Unexpectedly Expecting the Sheik's Baby - Elizabeth Lennox Page 0,7

silent messages being sent and absorbed across the polished conference room table. But she definitely understood that Darren was implying that she had…that Nasir was sexually interested in her.

Okay, so that was pretty obvious, if not from the soft touches earlier, the kiss on her wrist was an obvious clue.

But Cassy knew she hadn’t done anything inappropriate. She’d done her best to avoid him without insulting him. He was an important client! Thinking over the morning’s interactions, she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. Other than the soft kiss on her wrist, which still tingled, there had been nothing inappropriate about her interactions.

Of course, her thoughts had been another matter entirely! Cassy was fairly confident that none of the other people in the room were aware of those thoughts.

Which made Darren’s insinuations completely unfounded and rude! Was she going to have to say something? She glanced over at Nasir again, the man who was more powerful than she could even imagine. Had he perhaps said something to someone else that might have hurt her career? Had Darren…

A slight shake of his head told her to stop thinking along those lines. Cassy looked away, horrified that he could so easily read her mind.

Unfortunately, Darren’s comments gnawed at her. A conquest? What had she done wrong? And how could she fix it? She thought back over the morning, trying to figure out what she’d done and how she could have handled the situation differently. She couldn’t simply ignore the problem. Assumptions of this magnitude could destroy one’s career and she’d worked too hard for too long to let it go.

Unfortunately, the meeting was called back to order and she walked across the room, trying to keep her head held high, but she felt…dirty somehow. She’d done absolutely nothing wrong and yet, the men around her had sullied her reputation. Over an innocent conversation!

Granted, the subtle, non-verbal messages hadn’t been exactly innocent but…the others in the room couldn’t know that. Could they?

The meeting restarted and Cassy sat down, shaking again but this time for a completely different reason. For the rest of the afternoon, she refused to look at Nasir.

Had she done or said something to indicate that she was interested? Had Darren caught one of her glances?

If that were the case, then she would have to be extra careful during the afternoon session. She simply wouldn’t look at Nasir. When he asked her a question, she looked at her notes, pretending to verify the information written there.

Issue after issue was discussed in a seemingly never-ending meeting. Cassy wondered if anyone else needed a break. Unfortunately, as she glanced around the room, everyone seemed fresh and engaged.

Looking down at her paper, she tried to focus only on the words and not on Darren’s sneering presence beside her. When the meeting was finally over, she waited just long enough for the clients to leave before she hurried out of the conference room. She didn’t want to wait around for Darren’s next comment or for someone to ask her what was going on between herself and an obviously important client. Cassy refused to even listen to such horrible insinuations, especially from Darren, who thought that women were his personal playthings. He had no respect for women and he was a married man! So how dare he imply that she’d behaved inappropriately towards a client!

With her head down, she rushed into her office, determined to get away and rebalance herself. Grabbing her gym bag and her black tote, she hurried out of the building, without stopping to talk to anyone. She didn’t check her e-mail, nor did she care if there was a stack of issues that needed her attention. She wanted out! She needed some breathing space!

When she was on the street, her cell phone rang. “Hey, where are you?” Ella asked. “Naya and I are in the lobby waiting for you.”

Cassy continued down the street, not looking around as she maintained her furious pace. “I’m on my way to the gym. I’ll meet you guys there.”

She was already warming up when her friends slipped into the large aerobics class area. “Okay, what’s going on?” Ella asked, dumping her bag by the doorway. “You never beat us to class. Usually, we have to text you to get your butt down here.”

Ella was the most direct of their trio. As a news reporter, she traveled all over the world, ferreting out the next scoop and revealing the bad guys and their illegal antics. It was pretty