CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
S HE SHOULDN’T TALK . She shouldn’t want to talk. But whatever fairy dust Desmond had sprinkled in the room the night before must be in effect again, because she began telling him her story.
“I met him one night when he dropped his wallet,” she said. “It was Mardi Gras, when I was still young and excited enough to go. He was visiting New Orleans, trying to get a buyer for some new energy drink he claimed would keep people partying all night long. I was with my friends, and I’m really not the party type, so when I returned his wallet and he gratefully asked me to dinner as a reward, I agreed.”
It was surreal, how narrating the events of that evening so many years ago was bringing back smells, colors, and sounds: music from a brass band several meters away; an acrobat dressed in neon yellow, contorting himself into shapes just to her right; the smell of barbecue and burnt sugar. And Malik’s dark, handsome face, peering into hers as if surprised and pleased at what he’d stumbled across.
“His life sounded so exciting. His business ventures. He’d opened a chalet in Aspen, had food trucks in Oklahoma, traded crypto currency. He’d been to so many places, and…well, I was feeling a little trapped then, so meeting him felt like some kind of release. We started dating right away, and I followed him out to Dubai, where he was wrapped up in something there—horse racing, I think?”
“It’s pretty lucrative in the Gulf.”
“Not the way he did it.” There was acid in her voice, but she didn’t care. “I got a job as a teacher and I sponsored him while he worked on his business ventures. There were loans he took out, things he had me sign…” She realized then that she was sounding increasingly disjointed, but she couldn’t have explained it better.
“I was a fool.”
“Hey, now,” Desmond said, quietly.
“No, no, I was ,” she said resolutely. “I don’t mind admitting it.”
“You were married .”
“I was a fool,” she said crisply. “And he was dismissive and mean. I thought it was because he didn’t have money, because he was waiting for that one big thing to pay off. Right before everything fell apart, he looked me right in the eye, like he actually saw me for the first time. He told me that he was glad he’d married me, because not many women would have put up with him.”
“Was he that bad?”
“That’s not the point.” Val gave a quick shake of the head. “The point is that—I don’t know how to articulate it—but I felt like such a pushover . Like he’d stayed with me simply because I wouldn’t call him out on his shadiness, and all those years I thought he’d want to change for me, but I was fooling myself.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” Desmond looked faintly impatient.
A lump was rapidly rising in her throat. “Because I’m pathetic.”
The words hung in the air between them. Desmond sighed, all traces of impatience gone from his face.
“You’re not pathetic,” he said simply. “I can think of many pathetic things, and you being taken advantage of isn’t one of them.”
She nodded. She had no idea why he was being so sympathetic, but he was looking intently at her, as if willing her to absorb every word she was saying.
“Val, do you hear me?” He leaned forward and took her hands. “Don’t give him power by blaming yourself. Especially when it wasn’t your fault!”
Tears stung Val’s eyes. The validating words were unexpected, brief, and yet touched something in a place she’d kept protected for years. “All I’ve wanted since then is to be free of him. To be free of men, really. And then—”
Comprehension dawned in his eyes. “I’ve mucked things up for you nicely, haven’t I?”
“Something like that.”
“How much do you owe him?”
She swallowed. “I don’t see how that’s—”
“How much, Valentina?”
“I am nearly a million riyals in debt.” She looked at him to gauge his reaction. He kept his face carefully blank.
“That’s a lot of money.”
She felt her insides twist. “Not to you , I would imagine.”
“You seem very close with Sheikh Rashid…”
Her lips twitched. “You have no idea.”
“Is he aware of your situation? Have you ever asked him for help?”
Laughter broke from her although the situation was far from funny. “Aware? He was a business partner of my husband’s. He was also the one who bailed me out of jail when I was locked up for debt.”
“What?”
“Yes.” Bile rose to her throat at the memory—the humiliation, the small, hot women’s dormitory at the debtor’s prison, the hopelessness she felt. The invasive questions she’d been asked, the courtroom. “I’d been helping Hind with her reading—I used to tutor, just to keep myself busy—and she was quite attached to me. I don’t know why Sheikh Rashid believed me, but he did.”
Desmond crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Probably because your husband ran off with some of his money as well.”
“We made an agreement that I’d work for him and in exchange he’d become the guarantor for my loan.” She paused, swallowed hard. “I haven’t exactly been up front with him, either. I’m fairly sure he assumes I’m divorced by now, which is why he believed your story.”
Desmond was looking at her steadily and her heart quickened. What was he thinking?
“I have a proposition for you. You’ve got your goals, Val, and I’ve got mine. And right now, they intersect.”
“That’s a little presumptuous to say.”
“Help me do this,” he challenged. “If I get the deal with Sheikh Rashid, I’ll pay off your debts. All of them.”
What?
“Desmond—”
“Trust me, I can afford it.” The words sounded arrogant, even to him, but he pressed on. “This is about elevating my business, Val, not necessarily just about the money. We’re in a position to help each other.”
Help each other? Valentina stared at him, her insides in turmoil. She was feeling so many things at once that she didn’t know which to address first. There was a residual warmth from the memory of his hands on her body just hours ago, coaxing pleasure from her.
She forced the thought away as quickly as it’d come. Desmond Tesfay was not an option for any type of lingering thoughts. Wasn’t that why she’d chosen to spend the night with him in the first place?
“If you’re trying to kill that napkin, there must be better ways than slow strangulation,” Desmond said dryly.
She looked down to see the mangled white linen in her lap.
“I—”
“There are no downsides to this, Valentina.”
There it was, her full name again, his voice warm and honeyed around the syllables. Would it be hypocritical of her to insist he not use it again, since it sparked such warmth in her? She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself.
Emotions are weaknesses to be exploited.
Never put the power to hurt you into anybody’s hands.
She repeated the mantras in an attempt to control her thumping heart, willing that new softness inside her to a place where it could not affect what she said to the man looking at her now.
“It’s Val , as I told you before,” she said haughtily. “And let’s be frank, Desmond. I’ve been trapped in a position to help you.” Part of her wanted to cringe at her own frankness. She could hear the note of bitterness in her voice. “I don’t want to owe you anything.”
“It’d be an equal and fair exchange!”
“You don’t understand. It’s never that simple.” She swore softly and laughed at the shock on his face. “Think of the consequences!”
“Only if you choose to see it that way, Val.”
“Yes, everything’s about the spin in your line of business, isn’t it,” she said a little archly. “Are you this dismissive of everything?”
“Only of things that shouldn’t matter.” Desmond sighed. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. You shouldn’t have to pay for his mistakes.”
“Pretty words.”
“I mean it.” His eyes were intense. “Why won’t you let me help you? It’s a bargain , Val, not a way to trap you. I have no desire to trap you.”
She swallowed and focused on the fine china on the table in front of her. Ultimately, she had no choice, because the lie had already been sold to the sheikh, and the thought made her want to cry from frustration.
When she spoke, her voice cracked the way she feared it would.
“Fine.”
* * *
She didn’t like it, and Desmond didn’t like the fact that he felt so uncomfortable about the situation. It tainted their night with an ugliness that reeked of coercion—something he recoiled from with all of his sensibilities.
And so, to his surprise, he found himself saying, “Forget it.”
Her dark head jerked up, those enormous eyes fixed on him in surprise.
“I mean, I still want you to help me, don’t get me wrong,” he said crossly. “But I don’t like how this feels.”
He wanted that horrible cornered look to be gone from her face.
He wanted her to look at him the way she had the night before.
He reached down and picked up his leather laptop bag that held the assortment of devices that never left his side. He placed an electronic tablet in front of her and handed her the stylus.
“Give me the details of your loan account,” he said.
One of her hands flew up to her throat. “What? ”
“No strings. Consider it compensation for a very painful lie,” he continued, somewhat dryly. “You don’t have to influence Sheikh Rashid on my behalf, either. My work can, and should, stand on its own. Just allow me to maintain this…fiction, for both our sakes, until I hear either way.”
He didn’t know what he was doing, but he had no idea how else to lift that burden from her shoulders, and have her accept it. Even if she left his life completely, after this, he had plenty of his own sins to atone for.
Shock had drained her rich brown skin of its glow and she looked wrung out. He wanted to tell her his real motivations—that he knew exactly what it was like to be trapped by circumstance, and that something as banal as money would not be a barrier to freedom in a just world—but he said nothing.
She was shaking her head. “No. It’s very generous, but I can’t accept that.” Her mind was racing; he could tell by the way her full mouth was pinching in the middle. “I—I won’t deny that this will get me out of a terrible situation that has crushed me for years, Desmond. I won’t deny it. But I have to…earn this. I’ll help you with Sheikh Rashid.”
“Valentina—”
She stuck out her hand, still not looking at his face.
He took it, and in an instant, it was there, that absurd desire, overcoming all propriety, all common sense. Familiar heat was coiling low and slow in his abdomen. Last night was coming back to him in sounds and images that were brief but intense. Sighs. Gasps. Moans. Those nails on his skin.
Desmond, please…
He could still taste her on his tongue if he tried hard enough, that honeyed sweetness born of arousal she hadn’t even known how to hide.
“Your husband,” he said softly, “must have been out of his mind.” He wanted desperately to lift a hand and stroke her cheek with his fingers the way he had last night.
She closed her eyes briefly as if gathering strength, then looked at him steadily.
“This can’t be part of…whatever this is, Desmond,” she said after a beat. “You know it would be a terrible idea. We have to keep our minds clear if this is going to work. It’s got to be—”
“Strictly business,” Desmond finished for her.
“Yes.” He saw her throat contract as she swallowed. “When we go back to the real world, my real world, I need to be able to separate what’s real and what’s not. This was…lovely. It was the loveliest night I’ve had in a very long time. Magical, really—”
Desmond held up a hand. He felt as if he were being rejected, although he completely agreed with every word she was saying. Not to mention her husband, for goodness’ sake, and his own…complications.
“We mustn’t be greedy, must we?” she said, but it seemed more like she was telling herself rather than him.
“And we can be friends, can’t we?” she added with a bit of a wobbly smile.
Of course they could. They had their dead fathers in common, after all.
Dead fathers.
Oh, damn it. Damn it. Damn it!
Val, of course, noticed the change in his expression immediately. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, yes, it is.” Except it wasn’t. He glanced down at his watch—his father’s watch—and looked at the time, groaning inwardly. Croydon was at least an hour and a half away in current traffic, an hour if he was lucky, and he’d forgotten. He’d never forgotten, not once in nearly ten years.
“What’s happened? You look worried.”
He let out a short, barking laugh. She didn’t know the half of it. To his surprise, he found himself answering honestly. “Memorial service. For my dad and the other people…in the accident he was in. I go every year. This is the first time I’ve forgotten. I can’t believe it.”
He was fully aware that he must sound unhinged. He clenched his hands for a moment, then stood. “I don’t even have time to change…”
Val’s brown eyes were wide and soft. “I’m so sorry. I kept you…”
“No. No, it wasn’t you at all.” Except, of course, it was. He sometimes, especially in the early years, would go on a bender around this time. Val certainly wasn’t the first woman who’d ended up in his bed a couple of nights before. But today he’d forgotten . He raked his fingers through his hair and swallowed back that choking feeling threatening to tighten round his chest. “I’m so sorry but I’ve got to go.”
“Do you…do you want some company?”
Those words stopped him in his tracks.
He took a deep breath to tell her no, and found himself saying, instead, “Sure. Fine. Let’s go. But—Hind?”
Val gave him a wobbly smile. “I haven’t asked for an afternoon off in years. This is more important.”