Behind the door, Guy smiled. ‘I’m making breakfast.’
‘What do you want—a medal?’
‘Just your company.’
She pushed the duvet back and stepped out of bed. What was the point in sulking, and pretending she hated him? If she intended to stay—and she did—she couldn’t behave like a petulant child simply because he’d lost his temper with her last night. ‘You’ll have to wait until I’m showered and dressed,’ she said.
Guy gave another wry smile. The trouble was that he liked it when she started laying down the law. And it was novel enough to be very, very stimulating. ‘Don’t take too long.’
‘Then go away and leave me to it.’
‘Yes, Sabrina,’ he murmured.
She appeared dressed and showered twenty minutes later, to find that he’d put a crisp white cloth on the dining-room table and there were freshly squeezed juice, warm croissants and different jams. And he was sitting, barefooted, in jeans and a T-shirt, reading a newspaper.
He looked up as she came in and their eyes met.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and forced himself to behave like a calm and rational human being instead of some kind of jealous monster. ‘I had absolutely no right to talk to you like that. Whether or not you choose to go out with Khalim is entirely up to you.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Sabrina agreed coolly as she sat down opposite him and picked up a napkin. ‘It is.’
It was not the answer he’d been expecting. Or wanted. But he forced himself to smile. ‘I’m going into the office for a couple of hours,’ he said.
‘But it’s Sunday!’ She pouted disapprovingly.
‘Princess,’ he said grimly, because much more of this and he really might lose his head. Or something even more dangerous. Like his heart. ‘I just about know my days of the week!’
‘You’re going to burn out before you’re forty,’ she warned.
He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Lecture over now, is it, Sabrina?’
They spent the rest of that week being extremely polite to each other. And more than a little wary.
He was home earlier than usual on Thursday. Just as he’d been home earlier on Tuesday. Funny how the office suddenly seemed to have lost some of its old allure. He’d picked up a take-away on the way home, and they’d stood together, unpacking the foil containers, while Guy tried very hard not to be diverted by the sweet sheen of her hair.
‘How about dinner tomorrow night?’ he asked suddenly.
Sabrina looked up, surprised that he was keen to repeat the experience after what had happened last time. Unless…‘You mean, with you?’
‘Yeah, and another client.’
Her heart fell, but she was damned if she would show it. ‘Not Khalim?’ she posed, wondering guiltily whether she ought to tell him that an exquisite orchid from the Prince had arrived by post yesterday. And it was hidden in all its scented beauty in the one place that Guy would never find it.
Her bedroom.
‘No, not Khalim.’ He spooned some rice onto his plate. ‘Actually, it’s a businessman who wants to buy a painting which has just come onto the market.’ He shrugged. ‘Even though he doesn’t particularly like it.’
‘Then why on earth is he buying it?’
‘As an investment. And as a coup.’ The ice-blue eyes were narrowed at him perceptively. She had a strange and infuriating habit of looking at him in that questioning way, and when she did he just couldn’t seem to resist telling her what she wanted to know. ‘He’s a bit of an idiot, actually.’
Sabrina put the spoon down. ‘And you want to give up your Friday night to have dinner with an idiot—and mine, too?’
‘It’s business.’
‘Oh, yes—business.’ She couldn’t keep the derision out of her voice. ‘Better not miss out, then, Guy—you really need that extra million bucks, don’t you?’
Guy froze. He hadn’t been the recipient of undiluted criticism for more years than he cared to remember, and even if it had more than a kernel of truth in it, it wasn’t her damned place to give it to him. ‘I take it that’s a refusal?’ he snapped, thinking that there wasn’t a single other woman of his acquaintance who would have turned him down.
‘Too right it is! I’d rather stay in and read my book, if you must know.’
‘Fine,’ he said tightly. ‘Then do that.’
‘I will!’
They had just sat down in a frosty silence to eat their meal when the telephone began to ring.
‘You’d better get that, Guy,’ said Sabrina sweetly. ‘You virtually bit my head off the last time I answered it when you were here!’
And no wonder. He stood up. Ever since that day his mother had taken to ringing him at work and bombarding him with all kinds of questions about Sabrina. Where had they met, and what was she like? And the more he seemed to protest that she was nothing more than a girl who happened to be staying for a while, the less his mother seemed to believe him.
‘You’ve never had a woman living with you before,’ she’d pointed out.
‘She’s not living with me,’ he’d explained tersely. ‘Just living in the same flat. It’s no big deal, Ma—people do it all the time these days.’
‘Not someone like you,’ his mother had said serenely. ‘I know how you like to be in control.’
‘So?’
‘Well, as every year passes you become more and more eligible—’
‘Ma,’ he’d objected on a note of drawling humour.
‘It’s true. And an attractive young woman invading your space would normally have you running screaming in the opposite direction.’
‘Who says she’s attractive?’ Guy had asked suspiciously.
‘Well, is she?’
‘Mmm,’ he’d agreed, without thinking. ‘She is. Very.’
His mother had sounded oddly triumphant. ‘So when are we going to meet her? Your brother and I are itching with curiosity.’
‘Then itch away. You are not going to meet her,’ he’d said patiently. Then, having heard his mother’s offended silence, he’d sighed. ‘Not just yet, anyway…’
He picked the phone up. ‘Guy Masters.’
‘Guy? Khalim here.’
‘Khalim!’ He forced enthusiasm into his voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘May I speak with Sabrina, please?’ came the honey-smooth response. ‘I was going to ask her out to dinner on Saturday.’
Resisting the urge to slam the phone down, Guy marched back into the dining room. ‘It’s Khalim on the phone,’ he said accusingly. ‘For you.’
Infuriatingly, Sabrina found herself thinking about the orchid, and felt the blood rush hotly into her cheeks. ‘I wonder what he wants.’
‘To ask you out for dinner.’ He stared at the pink cheeks and wondered what had caused her to blush. ‘But we’ve been invited out to a party on Saturday.’
‘We?’ she asked disbelievingly.
‘Well, I have,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m sure that Jenna won’t mind if I bring someone.’
Oh, sure. Sabrina could just imagine how much Jenna would like her there. ‘Jenna doesn’t like me, Guy—on the only two occasions I’ve met her, she’s looked at me as though I was an insect she found squashed onto the sole of her shoe.’
‘She’s better with men than with women,’ he observed.
Understatement of the year. Sabrina paused by the door, thinking that she was fed up with only being good enough for client dinners with idiots or as the unwanted guest at the party of a predatory woman who obviously wanted Guy for herself.
‘Actually, I just might go out with Khalim,’ she said. ‘It could be rather fun.’
Guy could hear her on the phone to his friend, and his pulse began to hammer. He pushed his barely touched plate of food away, and scowled. She could do what she damned well liked.
Inexplicably, Guy found himself cancelling the client dinner on Friday, and then spent the next evening prowling the sitting room like an edgy j
ungle cat as he waited for Khalim to arrive. He seethed when Sabrina breezed into the sitting room and he saw that she was wearing that same silky silvery grey dress she’d worn in Venice. The night he’d taken her to his bed.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her whether she intended an action replay with his friend, but some last vestige of sanity made him bite back the jealous words that he instinctively knew she would never forgive. Words that deep down he knew he didn’t mean—so why the hell did he keep imagining the whole scenario, as if someone were running a film reel through his mind?
Sabrina felt slightly on edge, wondering if she was equipped to cope with a man who, as Guy had already said, ate women like her for breakfast.
Suddenly she wished that she hadn’t been so proud, or so stupid. Fancy letting Guy go alone to a party where Jenna would no doubt be waiting to get her hooks in him. ‘Aren’t you going to be late, Guy?’ she asked tentatively, and then almost recoiled from the anger in his eyes.
‘Want me to get out from under your feet?’ he asked silkily.
‘Don’t be so insulting!’
He picked up his jacket with a careless finger. ‘Just be careful, huh? You’ve got the number of my mobile, haven’t you?’
‘Why, do you think he’s about to drag me off to his palace with him to make mad love to me all night?’ she asked sarcastically.
‘I wouldn’t blame him if he did,’ he drawled. He looked at the silver-grey fabric, which clung so enticingly to the slender curves of her body, and swallowed. If Khalim attempted to do that then as one man to another he would completely be able to understand it. ‘But just remember this, Sabrina—he’ll never marry an Englishwoman. His destiny has been mapped out for him since birth.’
‘I’m not looking for a husband!’ she snapped.
‘Good.’ He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Have a good time.’
‘What, after that little pep-talk?’ she asked acidly.
After Guy had gone, she felt like ringing up Khalim to cancel—but, apart from the fact that she didn’t have a number for him—even Sabrina realised that such a loss of face would be intolerable to a man like the Prince.
Even so, she felt as if the executioner’s axe was about to fall while she waited for the doorbell to ring.
Guy walked into the party and wished he could walk straight out again. He narrowed his eyes against the mêlée. Too many people, too much noise, too much smoke, and the music was hellish.
‘Hello, Guy,’ came a low, husky voice by his side, and he turned round to see Jenna, an expression he didn’t quite recognise making her lovely face look a little less lovely than usual.
‘Hi,’ he said, thinking how overly jovial he sounded. He handed her a slim, silver-wrapped present. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘For me?’ she said coyly. ‘What is it?’
The question irritated him far more than it had any right to. ‘Why not open it and see?’
Jenna’s perfectly painted fingernails greedily ripped open the paper. ‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘A book.’
She said it, thought Guy wryly, as though he’d just given her a serpent.
‘Apparently, if you only read one book for the rest of your life, this is the one. It’s up for a prize, and most people in the industry think it’s just going to walk away with it.’ He was, he realised, repeating Sabrina’s enthusiastic praise almost word for word. She had recommended that he read it himself, and maybe he would. Maybe he would.
‘Oh,’ Jenna said.
The blinkers seemed to drop from his eyes as he surveyed Jenna’s look of bemusement. It was going to be, he realised sadly, completely wasted on her. ‘Hope you like it,’ he finished lamely, and wondered just how long he could stay at this party without looking boorish.
‘I’m sure I will!’ Jenna’s green eyes slanted from side to side. ‘On your own?’ she quizzed softly.
Something in her tone made his hackles rise. ‘Obviously.’
Jenna shrugged. ‘Nothing obvious about it at all—I’m suprised you haven’t brought your new flatmate with you.’
Guy stared at her. Funny how you could know someone for years and years, and a remark which should have been completely inoffensive should suddenly sound like the most intolerable intrusion. His grey eyes gleamed. ‘And why should that surprise you, Jenna?’
‘Well…’ Jenna drank some champagne and left some of the liquid to gleam provocatively on her lips. ‘You know what people have been saying, don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?’ he suggested evenly.
Jenna shrugged. ‘Oh, just that she’s not your flatmate at all—but your lover.’ She gave a shrill little laugh. ‘As if!’
Some dark kind of explosion seemed to happen inside his head. ‘You’d find that such a bizarre scenario, would you?’ he asked quietly.
‘Well…’ Jenna shrugged, seemingly oblivous to the dangerous quality in his tone. ‘I think that most people would, don’t you? You’re…’ She gave a foolish, beaming smile, like someone who had decided to bet all their money on an outsider.
‘Hmm? What am I?’
‘You’re…well, you’re everything that most women would ever want, I suppose,’ she stumbled. ‘And she’s…’
Guy froze. ‘She’s what?’
‘Well, I’m sure she’s very nice,’ said Jenna insincerely. ‘But she’s just a small-town girl who works in a bookshop, isn’t she?’
‘As opposed to a small-minded girl who lives off her daddy’s trust fund?’
Jenna stared at him. ‘Guy!’ she protested. ‘That was completely uncalled for!’
His grey eyes were as cold as ice. ‘What right do you think you have to criticise a sweet, beautiful woman who actually works hard for her living? Who has seen tragedy and looked it in the face, and managed to come to terms with it?’
‘I didn’t know anything about that!’
‘You don’t know anything about anything!’ he snapped. ‘Not about anything that really matters! Forgive me if I don’t stay, Jenna, but I have something waiting for me at home!’
Or someone.
Except that he didn’t—and why would he expect to? All he’d offered Sabrina had been some lousy dinner with a man he himself had admitted was a fool. And the only additional carrot he’d dangled in front of her had been a trip to the party of a woman who looked down her nose at her.
Was this what his life had become? Some kind of extravagant but superficial game? Going to all the right places but with all the wrong people—and for the wrong reasons, too?
And Sabrina was now out with Khalim—a man he liked and respected, but a man who was a veritable tiger where women were concerned. He had seen for himself that Khalim had been capitivated by Sabrina’s easy, uncomplicated charm—just as he had been. He’d also said that Khalim would never marry an Englishwoman—but what if Sabrina’s golden bright beauty was the exception to the rule? Khalim was used to getting whatever he wanted in life. Wouldn’t he move heaven and earth to possess a woman if she’d touched his heart in a way that no one else had?
He drove like fury back to the flat, but it was, as he’d fully expected, empty.
He’d never spent a longer evening in his life—bar the one where he’d sat with his mother and waited for news which they’d both known in their hearts would be the worst possible news.
He tried reading, but that was useless, and he hated the television with a passion. He realised that he hadn’t eaten, but couldn’t face preparing any food. Or even eating some of Sabrina’s carefully packed leftovers which sat at the back of the fridge. And the sight of her slavish economising made him want to hit something.
Or someone.
Guy forced himself to face the fact that she might not come home at all. That Khalim might now be making love to her with all the skill acquired from having had women offer themselves to him since he’d been barely out of his teens.
And if that was the case, then he must force himself to act like a ration
al man. He had no right to show temper or outrage. They weren’t committing any crime. He didn’t own her.
He glanced down at his watch. Where the hell was she?
He had just sprawled down on the sofa, a glass of wine in front of him, when he heard the sound of a key in the front door. He rose to his feet, but stood right where he was and waited. Because he knew that he might have to face the fact that Sabrina was not alone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SABRINA walked into the sitting room to find Guy standing there, as motionless as if he’d been carved from some beautiful dark and golden stone. His eyes were the only animated part of his body, and they swept over her in a glittering and hectic question.
‘Is Khalim with you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He’s just driven off.’
Guy expelled a quiet breath of relief, but he didn’t move. He had rushed in once before. This time it had to be different. He gestured towards the bottle of claret which stood on the table. ‘Would you like some wine?’
It had been an emotional evening. She had drunk mineral water and jasmine tea, but right then she needed a drink. ‘I’d love one.’
He poured her a glass and put it down on one of the small tables, keeping his voice deliberately casual. ‘So. Good evening, was it?’
Sabrina dropped her shawl over the back of one of the chairs and went to sit down on one of the sofas. It hadn’t been the evening she’d been expecting. But then she hadn’t expected to find herself weeping quietly on Khalim’s shoulder and telling him that she was in love with Guy—and that if he ever said anything to Guy about it, she would never forgive him.
And Khalim, still slightly shell-shocked from the first rejection he had ever encountered, had given a rueful smile and smoothed a tear-soaked strand of hair away from her cheek with a gentle finger.
‘You think I would risk you not forgiving me?’ he’d mused. ‘You know, Guy is a strong man, not a stupid man—and he is behaving like one if he ignores this most precious gift which is his for the taking.’
Sabrina had bitten nervously at her lip. How could she possibly tell Khalim the truth? That she’d fallen into his friend’s arms in Venice with such indecent haste that he probably had no respect left for her.
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