by Abby Green
And she’d never been further from perfect than she was right now.
‘Get out, Zafir, this conversation is over.’
But her words bounced off him as if an invisible shield protected him.
‘Think about what you’re turning down, Kat. A chance to restart your life and return to where you belong. Have you thought about what you’d be turning down?’
He mentioned a sum of money and it was literally life-changing. Kat felt her blood drain south.
He reached into an inside pocket and took out a card, holding it out to her. She unlocked her arms from her chest and took it reluctantly.
‘That’s my private number. I’ll be staying at my penthouse apartment. I’ll give you till tomorrow morning, Kat. If I don’t hear from you I will find someone else and you will never hear from me again.’
She looked at him and marvelled that she’d once believed that he loved her because he’d asked her to marry him. Because she’d always had a romantic notion that that was what people did when they loved someone, in spite of being brought up as the only child of a single parent with no clue as to her father’s whereabouts.
But Zafir’s motives had been so much more strategic than that. She’d been scrutinised and deemed suitable. Perfect. And now he was asking her to step back into a world that had chewed her up and spat her out. Not only that, he was asking her to lay herself bare to him again, to let him carve out the last remaining part of her heart that still functioned and let him crush it until there was nothing left.
Kat was stronger now than she’d ever been, considering the trials she’d faced in the past eighteen months, but she was still only human and she wasn’t strong enough for this. No matter how much money he was offering.
Without taking her eyes off Zafir’s, as if some small, treacherous part of her wanted to commit them to her memory, she held up the card and ripped it in half, letting the pieces fall to the floor.
‘Goodbye, Zafir.’
His eyes flashed and his jaw clenched. Kat could feel the waves of energy flowing like electricity between them, but after a tense moment he just stepped back and said, ‘As you wish. Goodbye, Kat.’
But to Kat’s dismay, when Zafir finally turned and walked out, picking up his overcoat as he did so, and when the door had shut behind him, the last thing she felt was triumph.
She found her feet moving towards the door instinctively, as if to rush after him and beg him not to go. She stopped in her tracks, shocked at the profound sense of loss that pervaded her whole body, and she wrapped her arms around herself as if that could hold back all the turmoil she was feeling.
Zafir had devastated her once before. She couldn’t let it happen again.
So she stayed resolutely where she was, and after she’d heard the sound of his vehicles leaving from outside the apartment she breathed in shakily and sank down onto the couch behind her.
She looked around her, as if seeing the space for the first time again. She’d grown used to the bare furnishings and the sparse décor. It was all she’d been able to afford after the accident and her lengthy rehabilitation, even though the largest part of her debt had finally been gone.
And the reason it had been gone was because once those pictures of Kat had gone public, her blackmailer—the photographer who had taken them in the first place—had had no further means with which to blackmail her. After all, everything he’d always threatened her with had come true—her career had imploded in spectacular style.
Perversely, Kat had been grateful to whoever had found and leaked the pictures, because they had freed her from a malignant threat she’d had no idea how to deal with.
On numerous occasions she’d wanted to confide in Zafir, but then she’d feel too intimidated, or too scared of his reaction. How could a man like him, who had grown up in such a rarefied world, possibly understand why she would do such a thing? The thought of revealing all that ugly poison had pulled her back from the brink each time.
And in the end hadn’t she been vindicated? She’d never forget the look of disgust and horror on his face as he’d confronted her with her past.
Kat stood up again, restless, as Zafir’s visit sank in properly. She told herself that it was his arrogance that still left her breathless, but really it was the knowledge that he still wanted her, and the even more shattering knowledge that she still wanted him. The core of her body felt hot and achy, and her blood felt thick and heavy in her veins.
Damn him.
She paced back and forth, and as she did so her eye snagged on something in the corner of the room and she stopped. Zafir hadn’t noticed them. Crutches and a folded-up wheelchair. She hadn’t needed the wheelchair for some time now, but she would never not need one to hand. And she’d always need the crutches.
To Kat’s shame, she knew that this was as much of a reason as any other as to why she’d all but pushed Zafir out through the door. Because she couldn’t bear for him to know what had happened to her. Because she couldn’t bear to think about the fact that, even if she was to ever be with Zafir again, he would not want to be with her.
Because she was irrevocably altered.
Kat picked up the crutches and went into her tiny bedroom. She took off her sneakers, undid her jeans and pulled them off, then stood in front of her mirror, inspecting herself critically.
At first glance Zafir might not notice anything different about Kat—after all she stood on two legs, and was the same height she’d always been, with the same straight back. But then she imagined his gaze travelling down and stopping on her left leg. Specifically on the prosthetic limb that now made up her lower left leg, with its mechanical ankle and fake foot.
Even now Kat couldn’t recall anything about the accident itself on that fateful night. She only knew that one minute she’d been crossing the street and the next she’d been waking up, a day later, in a hospital, with a doctor informing her that they’d had to amputate below the knee to save her leg—which was kind of ironic, considering half of it was now gone.
She’d had flashbacks however, since then, of regaining consciousness and realising that her foot was trapped under the heaviest weight. People had crowded around her but she hadn’t been able to move or speak. And then she’d slipped back into darkness.
That was why she got claustrophobic now.
Sometimes people gave her a second glance, but they soon dismissed her when they saw her slightly limping gait and figured this woman with darker hair and no make-up couldn’t possibly be the Kat Winters.
A ball of emotion lodged itself in Kat’s chest, and before she could stop them hot tears blurred her vision. But she dashed them away angrily as she sat down on her bed and set about removing her prosthetic limb with an efficiency born of habit.
It had been a long time since she’d indulged in self-pity. That had been in the dark early days, when she’d fallen down in many graceless heaps while trying to get to the bathroom during the night, when she’d hurled her crutches across the room in a rising tide of fury at the hand she’d been dealt. Or when she’d locked herself away for long days, sunk in such a black depression that she’d thought she might never emerge into daylight again.
It was her oldest friend, Julie, who was also her agent, who had finally saved her. And the local rehabilitation centre. It was there that she’d learnt how to deal with her new reality and had been able to start putting things into perspective after meeting a man who had lost both his legs in a war, and a woman who had lost an arm, and an endlessly cheerful little girl who’d lost her limbs after meningitis... They, and many more, had humbled her, and reminded her that she was one of the luckier ones.
And gradually she’d clawed her way out of the mire to a place of acceptance, where this was her new reality and she just had to get on with it. And she had been getting on with it, perfectly well, until a Zafir-shaped storm had blown everything up again.
Kat could be honest enough with herself to acknowledge that—as much as the accident and its c
onsequences had made her feel as if her life had shrunk—she’d been living in a kind of limbo, taking one day at a time. The accident had been so catastrophic that she’d been able to block out that last night with Zafir for a long time, but recently it had been creeping back, as if now she was ready to deal with it...
Maybe he was right, whispered a coaxing voice. Maybe you do have unfinished business. Perhaps if you took on the assignment you could lay more than one ghost to rest.
The ghost of the relationship she’d thought she had with Zafir, but which had never really existed...only in her romantic fantasies.
The ghost of the Kat Winters she’d been before—in awe and intimidated by nearly everything and everyone around her in spite of her high-flying career, and by none more so than Sheikh Zafir Ibn Hafiz Al-Noury. The ghost of her mother’s death and the constant feeling of failure Kat had grown up with when she hadn’t been able to save a mother who hadn’t wanted to be saved.
The thought lodged in Kat’s head, and as much as she wanted to dismiss it out of hand she was afraid that she couldn’t go back to fooling herself that Zafir was firmly in her past. She’d been too scared to really look at the repercussions of what had happened between them, but seeing him again this evening had roused more than one dormant part of her.
Not least of which was the reawakening of her sexual awareness. It was terrifying. The prospect of intimacy and what it would mean now was something she’d found easy to bury deep inside her since the accident. If she’d thought about it at all, she’d imagined that it would be with someone gentle, kind...patient.
Zafir was a force of nature—above such benign human virtues. He didn’t have to deal with imperfection. He walked amongst the brightest, the best, the most beautiful. He was one of them.
Panic skittered up Kat’s spine. There was no way she felt ready to trust Zafir on an intimate level again with her new self.
Resolutely shutting her mind to that scenario, she thought again of that fateful night and their fight.
Her conscience pricked when she remembered rushing out of his apartment—had she been too hasty? But once she’d known that he didn’t love her, the last thing she’d wanted to do was try to defend herself to someone who had only ever seen her as some kind of a commodity.
That’s how her mother had seen her—as a means to make money, capitalising on her daughter’s beauty. Zafir had been no different—he’d all but admitted he’d only proposed because she’d fitted into his life on a superficial level and nothing more. It had driven home to Kat how much she hungered to be loved for her whole self.
But she had the sinking feeling that her secret wounds would remain raw until she confronted Zafir properly and forced him to listen to her side of the story behind those lurid headlines.
Not that she wanted anything more than that... The prospect of more made panic surge again even as her blood grew hot.
She would deny that her attraction to him was as strong as ever with every breath in her body—she had no intention of ever letting Zafir see her like this. She looked down at her residual limb and ran a hand over it almost protectively.
Yet even as she entertained the possibility of acquiescing to his demand—purely on a professional basis—she balked at the thought. The prospect of going back into that world and being scrutinised terrified her. And doing it all with Zafir by her side? Scrambling her brain to pieces? Making all the cold parts of her melt again after she’d spent so much time rebuilding her defences?
No way. She couldn’t. She wasn’t strong enough yet.
At that moment Kat caught sight of her reflection in the mirror as she sat on the bed. Her eyes were huge. She looked panicked and pale... Something inside her resisted that. She sat up straight and took in the full reality of who she was now. A damaged woman, yes, and less whole than she’d once been, but actually in many ways more whole than she’d ever been.
She’d always known on some level that she wasn’t prepared to hide away as Kaycee Smith for ever, and Julie had been putting more and more pressure on her to come out of her protective cocoon, to let herself be seen again.
And now Zafir was asking her to take on a modelling assignment. That was all. No, it’s not, whispered a snide voice, and Kat’s heart thumped in response. Zafir had wanted perfection before, and he’d rejected her because she’d fallen from grace. She would never give him a chance to do that to her again.
She thought of the sum of money he’d mentioned and realised with a churning gut that it would allow her to pay Julie back. Her friend had helped support Kat through not only the first six months of her rehabilitation, but since then too, because Kat had only had the most basic of insurance. But also—and maybe more important—she realised that she would be able to help the rehabilitation centre that had been so instrumental in her recovery.
The St Patrick’s Medical Centre for Traumatic Injuries was currently facing the prospect of closure due to lack of funds and resources. Kat would be in a position to give them enough money to avoid imminent closure until they could get back on their feet and raise more funds for their long-term future.
If she accepted Zafir’s job offer.
Her heart sped up with a mixture of terror and illicit excitement—if she said yes, then she could use it as an exercise to prove to herself just how ill-suited she and Zafir had always been, in spite of the insane chemistry between them. Never more evident than now. She was no longer a wide-eyed virgin being initiated into a world that had moved at a terrifying pace—too fast for her to shout, ‘Stop!’ and get off.
She was strong enough to take on Zafir and walk away with her head high.
Are you really, though?
Kat assured herself that, yes, she was.
This would be purely a professional transaction. Zafir would never touch her emotions again—or her body. He was the kind of man who relished the conquest, who relished making a woman acquiesce to him of her own volition, and she had no intention of acquiescing to an affair.
The walls Kat had had to build just to survive since the accident were impenetrable. He wouldn’t break through. She could do this.
She picked up her mobile from the table near the bed before she lost her nerve, focusing on anything but the terror she felt at the thought of what she was about to do. And how it would affect her life.
This wasn’t just about her. Not when she now knew she could put that money to good use. Vital use.
Zafir had made it clear that he would walk away, and if Kat knew anything about him it was that he meant what he said. He was a proud man. He wouldn’t ask again and he certainly wouldn’t beg.
As Kat dialled her friend’s number and waited for her to answer, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror again. She scowled at her flushed face and the too-bright eyes that whispered that her decision had a lot less to do with altruism and more to do with something much darker and far more ambiguous deep inside her.
And then Julie answered and Kat had a split second to decide whether to take a step into a dangerous future or remain safe in the past.
CHAPTER THREE
ZAFIR STOOD AT the window of his penthouse study and looked out over Manhattan, sparkling under the autumn sun, with Central Park in the distance. He was trying not to acknowledge the sense of triumph and satisfaction rushing through his blood, but it was hard.
Along with it, though, had come something far more contradictory—a kind of disappointment—and Zafir realised that it was because when he’d walked away from Kat last night she’d seemed so resolute. And, as much as it had irritated him intensely, he’d admired it on some level. It was rare to find anyone going against him in anything—especially since he’d become King.
He recalled getting into his car last night and how stunned he’d been that she’d turned him down. And then how he’d had to physically restrain himself from instructing his driver to turn around so that he could go back to Kat’s apartment and shatter that cooler than cool reception by reminding her
in a very explicit way of just how good it had been between them. How good it could be again.
And yet before 8:00 a.m. this morning his personal phone had rung and it had been her agent, confirming that Kat had decided to take on the assignment after all.
At this very moment she was with her agent and his legal advisors, signing the contract, and then she was due to spend the rest of the day and tomorrow in preparation for the tour with a team of stylists. Rahul would go through the itinerary with her and make sure her passport and travel documents were in order for when they left the United States.
So her cold stonewalling and reluctance last night had been an act. Much like the act she’d fooled everyone with when he’d first met her, projecting a false persona of someone who was honest and hard-working, making the most of the opportunities presented to her.
She’d been honest, at least, about coming from a poor background—which in Zafir’s eyes had only made her more commendable. She’d epitomised the American dream of grit and ambition and achieving success no matter what your circumstances were.
But in actual fact her story had been a lot darker and murkier. She’d had a huge personal debt she’d never revealed—in spite of commanding eye-wateringly high fees as one of the most in-demand models of her time. She’d had a drug-addicted mother, no father to speak of, and barely any education. Not to mention the coup de grâce—those provocative pictures taken when she was only seventeen years old, apparently in a bid to make money so her mother could score her next fix.
Even now when Zafir thought of those explicit pictures he felt his vision cloud over with a red mist and his hands curl to fists in his pockets. Kat had been so young, and yet she’d looked at the camera almost defiantly. The rage he’d felt towards the person behind the camera had scared him with its intensity. But what he’d felt towards Kat had been much more complicated—anger, disappointment. Protectiveness. Betrayal.
When he’d confronted her with the headlines due to hit the news stands within hours, he’d wanted to hear her say that she’d been an unwilling victim, so that he could apportion blame to someone else and not her... But she’d agreed with him that she was not perfect. That she was flawed. And then she’d walked out of his apartment and disappeared, leaving him with a futile anger that had corroded his insides as he’d gone over it in his head again and again, trying to make sense of how he could have been so naive...