The Sheikh's Convenient Bride

al with the man who’d written that excellent proposal…Yes. He was looking forward to it.

Caz pulled into the lot behind the restaurant, parked the Lamborghini and told himself, with relief, that there was no reason for him to think of Megan O’Connell ever again.

CHAPTER FOUR

MEGAN saw the red light on her answering machine blinking as she let herself into her apartment, but she ignored it.

She didn’t want to hear another human voice, not tonight. All she wanted right now was to turn the long, awful day into a memory.

Like a snake shedding its suddenly constricting skin, she kicked off her sensible shoes, tossed her rain-soaked jacket on a chair, unzipped her soggy skirt and peeled off her silk blouse, her bra and pantyhose. She unpinned her hair, filled the tub, dumped in a handful of lemon-scented bath salts and sank into the warm, fragrant water.

Sheer bliss.

For the first time all day, she began to feel human.

Half an hour later, wearing old sweats that dated back to her university days and a pair of fuzzy slippers even older than the sweats, she padded into the kitchen and flicked on the light.

The answering machine was still blinking. According to the red dial on its face, four messages were waiting for her now. So what? She wasn’t doing anything she didn’t absolutely have to do tonight, and that included blow-drying and endlessly brushing her hair to make it straight.

Let it be a curly mop. Tomorrow was Saturday. She didn’t have to worry about leaping out of bed at six and turning herself into Megan O’Connell, girl financial whiz. No need to dress-for-success or brace herself for another encounter with Jerry Simpson. What for? Her days of striving for success were over. Come Monday, she’d either be fired or get a big, fat, juicy new client.

All she could do was wait and see which way things went, though she had a feeling that hanging up on Frank a little while ago had kind of settled the issue.

Megan opened the fridge, took a slightly shriveled carrot stick from a plastic bag and bit down on it.

And it was all the sheikh’s fault.

“The rat,” she said, and tossed the half-eaten carrot into the trash.

Time to stop thinking about el sheikh-o. Time to dump him in the trash along with the carrot stick. Time to purge her mind of the miserable memories of the miserable day. Forget Simpson. Forget Frank Fisher. Forget Qasim the Horrible and the fact that she’d let him kiss her.

People under stress did weird things, and heaven knew she’d been under stress.

She’d concentrate on something positive. Something like dinner. An excellent idea. She was starved, and why wouldn’t she be? Thanks to the sheikh, she’d skipped breakfast and lunch, spending the one getting ready for his visit and the other recovering from it…

And there he was, inside her head again.

Out with thoughts of the sheikh. In with thoughts about supper. Comfort food. That was what she wanted, something as homey and warming as the bath and the old sweat suit.

Megan opened the refrigerator again, her spirits sinking as she peered inside. Low-fat yogurt. Low-fat cottage cheese. Three little containers of low-fat pudding that was supposed to taste like the real thing and didn’t.

Damn.

She didn’t want anything sensible tonight. She wanted something like her mother’s fantastic rice pudding, or a big bowl of macaroni and cheese, anything with enough built-in calories to soothe the soul in every delicious, decadent mouthful.

She sighed, shut the refrigerator door and leaned back against it. She didn’t have macaroni in the pantry, and her mother was hundreds of miles away in Las Vegas, so there’d be no rice pudding tonight. A good thing, too, because how would she ever have explained to Ma that she needed it because she’d managed to let a man she despised turn her on?

Qasim hadn’t just turned her on, he’d turned her inside out.

Damned if she’d let that ruin her weekend.

Forget the cottage cheese, the yogurt, the sheikh. A little Thai takeout place had opened around the corner a couple of weeks ago. They’d tucked menus in all the mail boxes and she’d put hers somewhere…

There it was, stuck to the fridge door with a magnet.

Megan read through the specials. Great. Coconut milk soup. Pad Thai with chicken. Sticky rice. It wasn’t Ma’s rice pudding or her own mac and cheese but it sounded wonderful. It probably was comfort food, if you were Thai.

She smiled for what felt like the first time in a century. Tonight, she’d claim honorary citizenship. Still smiling, she reached for the phone…