by Penny Jordan
She’d been prepared to marry him, buoyed up by his proposal, only to discover too late that for him it had never been a romantic proposal. It had been purely because he’d deemed her ‘perfect’. Her humiliation was still vivid.
She stalked past him now and got into the car, burningly aware of his gaze on her and wondering what on earth he must make of her—a shadow of her former self. The fact that she didn’t seem to be repelling him irritated her intensely.
Zafir shut the door once her legs were in the car and came round and got in the other side, immediately dwarfing the expansive confines of the luxurious car. For a moment Kat felt herself sinking back into the seat, relishing the decadent luxury, but as soon as she realised what she was doing she stiffened against it. This wasn’t her life any more. Never would be again.
‘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?’
Copyright © 2017 by Abby Green
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A DIAMOND FOR THE SHEIKH’S MISTRESS
by Abby Green,
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ISBN-13: 978-1-488-09151-3
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE
First published in 1993
This edition published in 2017
Copyright © 1993 by Penny Jordan.
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