To Tame a Sheikh Read Free Page A

below her chin tilted her face up to him, to pore into those eyes he felt he’d fallen into whole.
    Then he whispered, “You know me?”



Two
    H e didn’t recognize her?
    Johara gaped at Shaheen as the realization sank through her, splashed like a rock into her gut.
    She should have known that he wouldn’t.
    Why should he? He’d probably forgotten she existed.
    Even if he hadn’t, she looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old he’d known.
    That was due in part to her own late blooming and in part to her mother’s influence. In Zohayd, Jacqueline Nazaryan had always downplayed Johara’s looks. Her mother had later told her she’d known that Johara, having inherited her height and luminescent coloring and her father’s bone structure and eyes, would become a tall, curvaceous blonde who possessed a paradoxical brand of beauty. And in the brunette, petite-woman–dominated Zohayd, a woman like Johara would be both a prized jewel and a source of endless trouble. If she’d learned to emphasize her looks, she would have become the target of dangerous desires and illicit offers, heaping trouble on her and her father’s head. Her mother had left her in Zohayd secure that Johara had no desire and no means of achieving her potential and would continue looking nondescript.
    Once she’d joined her mother in France, Jacqueline had encouraged her to showcase her beauty and had done everything she and her fashion-industry colleagues could to help Johara blossom into a woman who knew how to wield what she was told were considerable assets.
    As Johara became a successful designer and business-woman herself, she learned her mother had been right. Most men saw little beyond the face and body they coveted. Several rich and influential men had tried to acquire her as another trophy to bolster their image, another check on their status report. She’d been fully capable of turning them down, without incident so far. Without the repercussions her mother had feared would have accompanied the same rejections in Zohyad.
    So yes. She’d been crazy to think Shaheen would recognize her when the lanky, reed-thin duckling he’d known had become a confident, elegant swan.
    And here he was. Looking at her without the slightest flicker of recognition. That instant awareness, that flare of delight at the sight of her hadn’t been that. It had been…
    What had it been? What was that she saw playing on his lips, blazing in his eyes as he inclined his awesome head at her? What was it she felt electrocuting her from his fingers, still caressing her chin? Was it possible he…?
    “Of course you know who I am.” Shaheen cut through her feverish contemplations, shook his head in self-deprecation. The flashes from the mirror balls and revolving disco lights shot sparks of copper off the luxury of his mane and into the fathomless translucence of his eyes, zapping her into ever-deepening paralysis. “You’re attending my farewell party, after all.”
    She remained mute. He thought she recognized him only because he was a celebrity in whose name he thought she was here having free drinks and an unrepeatable networking opportunity.
    He relinquished her chin only to let the back of his fingers travel in a gossamer up-down stroke over her almost combusting cheek. “So to whom should I offer my unending thanks for inviting you here?”
    Her heart constricted as the reality of the situation crystallized.
    She hadn’t even factored in that he might not know her on sight. But she’d conceded she shouldn’t have expected it. But that there was nothing about her that jogged any sense of familiarity in him—that she couldn’t rationalize. Or accept.
    Her insides compacted in a tight tangle of disappointment.
    His words and actions so far had had nothing to do with happiness at seeing her after all these years. There was only one reason he could have approached her, was talking to her, looking at her this way. It seemed absurd, unthinkable. But she