She exclaimed with relief as they crossed the finish line and Ram brought the monster machine to a screeching halt. Lifting off her helmet, she threw herself back in her seat, laughing with relief and happiness. The whole experience had been incredible—and quite an education. And the race had been good too, Mia conceded dryly as Ram removed his helmet and ruffled his thick black hair.
‘You’re still alive, then?’ he said, turning to look at her.
Alive? She felt properly alive for the first time since…for ever. ‘Did you see our time? According to my calculations we just knocked a good three seconds off last year’s record.’
‘Not bad,’ Ram agreed. ‘And good to see you did your homework,’ he added wryly.
Would he expect anything less of her? Slanting a glance at him, Mia guessed not.
But then he started laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded.
‘I think you must have forgotten that I can hear every sound you make through the headphones—’
‘Every—’ Mia’s cheeks fired up.
‘Every sigh and gasp—every sexy little groan you make,’ Ram confirmed, staring at her with unbearable male smugness.
‘Well, I can see why that might amuse you,’ Mia agreed. ‘Though…sexy little groan? I don’t recognise that. I can only conclude you’re going deaf and need to turn your microphone up.’
‘And I’m equally sure you need your heat control turned down.’
Chapter Five
THE podium was bathed in sunshine. The crowd had gathered. The jeroboam of champagne that had been waiting on ice all day was ready to be uncorked and the winners were lining up. But Mia and Ram were still standing in the crowd. ‘Ram, you should be up there—what happened?’
‘Penalty points.’
‘For what?’ Mia demanded with outrage.
‘Taking you on at such short notice. It was a wonder they let me race at all. My powers of persuasion,’ he said to Mia’s unspoken question. ‘But these are time trials, so I lost out in the final calculation.’
‘That’s so unfair.’
‘That’s just how it is.’
‘Ram, I’m really sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I wouldn’t have been able to enter the race at all if you hadn’t stepped forward.’
‘Someone else would have.’
Ram shrugged, and it thrilled her to see his dark eyes glowing with amusement as he stared down at her. ‘But I wouldn’t have had half so much fun.’
‘Hmm. So you don’t mind our not winning?’
‘I’ll settle for a hug.’
The breath shot out of her lungs as Ram dragged her close, but then right on cue his glossy cheerleaders found them. ‘Shall I leave you to your fan club?’
Ram laughed. ‘You dare.’ He steered her away from the squawking women.
‘Are you using me to put those women off?’
He groaned. ‘Am I so obvious?’
‘Yep.’
‘Can you bear to leave the trophy behind?’ he teased her as they walked past the podium.
‘Silverware needs such a lot of cleaning—but I still think you should have received some sort of prize. Your time was way faster than the rest.’
‘I did receive some sort of prize,’ Ram informed her.
How had she allowed herself to be talked into this? Racing with Ram was one thing, but now she was going out to dinner with him? Just the usual celebration after the race, Ram had assured her—and it had seemed rude to say no. There was nothing special about it—all the teams would be out tonight and it would look odd if she and Ram weren’t seen about town—
Oh, really?
Frustrated? Her libido was pinging off the walls, which, admittedly, should have been all the warning she needed to turn down Ram’s invitation, but he was so decisive and she was so…Maybe there were stronger women than her around—sensible, level-headed women, who would…
Who would definitely trample each other in the rush for the chance of a date with Ram.
She loved her flatmates, Mia realised when they greeted her at the door with squeals of excitement. ‘We saw you on TV—You were great! So cool—The car was hot! The Maharaja was hotter than hell—’
She laughed as they dragged her inside, all talking at once. Mia had never been a girly girl, but her new friends had adopted her and treated her as one of them. They despaired of her refusal to follow trends, but lapped up her energy, just as they had lapped up Mia’s emergency call demanding they find her a hot dress fast.
‘We’re going to clean up your act and send you out looking like a princess,’ a pretty, dark-haired eastern European called Xheni who had recently been scouted by one of the top model agencies assured her.
‘Princess Patch?’ Mia suggested.
‘Start with a shower,’ Xheni insisted, ignoring Mia’s comment as she bundled her towards the bathroom. ‘You smell of engine oil.’
‘Don’t stint on the compliments.’ Mia was still laughing when the other girls overruled this and, catching hold of her, dragged her the other way into their tiny, cluttered sitting room.
‘You have to talk before you shower,’ they insisted. ‘And make sure you leave nothing out.’
Xheni was happy to concede defeat. ‘I suppose you can sit and chat for a while. If it gets too bad we can always light a scented candle.’
Shrieks of unladylike laughter greeted this comment as they all collapsed in a heap on the sofa with Mia in the middle of the group.
‘All right. I give up,’ Mia announced. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘You can’t just ring us and say you need a hot dress in a hurry without expecting us to conduct our own investigations,’ Xheni explained, holding Mia down when she made a sly bid to escape. ‘So stop acting cool and pretending like there’s nothing special happening tonight when we all know you’re meeting the Maharaja—’
‘Who told you I was meeting Ram?’
‘Ah, Ram,’ Xheni said triumphantly, seizing on Mia’s use of the notorious royal’s first name. ‘Guilty as charged,’ she exclaimed, exchanging glances with their friends. ‘Monsieur Michel told us, of course. Who do you think? He’s so excited for you.’
Mia huffed dismissively. ‘Well, he needn’t be.’
‘Come on—give us the juice,’ Xheni insisted, ignoring Mia’s protests.
The juice…Mia spared a moment for a wistful smile. If she had to go back to the beginning there were things she would rather forget—like Ram saying he would never forget her, when he clearly had for all those years. And now it seemed she was determined to throw herself back in his path again—and not like a naive schoolgirl with a crush, but like a deerhound on the trail of some juicy prey. Seeing Ram again had fired all her latent lust and directed it towards him like a heat-seeking missile.
Not that Ram was interested. Asking her out for dinner was just him being nice—
Ram nice?
Okay. To be honest, that didn’t sound much like Ram.
‘Have you known him for long?” Xheni demanded, breaking into Mia’s thoughts.
‘Long enough,’ Mia responded dryly. Before the accident she would have been thrilled at the thought of tonight, but the loss of her sight had changed all that, reducing her to a shambling, petrified wreck who was frightened of her own shadow—or who would have been, if she could have seen it—
‘Coffee, anyone?’ Xheni said as one of the girls carried a tray in. ‘I don’t know about you lot, but I’m settling in for a very long and tasty session…’
Mia stared at the steaming mugs, remembering that after the accident even silly little things like learning to carry a tray again had become a mountain she’d had to climb in terror. But like the girls Ram had taken her injuries in his stride. He didn’t appear to find them repulsive. He didn’t pity her either. In fact, he gave no quarter, which was why she was so comfortable with him—
Comfortable? Did that explain a rocketing heartbeat when she thought about him?
Her thoughts had been in disarray since the rally. She could never have predicted that one phone call to Ram could change her life, forcing her to ask herself all sorts of questions.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ one of the girls said, putting her arm around her. ‘We promise to fire questions at you only until we run out of them.’
Mia had to laugh. ‘And that’s likely to happen.’
She should stop worrying and take this as a sign of how far she’d come. The girls had been part of her recovery and she was grateful to them. She’d lost her confidence along with her sight and had asked everyone, including her family, to leave her alone while she worked out how to go forward. How could an interior designer face the world blind? How could she face the world blind? When the sight in one eye returned she should have been grateful. She should have been down on her knees thanking God for his mercy. She had her life, her health, and the sight in one eye. Wasn’t that enough when she could so easily have been killed? But she hadn’t felt grateful. She had felt bitter and depressed, and had only wanted to spare those who loved her from the fallout, and so she’d left home. Her dream of leaving her mark on the world had felt as if it was over. And as for her dream of sailing into the sunset with a man like Ram Varindha—
Well, he’d hardly want her now, Mia reflected, checking her eyepatch was in place.
‘Well, come on, then,’ Xheni prompted. ‘Tell us about the Maharaja.’
How could she begin to tell them about Ram when he had flashed across her world like the brightest of comets leaving her to clutch in vain at his sparkling dust? When Ram had left England she’d known she would never get over it. There would be no more ridiculous birthday cards, or phone calls requesting a taxi for a maharajah and his elephant—no one twanging her old lute, or whistling ‘My Girl’ ever again—
‘Start with how you came to be driving in the rally with him,’ one of the girls insisted.
‘Or how you came to know Ram would be driving in it,’ Xheni interrupted, wide-eyed, nudging her friend. ‘Well, we’re waiting,’ she said as one by one the girls settled down. ‘We want to know everything about Ram. And you can leave out all the boring bits like what he likes to eat—unless that’s you.’
The girls had completely thrown her out of the past and into the present, and as they laughed their agreement she spluttered, pulling a face. ‘I’m hardly his type.’ Putting it mildly.
‘Who says?’ Xheni demanded. ‘Have you ever put him to the test?’ Resting her chin on the heel of her hand, the pretty young model leaned forward.
‘And how am I supposed to do that?’
‘Hold his gaze…Moisten your lips…’
The girls cheered as Xheni gave a practical example.
‘That would have worked well if I’d tried it out on a hairpin bend—’ And was easy enough for Xheni to say. Like all the girls Mia shared an apartment with, Xheni was stunning and accepted male attention as her due. ‘Anyway, I’m sure he’s got better things to do—’
‘Which is why he asked you out on a date,’ Xheni interrupted.
‘It’s hardly a date,’ Mia argued. ‘It’s more of a debriefing session.’
‘Excellent!’ Xheni screamed to filthy laughter from the other girls.
‘Believe what you will—’
‘Oh, we will,’ the girls assured her, exchanging glances. When Ram was in town there was a buzz of sexual excitement in the air; they’d all felt it.
‘I still want to know how you came to fall for Ram—because you have,’ Xheni insisted, looking to the other girls for agreement.
‘We all have,’ they chorused, hugging themselves as their vivid imaginations got to work.
‘What about the rally?’ Xheni prompted. ‘What did that feel like—pressed up close to him in such a highly charged and dangerous situation?’
Mia pretended bewilderment. ‘We were professional,’ she protested, blushing. ‘How either of us felt about the other had nothing to do with the rally—we just got on with it—’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ the girls chorused.
Mia wasn’t ready to admit how she’d felt—or that she was still coming to terms with how deeply Ram had affected her.
‘A professional situation, huh?’ Xheni teased her. ‘Okay, so let’s start at the beginning and work up to that boring old professional bit.’
Mia shrugged. What could she tell them?
All the bits she didn’t allow herself to dwell on—like filling in the gaps of Tom’s engagement party? When selecting an appropriate look for the evening hadn’t involved finding a suitable eyepatch to wear with her going-out dress…
‘Ram was my brother’s school friend, and things really came to a head on the night of Tom’s engagement party—’
‘Sex was in the air,’ Xheni advised the other girls.
Mia shook her head firmly. ‘We’re talking about my brother and his wife. Love was in the air—’
‘Even better,’ Xheni approved.
The other girls sighed theatrically, but their mischievous glances weren’t lost on Mia, who sat up. ‘If you won’t be serious,’ she warned, pretending stern, ‘I won’t tell you anything.’ She waited for silence, realising just how long she had shut out the details of that night. ‘I was all dressed up in my party frock—’
‘White lace and silk ribbons,’ one of the girls supplied dreamily.
‘We were scholarship kids, remember? My parents lived on the breadline, and even if they did keep up appearances in the crumbling family pile the best they could do for me was a hand-me-down with a rip beneath one arm that my mother stitched up for me. The dress was faded blue and the only thread my mother had was red, but she assured me no one would notice.’
‘Except Ram did,’ Xheni guessed.
‘Because he couldn’t stop looking at you,’ another girl suggested with a sigh.
‘Only to check I wasn’t chewing gum. Anyway, who’s telling this story?’ Mia demanded.
‘Go on,’ the girls begged her, thoroughly enthralled now.
‘Okay,’ Mia agreed, sighing as she remembered. ‘When Ram arrived I was surprised when he took me to one side.’
‘But you quickly adapted to this new development,’ Xheni said hopefully.
‘Of course. I explained I couldn’t leave the entrance hall,’ Mia continued, refusing to be sidetracked.
‘What?’ the girls demanded to Xheni’s moan of despair.
‘My job was to greet my parents’ guests and show everyone where to go.’
There was a chorus of groans, which Xheni quickly shushed.
‘Ram insisted on seeing me in private—and so I showed him into the library.’
‘The library?’ Xheni exclaimed with despair, but when something wistful came into Mia’s face all the girls fell silent.
‘Ram had changed somehow—and in a way that frightened me, because it changed everything between us. He was cold, and yet…not cold. At least, his eyes were hot.’ She bit her lip as she remembered. ‘He’d bought me a dress from Paris—a dream of a dress. I’d never seen anything like it before except in magazines. It was my first full-length ball gown. He’d guessed my size and everything,’ she added with innocent surprise, but this provoked a chorus of laughter.
‘I have to say Ram’s good with figures,’ Xheni exclaimed, clutching her chest as she gasped for breath. Reaching for a nearby newspaper, she brandished the front page that estimated Ram’s fortune in billions.
‘Go on,’ the other girls encouraged Mia.
‘Ram told me to go and put the dress on so he could see me wearing it.’
‘And, of course, you obeyed him?’ One of the girls suggested, with a wink.
‘No,’ Mia said quietly. ‘Actually, I refused.’
‘You refused?’ Xheni demanded to a murmur of disapproval from the other girls.
‘I didn’t want to upset my mother—I didn’t want her to think that the dres
s she had so carefully mended wasn’t good enough for me.’
The girls looked at each other, understanding. None of them had enjoyed easy lives.
‘Do you still have the dress?’ Xheni demanded.
‘I think it’s still at home somewhere. I didn’t want to offend Ram either, and so I thanked him for his lovely gift and put it away upstairs.’
‘And you’ve never worn it since?’ Xheni guessed.
‘No, I never have,’ Mia confirmed, remembering back to how she’d reverently untied the black silk bow on the powder-pink gown box and lifted out the exquisite dress Ram had bought for her from its nest of ivory tissue paper, knowing she would never wear it. Holding it up in front of her body, she had stood in front of the mirror pretending Ram was holding her and they were dancing.
And the rest…
What she could never have imagined was that Ram would come to find out what was keeping her. ‘You haven’t changed your dress,’ he had accused her when she answered his rap on her bedroom door.
‘There isn’t time for me to change,’ she had lied, trying to force the door closed—which wasn’t an easy thing to do when there was a maharajah’s foot in the way.
Ram’s dark eyes had called her a liar and when she had given up on the door and tried to slip past him he’d caught hold of her and pinned her to the wall, demanding, ‘You don’t like it, do you?’
Ram had always teased her, but on this occasion his face had been very close—and she hadn’t been a baby any longer—or a tomboy to be teased. And had he even been talking about the dress? She had been too naive to know. She could only remember that Ram’s eyes had been full of teasing laughter and there had been a dangerous frisson of something running down her spine, and her head had been full of thoughts of her bed just a few tantalising feet away from them—
‘You only have to say if you don’t like the dress I bought you,’ Ram had murmured, his lips so close to her own that hers had tingled.
‘I love it.’ And then she’d been angry when Ram had straightened up and pulled away—angry with herself for being such a girl when Ram was already a man. If she had been one of the older girls with her eye on him, she would have shut the door with both of them on the bedroom side of it.
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