Pleasure: The Sheikh's Defiant Bride. Sandra Marton

on his suit jacket and strode toward the door. First, choosing celibacy that had clearly affected his concentration. Then, refusing an invitation to a place that might, indeed, provide excellent prospects for his search for a wife.

      An old American expression danced into his mind. Three strikes and you’re out. It referred to baseball but it could just as readily refer to his quest. First, his search in Dubaac, then in the Nations.

      Well, there wasn’t going to be a third strike. He hadn’t been looking hard enough, that was the problem.

      And that was going to change, starting now.

      “Okay, people. We’re off the air.”

      Madison Whitney rose to her feet, unclipped the tiny black mike from the lapel of her suit and handed it to the waiting technician.

      “Madison,” her boss said, “you did a fine job.”

      “Thank you.”

      “Excellent.” He laughed—ho, ho, ho, Madison thought, just like an actor doing a really bad interpretation of Santa—and leaned in close. “Suppose we have a drink and discuss things?”

      Discuss what? she wanted to say. How you can figure out a way to get me into bed? But Mrs. Whitney had not raised a stupid daughter so Madison smiled brightly, just as she’d been doing ever since MicroTech had taken over FutureBorn and said oh, that would be lovely, but she had a previous engagement.

      The phony smile of her very married employer turned positively feral.

      “Now, Madison, it isn’t wise to say ‘no’ all the time.”

      It isn’t wise to court a sexual harassment lawsuit, either, Madison thought, but she knew what he didn’t, that their uneasy alliance would soon be over.

      It was enough to make another smile easy to produce.

      “Some other time, Mr. Shields. As I say, I have a date.”

      She felt his eyes on her as she walked away.

      Twenty minutes later, she slid into a booth at a quiet bar on Lexington Avenue. Two things were waiting for her: a cold Cosmopolitan cocktail and her old college roommate, Barbara Dawson.

      Madison sighed, lifted the drink and took a long, long sip.

      “Bless you for ordering ahead. I really needed that.”

      “I live to serve,” Barb said lightly. She smiled, and jerked her chin toward the TV screen above the bar. “I caught the show. Still hiding behind those tortoiseshells, huh?”

      Madison grinned. “They make me look intellectual.”

      “You mean, they make you look untouchable.”

      “If only,” Madison said, and took another sip of her drink.

      “Don’t tell me. The lecher’s still leching?”

      “Uh-huh. Did you know you were my date for tonight?”

      “Why, Maddie,” Barb purred, batting her lashes, “I never knew you felt that way.”

      “Hey, there’s an idea. Maybe that’ll be my next excuse.” Madison shook her head. “He’s impossible but then, he’s a man.”

      “Have you ever considered it’s time you stopped thinking every guy out there is a cheating, conniving jerk like your once-upon-a-time fiancé?”

      “No,” Madison said firmly, “because they are. And that includes my own father, who only stopped being unfaithful to my mother because he died. Men are all the same. It’s a fact of life.”

      “Wrong.”

      “Right. There are no good guys, Barb. Well, except for yours, but Hank’s the last one on the planet.”

      “Maddie …”

      “Did you read the latest alumni newsletter?”

      Barb looked glum. She knew where this was going. “No.”

      “Remember Sue Hutton? Graduated a year after us? Divorced. Sally Weinberg? Divorced. Beverly Giovanni? Divorced. Beryl Edmunds? Div—”

      “Okay, okay. I get the message, but that doesn’t mean—”

      “Yes. It does.” Madison gulped down the last of her drink and looked around for the waiter. “I am not getting married, Barb. Not ever!”

      “No husband? No family? No kids?”

      Madison hesitated. “No husband doesn’t mean no kids. Actually—actually, I do want kids. Very much.” She paused again. “But I don’t want a husband to get in the way.”

      Barb raised an eyebrow. “And you’re going to manage this how?”

      Okay, Madison thought, now was the time.

      “Artificial insemination,” she said, and if her heart hadn’t been beating so hard at this first public admission of what she was about to do, she’d have laughed at the look on Barb’s face. “Surprised you, huh?”

      “You could say that.”

      “Well, I know a lot about A.I. It’s safe, it’s reliable—and it means a woman needs a syringe of semen, not the man who provided it.”

      Something dropped to the floor. Madison looked up. The waiter, a young guy of maybe twenty, was standing next to their table. Either his jaw or his order pad had just hit the ground.

      It was just what Madison needed to ease the tension.

      “Another Cosmopolitan for me,” she said sweetly, “another glass of Chablis for my friend … and if I dinged your ego, I apologize.”

      Barb groaned and put her head in her hands. “Nice,” she said, once the waiter had scurried off.

      Madison tried a quick smile. “Sometimes, the truth hurts.”

      “Speaking of which … I’m going to be blunt here, okay?”

      “We’re friends. Go for it.”

      “Well, have you thought this through? I mean, have you really considered why you want a kid? Could it be to sort of relive your own childhood? Erase your mom’s mistakes? Oh, hell,” she said, as Madison’s smile vanished. “Maddie, I didn’t mean—”

      “No. It’s okay. You said you were going to be blunt. So will I.” Madison leaned forward. “My mother depended on the men she married for everything. I never wanted to be like that. I was intent on making my own way in life. On not having to rely on anyone, ever. Doing well in school mattered. So did getting a degree, and an M.B.A., and making it up the corporate ladder.”

      “Honey. You don’t have to ex—”

      Madison reached over the table and caught Barb’s hand.

      “I was sure I’d never want marriage or children, any of that stuff.” She paused; her voice grew soft. “Then, one day I looked around and realized I had it all. The undergrad degree. The M.B.A. The great job. The Manhattan apartment … Except, something was missing. Something I couldn’t identify.”

      “See? I’m right, Maddie. A guy to love and—”

      “A child.” Madison flashed a quick smile that didn’t do a thing to rid her eyes of a sudden suspicious-looking dampness. “There’s a thousand dollar Picasso print on the wall next to my desk. My P.A. has one of those school photos of her little girl next to her desk and you know what? It hit me one morning that her photo was a lot more important than my Picasso.”

      “Okay. I shouldn’t have said—”

      “And then, a couple of months ago, a girl who once interned for me dropped by. She had a belly the size of a beachball, her back hurt, she had to pee every five minutes—and even I could tell that she’d never been happier in her life.”