Wrapped In Pleasure - Brenda Jackson [79]
And to think that this was the woman he was supposed to marry. The woman that he would marry.
The thought of that only made Rasheed sigh and shake his head. The sound made her glance up at him. She smiled faintly and he saw something he could very well do without seeing in her. Trust.
“Are we almost there, Monty?”
Her question, spoken in an accent he loved hearing, invaded the quietness of the elevator and disturbed his already unsettled mind. “It’s the next floor,” he said, and before he could get the words totally out of his mouth, the elevator came to a stop and the door swooshed open.
Tightening his hand in hers, he walked off the elevator with her by his side while wondering if she had any idea that he was taking her to his penthouse. If she didn’t know before, she knew now, he thought, when they stopped in front of a set of large double doors. He let go of her hand while he fished the key from his pocket.
“This is where you live when you are in New York?” she asked, her voice silky and inquisitive, and filled with more wonder than caution, reminding him of the trust she had placed in him.
“Yes, I brought you here to dance in private,” he said, taking the lock off the door.
What he didn’t say was that he had done so because he only wanted her to dance with him and dance for him. The thought of another man holding her in his arms was something he wasn’t ready to accept. That was strange in itself since he’d never experienced being so possessive of any woman. His only reasoning for that was with a fiancée his emotional attachment could be expected to be different.
He gazed over at her and decided to calm her fears just in case she was doing a good job of hiding them. “If for some reason you don’t feel comfortable about being here alone with me, Jo, we can leave and go back.”
She held his gaze for a moment as if to consider his words. And then without saying anything she reached out, turned the knob and opened the door. Then, giving him another faint smile, she walked inside.
Chapter 3
Johari stood in the middle of Monty’s New York home and turned around, taking in the large and spacious, beautifully decorated room—including all the exquisite paintings that hung on the wall, the marble flooring and the lovely Moroccan rug she was standing on. She didn’t have to touch the furniture to know it had been hand-carved and built from the finest-quality materials. This home was a stunning representation of his taste as well as his wealth.
She turned to him. He had followed her inside his penthouse and was leaning against the closed door. He looked breathtakingly handsome and just looking at him almost made her forget the question she’d been about to ask. “You have other homes beside this one?”
“Yes,” he said, moving away from the door to walk toward her. She even found his walk attractive—his strides were confident, sexy and so vastly different than the hurried, lazy, untutored walk of the guys she’d met at the university. The guys who had been her age. She couldn’t help wondering Monty’s age and guessed it to be in the mid-thirties.
“I have another home in Los Angeles. I also have homes in Brazil, London and Dubai.”
She winced at the last since it was too close to her home for comfort. The only thing separating Dubai from her homeland was the Persian Gulf. “Dubai?”
“Yes,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her. “I purchased it more out of necessity than anything else since my company is involved in a lot of construction there.”
She was well aware of all the construction that had now transformed Dubai from the sleepy port town to the most populous. It was the fastest growing city on the Arabian Peninsula and