‘Maybe you should try and contain your enthusiasm a little?’ Raffa suggested dryly. ‘You do still want the job, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
As she nodded her head like an automaton Casey knew she had just come crashing back down to earth. Maybe the peaches and champagne at the oasis had something to do with it. Raffa’s team arriving unannounced on site certainly had. She guessed now that Raffa had wanted to illustrate the fantasy future visitors would enjoy by proving that the impossible could be made possible. Was the intense lovemaking they had shared another example of this? In wanting to heal her, had Raffa simply chosen to prove yet again that the impossible was possible?
‘Do I have to continue my search for a marketing supremo?’ Raffa prompted when she remained silent, lost in thought.
‘You’ve got one,’ she said, instantly alert. ‘I’ll do the job for you, Raffa, and I’ll do it well.’ But she could give her life and soul to A’Qaban and it wouldn’t bring her any closer to Raffa. She could share his bed, providing she was discreet about it, but that would never be enough for her.
‘Congratulations! I’ll summon the cavalry, and then we can celebrate properly.’
‘The cavalry?’
‘A helicopter.’
Of course. This was Raffa’s life; a life she had no part in other than when it came to business.
After a few words in A’Qabani he snapped the phone shut again. ‘They’ll be here in ten. Yes, I know,’ he said, misreading the expression on her face. ‘It beats horseback, but it isn’t half as much fun.’
‘Okay, so I’m almost a convert,’ Casey confessed, thinking that now she had made the decision to put her feelings to one side it should be easier to relax around Raffa. But it wasn’t, and he was instantly concerned.
‘You seem preoccupied?’
‘Me? No…’ She shook her head. Anything else she had to say to him could wait.
The helicopter trip to the city was smooth and uneventful. The helipad was located on the top of Raffa’s office building, there he helped her out and escorted her to his suite on the top floor, where they were to discuss the finer points of her contract.
He could switch so easily from lover to employer, Casey reflected, while she was finding it hard if not impossible. He left her drinking coffee while he went to shower and change his clothes, and returned to her ten minutes later looking like an ad for Armani in a tailored business suit.
‘You’ve done it again,’ she said self-consciously.
‘Done what again?’ He was already going through her contract, completely unaware of how very physical and handsome he was.
‘I’m a little underdressed for this,’ Casey observed, glancing down at her safari suit.
‘Forgive me—I should have taken you straight to your hotel, where you could have freshened up. Would you like to use the bathroom here?’
And prolong this meeting? ‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine,’ she told him in her best business voice.
‘When you sign the contract you’ll have access to all that’s best in A’Qaban.’
Not quite all, Casey thought as she studied the small print and tried not to look at Raffa.
By the time he had uncapped his fountain pen her mind was made up. ‘There’s just one thing I’d like to change.’
‘Which is?’ He came to look over her shoulder at the contract.
‘I can do the job as well from the UK as I can from here.’
‘What are you saying, Casey?’ Raffa’s expression darkened.
‘I won’t be staying.’
‘I thought we’d agreed this—’
‘I can market A’Qaban from anywhere in the world.’ She surprised herself with the calmness of her voice. ‘I can train personnel, implement change, and even source all the manpower you could possibly need from my home office.’
‘A’Qaban is the home office for this job,’ Raffa cut across her coldly. ‘And my terms are non-negotiable. They are the most generous terms in the Gulf. I have every benefit set up for my employees that you can imagine.’
Except the only benefit she wanted—which was him. ‘I’ll do the job for you. Just not from here.’ She couldn’t live day in day out, pretending that loving Raffa, the man who was king, who could never be hers, didn’t hurt.
‘Non-negotiable,’ Raffa rapped. ‘Take it or leave it.’
She attempted to moisten her lips with a tongue turned dry. ‘I’ll leave it, thank you,’ she said, standing up.
He was dumbfounded. He prided himself on reading people, but he had got Casey badly wrong. Her plan was good. A’Qaban needed her. And he wanted her. He had formed some vague notion, he realised now, that she would always be here, and that they would work together for the good of the country, and that in rare interludes of relaxation they would enjoy each other in every sense of the word.
‘I’ll take a cab.’
She was already at the door, he realized, refocusing. ‘No— my driver will take you.’
‘I can call a cab—really. I’d prefer to.’
His intention had always been to build Casey’s confidence, and it seemed he had succeeded, even if that intention had backfired. ‘As you wish…’ He turned his back, trying to make sense of what was happening. He couldn’t believe she was walking out on him
She had everything packed and was ready to leave. She had checked the rooms and had only to switch the television off. It was on to keep her company. Poor company, Casey reflected, but at least there was sound and voices and life going on outside of her own small concerns to put everything in perspective. There was just one more thing she had to do. Picking up the phone, she placed her order.
He had never learned to give up, Raffa accepted, as he stood in silence by the door listening to Casey making her phone call. He didn’t eavesdrop either, as a general rule, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
‘Raffa—’ She whirled around, a guilty expression on her face. She even hid the phone with her hand, as if she had done something terrible.
‘My apologies for alarming you, but the door was open…’
‘The bell boy just collected my luggage,’ she explained, replacing the receiver in its nest. ‘I told him I’d be right down and not to bother with the door.’
‘And then you remembered a call you had to make?’
‘No…not exactly.’
She still wouldn’t look at him.
‘It was a call I had to make before I left A’Qaban,’ she said, so softly he had to strain to hear her.
She wasn’t going to tell him, so he would have to repeat what he’d overheard. ‘An order for pencils and colouring pads, crayons and paints for the children you met in the desert?’
The nod of her head was almost imperceptible, and then she lifted her chin to confront him. ‘It’s only a small thing, Raffa.’
‘Small?’ he frowned. ‘Whose opinion are you stating now?’
‘I mean on the scale of things you do here—on the scale of your proposals for spending the money we raised at the auction, for example.’
‘The money you raised,’ he corrected her.
‘It’s