you like another?” Basam asked.

She nodded. “Please.”

She was a little giddy by the time she’d swallowed down the second drink, but it made whatever nerves she’d had disappear as if they’d never been. She could handle being the sheikh’s girlfriend! She could handle anything that came her way!

She put her empty glass on the bar, spinning back around as the string quartet stopped playing and exotic music suddenly rang out from speakers hidden inside the palace walls. Two rows of women in tiny beaded tops and bared midriffs with jeweled pants then entered the room in formation.

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