The memory of the look they’d shared hit him again with a jolt of sensation in his solar plexus. It was bizarre, but he thought he’d seen something close to panic and desperation in her huge brown, heavily kohled eyes.
He frowned; he must have been mistaken, because now, as he watched the bride and groom place garlands over each other’s heads, she looked nothing but serene. And yet, had he just seen her delicate hands shaking? Sebastian mentally chastised himself—what did he care for the emotional state of a complete stranger on her wedding day? All he cared about was that everything went smoothly and they had no cause to fault their venue.
This hotel was just one in his hugely successful chain of hotels around the world. The uberluxurious Mumbai Grand Wolfe Hotel. And he was here merely on a whirlwind tour to oversee the society wedding of the year: Aneesa Adani to Jamal Kapoor Khan, two of Bollywood’s hottest stars.
From the report his Indian PA had given him about the wedding, he knew that Aneesa Adani had been crowned Miss India some years before and following a successful modelling career she’d branched into Bollywood movies and had since become their biggest star, with a veritable list of number-one movies to her credit. The subsequent romance and wedding with fellow Bollywood star Jamal Kapoor Khan was going to make them the power couple of Indian cinema for years to come. They were at the very epicentre of mass adulation, which in a country of more than a billion people was no small feat.
Sebastian cast a quick look around, noting to his satisfaction the heavily armed security guards and plain-clothed police officers, amongst his own highly trained security team. Nothing had been left to chance and he was quietly confident of the strict security measures and discretion he could guarantee in all of his hotels. It was one of the reasons his hotel had been picked as the venue of choice for this wedding as well as for its ultralavish yet understated stylish surroundings.
From where he stood he could see the rising moon shining over the Arabian Sea and the floodlit outline of the Gateway of India, Mumbai’s most iconic landmark.
Sebastian waited for the usual sense of satisfaction to steal over him when he experienced a moment like this—the rare chance to stand back and survey his hard work. A moment when he lifted his head long enough to acknowledge the fruits of his success. But it didn’t come. And it was only then that he realised that he hadn’t felt it in some time.
Unused to and slightly disturbed by that thought and the impulse to self-examine which he didn’t usually indulge in, he looked once again to the centre of the marquee where the bride and groom now sat side by side on regal thrones on a raised dais.
The bride’s exquisite face was still a cool mask of serenity but Sebastian felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as if he could somehow sense that it was just a façade.
And then he felt a pull of something much more earthy in his groin. Encased in the elaborate wedding costume he could only see snatches of her pale olive skin, an enticing view of the bare curve of her waist and top of her hip below the tight bodice. He could imagine the silky texture of that skin, that it would feel as soft as a fresh rose petal.
To his utter chagrin and disgust, Sebastian realised that he was ogling a bride in the midst of her wedding ceremony and that merely looking at her was arousing him to a level that he hadn’t felt since his last liaison had ended some weeks previously. He realised, too, that on some very base level he felt jealous of the groom, that he would be the one to uncover the lush secrets of his new wife’s exotic beauty.
Sebastian cursed himself. He’d no doubt that Aneesa Adani was like every other girl of her upper-middle-class upbringing. A little princess. Her marriage to this man was merely the next step in a life of luxury and inherent idleness, despite her career as an actress. And he’d no doubt, too, that she would be no blushing virgin on her wedding night. Despite the chaste lovemaking of the Bollywood movies, in the real world the stars were just as amoral and prone to bed-hopping as in Hollywood, and she’d had a highly publicised relationship with this man for months.
Despite those assertions, turning away took more effort than he liked to acknowledge and he saw one of his close aides waiting patiently in the wings for his next move. Sebastian welcomed the distraction and thrust aside disturbing thoughts of flashing kohled eyes that had emitted what must have been an imaginary beacon of distress, and equally disturbing erotic images of sensual half-hidden curves.
He walked out of the courtyard, leaving the wedding behind, and smiled grimly. His mind had been playing tricks on him, perhaps the ritual and incense had gotten to him for a moment. Striding across the main reception area which was a glorious fusion of classic Moorish and Portuguese design, he coolly ignored the admiring looks his tall and powerful frame drew. The attention of women was something that Sebastian and his brothers had never had to worry about. They’d effortlessly drawn it as soon as they’d been old enough to know what that attention meant.
Minutes later, after consulting with his hotel manager, he stepped into his private lift and felt the habitual constriction of being in a suit, and the familiar need to engage in something physical which would clear and quieten his mind. Exercise for Sebastian was a drug, an outlet he’d turned to for as long as he could remember. It had helped him escape the chaos of his dysfunctional upbringing and now helped him escape the rigid confines on his time. It also eased the niggling sense of dissatisfaction he increasingly felt, and helped him through the frequent nights where he was lucky to get three hours sleep, the curse of the chronic insomniac.
Sebastian didn’t register the impassive lines of his hard-boned face in the mirrored elevator door; he’d long ago learnt the art of projecting a controlled front, even while inwardly he might be a mass of contradictions. But his thoughts helplessly veered back to the couple downstairs. He had no doubt that in time reality would strike and the sham that all marriages inevitably were would become apparent in theirs. And in a country which held one of the lowest divorce rates in the world he could almost feel a twinge of sympathy for the happy couple, for it was unlikely they’d be allowed to escape the confines of their union, especially if they had children.
He chastised himself mockingly—who was he to rain on their parade or judge them? His mouth tightened with grim black humour—after all, hadn’t he himself come from a far from normal family upbringing?
On that thought the elevator doors opened and Sebastian walked into the penthouse Grand Wolfe suite, the best in the hotel. As he started to rip off his tie and jacket he mentally wished the couple downstairs all the best in the world and firmly pushed the image of the luscious bride from his mind. They were welcome to each other and a lifetime of wedded disharmony.
Aneesa was barely aware of the wedding ritual going on around her. She felt numb from the inside out and she knew on some level that this feeling was a form of self-protection, albeit dangerously flimsy.
Her head ached as it had done ever since her comfortable, privileged and secure world had been blown to smithereens just two evenings previously. She’d gone to Jamal’s rooms at the hotel to surprise him, hoping that she might encourage him to take their chaste lovemaking to the next level.
The thought of being a virgin on her wedding night had inexplicably filled Aneesa with fear; perhaps even then she’d been aware that what she and Jamal shared wasn’t normal and had wanted to provoke him in some way. She’d never understood his reticence in the physical side of their relationship.
But instead of finding him quietly reading his new script, which is what he’d told her he’d be doing, she’d found him in bed. With his assistant. His male assistant.
Aneesa knew she still hadn’t fully assimilated the shock of that moment. She’d stumbled to the bathroom and had been violently ill. By then Jamal’s lover had disappeared and Jamal had calmed down enough to go into damage limitation mode.
She could remember his smoothly handsome face, a mask of condescending pity, as he’d asked her