FOR the next week, Sabrina was in a complete state of nerves. What on earth did you wear if you were going out for dinner with a prince?
She rang her mother and explained her predicament.
‘Good heavens,’ said her mother faintly. ‘A prince? You’ll never want to come home to Salisbury at this rate!’
Sabrina winced at how her mother had unerringly hit on the truth. She couldn’t imagine wanting to either, but that had everything to do with Guy and nothing whatsoever to do with a Middle-Eastern potentate.
‘What do I wear, Mum?’ she repeated patiently.
‘You’ve got lots of lovely clothes! Just be yourself,’ said her mother. ‘My goodness—wait until the neighbours hear about this!’
‘Well, I don’t want you to tell them,’ said Sabrina stubbornly. Because however much she wished otherwise, one day soon she was going to have to go back and live at home, and she would do herself no favours whatsoever if she arrived with Guy Masters’s magic dust still clinging to her skin.
She even tried to quiz Guy about the correct dress code one evening when he arrived home even later than usual and had been in a snarling temper. She produced a huge tureen of soup, and he stared down at the steaming bowlful and suddenly went very quiet.
‘You don’t like home-made soup?’ she asked nervously.
Guy looked up. The soup looked perfect. Damn it—she looked perfect, standing there in a pair of white jeans and a white T-shirt, with her bright hair caught back in a ponytail.
‘Haven’t had a lot of experience of it,’ he said shortly. ‘My mother used to open a can.’
Sabrina pushed some cheese across the table towards him. ‘Wasn’t she keen on cooking, then?’
It was an such an artless question that Guy found himself uncharacteristically answering it. ‘Not particularly. And we were always…moving,’ he said slowly. ‘So a lot of her time was taken up with settling into new places.’
‘You make it sound quite nomadic, Guy.’
‘Do I? I suppose it was when you compare it with living in one place all your life.’
‘Like me, you mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said carefully, as some warning light in his eyes told her to go back to the safer subject of cooking, rather than the potential minefield of childhood.
She sawed through a crusty loaf and handed him a huge chunk of it. ‘My mother was so busy going out to work that she never had time to cook properly, except at weekends.’
He nodded, seeing the sudden, defensive set of her face. Despite his reservations, he found himself asking, ‘How old were you when your father left?’
‘Eight.’ She pulled a face. ‘He fell in love with my mum’s “best” friend.’
He winced. ‘That must have been tough.’
‘Yes.’ She stared down at the soup without really seeing it. ‘For a while it was dreadful.’ She looked up and gave him a bright smile. ‘But time heals, doesn’t it? Corny, but true.’
‘Yeah, but you always get left with a scar.’ He shrugged, but he shook his head at the silent question in her eyes. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Just I always vowed that when I grew up I would learn how to cook properly.’
Unexpectedly, he found the thought of Sabrina as a little girl exquisitely touching. He sipped the soup. ‘Well, you achieved it with honours,’ he murmured.
She glowed with pleasure. ‘Guy?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You know this dinner on Saturday night—’
He put his spoon down. ‘Damn!’
‘It’s been cancelled?’ she asked hopefully.
He shook his head. ‘Nope—but I haven’t organised anything and I’m in Paris all day tomorrow. You’ll have to book the restaurant, Sabrina.’
‘Like Where? I don’t really know London at all!’
He reeled off a list of London’s most famous eating places and Sabrina shook her head doubtfully.
‘We’ll never get a table at any of those places this late!’
He gave a small smile. ‘Just try mentioning my name.’
From anyone else it would have sounded outrageously arrogant—from Guy it just sounded supremely confident.
‘And what on earth can I wear?’ she wailed.
‘Wear what you want.’ He shrugged. ‘You always look pretty good to me.’
She had received better compliments in her life, but none had she embraced as warmly as Guy’s careless words and she had to force herself to suppress the guilt. She was letting go, and starting to live again—and there was nothing unacceptable about enjoying a compliment.
It still didn’t solve the problem of what to wear, of course.
Guy left at the crack of dawn the following morning. Sabrina heard him moving around the flat and for once came, yawning, out into the hall to say goodbye to him.
His hand tightened around the handle of his briefcase as he saw her hair in all its tousled disarray tumbling down over her shoulders. Was she trying to play the siren? he wondered distractedly. But that was just the thing—he honestly didn’t think she was.
‘Have you remembered your passport?’
‘Sabrina!’ he exploded. ‘I’ve been flying to Paris at least once a month for the last I don’t know how long! How the hell do you think I managed before you came into my life?’ It had been a calm, ordered time which was slowly but surely fading from his memory, the end of which had seemed to coincide with him urging her to let her guilt and her sorrow go. He had only himself to blame, and yet he hadn’t realised how familiar it could feel, living with a woman—even if you weren’t having sex with her. He winced. Why remind himself of that?
‘Send me a postcard.’ Sabrina smiled.
‘I won’t have time,’ he said tightly, because he was having to fight the terrible urge to kiss her goodbye—as if she were his wife or something. His smile tasted like acid on his mouth. ‘And don’t forget to book the damned restaurant!’
‘I won’t forget.’ She stood at the front door until he’d disappeared out of sight, praying that he would turn round and give her that rare and brilliant smile. But he didn’t.
Sabrina felt more than a little intimidated at the thought of booking a meal at a place she had only ever read about in magazines. Wouldn’t even her best dress look out of place in a venue as upmarket as that? And, when she thought about it, wouldn’t Prince Khalim be bored rigid with going to fancy restaurants, and Guy, too, for that matter? Wouldn’t they rather try something a little different?
She spent her lunch-hour scouring the restaurant section of the capital’s biggest glossy magazine, and eventually found what she’d half thought she’d been looking for. She picked up the phone and booked it.
But Guy was delayed in Paris. He phoned that night.
‘This deal is taking longer than I thought,’ he said, and she could hear the sounds of people in the background. ‘I may even have to stay over for a few days.’
‘A few days?’
‘You’ll be OK on your own, won’t you?’
Sabrina pulled a face. She couldn’t be missing him already, could she? ‘Yes, of course I will.’