Inside his chest, Zahir’s heart drummed hard. His confession that he had never wanted a woman this much before was perfectly true. How could attraction be so instant and so … so violent? he mused. His every sense was irrefutably held captive, and he could barely think, let alone hope for some understandable explanation. He found himself intimately examining the arresting features before him. In contrast to the brightness of her golden hair, Gina’s arched brows were dark and generous. They raised her exquisitely formed features to a visage far beyond merely pretty, stamping them with a beauty that was hard to forget.
It was, Zahir thought, perhaps the only night they could be together for a long time. Who knew how long Gina’s mother would be in the hospital? How long before her lovely daughter could return to Kabuyadir? The idea made his insides lurch painfully. Why had fate brought him this treasure only to rip it away from him so soon … too soon?
‘I never expected …’
Gina sucked in a breath, her lips visibly trembling, bringing home to Zahir how nervous she was. How to convey without the use of words—words that would surely be woefully inadequate—that he would never knowingly cause her hurt or bring her shame? Those same reasons had made him check to see if they were being observed just now in the garden. He would willingly shoulder all the blame if someone were to even think of judging her.
‘Neither did I, rohi.’ He laid the pad of his thumb across her plump lower lip and stroked it. ‘And if all we are destined to have together for a while is this one night … then I will make sure it is a night that our bodies and souls will never forget. That is a promise I make to you straight from my heart …’
Three years later …
‘Dad, are you there? It’s only me,’ Gina called out after letting herself in with her key.
She gathered up the stack of letters on the mat inside the door, frowned, and made her way along the rather gloomy hallway to the back of the three-storied Victorian house, where her father had his study. He was hunched over at his desk, staring at what looked to be an aged, yellowed document. Just then, with his mussed greying hair and his too-thin shoulders in a blue unironed shirt, he seemed not just preoccupied and isolated, but sad and neglected, too.
In Gina’s heart a pang of guilt mingled with her sorrow. She’d been working hard at her new job at a prestigious auction house, had rung him nightly, but hadn’t called in for a week.
‘How are you?’ Leaning towards him, she brushed the side of his unshaven cheek lightly with her lips.
He stared up at her with shock in his eyes … just as if he’d seen a ghost. Then he grimaced and forced a smile. ‘I thought you were Charlotte. You’re looking more and more like your mother every day, Gina.’
‘Am I?’ The comment surprised her, and made her heart skip a beat. It was the closest thing to a personal remark Jeremy Collins had made to her in weeks. He particularly avoided mentioning his wife, Gina’s mother, if he could help it. Her death three years ago had hit him much harder than she’d ever envisaged it would. Gina was disturbed that he should bring her up now.
‘Yes, you are.’ Shrugging his shoulders, Jeremy laid down the yellowed document and tried for a smile. ‘How’s the job going at the auction house?’
‘It’s really testing my mettle, if I’m honest. I mean, just when you think you’ve got a handle on something you discover there’s so much more to learn.’
‘You sound as if you’re learning some valuable wisdom along the way as well.’
‘I hope so. No matter how many diplomas I’ve succeeded in getting, I still feel very much a junior in this trade, Dad.’
‘I understand, dear. But don’t be in such a hurry to get somewhere. This “trade,” as you call it, is a lifetime’s passion for most who enter into it, and you never stop learning and discovering things you didn’t know before. You’re still so young. How old? Remind me?’
‘Twenty-nine.’
‘Good God!’
His exclamation made Gina giggle. ‘How old did you think I was?’ she playfully challenged him. At least he wasn’t looking so down and distracted now, she noticed.
The greying eyebrows made a concertina motion. ‘In my mind I always remember you at round about five years old … reaching a sticky exploring little hand towards the papers on my desk. Even then you had an interest in history, Gee-Gee.’
Dumbfounded, Gina stared hard, ‘Gee-Gee?’
‘It was my pet name for you. Don’t you remember? Your mother thought it highly amusing that a distinguished professor of antiquities and ancient history should have the imagination to come up with something like that.’
‘Here.’ There was a lump in her throat the size of an egg as she handed him the letters she’d found on the mat.
‘What’s this?’
‘Your post … looks like it’s been accumulating for days. Why didn’t Mrs Babbage bring it in for you?’
‘What?’ The pale blue gaze was distracted again. ‘Mrs Babbage resigned last week, I’m afraid. Her husband had to go into hospital for a major operation and she wanted to be able to visit him as often as she could. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t keep her job here. Anyway, I shall need to interview for a new housekeeper.’
Reaching out her hand, Gina laid it briefly on his shoulder. She was shocked to feel how little flesh covered it beneath his shirt. ‘That’s the third housekeeper you’ve lost in a year,’ she commented worriedly.
‘I know. Must be my sparkling personality or something’
Ignoring the droll reply, Gina gazed at him, seriously concerned. ‘What have you been living on for a week? Not much, by the looks of it. Why didn’t you tell me about this when I rang you, Dad?’
For a moment the expression on her father’s long thin face reminded her of a small boy who had been reprimanded by a teacher and told to stand at the back of the class. The lump inside her throat seemed to swell.
‘Didn’t want to worry you, dear … You’re not responsible, you see. It’s my own stupid fault that I never took the time to learn how to cope with the domestics … Head always in some book or other, you see. Since your mother went I don’t seem to have the heart for much else. People thought I was a cold fish when I didn’t cry at her funeral. But I cried inside, Gina …’ His voice broke, and moisture glazed the pale, serious eyes, ‘I cried inside …’
She hardly knew what to say—how to respond. It was as though a stranger sat in front of her—not the remote, self-contained, preoccupied man who was her father. The man she would have been hard put to it to say had any feelings at all.
Patting his bony shoulder again, she gave it what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. ‘Why don’t I make us both a nice cup of tea? We’ll have it in the living room, then I’ll nip out to the supermarket to get you some supplies for the fridge.’
‘Are you in a hurry tonight, Gina?’ The moisture beneath the pale eyes had been dashed away, and now his eyes glimmered with warmth … affection, even.
‘No, I’m not in a hurry. Why?’
‘Would you—I mean could you stay for a while? We could—we could talk. You could tell me a bit more about your work at the auction house.’
Was this some kind of breakthrough in their difficult and sometimes distant relationship? Why now, when it had been three years since she had lost her mother? Had it taken him that long to realise that he’d