And she had deceived him. She had lied to him as women always lied.
Taking a long draught of wine in an effort to steady his nerves, somehow he hung on to his temper for as long as it took to charm the ambassador during the first course, which he had no desire to eat.
He wondered if it was rude to completely ignore Leila, but he didn’t care—because he still didn’t trust himself to speak to her again. It wouldn’t look good if he exploded with anger at the exalted banqueting table of the Sultan, would it? Yet he found his gaze drawn inexorably to the way her fingers toyed with the heavy golden cutlery as she pushed food around her plate.
The ambassador had turned away to talk to the person on his left and Gabe took the opportunity to lean towards her, his voice shaking with suppressed rage. ‘So is there some kind of power game going on that I should know about, Leila?’ he said. ‘Some political intrigue which will slowly be revealed to me as the evening progresses?’
Her heavy golden fork clattered to her plate and he saw the apprehension on her face as she turned to face him.
‘There’s no intrigue,’ she answered, her voice as low as his.
‘No? Then why all the mystery? Why not just tell your brother that we’ve already met. Unless he doesn’t know, of course.’
‘I—’
‘Maybe he has no idea that his sister came to my hotel today,’ he continued remorselessly. ‘And let me—’
‘Please.’ Her interruption sounded anguished. ‘We can’t talk here.’
‘Then where do you suggest?’ he questioned. ‘Same time, same place tomorrow? Maybe you’d already planned to return for a repeat performance, wearing a different kind of disguise. Maybe the masquerade aspect turns you on. I don’t know.’ His eyes bored into her. ‘Had you?’
‘Mr Steel—’
‘It’s Gabe,’ he said with icy pleasantry. ‘You remember how to say my name, don’t you, Leila?’
Briefly, Leila closed her eyes. She certainly did. And she hadn’t just said it, had she? She’d gasped it as he had entered her. She had whispered it as he’d moved deep inside her. She had shuddered it out in a long, keening moan as her orgasm had taken hold of her and almost torn her apart with pleasure.
And now all those amazing memories were being swept away by the angry wash from his eyes.
She wished she could spirit herself away. That she could excuse herself by saying she felt sick—which was actually true, because right at that moment she did feel sick.
But Murat would never forgive her if she interrupted the banquet—why, it might even alert his suspicions if he suspected that she found the Englishman’s presence uncomfortable. He might begin to ask himself why. And surely the man beside her—the man who had made such incredible love to her—couldn’t keep up this simmering hostility for the entire meal?
‘Look, I can understand why you’re angry,’ she said, trying to keep her tone conciliatory.
‘Can you?’ His pewter eyes glittered out a hostile light. ‘And why might that be? Because you failed to reveal your true identity to me?’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘Or because it’s only just occurred to you that you might have compromised my working relationship with your brother?’ His voice was soft but his words were deadly. ‘Because no man likes to discover that his sister has behaved like a whore.’
He leaned back in his chair to study her, as if they were having a perfectly amicable discussion, and Leila thought how looks could deceive. The casual observer would never have noticed that the polite smile on his lips was completely at odds with the angry glitter in his grey eyes.
‘I was behaving as other women sometimes behave,’ she protested. ‘Spontaneously.’
‘But most women aren’t being pursued by bodyguards at the time,’ he continued. His voice lowered, and she could hear the angry edge to his words. ‘What would have happened if they had burst in and found us in bed together?’
Leila tried desperately to block the image from her mind. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, I think you’ve got a pretty good idea. What would have happened, Leila?’
She swallowed, knowing that he was far too intelligent to be fobbed off with a vague answer. ‘You would have been arrested,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘I would have been arrested,’ he repeated grimly and nodded his head. ‘Destroying my reputation and losing my freedom in the process. Maybe even my head?’
‘We are not that barbaric!’ she protested, but her words did not carry the ring of conviction.
‘It’s funny really,’ he continued, ‘because for the first time in my life I’m feeling like some kind of stud. Wham and bam—but not much in the way of thank you, ma’am.’
‘No!’ she said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Really? Then what was it? Love at first sight?’
Leila picked up her goblet of black cherry juice and drank a mouthful, more as a stalling mechanism than because she was thirsty. His words were making her realise just how impulsive she had been and how disastrous it would have been if they’d been caught. But they hadn’t been caught, had they? Maybe luck—or fate—had been on their side.
And the truth of it was that her heart had leapt with a delicious kind of joy when she’d seen him again tonight, in his charcoal suit and a silver tie the colour of a river fish. She had stared at the richness of his hair and longed to run her fingers through it. Her eyes had drifted hungrily over his hard features and, despite everything she’d vowed not to do, she had wanted to kiss him. She had started concocting unrealistic little fantasies about him, and that was crazy. Just because he had proved to be an exquisite lover, didn’t mean that she should fall into that age-old female trap of imagining that he had a heart.
Because no man had a heart, she reminded herself bitterly.
‘Love?’ She met the challenge in his eyes. ‘Why, do you always have to be in love before you can have sex?’
‘Me? No. Most emphatically I do not. But women often do, especially when it’s their first time. But then I guess most women aren’t just spoiled little princesses who see what they want and go out and take it—and to hell with the consequences.’
Leila didn’t react to the spoiled-little-princess insult. She knew people thought it, though no one had ever actually come out and said it to her face before. She knew what people thought about families like hers and how they automatically slotted her into a gilded box marked ‘pampered’. But what they saw wasn’t always the true picture. Unimaginable wealth didn’t protect you from the normal everyday stuff. Glittering palace walls didn’t work some kind of magic on the people who lived within them. Prick her skin and she would bleed, just like the next woman.
‘It was an unconventional introduction, I admit,’ she said. ‘To bring my work to your hotel room unannounced like that and ask you for a job.’
‘Please don’t be disingenuous, Leila. That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.’ He sounded impatient now. ‘Which guide to interview technique did you study before you started removing your clothes and climbing all over me? The 1960s Guide to Sexual Behaviour? Or A Hundred Ways To Make The Casting Couch Work For You?’
‘You didn’t seem so averse to the idea at the time!’
‘Funny that,’ he mused. ‘A beautiful woman comes up to my suite, turns her big blue eyes on me and starts coming on to me. She brushes my arm so lightly that I wonder if I’d imagined it, though my senses tell me I hadn’t.