One-Click Buy: September Harlequin Presents

by Penny Jordan

  It was Jay himself who brought her back down to earth, arriving with a tray of tea and an expression that had her giddy heart’s headlong race brought to an abrupt halt.

  Something was wrong. Something was more than wrong. Jay was looking autocratic and distant. He was fully dressed. He didn’t come to her, or even sit down on the bed beside her, instead he walked over to the window and then turned to face her so that its light fell on her face but obscured his.

  ‘I owe you an apology. And I’m afraid it will have to be accompanied by a warning.’

  He was speaking to her as though he was addressing a business meeting, Keira recognised, his whole manner cool and distant. Her heart was pounding again—but not this time with elation. Instead what she felt was dread.

  ‘I want to be frank with you, Keira. Had I known you were a virgin I would never have had sex with you. Were you a girl of eighteen or so, I would add here that I understand you might have had rosy romantic delusions about men falling passionately in love with sweet innocent virgins, and throwing their heart and an offer of marriage at their feet having taken that virginity. But you are not eighteen. You are twenty-seven. Women of twenty-seven do not remain virgins by accident or out of some romantic delusion. To have chosen virginity when yours is such a sensual and passionate nature can’t have been easy.’

  Keira’s mouth had gone dry. She might not have been expecting quite the eighteen-year-old’s scenario he had described with such sparing and cruel accuracy, but to be addressed as Jay was addressing her now was a horrible shock and very hurtful.

  ‘My assumption has to be that you chose virginity because you saw it as, shall we say, a good business decision—an insurance policy that would mature with handsome dividends when it was offered to your chosen recipient: your exclusivity sexually, both past and future, in exchange for the right kind of marriage. I do not doubt that there are men, wealthy men, who are willing to make such a barter in return for the security that comes from knowing that their wife is indeed a model of virtue. However, I am not one of those men. To be blunt, I have no intention of making a commitment to any woman ever, either inside marriage or outside it, and had you told me the truth about yourself first, I would have suggested that you retained your virginity to bestow on someone else. Sexually, what we shared last night was very enjoyable, but that was all it was for me. A fleeting enjoyment which is now over and will be quickly forgotten. I am sorry if my words offend or upset you, but it is better that you know the truth. It would be cruel of me indeed to allow you to hope for something I have no intention of giving you or anyone else.’

  Keira felt each word like a blow to her heart and her pride. He was both wrong about her and right. She had not set out to use her virginity to force him into a commitment, but she had given it up to him because she herself had made an emotional commitment to him. He must never know that, though. Not now. For her pride’s sake she had to salvage what she could of the situation and her self-respect.

  It did not help that she was lying naked under the bedclothes whilst he was fully dressed. Didn’t it tell her all she really needed to know about him that even now, when he was humiliating her, he had taken for himself every advantage there was to be had in order to give himself more power than her. He was dressed; she wasn’t. He had the light behind him; she had it on her. He had had time to plan and rehearse what he intended to say; she had not. Well, luckily for her, living with her great-aunt had taught her a great deal about how to defend herself when she was the weaker party.

  She pulled the bedclothes securely around her body and sat up.

  ‘I appreciate what you’re saying,’ she told him, trying to keep her voice as cool and focused as his had been, ‘but I must tell you that once again you’ve reached a conclusion about me that isn’t correct.’

  There was a telling silence during which Keira waited, praying that he wouldn’t tell her outright that he didn’t believe her.

  His assessing, ‘Meaning?’ had her exhaling unsteadily.

  ‘Meaning that, yes, I had chosen to remain a virgin, but the reason I did so had nothing whatsoever with any desire on my part to get married. Far from it.’

  He had moved slightly, but she still could not see his face.

  ‘You remained a virgin because you don’t want to get married? Forgive me, but I have to say that I don’t…’

  Any minute now he was going to start asking questions she could not answer. She had to head him off with something plausible.

  ‘I wanted a career and my own independence, and as a teenager it seemed to me that as soon as a girl fell in love she stopped wanting those things. So I vowed not to fall in love. It was far too dangerous. Remaining a virgin was a by-product of my decision not to fall in love.’

  She gave what she hoped was a convincingly careless small shrug.

  ‘Obviously as I’ve grown older I’ve been able to recognise that it is possible to have sex and remain emotionally independent, and I had begun to wonder what I might be missing because of a decision made when I was very immature.’

  ‘And you’ve been looking round for someone to experience sex with? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

  Keira actually managed to laugh.

  ‘I hadn’t got as far as that, and if I had done there would have been the embarrassment of my virginity to deal with. I’m old enough to understand that what happened between us was something that neither of us expected to happen and that both of us would probably have preferred not to have happened.’

  There had been the clear ring of truth in her voice when she had spoken about her vow not to fall in love and her fear of doing so, Jay acknowledged. He had already misjudged her once. His pride didn’t want him doing so a second time. It made sense for him to accept what she was saying, but at the same time he still intended to reinforce his own message to her by putting things on a strictly business footing.

  ‘It might be best in the circumstances if we terminated our contract,’ Keira told him. She couldn’t afford to break it herself, but she was hoping desperately now that he would terminate it. How on earth was she going to be able to work for him now feeling as she did about him? Feeling as she did about him? What did that mean?

  ‘I do not wish to terminate our contract,’ Jay was telling her sharply. ‘It would be too costly and disruptive to find another interior designer at this stage. That is in part why I am speaking with you as I am. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings—any hopes or aspirations, shall we say, that cannot be met.’

  Keira permitted herself a small, bitter inward smile as she imagined what he would think if he knew the truth about her.

  ‘All my hopes and aspirations are focused on my business.’

  ‘As mine are on mine,’ Jay responded.

  Jay had gone. She was on her own, but even now Keira did not dare to give way to her emotions—just as she had never dared to do so when she had lived with her great-aunt.

  To allow anyone to see her pain was to risk having it used against her, to hurt her even more. She had learned that lesson very young. But the pain she had experienced then was nothing compared to what she must somehow find a way to live through now.

  The unthinkable, the unbearable, the most cruel of all cruelties had infiltrated her defences and overpowered her. She had fallen in love with Jay. But he must never know that. She would die before she would humiliate herself by letting him see what a fool she had been.

  Last night she had broken the most important promise she had ever made to herself. Now she must face the consequences, she told herself bleakly.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HER work on the first three of the show houses was finished, and there was no real need for her to be here at this hour of the morning, straightening cushions, checking on the arrangement of flowers and the drape of curtains, but Keira was desperate to keep herself busy. Jay was due back from Mumbai today.

  Was she going to be strong enough not to betray any reaction to his return?
He had, after all, made the situation plain enough to her. From the moment he had questioned her about her virginity to the moment he had left for Mumbai he had treated her with clinical detachment. She, meanwhile, had gone through hurt to anger and back to hurt again, and it had been a relief of sorts when he had actually left.

  At least with him gone she had been able to get on with her work without the fear of what his proximity might do to her self control.

  But soon he would be back. And last night her dreams had been filled with her longing for him—so much so, in fact, that her body now ached physically and tormentingly for him.

  He had emailed her to tell her that he was bringing with him the art director of a new swish homes magazine, with a view to the magazine doing a feature on the development—complete with photographs of her interiors and an interview with her on modern interior design and décor.

  Keira had dressed appropriately for the interview in one of her favourite silk linen outfits, a softly styled cream skirt teamed with a toning strappy top under a wrap cardigan. She had completed her outfit with a pair of designer sunglasses and a fashionably large leather bag—a gift from an up and coming young designer whose apartment she had once styled for a photoshoot.

  She had read recently in Vogue that the handbag was now a top ‘must have’ fashion item.

  Would Jay be pleased with the work she had done? She tried to see the rooms through his eyes instead of her own. Her hands were trembling slightly as she straightened the piece of polished wood artwork she had placed on the glass-topped coffee table. What was she going to do if he didn’t like it? Burst into tears? Hardly.

  What she wanted him to see was his in-control interior designer, not a needy, over-emotional woman who had fallen in love with him.

  She couldn’t stay here all day. She needed to return to the palace. Jay hadn’t been specific in his e-mail as to the timing of his return.

  She was just on the point of leaving the show house when a four-wheel-drive drew up outside, and Jay and another man climbed out of it.

  Keira felt as though her heart had physically stopped beating, as though the earth itself had stopped moving—because, like her, it was so focused on this one man that nothing else could exist.

  The ache that had taken possession of her heart now spread to the rest of her body, so that every part of her that had touched him or been touched by him longed violently for that physical contact once more.

  He was coming towards her, turning his head so that he could look at her. To make sure that she still understood what he had told her? Keira forced her lips into a professional smile, no different for Jay than it was for the man to whom he was introducing her, who was now smiling at her with male warmth and interest that threw into sharp relief Jay’s coldness towards her.

  ‘My friends call me Bas,’ he told her, ‘and I hope that you will do the same. I have heard a great many complimentary things about your work, and I am looking forward to featuring it in our magazine.’

  ‘I expect Jay has already told you that part of his remit was that he wanted me to use local products as much as possible?’ Keira asked him as she stepped to one side to allow the two men to enter the show house.

  ‘Do you feel that interfered with your own creativity?’

  ‘No, not at all. Using local products and focusing on the nature of the land around the development was very much in keeping with my own way of working. I enjoyed finding different ways to stick to Jay’s remit, but at the same time ensure that the houses reflect the lifestyles and tastes of the people who will buy the properties.’

  Keira stopped speaking to allow the art director to look at the décor and inspect what she had done.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he told her. ‘Very impressed. This toile, for instance…’

  ‘Locally made and designed.’

  ‘Jay, with your permission I’d like to make Keira and the work she’s done here a lead feature in our magazine. In fact I’d love to devote an entire magazine to what’s going on here, with interviews with the local craftsmen, articles on the history of those crafts, that kind of thing. What’s happening here really is revolutionary. Now that I’ve seen what Keira’s done I’m really blown away.’

  Jay was frowning, and Keira wondered if perhaps he wasn’t as pleased with the interiors as she had hoped.

  ‘What I need to do is get a crew up here and some interviews set up. I know you want the feature to coincide with the launch of the development via your own advertising. You said you’d be launching officially at the World Trade Fair in six months’ time? Keira, I’ll want to do an in-depth interview with you, and I’d like to get an idea of how you work. Would it be okay with you if I attached myself to you and followed you around for the next couple of days?’

  Jay was frowning even more now.

  ‘Well, if Jay doesn’t mind…’ she told Bas helplessly.

  ‘Of course he doesn’t mind. That’s what he’s brought me down here for—isn’t it, Jay?’

  Ignoring the other man, Jay turned to Keira and said tersely, ‘Come and see me in my office at the palace in an hour’s time. I want to go through a few things with you. I’ll take you to your hotel now, Bas, and leave you there to get yourself settled in.’

  The art director smiled warmly at Keira.

  ‘It’s only a flying visit for me this time, but I’m already looking forward to coming back and getting to spend more time with you.’

  At least someone had admired the work she had done, even if that someone wasn’t Jay, Keira thought sadly as she waited for the houseboy to come back from telling Jay that she was here to see him.

  She had arrived early for their appointment, and now she was feeling slightly sick and very nervous. The only thing that was keeping her going was her pride—and her determination to prove to Jay that she could be utterly professional.

  Rakesh had returned and was asking her to follow him.

  With every step that took her closer to Jay’s office and Jay himself her apprehension increased, until she would have given anything to turn and run away. What if he told her that he knew how she felt about him? What would she do then? How would she survive that humiliation?

  Rakesh had knocked on the door and was pushing it open for her. It was too late now for her to run away. Keira stepped into the room, and then froze as she realised that Jay was standing so near to the door that she had virtually walked straight into him. When he reached past her to shut the door she felt close to dizziness with the effort of not allowing her body to react to his proximity. It was like depriving her lungs of oxygen, leaving her feeling dangerously weak and off balance. She had missed him so much. She ached for him so much. But she must not feel like this—she must not be like this.

  ‘Has Bas asked you to go to bed with him yet?’

  The words, delivered in a harsh, flat and yet distinctly antagonistic voice, shocked her out of her painful thoughts.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘There is no of course not about it,’ Jay told her. ‘He wants you. He made that perfectly obvious.’

  This kind of discussion was the last thing she had expected, and she had no idea how to deal with it.

  ‘If you’re concerned that I might prejudice the success of your development by behaving unprofessionally—’ she began, but Jay cut ruthlessly across what she was saying.

  ‘You don’t want him, then?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Do you want me?’

  It was several betraying seconds before she could find the breath to speak.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want me to make you want me?’

  Now she was panicking. ‘I’m not staying here to listen to any more of this.’

  He reached the door before her, blocking her escape, leaving her with nowhere to go other than into his arms.

  His kiss was fiercely possessive and even more fiercely sexual, with the tip of his tongue as it probed the soft line of her lips
mirroring the hard urgency of his erection. His hands were caressing her breasts, shaping her body to his own. A few more heartbeats and she would be totally lost, not caring one bit about the promises she had made to herself.

  ‘I want you in my bed.’

  Keira made herself resist the lure of his words.

  ‘Because you think another man wants me?’ she challenged him.

  ‘No—although I admit seeing him looking at you the way he was made me decide that I’d better not waste any time putting my proposition to you.’

  The word ‘proposition’ struck a chill note against Keira’s heart and her overheated senses.

  Jay had released her now, and was telling her bluntly, ‘Sex in my office has never had much appeal for me, but if I don’t put some distance between us I can’t promise you that it isn’t going to happen. The next time you and I have sex I want to have the time and the privacy to ensure that it’s a very special and memorable experience—and for all the right reasons.’

  Her heart was thumping unsteadily now, her body reacting to the promise contained in his words in a way that made total nonsense of her vow to herself to remain in control.

  ‘You as good as said that you aren’t into virgins,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You aren’t a virgin any more. Look, the reality is that whether we like it or not there’s a sexual attraction between us that I’m prepared to admit is far stronger than I’d allowed for. It’s certainly strong enough to have kept me awake at night wanting you whilst I’ve been away—wanting only you. We both know the score: no long-term relationship, no commitment, no emotional trauma. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be bed partners. My guess is that you want me every bit as much as I want you, and my proposition to you is that we give ourselves a break and ride the wave together rather than fight against it. The kind of intense sexual hunger we’re experiencing burns itself out quickly once its satisfied. Right now by resisting it all we’re doing is feeding it. Far better to enjoy it, and one another, for the short duration of its lifetime—don’t you agree?’