‘Hashim,’ she whispered, like someone waking from a long dream. ‘Is it really you?’
‘It really is.’ His hard eyes mocked her, enjoying her discomfiture in a way he had not enjoyed anything for a long time. ‘You seem surprised, Sienna.’
‘Surprise implies something pleasant,’ she said shakily.
He arched heavy black brows in sardonic query. ‘And this is not?’
‘Of course it’s not!’ Nervously, she flicked her tongue over her lips to moisten them, and then wished she hadn’t, for his black eyes were drawn to the movement as a snake to the charmer’s pipe. ‘I’m shocked—like anyone would be.’
‘I disagree—a lot of women might be delighted to see a man who had once featured in their lives, but I guess it’s different in your case.’
Her eyes pleaded with him to stop, but he did not, and his hard mouth twisted into a cruel imitation of a smile.
‘I expect your past is always coming back to unsettle you in all kinds of ways—but you have only yourself to blame, my dear. If you didn’t keep so many unsavoury secrets, then you might be able to sleep a little easier.’ He allowed his eyes to linger on the exquisite swell of her breasts and the swift shaft of desire became blunted with the memory of betrayal. His mouth hardened. ‘Though I can’t imagine any man letting you sleep easy at night.’ Except maybe him. The mad, duped fool who had protected her and respected her. Who had cherished her as if she had been a delicate and priceless piece of porcelain.
And then seen her crushed into smithereens before his eyes.
But he was a fool no more...that day had gone...never to return.
Sienna wanted to tell him not to stare at her that way, but she knew if she did that then he would do it all the more. He was not a man to be thwarted or dictated to, and in his hard black eyes was the glitter of danger. She swallowed, terrified to ask the question because of what the answer might be. Until she told herself that this was just some horrible, unfortunate coincidence—it had to be...
Or was it? Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Did anything ever happen completely by chance?
‘What are you doing here, Hashim?’
He thought how easily his name came to her lips. How little she realised the honour accorded to her by being able to speak it so freely where most women would dip their eyes in deference! Even the sophisticated women in his life—and there had been many—had always been slightly in awe of his power and position. He stared at her, and the anticipation of what he was about to do made his blood sing with pleasure. ‘You know very well why I am here,’ he reprimanded silkily.
For a second her world was suspended in a moment of disbelief as she was frozen by the stark sensual intent in his eyes. And it was as if just that one sizzling look had begun something which her unresisting body was powerless to stop. She shook her head, trying to stop the stealthy and hated shiver of desire. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Shame on you, Sienna—is this how you always react when you are booked in to have a business meeting? You are being paid to organise a party for me—remember?’
His soft, mocking words made her throat close over with fear and she swallowed it down. There was no way she could have any kind of meeting with him—business or otherwise. He must know that!
‘No!’ she said, as calmly as she could. But as she shook her head the heavy weight of her piled-up hair wobbled, as if itching to cascade down her back. ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it!’ She looked around her with slight desperation, as if any minute now she would suddenly wake up and discover that the whole incident had been some ghastly nightmare. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting a Mr Altair! Not you.’
He gave a cold smile. ‘But “Mr Altair” is me, Sienna. Didn’t you realise?’ His smile grew even colder, even though the undulating movement of her hair made him ache to unpin it and set it free. Free to tumble onto the warm nakedness of his chest. And his belly...
‘Altair is one of my many aliases,’ he drawled. ‘Surely I used it when I knew you?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Ah. So much changes with the passage of time, does it not, Sienna? What else has changed, I wonder?’
She felt like a woman who had woken up in an alien place, where all the rules of survival had changed, and she knew that she had to take control—not just of herself but of the situation, too. She was no longer a young girl, besotted and completely fixated by a man who was light-years away from her in terms of experience. The wrong man, she reminded herself painfully.
With an effort, she gave him a smile. A rueful, grown-up smile. ‘Look, Hashim, I presume that now you’ve seen me you’ve changed your mind. We aren’t going to be able to do this—you know we aren’t.’
His eyes glittered with provocation. ‘To what...precisely...do you refer? What aren’t we going to be able to do, Sienna?’
She didn’t rise to the sexual taunt. If she kept it on a business level then she might be safe—but if she allowed the discussion to stray into the personal or—even worse—the past, then she really was in danger.
‘But what are you doing here?’ she questioned, still with the last vague hope that things were not what they seemed. ‘When you always stay at the Granchester?’
‘Maybe I find that the memories there are too tainted,’ he mocked. ‘Or maybe I find that I just can’t resist the attractions on offer here...’ Once again he let his eyes linger with insolent hunger on the swell of her magnificent breasts. ‘Your...reputation in the capital is growing, Sienna,’ he added silkily.
She didn’t suppose he was alluding to her backlog of satisfied clients. It was not a compliment at all, but a thinly veiled insult, implying...implying... Oh, she knew damn well what he was implying! Feeling as though her lungs had been scorched, she sucked in a breath to steady herself. ‘But presumably you’re not expecting me to work with you,’ she said quietly.
He gave a heady, husky laugh of anticipation. ‘For an employee you sure as hell make a lot of presumptions. It could get you into a lot of trouble if you’re not careful.’
She had forgotten what a curious mixture he was, of the ancient and the modern, the forward-thinking and the ludicrously old-fashioned. He was one of the most intelligent men she had ever met—so why the hell was he deliberately misunderstanding her reservations? ‘Oh, Hashim—don’t be so...dense!’
‘Dense?’ He tilted his chin imperiously and his eyes narrowed into glittering ebony shards. ‘You dare to address me—a sheikh—in such a way?’
In the past he had never pulled rank—but then he hadn’t needed to. She hadn’t cared about his position—hadn’t even known about it to start with. And by the time she did it hadn’t mattered. Or at least she’d thought it hadn’t—but that was yet another indication of just how out of her depth she had been. Because of course it had.
It had mattered a lot.
SHE should never have met him, of course, for theirs were two such different paths in life—destined never to cross. But country girls sometimes went to live in big cities and became receptionists in super-smart hotels—the kind of places where you bumped into real-live sheikhs when you were on your way to work. Just like a fairy tale. And sometimes the fairy tale came true—but what it was easy to forget was that