Undressed by the Boss (Mills & Boon By Request)

by Marsh, Susan

  ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘To walking around in the nude? To swimming in the nude? To believing this is our private paradise? Yes, it does.’ She moved away from him as icy dread trickled down her spine. ‘You misled me,’ she said, swinging around. ‘I feel like I’ve been had. Is this how it’s going to be?’ She made a gesture and then stopped, the words freezing on her lips. There was no ‘going to be’, because there was no future for them. When was she ever going to get that into her head?

  Raffa walked over to her. ‘We were alone,’ he said quietly. ‘We were alone right up to dawn this morning, when the camel train came in with the supplies I’d asked for from the camp we visited. I wanted to do something special for you—something you would never forget.’

  She’d never forget how she felt now, Casey realised. Raffa couldn’t see that he didn’t need to do anything for her, that he only had to be. And this was the second time she had misjudged him so badly.

  Confused and full of emotion, she passed a hand across her eyes as if to wipe the debacle from her memory. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Casey?’

  ‘I’m sorry that I spoiled everything; that I always spoil everything.’

  ‘You don’t. You only feel so bad because you’re mentally exhausted from wrestling with your conscience and still throbbing from our lovemaking—something life-changing for you.’

  And not for him?

  ‘Don’t,’ she said quietly when Raffa rested his hand on her arm.

  To discover she was just another notch on his bedpost would finish her. But perhaps she had needed this to bring her up short and make her face the truth. She had no alternative now but to be the one to finish this; she was in far enough. She was in love, deeply and for ever … and utterly pointlessly. Nothing Raffa could say or do would ever change that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SHE clung to business like a drowning man to a lifeline. She didn’t need Raffa’s encouragement to get dressed and meet the team of people who had remained so discreetly out of the way once they had proved it was possible to bring the five-star service of Raffa’s hotels into the desert.

  The part of her mind that wasn’t mourning the loss of something that had never really existed had to be laid gently to one side as she turned her thoughts to business. She was soon fully involved in discussions with Raffa and the team, suggesting that more guides should be brought in to decide what would and would not be possible for enthusiastic amateurs to do in the desert. Like Raffa, she was determined not to make a sideshow of the desert people, but if some of them could be persuaded to become involved, at least on a part-time basis, they both felt their vision stood a good chance of becoming reality.

  ‘Some of these men are already unofficial game wardens,’ Raffa explained as they walked back to pick up their personal belongings from their temporary campsite.

  ‘Do you think they might be prepared to extend their duties?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said, all the time watching her thoughtfully. ‘If you draw up a plan I’ll make sure it’s discussed.’

  ‘I can’t ask for more than that,’ she said, though she couldn’t hold his gaze when Raffa looked at her this time.

  ‘We make a good team, Casey.’

  As he helped her step over some rocks she willed herself to feel nothing as his strength kept her safe. It was a relief when he turned the conversation to Casey’s idea for a safari camp within an hour of the city, where resident staff and a really good chef could be employed on a permanent basis.

  ‘I like your idea,’ he admitted when they reached the sheltered ledge where so much had happened.

  ‘So does this mean I get the job?’ She tried not to look at the rumpled mound of rugs on which they’d slept and made love as she spoke.

  ‘Of course you’ve got the job. Do you think I would have brought you to the desert otherwise?’

  Emotion welled inside her, threatening to spill out. Looking away, she bit down on her lip fiercely, as a reminder that this was all she had ever wanted. ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly, when her thoughts betrayed her. ‘I hope I’ve proved I have skills as well as vision, and …’ here she hesitated ‘ … and staying power.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Casey?’

  ‘Wrong?’ The same problem she’d always had: she was a dreamer, and this had always been a business project with an interlude on the side, and now it was time to wake up. ‘Nothing’s wrong … I’ve just been worried about not making the grade, that’s all—this has come as a relief.’

  ‘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 fr
om 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 such a little thing.’

  ‘Not for the children …’

  She mulled this over before speaking, and when she raised her head to express her thoughts he thought her the loveliest and most precious creature on earth. It struck him like a knife in his heart when he saw the tears in her eyes. If he should lose her—

  ‘I just thought we’d forgotten the small things that matter.’ Mashing her lips together with embarrassment, she made a small, self-deprecating sound accompanied by an even smaller gesture. ‘The little things that make life …’

  ‘Fun?’ he supplied as Casey’s voice tailed away. Had he forgotten those things too?

  She swallowed as their gazes held. ‘There should be fun …’

  She made it sound like a question and he could understand why. Beyond lust and business there hadn’t been too much time for fun, and he remembered now with a wistfulness that was new to him their impulsive dance with the children in the desert.

  ‘Yes, there should be fun,’ he assured her. She always put others first, but who made time for Casey?

  The flight Casey was supposed to be taking home to the UK had experienced an unexpected delay. Once it was clear there would be no further flights that day, and he had changed into jeans and a casual top, he persuaded Casey she might as well hitch a lift with him to the Bedouin encampment. He wanted to make sure she had the pleasure of distributing the gifts herself. He wanted her.

  She was so excited. Seated next to him in the cockpit of the helicopter, he could sense her pleasure and impatience to return to the desert. It had completely obliterated her reluctance to have anything more to do with him.

  He couldn’t believe he had almost lost her. He couldn’t believe she had been slipping through his fingers like sand while he had been obsessed by duty. It had taken Casey to prove to him that duty went far beyond the chequebook and must have a heart. She was that heart. In a few, short intense days she had broken through his emotional guard with her innocence and her goodness and integrity. She had shown him that money could never be the answer to a country’s problems.

  He glanced across to find her staring intently through the Plexiglass viewing panel at their feet. Children were already gathering on the ground and waving up at them.

  ‘Be careful, Raffa.’

  Her exclamation came through his headphones as he brought the helicopter down in a slow, controlled descent. ‘Don’t worry—the adults have seen us too.’

  And the women. He’d wired ahead to warn them they were coming, and also to ask a favour.

  Casey forgot all her concerns in the sheer pleasure of being back amongst the people she already felt so close to. She had never felt this much at home, she realised, watching the Bedouin teacher surrounded by her pupils. She had just handed over the art supplies, and now the teacher was deciding with the children on what should be their first project.

  The children looked shyly at Casey as she left the mobile schoolroom in front of Raffa. They had stood up respectfully when he said goodbye, reminding Casey that for all his darkly glittering glamour and sex appeal Raffa was their king. And she was …

  She was going home.

  ‘That was a heavy sigh,’ Raffa commented as he closed the door behind them.

  ‘I’ll miss them,’ Casey admitted. ‘I can’t believe how much.’

  ‘You don’t have to go.’

  ‘I think we both know I do.’ She stared at him for a brief moment, wishing that life could be different sometimes—easier.

  ‘There is no easy answer,’ Raffa agreed, as if reading her mind. ‘And what I’m about to suggest has never been easy for you.’

  She followed his gaze down the dusty path. ‘Oh, no …’ She pulled a face. Raad, Raffa’s stallion, and the smaller dapple grey she had ridden before were tethered in the shade beneath a thatched awning. ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Raffa …’ Her heart turned over. She knew that look of his so well—though she had always seen it before in a very different context. She lifted her chin. ‘Humour now?’ If he was mocking her—

  ‘Humour always.’

  There were no followers, no bodyguards, no people clustered around them. They had walked away from the small group of school buildin
gs and were hidden from sight.

  ‘No, Raffa.’ She turned her face away, but he backed her towards the nearest palm.

  ‘Yes,’ he growled, low and husky, pinning her there.

  ‘No …’

  He teased her with almost-kisses all the way down her neck, around her ear, her cheek, and finally, somehow, her mouth. She must have turned to tell him to stop, Casey reasoned, managing to hold out for around a nano-second before she was lost. Was she supposed to resist something she wanted so badly?

  ‘Do you forgive me?’ Raffa murmured, continuing to tease her.

  ‘Do I forgive you for making me want you so badly? No.’

  ‘Will you stay in A’Qaban?’

  ‘Blackmail?’ she suggested when he stopped kissing her.

  He gave her a look, but didn’t deny it.

  ‘Subtlety never was your strong point,’ Casey observed, fighting hard not to look at Raffa’s lips.

  ‘Try this,’ he said. ‘You have to stay.’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘May I finish?’

  Casey signalled her assent, but remained tensely aware of Raffa’s body heat and sexual charisma; all the things she had sworn off for life, she remembered.

  ‘A’Qaban needs you—and my people need you—here, with them—not delivering disembodied instructions from afar. Didn’t you see those children’s faces when you arrived?’

  ‘Oh, that really isn’t fair,’ Casey protested.

  ‘So now I’ve touched you?’ Raffa remarked dryly.

  ‘Only because you play dirty.’

  ‘I play to win.’

  ‘I don’t know how I could stay.’

  ‘You’d move in with me?’ he suggested casually.

  ‘You’re short of a room-mate?’ Casey said cynically.

  ‘No, I’m short of a wife.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘A wIFE?’ Casey looked at Raffa for a moment, and then burst out laughing. At least it had relieved the tension, she reasoned. Raffa always had had a keen sense of humour. ‘Yeah, right,’ she intoned dryly. ‘Queen Casey. Like that’s ever going to happen.’