Nat got the distinct impression that he was no mere model turned actor. She smiled, a part of her relaxing for the first time since she’d walked in. ‘I’m Nat. Nat Jordan.’
‘And I’m Salim Segal.’
The waiter arrived and put down their drinks. When he was gone Salim raised his glass, ‘To meeting you, Nat Jordan.’
She lightly tipped her glass off his. ‘You too.’
Sipping at the cool fresh wine, she put down the glass and had to admit, ‘Someone told me who you were, earlier. After you’d left.’
‘Ah.’
Once again, not the self-involved response of a person in the media glare. It was as if he was waiting for her reaction. Interesting.
Feeling awkward now she said, ‘I believe you have a film coming out? And you’re a model?’
His face seemed to harden as he admitted with clear irritation, ‘I’ve been answering those questions all day in a million different ways. Would you mind if we didn’t talk about it?’
Nat’s mouth opened and shut again. And her eyes must have widened because he drawled, ‘What? You’d heard I was a model and an actor and you expected to find me either gazing at my own reflection or asking you out so I could talk about myself ad nauseum?’
She flushed and lifted her glass to hide behind. When she looked at him again he was staring at her and she had to shrug a little and admit, ‘I wasn’t sure what to expect…but I know what my experience of models has been and they’re usually—’
‘A bunch of vacuous clothes-horses?’
Nat’s mouth twitched. ‘Now that’s not fair, they’re not all like that. For instance our model today, Lenka, she’s studying to be a neuroscientist in Moscow.’
He leaned forward and growled softly, ‘I don’t want to talk about Lenka, or models, or films.’
He sat back and took a sip from his glass. He held it in his hand and something about the delicacy of the glass in his big hand made a light sweat break out all over her skin. She suddenly felt self-conscious in her wrap dress. Aware of how it could gape slightly at the front, showing more than she liked. She resisted the urge to tug it together.
Was it her imagination or was his gaze on her there? Hot.
But then he was asking, ‘Nat…what’s it short for?’
Her name on his tongue made little sparks skate across her skin, raising it to goosebumps. She’d never thought of herself as a particularly sexual person but right now it seemed to be all she could think about. What it would be like to feel his mouth on hers, his tongue…that body pressing her down, spreading her legs to take him-she blurted out before she lost it completely, ‘It’s short for Natalja. My mother was Russian, my parents met when my father was covering elections there.’
‘I heard you talking Russian today.’
Nat felt hot to think of him observing her work. ‘I used to speak it with my mother. My father would be away…for long periods of time.’
He leant forward again. ‘I came across your father’s work when I was twenty, in a gallery in Paris. It was seeing his images that inspired me to join the army. He died not long after I joined, I was sorry to hear of his death.’
Nat struggled to take this in, not liking how her chest got tight to hear him mention her father as a personal influence. It…bound them in a way that made her wish he was just some dizzy model interested only in talking about fashion. And then she thought about what he said. ‘You were in the army?’
He nodded. But just then someone coughed discreetly nearby and Nat looked up, a little dazed, to see the hotel manager, Cavello. He glanced at her with not a little surprise and bowed deferentially towards Salim. ‘Mr Segal, your table is ready in the restaurant, would you like us to hold it, or…?’
Nat looked at Salim. His name conjured up dark exotic things. Like him. He spoke to her, ‘I’d very much like it if you’d accompany me to dinner.’ He smiled, ‘If those boundaries of yours will allow.’
Those treacherous boundaries were disappearing like ice melting into water. She could no more walk away from this man now, than she could stop breathing.
‘Ok, I’d like that.’
‘So, tell me more about yourself, Natalja. Have you always worked in fashion?’
Nat shook her head, hiding a frisson of pleasure to hear him call her that. Only her mother had ever used her full name. She felt drunk on the sumptuous surroundings, delicious food and wine. And on the man who lounged as indolently as a jungle cat on the other side of the table. Almost as if mere solid furniture couldn’t contain him. Her hands played semi-nervously with the stem of her wine glass. ‘No. I’ve only been working in fashion for the last three years or so. Before that…I’d followed in my father’s footsteps.’ She grimaced self-deprecatingly, ‘Without half of his talent or acclaim I’m afraid.’
Salim’s eyebrows snapped together and she could feel him tense. It had an effect on her body, making awareness skitter over her skin. Awareness? She mocked herself, awareness was too ineffectual a word for what she was feeling. Down and dirty lust. That was more appropriate.
‘You worked in war zones?’
She nodded and forced herself to look at him, dimly aware that there were only a few people left in the restaurant. ‘Yes. I worked in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and most recently in the Middle East.’
‘Why did you leave it behind?’
Nat fought back the reflex of pain whenever she thought of that time and looked at him. ‘I got injured…I was shot.’
She heard his intake of breath, a hiss between his teeth and it made her heart flip-flop unsteadily. As if he cared?! Quickly, to cover up how his reaction made her feel, she said, ‘I was incredibly lucky, it was just a flesh wound, my thigh. But it was a wake-up call. My father had died in similar circumstances and I think I realised in that moment that I was somehow searching for him, trying to maintain a connection. The truth is that I never loved that world as much as he did. It terrified me.’
‘You were close to him?’ Salim’s voice was hypnotic.
Nat nodded, battling down the surge of emotion to think of her tall gorgeous father, lifting her high in the air and hugging her close enough to hurt. No wonder he’d hugged her close, he’d known the risks he took.
‘Very close. And my mother…she fell apart when he died. She couldn’t cope. He’d taken her out of a small town in Russia and he was her world. Six months after he died, she killed herself.’
Salim just looked at her, those dark dark eyes like bottomless wells. Simply but with obvious empathy he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
And she knew that he knew, because she sensed the same deep well of tragedy within him.
‘Your father would be proud of you.’
Nat huffed a tremulous laugh. ‘Really? For taking pictures of a nineteen year-old girl in a dress worth thousands of dollars?’
He shook his head minutely, ‘Because you had the balls to get out before that world consumed you.’
His words went straight to her gut. Nat looked at him. She’d never revealed so much in such a short space of time, to a relative stranger. And no-one had ever got her like this before.
She cocked her head slightly. ‘What about you—what army were you in? The French one?’
Now