A Diamond For The Sheikh's Mistress

And then he turned and walked out.

* * *

Kat really didn’t want to leave the restaurant when her shift was over, because Zafir’s car was still outside. As was the very conspicuous black four-by-four undoubtedly carrying his security team.

She was more than a little shocked that he was still waiting for her. Two hours later. The Zafir she’d known a year and a half ago had never waited for anyone—he’d been famously restless and impatient. Fools had suffered in his presence. He’d cut down anyone wasting his time with a glacial look from those pewter-coloured eyes.

As Kat dragged on her coat and belted it she felt a sense of fatalism settle over her. If Zafir had ignored her agent and tracked her down this far, then he wouldn’t give up easily. She should know more than anyone that when he wanted something he pursued it until he got it.

After all, he’d pursued her until he’d got her. Until he’d dismantled every defence she’d erected to keep people from getting too close. Until she’d been prepared to give up everything for him. Until she’d been prepared to try and mould herself into what he’d wanted her to be—even though she’d known that she couldn’t possibly fulfil everything he expected of her.

Her hands tightened on her belt for a moment. He’d asked her to be his Queen. Even now she felt the same mix of terror and awe at the very thought. But it hadn’t taken much to persuade him of her unsuitability in the end.

She steeled herself before walking out through the door, telling herself that she was infinitely stronger now. Able to resist Zafir. He had no idea of what she’d faced since she’d seen him last...

As soon as she walked outside though, the back door of Zafir’s sleek car opened and he emerged, uncoiling to his full impressive height. Kat’s bravado felt very shaky all of a sudden.

He stood back and indicated with a hand for her to get in. Incensed that he might think it could be this easy, she walked over to him, mindful of her limp, even though disguising it after a long evening on her feet put pressure on her leg.

‘I’m not getting into a car with you, Zafir. You’ve had a wasted evening. Please leave.’

She turned to walk away and she heard him say,

‘Either we talk here on the sidewalk, with lots of ears about us, or you let me take you home and we talk there.’

Kat gritted her jaw and looked longingly down the street that would take her to her apartment, just a couple of blocks away. But if she walked away she could well imagine Zafir’s very noticeable car moving at a snail’s pace beside her. And his security team. Drawing lots of attention. As he was doing now, just by standing there, drawing lingering glances. Whispers.

A group of giggling girls finally made Kat turn around. ‘Fine,’ she bit out. ‘But once I’ve listened to what you have to say you’ll leave.’

Zafir’s eyes gleamed in a way that made all the hard and cold parts of Kat feel dangerously soft and warm.

‘By all means. If you want me to leave then, I’ll leave.’

His tone once again told Kat that that was about as likely as a snowstorm in the middle of the brutally hot Jandor desert, and that only made her even more determined to resist him, hating that his visit was bringing up memories long buried. Memories of his beautiful and exotic country and how out of her depth she’d felt—both there and in their relationship. Zafir had been like the sun—brilliant, all-consuming and mesmerising, but fatal if one got too close. And she had let herself get too close. Close enough to be burnt alive once she’d discovered that the love she’d felt had been unrequited.

She’d been prepared to marry him, buoyed up by his proposal, only to discover too late that for him it had never been a romantic proposal. It had been purely because he’d deemed her ‘perfect.’ Her humiliation was still vivid.

She stalked past him now and got into the car, burningly aware of his gaze on her and wondering what on earth he must make of her—a shadow of her former self. The fact that she didn’t seem to be repelling him irritated her intensely.

Zafir shut the door once her legs were in the car and came round and got in the other side, immediately dwarfing the expansive confines of the luxurious car. For a moment Kat felt herself sinking back into the seat, relishing the decadent luxury, but as soon as she realised what she was doing she stiffened against it. This wasn’t her life any more. Never would be again.

‘Kat?’

She looked at Zafir, who had a familiar expression of impatience on his face. She realised she hadn’t heard what he’d said.

‘Directions? For my driver?’

She swallowed, suddenly bombarded with a memory of being in the back of a very similar car with Zafir, when he’d asked his driver to put up the privacy window and drive around until he gave further instructions. Then he’d pulled Kat over to straddle his lap, pulled up her dress and—

She slammed the lid shut on that memory and leaned forward to tell the driver where to go before she lost her composure completely.

She refused to look at Zafir again, and within a couple of minutes they were pulling up outside her very modest apartment block. Kat managed to scramble inelegantly out of the car before Zafir could help her. She didn’t want him to touch her—not even fleetingly. The thin threads holding her composure together might snap completely.

Her apartment was just inside the main doors of the apartment block, on the ground floor, and Kat could feel Zafir behind her. Tall, commanding. Totally incongruous.

As if to underline it she heard him say a little incredulously, ‘No concierge?’

Kat would have bitten back a smile if she’d felt like smiling. ‘No.’

She opened her door and went into her studio apartment. What had become a place of refuge for the past year was now anything but as she put her keys down and turned around to face her biggest threat.

Zafir closed the door behind him and Kat folded her arms. ‘Well, Zafir? What is it you have to say?’

He was looking around the small space with unmistakable curiosity, and finally that dark grey gaze came to land on her. To her horror, he started to shrug off his overcoat, revealing a bespoke suit that clung lovingly to his powerful body.

When he spoke he sounded grim. ‘I have plenty to say, Kat, so why don’t you make us both a coffee? Because I’m not going anywhere any time soon.’

Kat stared mutinously at Zafir for a moment, and for those few seconds he was transfixed by her stunningly unusual eyes—amber from a distance, but actually green and gold from up close, surrounded by long dark lashes. They were almond-shaped, and Zafir’s blood rushed south as he recalled how she’d look at him after making love, the expression in her gaze one of wonderment that had never failed to catch him like a punch to his gut.

Lies.

It had all been lies. She might have been a virgin, but she’d been no innocent. It had been an elaborate act to hide her murky past. Suddenly he felt exposed. What was he doing here?

But just then something in Kat’s stance seemed to droop and she said in a resigned voice, ‘Fine, I’ll make coffee.’

She disappeared into a tiny galley kitchen and Zafir had to admit that he knew very well why he was here—he still wanted her. Even more so after seeing her again. But questions buzzed in his brain. He put down his overcoat on the back of a worn armchair and took in the clean but colourless furnishings of the tiny space she now called home.

He’d never been in the apartment she’d shared with three other models when he’d known her before, but it had been a loft in SoHo—a long way from here.

She emerged a couple of minutes later with two steaming cups and handed one to Zafir. He noticed that she was careful not to come too close, and it made something within him snarl and snap.

She’d taken off her coat and now wore a long-sleeved jumper over the T-shirt. Even her plain clothes couldn’t hide that perfect body, though. High firm breasts. A small waist, generous hips. And legs that went on for ever...

He could still feel them, wrapped around his back, her heels digging into his buttocks as she urged him deeper, harder—

Dammit. He struggled to rein in his libido.

‘Take a seat,’ she said, with almost palpable reluctance.

Zafir took the opportunity to disguise his uncontrollable response, not welcoming it one bit. He put it down to his recent sexual drought.

She sat on a threadbare couch on the other side of a coffee table. Zafir took a sip of coffee, noting with some level of satisfaction that she hadn’t forgotten how he liked it. Strong and black. But then he frowned, noticing something. ‘Your hair is different.’

She touched a hand to the unruly knot on her head self-consciously. ‘This is my natural colour.’

Zafir felt something inside him go cold when he observed that her ‘natural colour’ was a slightly darker brown, with enticing glints of copper. Wasn’t this just more evidence of her duplicitous nature? Her hair had used to be a tawny golden colour, adding to her all-American, girl-next-door appeal, but in reality she’d made a mockery of that image.

He put down his cup. ‘So, Kat, what happened? Why did you disappear off the international modelling scene and who is Kaycee Smith?’

CHAPTER TWO

ALL KAT HEARD WAS, ‘Why did you disappear off the international modelling scene?’ For a moment she couldn’t breathe. The thought of letting exactly what had happened tumble out of her mouth and watching Zafir’s reaction terrified her.

She’d come a long way in eighteen months, but some things she wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for...namely revealing to him the full reality of why she was no longer a model, or who she was now. The graceful long-legged stride she’d become famous for on catwalks all over the world was a distant memory now, never to be resurrected.

She breathed in shakily. Answer his questions and then he’ll be gone. She couldn’t imagine him wanting to hang around in these insalubrious surroundings for too long.

‘What happened?’ she said, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘You know what happened, Zafir—after all you’re the one who broke it to me that I’d been dropped from nearly every contract and that the fashion houses couldn’t distance themselves fast enough from the girl who had fallen from grace.’

Kat had been blissfully unaware of the storm headed her way. She’d been packing for her new life with her fiancé—filled with trepidation, yes, but also hope that she would make him proud of her... What a naive fool she’d been.

Zafir’s face darkened. ‘There were naked pictures of you when you were seventeen years old, Kat. They spoke pretty eloquently for themselves. Not to mention the not inconsequential fact of the huge personal debt you’d been hiding from me. And the real story of your upbringing—enabling a drug-addicted mother to find her next fix.’

Kat’s hands tightened on her cup as she remembered the vicious headline Zafir had thrust under her nose. It had labelled her ‘a white trash gold-digger.’ A man like Zafir—privileged and richer than Croesus—could never have begun to understand the challenges she’d faced growing up.

Kat felt a surge of white-hot anger but also—far more betrayingly—she felt hurt all over again. The fact that he still had this ability to affect her almost killed her. Feeling too agitated to stay sitting, she put down her cup and stood up, moving to stand behind the couch, as if that could offer some scant protection.

Zafir was sitting forward, hands locked loosely between his legs. He looked perfectly at ease, but Kat wasn’t fooled by his stance. He was never more dangerous than when he gave off an air of nonchalance.

‘Look,’ she said, as calmly as she could, ‘if you’ve just come here to re-enact our last meeting, then I can’t see how that will serve any purpose. I really don’t need to be reminded of how once my so-called perfect image was tarnished you deemed me no longer acceptable in your life. We said all we had to say that night.’

Her hands instinctively dug into the top of the couch as she remembered that cataclysmic night—stumbling out of Zafir’s apartment building into the dark streets, the pain of betrayal in her heart, her tear-blurred vision and then... Nothing but blackness and more pain, the like of which she hadn’t known existed.

Zafir stood up too, dislodging the sickening memory, reminding her that this was the present and apparently not much had changed.

‘Did we, really? As far as I recall you said far too little and then left. You certainly didn’t apologise for misleading me the whole time we were together.’

Struggling to control herself as she remembered the awful shock of that night, Kat said, ‘You saw that article and you looked at those pictures and you judged and condemned me. You weren’t prepared to listen to anything I had to say in my defence.’

Kat’s conscience pricked when she recalled how she’d always put off telling Zafir the unvarnished truth of her background. And as for the debt... She’d never wanted to reveal that ugliness, or the awful powerlessness she’d felt. Not to someone like Zafir, who set such an exacting standard for moral strength and integrity.

‘Dammit, Kat, you told me nothing about yourself—when were you going to reveal the truth? If ever?’ He shook his head before she could respond, and repeated his accusation of that night. ‘You were obviously hoping that I’d marry you before the sordid details came out and then you’d be secured for life even if we divorced.’

Kat felt breathless, and nausea rose inside her. ‘It wasn’t like that...’

Zafir looked impossibly stern. As unforgiving as he had been that night. He changed tack, asking her again, ‘Who is Kaycee Smith?’

Kat swallowed painfully, not remotely prepared for her past transgressions to be visited upon her again like this. ‘Kaycee Smith is the name on my birth certificate.’

A dark brow arched over one eye. ‘A pertinent detail missed by the papers?’

She refused to let Zafir do this to her again. Humiliate her. Annihilate her.

Kat tipped up her chin. ‘It was about the only thing they did miss.’

Thankfully, she thought now. Otherwise she would never have been able to fade away from view as she had.

‘We have nothing to say to each other, Zafir. Nothing. Now, get out—before I call the police and tell them you’re harassing me.’

Kat moved decisively from her spot behind the sofa towards the door, powered by anger and the tumult inside her, only to be stopped in her tracks before she reached it when Zafir asked sharply, ‘Why are you limping?’

Immediately the adrenalin rush faded, to be replaced with a very unwelcome sense of exposure. There was nothing to hold on to nearby and it reminded her of how vulnerable she was now.

She turned around slowly and realised that she was far too close to Zafir. Every part of her body seemed to hum with electricity. It was as if her libido had merely been waiting for his presence again, and now it was no longer dormant but very much awake and sizzling back to life.

His scent wound around her like a siren call to lean closer...to breathe in his uniquely male smell. It had always fascinated her—the mixture of earthy musk and something indescribably exotic which instantly brought her back to her first and last visit to Jahor, with its awe-inspiring palace on a hill overlooking the teeming ancient city on the edge of the ocean.

She’d felt so awed and intimidated at the prospect of becoming a Queen of that land, and yet deep within her she’d thrilled to the challenge. But when Zafir had deemed her unsuitable to be his wife she’d realised what a fool she’d been to indulge in such a fantasy. She was no Queen, and she had no right to the ache of loss that still had the power to surprise her when she wasn’t vigilant.

Her head snapped up. Zafir was still frowning. She moved back, aghast that her body could betray her like this. And then she remembered what he’d asked: Why are you limping?

Everything inside Kat recoiled from revealing herself to Zafir. The urge to self-protect was huge. He had no idea of the extent of the devastation in her life since she’d seen him—not all of which had to do with him. It also had to do with events totally beyond him.

But she knew that giving him nothing would only pique his interest even more, so reluctantly she said, ‘I was involved in a road traffic accident a while ago. I injured my leg and I was out of circulation for some time.’

Try at least a year, Kat thought to herself, and held her breath, praying he wouldn’t ask for more details.

Zafir looked at her assessingly. ‘Is that why you haven’t returned to modelling? And is that why you’re living like this? Because you still haven’t cleared your debts? You’re obviously recovered now though, and I can’t imagine the fashion world wouldn’t have renewed your contracts eventually, once the story had died down.’

Kat hid her reflexive flinch at ‘you’re obviously recovered now.’ But she wasn’t about to explain anything—not when Zafir was clearly no more ready to hear the truth now than he had been back then. And he was right—except when the fashion houses had come calling again she’d been in no position to consider going back...

Kat breathed out unsteadily. She avoided answering his questions directly and said, ‘I do some hand modelling, but that’s about it. And the waitressing.’

Zafir came closer, standing beside the chair. His gaze was far too keen on her and incisive. She could almost hear his brain working, trying to join the dots.

Kat just wanted him gone. He’d upended her world once before and she wouldn’t survive him doing it again.

‘Look,’ she said now, trying to hide the desperation in her voice, ‘did you really come here to rake over old ground, Zafir?’

She stopped and bit her lip as a dangerous thought occurred to her—perhaps in spite of everything he had come to listen to her side of the story? Even belatedly?

For a moment Kat felt something very delicate flower deep inside her, but after a moment Zafir shook his head and said curtly, ‘No. Of course not. That’s in the past and I’ve no wish to revisit it any further.’

Kat’s heart thumped. Hard. Of course he hadn’t come here to hear her side of things. Apparently she was as pathetically susceptible to this man as she’d ever been, and in spite of everything she’d been through that was somehow more devastating than anything else. She felt a dart of panic at the knowledge that time had done little to diminish her feelings or her attraction to him. If anything, everything felt more acute than it had before.

She forced out words through a tight jaw. ‘Then if you wouldn’t mind leaving? We had a past and you pretty definitively ruled out any future, so what more could there possibly be to say?’

She regretted asking the question as soon as she saw the calculating gleam come into those slate-grey eyes.

‘Our future is exactly what I’m here to talk about. A different future to the one previously envisaged, yes, but I don’t see why we can’t leave that in the past and move on.’

Kat’s insides tightened as if warding off a blow. ‘I’m not interested in discussing any kind of future or moving on with you, Zafir.’

* * *

Zafir’s jaw clenched and he had to consciously relax it. He wasn’t used to anyone talking to him like this—and he couldn’t remember Kat ever being so combative. But he couldn’t deny that somewhere deep inside him he thrilled to it. She had changed, and yet she was still intriguingly familiar. Achingly familiar. His whole body hummed with frustration to be so close and yet have her hold him at arm’s length and look at him as if he was an unwelcome stranger.

In truth, he hadn’t expected her to be so antagonistic towards him. He knew things had ended badly before, but she was the one who had kept the truth from him, clearly in a bid to avoid risking his commitment to marry her—which was exactly what had happened. Yet she was acting as if she was the injured party!

He cursed himself. He hadn’t planned on rehashing the past, but obviously it had been inevitable. But, as he’d said, he was done talking about the past now—it was time for him to lay out his plans for Kat. For them.

In spite of everything, and even though he knew there were a thousand reasons for him to turn and walk away from Kat and forget he’d ever seen her again, he couldn’t. Not now. But he assured himself that he could have what he wanted and get on with his life. And he fully intended to.

‘I’m not leaving until I’ve said what I came to say, Kat.’

Dismayed, Kat watched as Zafir illustrated his point by sitting down again. He was an immovable force, and she recognised that steely determination all too well. The last thing she wanted was for him to see how raw she felt, so she schooled her features and sat down opposite him, as if this visit wasn’t tearing her apart.

She looked pointedly at her watch and then back to him, ‘It’s getting late and I’ve got work early in the morning. I’d appreciate it if you could keep this short.’

Zafir inspected the bland expression on Kat’s face. For a moment he’d caught a glimpse of something much more fiery, but it was gone now. She seemed to be determined to treat him as if he was someone she hadn’t been intimately acquainted with. Soon, Zafir vowed, they would be intimately acquainted again, and she’d be moaning his name in ecstasy as her release threw them both over the edge and purged him of this ache.

He forced his mind out of his fantasies with effort and said, ‘Did you even listen to the proposition I sent your agent?’

Kat shook her head, a long tendril of hair dropping from the knot on top of her head to curl around her neck. Zafir wanted to undo her hair and let it fall in a luxurious curtain down her naked back, the way it had before. He gritted his jaw at the image. This was ridiculous—he could barely conduct a coherent conversation without X-rated images flooding his mind.

Calling on every ounce of control he possessed, he said, ‘What I’m proposing is a modelling assignment—’

He stopped and put up his hand as soon as he saw Kat’s mouth open, presumably to protest. She closed it again, her lush lips compressing into a tight line. Zafir ignored the pulse throbbing in his groin.

He tried another tack. ‘You might recall me telling you once about the famed missing jewel, the Heart of Jandor, the biggest red diamond in the world?’

Kat tensed opposite him, and then he saw a flush tinge her cheeks pink as if she too was remembering that moment—lying in her bed in Jahor, her limbs sprawled over his in sated abandon as he’d told her the story of the gem. He’d had to sneak into her rooms like a teenager, even though they’d been unofficially engaged at the time. His people would have been scandalised by such liaisons.

Kat had lifted her head from his chest and said huskily, ‘That’s so romantic... I hope they find it some day.’

Zafir could recall how a vague feeling of dread mixed with fear had washed over him on hearing the wistful tone in Kat’s voice, and how he’d felt the urge to say something, anything, to take the dreamy look from her eyes, to tell her that such a thing as romance had no place in his life. Duty trumped emotion. Always. There would be no room for romance when he became King and she was Queen.

But then she’d reached up and kissed him...and he couldn’t remember anything else.

‘I remember something...vaguely,’ she said tightly now, and Zafir desisted from arguing that she clearly remembered very well.

There was a curt edge to his voice after that memory. ‘They found the diamond recently, during an archaeological dig. It was a cause of much celebration and my people have seen it as a good omen for the future.’

Kat’s hands were clasped in her lap. ‘I’m very happy for you...and them...but I fail to see what this has to do with me.’

Zafir said carefully, ‘It has everything to do with you, Kat, because I’ve chosen you to be the model who will wear the diamond on our worldwide diplomatic tour to promote Jandor.’