‘Kat?’
She looked at Zafir, who had a familiar expression of impatience on his face. She realised she hadn’t heard what he’d said.
‘Directions? For my driver?’
She swallowed, suddenly bombarded with a memory of being in the back of a very similar car with Zafir, when he’d asked his driver to put up the privacy window and drive around until he gave further instructions. Then he’d pulled Kat over to straddle his lap, pulled up her dress and—
She slammed the lid shut on that memory and leaned forward to tell the driver where to go before she lost her composure completely.
She refused to look at Zafir again, and within a couple of minutes they were pulling up outside her very modest apartment block. Kat managed to scramble inelegantly out of the car before Zafir could help her. She didn’t want him to touch her—not even fleetingly. The thin threads holding her composure together might snap completely.
Her apartment was just inside the main doors of the apartment block, on the ground floor, and Kat could feel Zafir behind her. Tall, commanding. Totally incongruous.
As if to underline it she heard him say a little incredulously, ‘No concierge?’
Kat would have bitten back a smile if she’d felt like smiling. ‘No.’
She opened her door and went into her studio apartment. What had become a place of refuge for the past year was now anything but as she put her keys down and turned around to face her biggest threat.
Zafir closed the door behind him and Kat folded her arms. ‘Well, Zafir? What is it you have to say?’
He was looking around the small space with unmistakable curiosity, and finally that dark grey gaze came to land on her. To her horror, he started to shrug off his overcoat, revealing a bespoke suit that clung lovingly to his powerful body.
When he spoke he sounded grim. ‘I have plenty to say, Kat, so why don’t you make us both a coffee? Because I’m not going anywhere any time soon.’
Kat stared mutinously at Zafir for a moment, and for those few seconds he was transfixed by her stunningly unusual eyes—amber from a distance, but actually green and gold from up close, surrounded by long dark lashes. They were almond-shaped, and Zafir’s blood rushed south as he recalled how she’d look at him after making love, the expression in her gaze one of wonderment that had never failed to catch him like a punch to his gut.
Lies.
It had all been lies. She might have been a virgin, but she’d been no innocent. It had been an elaborate act to hide her murky past. Suddenly he felt exposed. What was he doing here?
But just then something in Kat’s stance seemed to droop and she said in a resigned voice, ‘Fine, I’ll make coffee.’
She disappeared into a tiny galley kitchen and Zafir had to admit that he knew very well why he was here—he still wanted her. Even more so after seeing her again. But questions buzzed in his brain. He put down his overcoat on the back of a worn armchair and took in the clean but colourless furnishings of the tiny space she now called home.
He’d never been in the apartment she’d shared with three other models when he’d known her before, but it had been a loft in SoHo—a long way from here.
She emerged a couple of minutes later with two steaming cups and handed one to Zafir. He noticed that she was careful not to come too close, and it made something within him snarl and snap.
She’d taken off her coat and now wore a long-sleeved jumper over the T-shirt. Even her plain clothes couldn’t hide that perfect body, though. High firm breasts. A small waist, generous hips. And legs that went on for ever...
He could still feel them, wrapped around his back, her heels digging into his buttocks as she urged him deeper, harder—
Dammit. He struggled to rein in his libido.
‘Take a seat,’ she said, with almost palpable reluctance.
Zafir took the opportunity to disguise his uncontrollable response, not welcoming it one bit. He put it down to his recent sexual drought.
She sat on a threadbare couch on the other side of a coffee table. Zafir took a sip of coffee, noting with some level of satisfaction that she hadn’t forgotten how he liked it. Strong and black. But then he frowned, noticing something. ‘Your hair is different.’
She touched a hand to the unruly knot on her head self-consciously. ‘This is my natural colour.’
Zafir felt something inside him go cold when he observed that her ‘natural colour’ was a slightly darker brown, with enticing glints of copper. Wasn’t this just more evidence of her duplicitous nature? Her hair had used to be a tawny golden colour, adding to her all-American, girl-next-door appeal, but in reality she’d made a mockery of that image.
He put down his cup. ‘So, Kat, what happened? Why did you disappear off the international modelling scene and who is Kaycee Smith?’
ALL KAT HEARD WAS, ‘Why did you disappear off the international modelling scene?’ For a moment she couldn’t breathe. The thought of letting exactly what had happened tumble out of her mouth and watching Zafir’s reaction terrified her.
She’d come a long way in eighteen months, but some things she wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for...namely revealing to him the full reality of why she was no longer a model, or who she was now. The graceful long-legged stride she’d become famous for on catwalks all over the world was a distant memory now, never to be resurrected.
She breathed in shakily. Answer his questions and then he’ll be gone. She couldn’t imagine him wanting to hang around in these insalubrious surroundings for too long.
‘What happened?’ she said, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘You know what happened, Zafir—after all you’re the one who broke it to me that I’d been dropped from nearly every contract and that the fashion houses couldn’t distance themselves fast enough from the girl who had fallen from grace.’
Kat had been blissfully unaware of the storm headed her way. She’d been packing for her new life with her fiancé—filled with trepidation, yes, but also hope that she would make him proud of her... What a naive fool she’d been.
Zafir’s face darkened. ‘There were naked pictures of you when you were seventeen years old, Kat. They spoke pretty eloquently for themselves. Not to mention the not inconsequential fact of the huge personal debt you’d been hiding from me. And the real story of your upbringing—enabling a drug-addicted mother to find her next fix.’
Kat’s hands tightened on her cup as she remembered the vicious headline Zafir had thrust under her nose. It had labelled her ‘a white trash gold-digger.’ A man like Zafir—privileged and richer than Croesus—could never have begun to understand the challenges she’d faced growing up.
Kat felt a surge of white-hot anger but also—far more betrayingly—she felt hurt all over again. The fact that he still had this ability to affect her almost killed her. Feeling too agitated to stay sitting, she put down her cup and stood up, moving to stand behind the couch, as if that could offer some scant protection.
Zafir was sitting forward, hands locked loosely between his legs. He looked perfectly at ease, but Kat wasn’t fooled by his stance. He was never more dangerous than when he gave off an air of nonchalance.
‘Look,’ she said, as calmly as she could, ‘if you’ve just come here to re-enact our last meeting, then I can’t see how that will serve any purpose. I really don’t need to be reminded of how once my so-called perfect image