He laughed, shaking his head. “But Josie, that’s exactly what wine is.” He tilted his head, giving her a boyish grin. “Though I don’t think the St. Raphaël winery will be using those exact words in their ads anytime soon. No wine, huh?”
“I didn’t like it.”
“I never would have guessed. You hide your emotions so well.”
For an instant, they smiled at each other, and Josie’s heart suddenly twisted in her chest. Then, turning away, he lifted his hand in signal. “I’ll get you something you’ll like better.”
He spoke in another language—Berber?—to one of the servants, and the man left. After serving their dinner, the other three, too, departed, leaving Kasimir and Josie to enjoy a private dinner in the Sahara, beneath the shadows of red twilight.
“Ooh.” Looking down at the table, Josie saw a traditional Moroccan dinner, full of things she loved: tajine, a zesty saffron-and-cumin-flavored chicken stew—pickled lemons and olives, carrot salad sprinkled with orange-flower water and cinnamon and couscous with vegetables. She sighed with pleasure. “You have no idea how often I ate at the Moroccan restaurant, trying to imagine what it woul
d be like to travel here.”
“How often?”
“Every time I got my hands on a half-off lunch coupon.”
He grinned at her, then the smile slid from his face. His expression grew serious.
“So,” he said in a low voice, “does that mean you forgive me? For bringing you here?”
She looked in shock at the vulnerability in his eyes. Something had changed in him somehow, she thought. The warm, generous man sitting across from her in exotic Moroccan garb seemed very different from the cold tycoon in a black suit she’d met in Hawaii. Had the desert really made him so different? Or was it just that she knew too much about the man behind the suit?
“I don’t like that you lied to me about Bree,” she said slowly. “Or that you brought me out here against my will. But,” she sighed, taking a bite of the tajine as she looked at the sunset, “at the moment it’s a little hard for me to be angry.”
He swallowed. Reaching across the table, he briefly took her hand. “Thank you.”
She shivered as their eyes met. Then he released her as the servant returned with a samovar of filigreed metal. He left it on the table in front of Kasimir, then disappeared.
“What’s that?” Josie said, eyeing it nervously.
He smiled. “You’ll enjoy it more than wine. Trust me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’d enjoy anything more than that,” she confessed.
“It’s mint tea.”
“Oh,” she sighed in pleasure. She watched him pour a cup of fragrant, steaming hot tea. “This is kind of like a honeymoon, you know.”
He froze. “What do you mean?”
“The bath with rose petals. This wonderful dinner. The two of us, in Morocco. It’s like something out of a romantic movie. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought…”
Whoa. She cut herself off, biting down hard on her lower lip.
He looked up from the samovar. “You’d have thought what?”
“You were trying to seduce me,” she whispered.
His shoulders tightened, then he shrugged, giving her a careless smile belied by the visible tension in his body. “I could only dream of being so lucky, right?” He swept his arm over the horizon, over the tea and the lanterns, with a sudden playful grin. “You can see the tricks I’d use to lure you.”
“And I’m sure they’d work,” she said hoarsely, then added, “Um, on someone else, I mean.” Looking away quickly, she changed the subject. “How did you find this place?”
He set down the elegant china cup on the table in front of her. Sitting back in his chair, he took a sip of his own wine. “After Nina dumped me, I had the bright idea that I should go see every single place where I held mining options. After our partnership dissolved, I still held the mining rights in South America, Asia and Africa.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Vladimir was happy to let those lands go. He didn’t believe I’d ever find anything worth digging.”
“But you proved him wrong.”
“Southern Cross is now a billion-dollar company, almost as wealthy as his.” His lips curved. “I left St. Petersburg with total freedom—no family, no obligations, almost no money, nothing to hold me back. Every young man’s dream.”