Hidden in the Sheikh's Harem: Christmas at the Castello(28)

'Tia! You can't ask that,' another woman admonished.

'Oh, don't pretend you're not dying to know, Pansy, you tried to get  him yourself once without any success. I heard he was into threesomes,  as well. Is that true?'

Threesomes? No way was Farah naively going to ask what that was.

'Tia, you're so naughty!' Pansy giggled and took Farah's arm. 'Please  ignore our friend. She's had too much champagne and she's had some  seriously bad dates.' She glanced down at Farah's empty hands. 'Oh,  Lordy, you don't have a drink. Waiter, champagne, por favor!'

'I'm fine,' Farah quickly assured her. 'I was sick the last time I had champagne.'

'So?' Tia asked.

'Oh, you're adorable,' Pansy interjected as if Farah was a puppy she'd just won in a competition. 'Isn't she adorable?'

Amy cast her a cool smile and sipped her own champagne as if she had no  trouble with the drink at all. 'How long have you and Zach known each  other?'

Farah felt the woman's interest like the pointed end of a sword to her solar plexus. 'Not that long.'

'Was it a whirlwind courtship?' Cherry asked, sipping a red drink with a paper umbrella sticking out of the top.

Farah thought about her father ordering Zach to marry her. 'I guess you could call it that.'

'You must have something special going on under the hood,' Tia drawled knowingly. 'To keep the attention of man like that.'                       
       
           



       

'Have you seen the way he looks at her? H. O. T. Hot,' Pansy said. 'Oh,  look, there's the girl I saw earlier with the goody bags. Yoo-hoo, over  here.'

Feeling a small glow at Pansy's observation that Zach looked at her in  some special way, Farah watched as a much younger woman in a tiny bikini  sauntered over with a basket of small delicately fringed purses inside.

'What's in them?' Tia eyed the bags with bored interest. 'If it's not diamonds, I'm not interested.'

'Chocolates,' the woman said.

'Oh, definitely not, then.' She shuddered as if the woman had said snakes.

'I'll take one,' Cherry said, reaching into the bag. 'What about you, Panse? Amy?'

'Which is which?' Pansy eyed the three different-coloured purses.

'There's dark, white and a combination of the two.'

Pansy selected the combination. 'Farah?'

'Oh...' Farah scanned the small purses, suddenly remembering the other  night when Zach had ordered strawberries and chocolate sauce and  proceeded to eat most of them. Off her. She couldn't prevent a small  smile from sneaking across her lips and her heartbeat quickened. 'Dark,  please.'

'Really?' Amy stepped forward to eye the selection. 'I'd choose the  white if I were you.' She rifled through the purses as if hunting for  the perfect specimen. 'Zach is more a vanilla kind of guy.' She glanced  up at Farah through a veil of thick lashes. 'If you know what I mean.'

Farah blinked, wondering if she'd heard her right. When she saw Pansy's  wide-eyed stare and Tia's amused smirk, she knew she hadn't  misinterpreted the other woman's subtle put-down. Heat rushed into her  face, making her insecurities spike. She bent over the basket, pride  insisting she choose the purse holding the dark treats. This woman might  be right about Zach's preferences, but he wasn't hers any more, and  Farah took some comfort from Zach's earlier reassurance that Amy was in  his past.

'Maybe he's changed,' she said casually, attempting to calm her galloping heartbeat. 'Five years is a long time.'

Amy's small smile could have frozen the sun. 'Five years?' She cocked her head, as if confused. 'I meant last week.'

Last week? Farah felt herself reel and couldn't stop the barrage of  questions from flooding her brain. Had Zach lied when he'd said Amy was  in his past? And what of the tender consideration he'd given her over  the past few days? Had that just been his way of making the best of a  bad situation?

'Oh, look, there's Morgan O'Keefe,' Amy said. 'If you'll excuse me?'

There was a short, loaded silence as they watched Amy saunter across  the crowded deck and then Pansy patted her arm. 'Don't mind her,' she  said. 'She was obviously looking to start a row.'

'She's jealous,' Tia said offhandedly. 'She was sure she was the next  Princess of Bakaan but it didn't come off. Move on, I say.'

'Oh, right, like you've moved on from Gary?' Pansy chortled.

'Do not mention that man around me,' Tia hissed, making the other two girls burst into peals of laughter.

Farah watched them, feeling as if she was listening to them from afar, a sort of numbness working its way through her system.

'Ready to go?'

Zach appeared at her side and Farah pinned a bright smile on her face. 'Of course.'





      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

'OKAY, OUT WITH IT,' Zach said, shutting the front door to the apartment and turning to face Farah.

She paused on the first step of the stairs. 'Out with what?'

He came towards her and shoved his hands in his pockets so that he  didn't put them on her. Once they were there, her clothing was coming  off, but he could tell there was something weighing on her mind that  needed to be dealt with first. 'Whatever's bothering you.'

'There's nothing bothering me.'

She continued up the stairs and he followed, trying to keep his eyes  off the sway of her bottom in those jeans. 'Pull the other one, it's got  bells on it.'

'Sorry?'

Seeing her pained look, he sighed. 'It's just an expression.' He  stopped her at the top of the stairs, his eyes searching hers. 'Talk to  me,' he said softly. She smiled brightly as she had on the yacht and he  wondered if she truly expected him to fall for it. 'Please,' he added.                       
       
           



       

'Okay...' Her throat worked as she swallowed. 'What's a threesome?'

'A what?' Zach nearly choked at the question. Now, that he hadn't been  expecting. 'How- Who-' He shook his head. 'Why are you asking about  threesomes?'

'One of the women said that you like them.'

'Ah, I see you've been listening to gossip.' His eyes searched hers but  she kept her gaze averted, so he guessed that wasn't the real question  on her mind, but damn...

He ran a hand through his hair before moving into the kitchen to pull a  bottle of water from the fridge, pouring them both a glass. Really he  should have just ditched the party when he'd first thought to. Ironic  when the whole purpose of coming to Ibiza had been to see his friends  and immerse himself in his old lifestyle, to get his spark back. Now all  he wanted was to immerse himself in Farah. In fact it was all he could  think about. Even when flying over the water in Damian's jet boat, at  speeds that usually wiped all thought from his mind, he'd compared it to  the joy of waking with her in his arms.

Not wanting to dwell on what that meant, he focused on explaining a  threesome to her. 'Okay, well, first a threesome is sex with three  people.' When she stared at him blankly, he continued. 'At the same  time.'

'Oh.' She blinked. 'I figured it was something sexual but I thought  perhaps it was three different positions or something.' She leaned her  elbows on the counter top and absently ran a hand up and down the glass  of water. 'Is it two men and a woman or two women and a man?'

Zach coughed into his hand. 'It can be either. Why? Are you interested?'

She raised limpid brown eyes to his and her nose wrinkled. 'I've never thought about it before, but...not particularly.'

He blew out a breath. 'Good because I don't share. Which should answer  your question as to whether I'm into them or not. But, as interesting as  that little diversion was, it wasn't the reason behind your quiet  state.'

Surprise flickered in her eyes before she lowered them. 'How do you know that?'

'I have good instincts.'

'You mean you're cocky.'

'That, too.' He smiled to try and lighten the mood. 'Tell me I'm wrong.'

'You're wrong.'

'Farah!'

'Okay, fine. Did you see that woman Amy last week?'

Zach blinked. Hell he hadn't been expecting that one, either. 'No. I haven't seen Amy for five years. Why do you ask?'

'No reason.'

She moved into the living area and he followed. 'Farah, don't fob me off. Why did you ask?'

'She implied that you had...' She shrugged. 'But it was probably my mistake.'

Possibly. Or possibly Amy had wanted to cause trouble between them  because she was upset that he hadn't shown any interest in catching up  with her. She had definitely been put out to find him married and maybe  that was his fault. 'Amy emailed me last week asking to catch up  tonight,' he admitted.

Something he'd completely forgotten about until just now. In fact it  had been a shock to see her at the party and even more of a shock to  realise that he felt nothing for her. Maybe she'd picked up on that and  also that he was completely enamoured with his new wife.

Was that how he felt about Farah? Enamoured?

Looking at her now, her bedroom eyes large in her face, her hair  tumbling around her stiff shoulders, her curvy figure outlined to  perfection... A sense of destiny whispered across the surface of his  mind. The fact was he couldn't remember ever making outrageously  arrogant statements to Amy or any other woman just to make her laugh  because it lit something up inside him, nor had he wanted to watch her  do the simple act of rubbing the sleep from her eyes in the morning, and  he certainly hadn't wasted time on a TV program other than sports just  because he'd wanted to hold her in his arms for a little longer.