“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fatima said a half hour later as she sat on one of the leather sofas in a corner of his office and smiled at him.
He’d had the foresight to order her favorite tea and some of the English biscuits she was so fond of, and now she nibbled on one of the butter cookies.
“Fatima, I need to know what’s going on,” he said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. “It took me all of five minutes to see through the disguise. Heidi is many wonderful things, but she’s not much of a femme fatale.”
“Is that so bad?” his grandmother asked. “We’ve experienced that kind of woman before in this family.”
He knew they were both thinking about Malik’s wife. The woman whose name was never spoken aloud.
“I’m not complaining,” he said earnestly. “I’m confused. I want to know why Heidi felt she had to do this. With that information I can figure out the best way to handle the situation. I don’t know if I should tell her I know or play along.”
“I see your point,” Fatima said, then sighed. “All right, yes, Dora and I helped her transform herself into the lovely Honey Martin. The idea came about because Heidi is convinced she could never attract you otherwise. She considers herself rather unskilled in the arts of seducing a man.”
“She wants to seduce me?” he asked, not able to believe he was having this conversation with his grandmother of all people.
Fatima sipped her tea. “Yes. She’s under the impression that she’s made a terrible mess of things with you, and she wants to fix that. At first I wanted to recommend a conversation to clear the air, but the more I thought about transforming her, the more I liked the idea. Playing Honey will give Heidi confidence as a woman. She’s bright, articulate and very funny, but she doesn’t understand that she’s actually very attractive and appealing.”
She fixed Jamal with a stern stare. “I trust you’ve been able to see past her dreadful clothes to appreciate the charms of your new bride.”
“Absolutely,” he said sincerely, not daring to admit that he’d been a little blind about Heidi’s physical attributes until she’d flaunted them in that pitiful excuse for a dress.
Fatima did not look convinced. “Something must have happened to get you two off on the wrong foot. However, now you can go about fixing things. In the meantime, show her how desirable she is.”
“So you think I should go along with her?”
Fatima smiled. “Only if you’re in the mood to be seduced.”
Jamal thought he might be willing to put up with that, especially if Heidi was the seducer. However, he had his doubts about her ability to figure out what to do. He would probably have to give her a few subtle cues now and then.
Fatima set her teacup on the table. “Be gentle, Jamal. Heidi is wonderfully strong in many areas, but not this one. I don’t want you to hurt her. In my experiences, very few marriages of convenience start out with a bride so very determined to win her husband’s affections. That is in your favor.”
“I’ll remember.”
She leaned forward and touched his arm. “I know that your marriage to Yasmin was a disaster. You kept most of the details to yourself, but we were all aware that she did nothing to make you happy.” Fatima paused, as if searching for words.
“Don’t let the sorrow of the past keep you from enjoying the promise of the present,” she continued. “Don’t turn your back on what Heidi is offering because you’ve made yourself a silly promise not to fall in love again.”
Jamal didn’t respond because he didn’t know what to say. Fatima was right on both counts. No one in his family knew the truth about what had happened in his marriage, and he had promised himself that he would never risk falling in love again.
“Loving or not loving Heidi is the least of my problems,” he said lightly. “First I have to figure out how I’m supposed to get in touch with the luminous Honey Martin.”
Fatima smiled. “I believe you will find her registered at the hotel you went to yesterday. Simply ask for her room, and she will pick up the phone.”
He stared at her. “But she’s not at the hotel.”
“I know. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?”
“There was a recent article in Fortune magazine on the power behind the power,” “Honey” said the next day as they waited for their lunch to be served in her hotel suite.
Jamal leaned back into the comfortable white sofa and surveyed the woman who was his wife. Yesterday she’d worn red, while today she matched her white-on-white living room. Instead of a dress, she’d put on pants and a shirt. In theory, the outfits were completely different. In practice, they were exactly the same. Both had been designed to reduce a man to a drooling, quivering mass of need.
Honey sat on the sofa opposite his. Her slacks were fairly normal in that they started somewhere near her waist and covered her to her ankles. However, they didn’t start exactly at her waist. Instead, they hovered a couple of inches below her belly button—a delightful “inny” decorated with a tiny gold hoop. Her shirt—a stretchy material that dipped low enough to show cle**age and ended just below her bra—had cutouts where the shoulders were supposed to be, so there were wide straps, bare skin, then the rest of her sleeves.
The combination of exposed skin and covered parts distracted him, although not as much as the red curls piled on the top of her head. The slightly messy hairstyle made her look as if she’d just tumbled out of bed and pulled on whatever was closest. She seemed to be adjusting to her contacts better—or she’d stopped flirting—because there was a lot less blinking today.