Page 75 of Hired Husband

“Because she’s Jasmine Saad, and once a Saad woman sets her mind on something, it happens. She was there when you brought over the model. I think she knows how bummed we were about it, so she made it her mission to lift our spirits.”

He finally walked deeper into the room, letting out a low whistle between his teeth. “For a guy who was just supposed to be a contractor for her father’s company, you seem pretty close to her.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time together recently. That’s all.”

That definitely wasn’t all, but I’d accepted that my feelings for her weren’t rational. Joseph had hit the nail on the head when he’d said I was supposed to have been nothing more than her father’s contractor and now I wasn’t even that. Joseph had also seen me kiss Jasmine, so he didn’t have to be a mind reader to know something was going on between us.

By all rights, I should’ve been getting ready to go back to Chicago. My bags had been all packed. But instead, I was on a cruise with the man’s daughter.

It makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

“Dinner!” Zara sang through the door after a quick, loud knock. “If you boys take too long, I’m deciding what we all have for dessert.”

Joseph shot me a horrified look. “We cannot let that happen. I’ve heard of the food on these ships and it’s supposed to be incredible.”

“So let’s go.”

He nodded and threw the door open to race into the hallway after her. She let out a surprised squeal, then laughed and took off running with Joseph only a few yards behind her.

I followed them, but at a much more leisurely pace, too busy trying to decide if I was absolutely nuts for coming to even realize where we were going until we reached the top deck. I blinked and found myself standing in the middle of a place that looked like it belonged in a travel magazine, and that finally crashed me back into the present.

White linen covered the tables. Lamp-oil candles flickered in the middle and twinkle lights had been strung overhead. An honest-to-goodness chef prepared dinner in an open kitchen while the sun drifted lower over Cairo. The city skyline was already fading as we glided across the water.

Zara and Joseph had already joined Jasmine at a table, both still breathing a little hard from their race as they argued. She was staring at him wide-eyed when I reached them, looking like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“No, I’m telling you, there’s no universe in which pineapple belongs on pizza.”

“There are many universes,” he countered. “I’ve personally visited several and pineapple belongs on pizza in every last one of them.”

I took the empty seat next to Jasmine, who was watching the two of them with an amused smile. Every so often, she’d toss another log onto the fire just to watch their debate ignite. “What about banana? That’s worse on a pizza than pineapple, right?”

Zara nodded enthusiastically, but Joseph shook his head, and as their bickering ramped up another notch, she chuckled. Once again, my breath caught when she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It was ridiculous how any ordinary little movement she made could steal the air right from my lungs. I was so screwed when it came to her.

Yeah, I’m in so far over my head that I can’t even see reason anymore.

The truth was that I’d changed after spending all this time with her. I wasn’t the same guy I’d been even just a month ago and the knowledge terrified me. Every instinct I had told me she was slipping through my fingers like grains of sand in the Sahara.

I was losing her, and it felt like the tighter I was trying to hold on, the faster it was happening.

CHAPTER 30

JASMINE

Long after dinner had ended, I cracked my door open and peeked into the hall. The long carpeted corridor was empty, not a soul in sight. I stepped out of my suite on my tiptoes and quietly slipped to Isaac’s door.

After taking another quick look around to make sure no one was watching, I knocked softly and took a step back, not really sure how I was going to sneak him out of his room and into mine without Joseph noticing, but I had to try.

Kissing him the other day in front of his friend had already been a mistake. I didn’t want any rumors starting, but at the same time, I was sleeping in those arms tonight. I didn’t know how many nights we had left together. The future was more uncertain than ever before, and I wasn’t planning on wasting any of whatever little time we had left.

A moment later, the door opened and I jerked myself out of my thoughts. Isaac didn’t look even mildly alarmed to see me. He was in a white T-shirt and sweats, that blond hair slightly damp and the faint scent of masculine body wash drifting out of the room.

“Hey, Jasmine,” he said easily. “What’s up?”

I widened my eyes at him, whispering furiously. “Could you keep it down?”

“Why?” he asked, taking a step toward me with amusement lighting those blue eyes. “Wait a second. This is a booty call, isn’t it?”

I scoffed. “It’s not. It’s an ‘I want to sleep next to you but I don’t want it getting back to my father’ call.”