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‘It was an interesting reaction to my invitation to visit Nadira.’
Without meaning to, she looked at him. He was not laughing. Far from it.
‘That was an invitation?’ she asked disparagingly, as she tore her gaze away from him.
‘You want a gold-edged card? Sheikh Zahir al-Khatib requests the pleasure …’
‘I want absolutely nothing,’ she said, furious with him. Furious with herself for letting him see that she cared. ‘I just want to do the job I’m paid for.’
‘It’s no big deal, Diana,’ he said carelessly. ‘There’ll be spare room on the media junket.’
‘Oh, right. Now I’m tempted.’
How dared he! How damn well dared he invite her to his fancy resort for a week of sex in the sand—including her as a tax write-off along with the freebie-demanding journalists—and say it was ‘no big deal’! That she would have no reason to regret it.
Too bad that the first man she had looked at since Freddy’s father was not only out of her reach, but a twenty-four carat … sheikh. Her judgement where men were concerned was still, it seemed, just as rotten …
Zahir had actually been congratulating himself on his self-control as he’d climbed out of the car on their arrival at Sweethaven.
There had been a difficult moment right at the beginning of the journey when he could have easily lost it. He only had to look at Diana Metcalfe for his mind to take off without him. But he’d got a grip, had jerked it back into line, forcing himself to concentrate on what had to be done. Ignore the possibilities of what he deeply, seriously, wanted to do …
Had managed, just about, to keep his tongue between his teeth and his head down—mostly—for nearly two hours and since, like him, Diana had, after that dangerous first exchange, taken avoiding action and hidden her expressive eyes behind dark glasses, they’d travelled from the heart of London to the coast in a silence broken only by the occasional interjection of the navigation system offering direction.
It should have made things easier but, without the oddly intimate exchanges through the rear-view mirror that were driving this unexpected, unlooked for, impossible connection, he’d found himself noticing other things.
The shape of her ear—small and slightly pointed at the tip.
A fine gold chain around her neck that was only visible when she leaned forward slightly to check that the road was clear at a junction.
The smooth curve of her cheek as she glanced sideways to check her wing mirrors. He’d found himself forgetting the document he was holding as he’d been captivated by the slow unwinding of a strand of hair.
It was scarcely surprising that when, on their arrival at Sweethaven he’d been confronted by her standing stiffly, almost to attention, as he’d stepped out of the car—he’d lost it so completely that he’d found himself issuing not an invitation, but an order for her to join him.
Actually, on reflection, he hadn’t got that bit wrong. The order part. An invitation would never have got her. An invitation offered her a choice which she would have had the good sense to decline.
She knew, they both knew, that there was, or at least should be, a barrier—a glass wall—between them. It had shattered, not when he’d kissed her, but with that ridiculous antique snow globe.
Diana, trapped in her role, was doing her best to repair the damage and he knew that nothing other than a direct order would have brought her into the yacht club. If he’d left it at that it might, just, have been okay, but he’d had to throw in that comment about her hat … And he refused to fool himself about the reason for it.
He’d wanted to see her hair again, the way it had been last night, when she’d stood by the river with the breeze tugging strands loose from her pins. Softly curled chestnut silk that had brushed against her neck, her cheek, his hand …
And it had been downhill all the way from there.
He’d stepped way beyond anything that could be considered acceptable behaviour when she’d challenged him and first his body, and then his mouth, had bypassed his brain.
He knew it would be a mistake to look at her now.
Could not stop himself.
She was staring straight ahead, the only movement the flicker of her eyes as she checked the mirror. If he’d been bright enough to sit in the back, he could have used that to catch her attention …
But then he’d have missed this profile. Missed her stubborn little chin, her mouth set firm, almost as if she were fighting to keep it shut. There was not a sign of that sweet dimple, just a flush to her cheeks that gave a whole new meaning to the old ‘you look magnificent when you’re angry’ cliché.
The strange thing was, he couldn’t remember ever having made a woman angry before. But then he’d never felt like this about any woman and maybe that was the point. To feel passionately, it had to matter. To her as well as to him.
Maybe that was why he was angry with himself. He didn’t do this. Had never, in all his thirty years, lost his head over a woman, no matter how beautiful, elegant, clever. His detachment—and theirs—had been a safety net, an acknowledgement that no matter how enjoyable the relationship, it was superficial, fleeting. Because, even though he’d deferred the inevitable, putting it off for as long as possible, he’d always known that his future was, as his cousin had suggested, written.
That his choice of bride was not his alone, but part of a tradition that went back through the ages as a way of strengthening tribal bonds.
His head understood, accepted that kind of power-broking, but then he’d walked out of the airport into the sunlight of a May morning and, in an instant, or so it seemed now, he’d been possessed by a girl who had nothing to commend her but an hourglass figure, a dimple and a total inability to keep her mouth shut.
And it was that mouth, her complete lack of control over it, rather than her luscious figure, that had hooked his attention. Had somehow enchanted him.
Diana slowed, signalled, turned into the boatyard. Gravel crunched beneath the tyres for a moment and then she drew up in the lee of a boathouse and the silence returned.
She made no move to get out, open the door for him, but remained with her hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. He unclipped his seatbelt, half turned towards her and when that didn’t get her attention either, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
He found the rarely used words unexpectedly easy to say. Maybe because he meant them. He was sorry. Wished he could start the day over. Start from where they’d left off last night.
If it hadn’t been for that damned email, reminding him that, while he’d escaped one future, there were some duties he could not escape …
Diana’s breath caught on a little sigh, her lips softened, but still she didn’t look at him, still held herself aloof, at a distance.
‘If I promise that I will never embarrass you in that way again, do you think you might just deign to come down off your high horse and talk to me?’
‘High horse!’ She swung round and glared at him. ‘I’m not on any high horse!’
Indignant was better than silent. Indignant, her eyes flashed green. Indignant might so easily spill over into laughter. She laughed so easily. Made him want to laugh as no woman ever had …
‘Eighteen hands at the very least,’ he said, pushing it. She shrugged, spread her hands in an ‘and that means?’ gesture.
He responded by raising a hand above his shoulder.
She swallowed. ‘Good grief, we’re talking carthorse, here.’ Then, when he didn’t respond with anything more than a twitch of his eyebrows, ‘I might—might—just admit to a slightly overgrown Shetland pony.’
‘One of those small, plump creatures with the uncontrollable manes?’ he enquired, encouraged by the fleeting appearance of that dimple.
‘They’re the ones,’ she admitted, doing her best to swallow down the smile that was trying very hard to break through. Then, having, against all the odds, succeeded, she added, ‘Much more my style than some long-legged thoroughbred, wouldn’t you say?’
‘A perfect match,’ he said.
For once she had no swift comeback and for the longest moment they just looked at each other, neither of them saying a word. But smiling was the furthest thing from either of their minds.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘DON’T you have an appointment to keep?’
It was Diana, not him, who finally broke the silence after what might have been an age, but was nowhere near long enough.
‘Nothing involving money.’ Zahir fought down the temptation to reach out, touch his fingers to her lips to silence her so that they could return to that moment of perfect understanding. Instead, he went for a wry smile. ‘I’ll rephrase that. It involves a great deal of money, but the negotiations were done and dusted months ago. I’m here to take possession of the finished article.’
‘Which, since we’re in a boatyard, I’m guessing would be a boat?’ she said, looking around her at the vast boat-building sheds, the craft pulled out of the water and propped up in cradles awaiting work.
‘Got it in one and you know how it is with a new toy. It’s no fun unless you can show it off to someone.’
Her gaze returned to him. It was direct, straightforward. Honest. She might blush like a girl, but there was none of that irritating coyness about her. She was direct in her look, direct in every way. Even as she acknowledged the truth of his remark with the smallest tilt of her head, she said, ‘Am I the best you can do?’
He sensed more than simple bafflement that he’d choose to display his latest acquisition to his chauffeur. Suspected that her question was loaded, but he played along, turning to look in the back of the car.
‘I can’t see anyone else. Of course, if you would really prefer to stay here and feed the seagulls?’
Diana knew that feeding the seagulls was the safe option. The sensible option. But, for some reason, she wasn’t doing sensible this week.
If she had been, she’d have politely accepted Zahir’s apology and left it at that. Too late now, but then their relationship had gone far beyond politeness. Beyond the point at which she could pretend that she was just his chauffeur and use the car as her defence. The fact that he’d asked, rather than ordered only underlined that point.
He was learning.
Pity she couldn’t do the same, she thought, as she opened the car door and stepped out, catching her breath as the breeze whipped at her hair.
At the marina, the sea, sheltered in the narrow estuary that the river had carved through the hills and coralled by wooden landing stages, had seemed deceptively tame.
Here the sea was a live thing, constantly on the move as it slapped against the concrete slipway, sucked at the shingle. Even the air tasted of salt.
She turned to Zahir, who was standing beside the car, waiting.
Tall, dark and so dangerous that he should have, Warning! Close Contact With This Man Can Seriously Damage Your Peace of Mind! stamped on his forehead.
The fact that he’d been able to tease her out of her strop the moment he’d put his mind to it was ample demonstration of the danger she was in. How would she ever be able to resist him if he really made an effort?
If he wanted more than a kiss …
She shook her head, recognising somewhere, deep inside her where she refused to go, that his apology had been a rare thing. That he had been making a very special effort.
That resistance was imperative. And, taking a slow calming breath, she turned to face him.
‘If you wanted to show off your new toy,’ she asked, ‘why didn’t you bring the Princess with you?’
‘Princess?’
He was good. He really looked as if he didn’t know what, who, she was talking about.
‘Tall,’ she prompted, holding her hand several inches above her own pitiful height. ‘Blonde.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to say beautiful. ‘Your partner, according to James Pierce?’
He leaned back, his brows drawn down in a puzzled frown. ‘Do you mean Lucy?’
‘I don’t know. How many tall, blonde partners do you have?’ she snapped, angry that he wouldn’t just own up, tell her the truth. That while he was flirting with her, kissing her, dancing with her, he had a thoroughbred filly at home in the stable.
Angry with herself for allowing him to waltz away with her, when she knew …
‘You were talking to her when I returned the tray. If that helps,’ she prompted. ‘She was wearing a pale grey …’
‘I’m with you,’ he said, getting the picture. ‘But calling her my partner is stretching it a bit.’
‘Surely you are or you aren’t,’ she said, hating him for not being honest with her. Hating herself for caring …
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No? What is it like, Zahir?’ ‘What is it like?’
His long look left her in no doubt that she’d exposed herself, had revealed feelings that would have been better kept hidden and, damn it, she was really good at ‘hidden’. She could keep a secret better than anyone she knew. She’d had years of practice …
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, turning away, but he stopped her. All it took was a touch to her shoulder.
‘It’s like this, Diana.’
And she turned back. Forget the way he looked, the way he smiled so that she felt like the only person in the world. Who could resist that low, seductively accented voice as it wrapped itself around her, warming everything within her that was vital, female, bringing it to life?
Who could resist it, when she’d been dead inside for so long?
‘Really—’
She made one more effort, but he raised a hand, demanding that she listen.
‘Lucy—charming, beautiful Lucy—’ she flinched at each word ‘—was the joint owner of one of those desert tour outfits. It was poorly managed, under-capitalised, going nowhere. And the man who ran it had been arrested for fraud, amongst other things.’
His mouth tightened as if just thinking about it made him angry and suddenly she was listening.
‘My cousin, Hanif—Ameerah’s father—knew that I was more interested in business than diplomacy and he encouraged me to step in, take it over, see if I could make something of it. I raised the capital—it didn’t take much—but when I bought Lucy out I insisted she keep a small equity in the business.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘Just in case I was as good as I thought I was. She’d had a raw deal.’
‘What a Galahad!’
‘You don’t understand.’ He lifted a hand as if asking her to at least try. ‘But then why should you?’
‘I never will unless you tell me. Not that it’s any of my business,’ she added, realising, somewhat belatedly, that haranguing a client about business affairs was probably not an entirely wise move. Except that she’d stopped treating Zahir like a client from, well, the moment she’d picked up the shattered snow globe.
But the admission earned her another of those smiles—the real ones—so that was okay.
‘Don’t go all polite on me, Diana.’
Or maybe not.
‘I’m listening,’ she said.
He leaned back against the car, folded him arms, looked down, as if dredging deep for what he was about to tell her. ‘The men in my family are diplomats. My grandfather before he became ruler. My father, uncles, cousins. I wanted something different. Like you, I had a dream.’
‘Your own airline?’
‘Not quite. It takes time to learn to dream on that scale. You have to start small, then, as your imagination grows, let the dreams grow until they are big enough to fill all the available space.’ He glanced up at her. ‘I got my chance because Lucy’s life had fallen apart. I owed her. She uses her share of the profits to fund a charity she founded, which is why she turns out for the PR stuff, as she did last night, whenever Hanif can spare her.’
