She had tried displacement therapy, and thrown herself into a week of feverish activity. She had spring-cleaned her bedroom—even though it was almost autumn!—and had gone to the cinema and the theatre. She had attended the opening of an avant-garde art exhibition and visited her parents in their rambling old farmhouse.
And still felt as though there was a great, gaping hole in her life.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again, wondering if her smile looked genuine.
Kerry frowned. ‘You’re quite sure?’ she asked gently. ‘You’ve seemed a little off colour this week. A bit pale, too. And haven’t you lost weight?’
For a moment, Rose was tempted to tell her, but she never bought her problems into work with her. And, anyway, she didn’t have a problem! she reminded herself. ‘Oh, come on! Who isn’t always trying to lose weight?’ she joked.
‘True.’ Kerry indicated the chair opposite her. ‘Sit down.’
‘Thanks.’ Rose wondered what all this was about, and started to feel the first stirrings of curiosity. Kerry seemed terribly excited about something. And it must be something big because Kerry was the kind of seen-it-all and done-it-all person who wasn’t easy to impress.
‘What if I told you I’d just had lunch with a client—’
‘I’d say lucky you—I just had a boring old sandwich at my desk!’ And no need to mention that most of it had ended up in the bin.
‘A client.’ Kerry sucked in a deep and excited breath and then Rose really was surprised. Why, her sophisticated and sometimes cynical boss was looking almost coquettish! ‘The most surprising and unbelievable client you can imagine.’
‘Oh?’
‘What would you say if I told you that we are being hired by a—’ Kerry gulped the word out as if she couldn’t quite believe she was saying it ‘—prince?’ Kerry sat back in her chair and looked at Rose, her face a mixture of triumph and curiosity.
Rose felt as though she were taking part in a play. As though someone else had written the script for this scene which was now taking place. It was surely far too much of a coincidence to suppose that…that…Her heart was pounding unevenly in her chest. ‘A prince?’ she asked weakly, playing for time.
Kerry completely misinterpreted her strangulated words. ‘I know,’ she confided. ‘It took me a little while before I could believe it myself! I mean, there isn’t much that surprises me, but when a Lawrence-of-Arabia-type character walks into one of London’s top restaurants and every woman in the room sat staring at him, open-mouthed. Well, suffice it to say that I was momentarily speechless!’
‘That must be a first,’ said Rose drily, and forced herself to ask the kind of questions she would normally ask if her brain weren’t spinning round like a carousel inside her head. ‘What did he want?’
‘That’s the funny thing.’ Kerry picked up a pencil and twirled it thoughtfully around in her fingers. ‘He wanted you.’
Disbelief and a lurching kind of excitement created an unfamiliar cocktail of emotion somewhere deep inside her. ‘Me?’ squeaked Rose. ‘What do you mean, he wanted me?’
Kerry frowned. ‘Calm down, Rose—I’m not talking in the biblical sense!’
No, but you could be sure that he was, thought Rose, and her heart-rate rocketed even further.
Kerry smiled encouragingly. ‘He—’
‘What’s his name?’ put in Rose quickly, thinking that maybe, just maybe—there was another prince in London with dark, exotic looks.
‘Khalim,’ said Kerry, and her face took on an unusually soft expression. ‘Prince Khalim. It’s a lovely name, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely,’ echoed Rose faintly. ‘Wh-what did you say he wanted?’
‘He wants to employ our agency to head-hunt for him! More specifically,’ added Kerry, ‘he asked especially for you.’
‘D-do you know why?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Kerry happily. ‘He told me. Said he’d heard that you were probably the best head-hunter in the city, and that he only ever uses the best!’
The word uses swam uncomfortably into her mind and refused to shift. Rose frowned in genuine confusion. ‘You mean he’s in advertising?’
Kerry shook her head. ‘Oh, no—it’s nothing to do with advertising. He wants you to find someone to be in charge of his country’s oil refinery. The man who has been there since the year dot is taking early retirement, apparently.’
Rose stared across the table in disbelief. ‘But we don’t do oilfields!’ she protested. ‘Our speciality is advertising.’
‘That’s exactly what I told him,’ said Kerry smugly. ‘I felt it was only professional to point that out. I said that my advice would be to consult someone who was familiar with that particular field.’
‘And what did he say?’ asked Rose, knowing that the question was in many ways redundant, and that she had a good idea of what was coming next.
She had.
‘Oh, he said that the principles for finding the right person for the job were the same, no matter what the particular job,’ Kerry explained airily. ‘Matching skills with needs.’
‘I’ll bet he did,’ said Rose dully. What Khalim wanted, Khalim had to have. And he wanted her, she knew that. The only trouble was that she wanted him, too—and she was only just beginning to discover how much…
Kerry gave her a piercing stare. ‘This wasn’t the kind of reaction I was expecting, Rose. I thought you’d be leaping up and down with excitement,’ she said, and leaned forwards over the desk. ‘When someone of this man’s stature hears that one of your staff is about the best there is, and decides that no one else will possibly do. Well—’ she shrugged, but there was no disguising her disappointment ‘—most people would be absolutely delighted! Is there something you’re not telling me?’
Rose was a naturally truthful person, but this was her boss. And, anyway, even if she told the truth—how weak and pathetic would she sound if she came straight out with it? Kerry, I’ve met him and he desires me and I desire him too, but I’m reluctant to start anything that I suspect is only going to end in tears.
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s nothing of any relevance to the job.’ And that much was true. If any of her ex-boyfriends had come to the agency requesting that she found someone to work for them—she wouldn’t have had a problem doing it. Wasn’t she in danger of letting Khalim tangle her life up into knots?
‘Think of the opportunities this presents!’ enthused Kerry. ‘This could give us the chance to branch out into a completely different field. The world could be our oyster—and just think of our profile!’
Kerry spoke sense; the professional in Rose acknowledged that. There was no way she could turn down such a golden opportunity, even if she had been railroaded by the coolly manipulative Khalim into doing so. She put as much enthusiasm as she possibly could into her reply. ‘I’d love to do it, Kerry.’
Kerry beamed. ‘Good! He wants to see you first thing in the morning. Well, ten o’clock, to be precise.’
‘Where?’ But Rose knew the answer to this, too.
‘At his suite. The penthouse suite! At the Granchester Hotel.’ Kerry winked. ‘Very posh! Just make sure you wear something nice!’
Rose opted for the cover-up. A silk trouser suit in a sugar-almond pink. And the complete opposite of a come-and-get-me look, with her hair caught back in a stark pony-tail and her make-up so sparing that it was virtually non-existent.
She arrived at the Granchester at precisely five to ten and the first person she saw standing at the other end of the vast foyer was Philip Caprice. As expected.
She saw his hand move to the breast pocket of his suit, and then, with a slightly wary smile, he walked across the foyer towards her.
‘Hello, Rose.’ He smiled.
It wasn’t his fault that he worked for a man who used his untold influence to control events, she supposed, and she gave him a returning smile.
‘Hello, Philip. Khalim sent you down to collect me, I suppose?’
‘N
o, Khalim has come down to fetch you himself,’ came a smooth, velvety voice from just behind her, and Rose turned round to find Khalim standing there, the black eyes glittering with some unspoken message. Was that triumph she read there? She supposed it was. He had got exactly what he wanted. Or so he thought…
‘And I suppose I should be flattered, should I?’ she asked spikily.
Khalim gave a hard smile. ‘Actually, yes, perhaps you should. After all, most women find it a pleasure to be in my company.’
‘But, presumably, they haven’t been manipulated into it, like I have?’
Khalim stilled. ‘Are you intending to make a scene in the middle of the foyer?’
‘You classify giving a legitimate opinion as making a scene?’ Rose smiled. ‘What spineless women you must have known in the past, Khalim!’
And looking at the feisty sparkle which was making her blue eyes shine like sapphires, Khalim was inclined to agree with her. ‘Shall we go upstairs?’ he asked pleasantly.
The words came blurting out before she could stop them. ‘Why, so that you can seduce me?’
The black eyes narrowed, but then his mouth curved in a slow, speculative smile. ‘Is that what you would like, then, sweet Rose?’
And, to Rose’s horror, that smile had the most extraordinary effect on her. She found her skin warming under that unmistakable look of approbation, as if she had found herself beneath the gentle heat of a spring sun. Her heart began to patter out an erratic little dance and little shivers of sensation skittered all the way down her spine.
With a supreme effort, she said firmly, ‘No, what I would like is to have been given some choice in taking this job!’
‘I’m sure you were perfectly free to turn it down.’ His shrug was disarming, but the steely intent behind his words remained intact.
‘Yes, that would have gone down very well with my boss, wouldn’t it? Sorry, but I don’t want to take this highly lucrative contract, because…’
‘Because?’ he questioned so silkily that the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle, and she stared at him indignantly.
‘Because a man who is capable of such underhand—’
But her words were waylaid by long, olive-coloured fingers being placed on her arm. She could feel their gentle caress through the thin silk of her suit jacket, and at that moment felt as helpless as a rabbit caught in the glaring headlights of an oncoming car.
‘Let us continue this discussion upstairs,’ he instructed smoothly. ‘I am not certain that I am going to like what I am about to hear—and, if that is the case, then I most assuredly do not wish for all the staff and guests of the Granchester to be privy to it.’
Rose opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. What was the point? She was here to do business, after all. ‘Will Philip be accompanying us?’
Dark eyebrows were raised in mocking query. ‘Ah! Once again you have need of a chaperon do you, Rose?’
Her own look mocked him back. ‘Of course not! I’m a professional—and our business will be conducted on just that footing. I know that I can rely on you to abide by that, can’t I, Khalim?’
Her attempt to dominate made him ache unbearably, and Khalim felt the slow pull of sexual excitement. What untold pleasure it would give him to subjugate her fiery insurrection!
‘A word of warning, Rose,’ he murmured. ‘A Marabanesh is master of his own destiny. Rely on nothing and you shall not be disappointed.’ He turned his dark head. ‘Come, Philip,’ he drawled. ‘The lady requests your company.’
Philip Caprice seemed slightly bemused by the interchange. ‘I’m honoured,’ he replied.
But Rose could barely think straight. All the way up in the lift, Khalim’s words kept swimming seductively around in her head. Master of his own destiny. Why should that thrill her so unspeakably? Because the quiet Englishmen of her acquaintance would never have come out with such a passionate and poetic phrase?
His suite was something outside Rose’s experience, even though her work had taken her to plenty of glamorous places in her time. But this was something else! She looked around in wonder. It was absolutely vast—why, she could imagine two football teams feeling perfectly at home here! And it was furnished with sumptuous understatement.
She didn’t know quite what she had expected—Middle-Eastern opulence, she supposed, with golden swathes of material, and mosaics and richly embroidered cushions scattered on the floor, perhaps even a water-pipe or two!
And she couldn’t have got it more wrong, because Khalim’s suite was so very English. Comfort, with a slight modern edge to it; it was thickly carpeted in soft pale cream with three enormous sofas coloured blood-red. On the wall hung some magnificent modern paintings—huge canvases whose abstract shapes took the mind on surprising journeys.
But it was the view which was the most stunning thing the suite had to offer—because along the entire length of the room ran floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking London’s most famous park. She gazed down, thinking that it was so unexpected to see a great sward of green right bang in the middle of a bustling city.
And when she looked up again, it was to find Khalim watching her.
‘You like it,’ he observed, and the pleasure in his voice was unmistakable.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said simply. ‘Absolutely beautiful.’
And so was she, he thought. So was she. Quite the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with her pale blonde hair and milky-white skin, and a pert little nose offset by the most sinful pair of lips imaginable. Again, he felt the irresistible pull of desire, but he quashed it ruthlessly.
At his English boarding-school, he had sometimes liked to fish—the calm and the quiet and the splendid isolation had soothed his homesick soul during the times he had been missing his homeland quite desperately. And early on he had learnt that the most prized fish were those which proved the most difficult to catch.
And so it was with Rose. He acknowledged that she wanted him, too, and he suspected that she was perceptive enough to have recognised it herself. But she was not like other women, he knew that with a blinding certainty. She would not fall easily into his arms, no matter how much she wanted him.
He smiled, not oblivious to the impact of that smile. ‘Please sit down, Rose. Shall we have coffee?’
His tone was so courteous and his manner so charming that Rose was momentarily captivated. She completely forgot about giving him a piece of her mind. Why, for a moment, she felt almost flustered.
‘Er, thank you,’ she said, and slid down onto one of the blood-red sofas, astonished when a middle-aged woman, who was obviously a Marabanesh herself, carried in a tray of fragrant-smelling coffee.
Had someone been listening for his command? she wondered rather helplessly, before realising that yes, they probably had! He was a prince, after all, with people hanging onto his every word.
And then she remembered. He might be a prince, but he was also a devious manipulator who had used his money and position and power to get her here today!
With a smile, she took one of the tiny cups from the woman, and put it down on the floor so that she could delve into her briefcase.
She extracted a sheaf of papers and fixed him with a bright, professional smile. ‘Right, then. Let’s get started!’
‘Drink your coffee first.’ He frowned.
She gave another brisk smile. ‘You’re not paying me to drink coffee, Khalim!’
His frown deepened. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked sulkily.
Rose almost smiled again. Why, right then, she got a fleeting glimpse of the little boy he must once have been! And a very handsome little boy, too! ‘You went to school with Guy, didn’t you?’ she asked suddenly.
Satisfied that she had fallen in with his wishes, and was postponing the start of the meeting in deference to him, Khalim nodded. ‘A very English boarding-school,’ he said and sipped his own coffee.
‘How old were you?’
His face suddenly tens
ed. ‘Seven.’
The way he shot that single word out told her it had hurt. And why brush those feelings under the carpet? Wouldn’t a prince be ‘protected’ from so-called prying questions such as those. And if you bottled things up, didn’t that mean you would never be able to let them go? ‘That must have been very difficult for you,’ she ventured cautiously.
Khalim regarded her thoughtfully. Brave, he reasoned. Few would dare to ask him such a personal question, and there were few to whom he would give an answer. But on her angelic face was an expression of genuine concern, not just mere inquisitiveness.
‘It wasn’t…’ He hesitated. A Marabanesh man of his stature would never admit to human frailty. ‘Easy,’ was all he would allow.
Understatement of the year, thought Rose wryly.
He saw her take her pen out of her briefcase, and suddenly found that he didn’t want to talk business. ‘It was the tradition,’ he said abruptly.
She glanced up. ‘The tradition?’
‘For princes of Maraban to be educated in England.’
‘Why?’
He gave a rather speculative smile and Rose was suddenly alerted to the fact that this man could be ruthless indeed. Remember that, she told herself fiercely.
‘So that it is possible to blend into both Eastern and Western cultures,’ he replied.
And sitting there, with his immaculately cut suit and his handmade Italian shoes, he did indeed look the personification of Western elegance. But the deep olive skin and the glittering black eyes and the decidedly regal bearing bore testament to the fact that his roots were in a hot, scented land which was worlds away from this.
And remember that, too, thought Rose.
‘Maraban sells oil all over the world,’ he continued. ‘And wherever I go, I am aware that I am my country’s ambassador. It has always been to my advantage that I am able to merge into whichever culture I am with at the time.’
‘So you’re a chameleon?’ asked Rose thoughtfully.
He gave a slow smile. ‘I prefer to describe myself as a man of contrasts.’
Surrender to the Sheikh (London's Most Eligible Playboys Book 2) Page 6