Proposal At The Winter Ball (Harlequin Romance)

by Jessica Gilmore

  ‘I gave them my own word, too,’ he went on.

  ‘So, now I’m beholden to the Sheikh’s chauffeur as much as the Sheikh himself?’ she tested.

  Coral lips thinned between the neatly trimmed beard and moustache. ‘I am not a chauffeur, Ms Blaise. I’m part of the royal protection detail.’

  Was she supposed to be impressed that his title had the word ‘royal’ in it? Well, snap, buddy, she was celebrity royalty, and it had never done her any particular favours. Quite the opposite, really.

  ‘Which makes me your protection detail for the next month,’ he added blandly.

  Immediately she regretted everything about the past fifteen minutes. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that she’d been dumb enough to be taken in by people she’d thought she could trust—a man she’d wanted to trust—or that it had all happened right before Christmas, a season she struggled with at the best of times. A forty-minute drive was one thing; the thought of spending the next four weeks butting heads with someone over baggage that wasn’t rightfully his did not appeal. She’d come out here to lie low—and to do the right thing by her father—not to stir up the locals.

  But she was more proficient in nurturing chasms than bridging them.

  ‘Gosh, you drew the short straw,’ she joked. ‘Babysitting me for an entire month.’

  She’d meant that to be self-deprecating, but she saw the word ‘babysit’ hit him as surely as the word ‘chauffeur’ had. His jaw clamped that tiny bit harder.

  ‘On the contrary,’ he gritted. ‘I drew anything but a short straw. You’ll understand when you see where I get to spend the next four weeks.’

  She might be known for her questionable decision-making now and again but even she knew to back away from the edge, sometimes. And the stiff way that this man held his body told her that this was definitely one of those times. But retreating didn’t mean she had to scramble, so she took her time setting off as he headed for the airport’s exit and she swanned after him with as much grace as she could muster, even as the glass doors slid wide and the warm desert air slapped her full in the face.

  * * *

  Outside the window of Al Saqr’s luxury SUV the region’s capital, Kafr Falaj, whizzed past in all its expensive glory—a spectacular city that had sprung up out of the sand in just a couple of decades. A testament to man’s supremacy over nature.

  Except that Sera preferred nature’s supremacy to mankind’s any day.

  The travel website had told her it translated as ‘village of channels’, grown on the strength of the massive network of ancient irrigation conduits that rivalled the Roman aqueducts and that still funnelled water from underground aquifers and mountain foothills to the desert village’s thriving agriculture. A village that had quickly grown into a city. Thankfully, this was as close as she needed to get to Kafr Falaj and its over-abundance of foreigners—living there, working there, visiting there. Where they were headed, the handful of foreigners would be vastly spread out.

  Studying the city had killed some time, then the emerging desert, and, in between, she’d studied him while he’d concentrated on the fast desert highway. The neat cut of his dark hair, the crisp edges of his suit collar, the clip of his dark beard so close it had to be a professional job, the curious scar cutting down into his left eyebrow. He hadn’t spoken since bundling her into the back seat of the massive SUV. She’d squeezed herself through the gap and into the front passenger seat before he’d even come around to his own door.

  She hated the whole Miss Daisy thing. She never rode in the back if she didn’t have to.

  ‘So, we’re going to spend four weeks in each other’s company,’ Sera said, simply to crack the long silence as they drove out of the city. ‘What should I call you?’

  ‘What did you call your last protection?’ he finally grunted.

  ‘Russell it is, then,’ she said, smiling. ‘What are the odds?’

  Dark sunglasses turned her way, just slightly. ‘You can call me Brad, Ms Blaise.’

  ‘You know that Blaise is a stage name, right? First and last name all in one. Like Madonna. Or Bono. Apparently that was a thing in the eighties.’

  ‘I assumed.’

  But maybe he remembered the vast quantities of money that she was spending on this trip, because he spoke again and this time it was longer than three syllables. ‘Would you prefer a different surname?’

  ‘I’d prefer no surname at all, actually.’ Ha! Like father like daughter.

  ‘Okay. Seraphina.’

  ‘God no! That’s as much of a show name as Blaise. Pretty sure Dad’s publicist picked it.’ Forgetting that a little girl needed to live with it.

  His lips pressed more tightly together within the architectural facial hair. ‘What do you call yourself?’

  ‘Sera.’

  ‘Fine. How about we set some ground rules, Sera?’

  She’d had a gutful of alpha-male types. They could tie her in knots way too easily. ‘You know...you sure are shovey about how things need to be.’

  ‘Establishing parameters is necessary. I have a job to do.’

  She opened the console fridge between them in the back seat and cracked the lid on one of several frosty bottles of water she found there. ‘I’m not sure how parameters are going to go with me. Didn’t you read my file? There must have been a note.’

  From her father. Or Russell. Or the security detail before him. Her tutor before that. Any of her nannies. How far back did he want to go?

  ‘There were quite a number of notes, in fact.’

  And he struck her as a man who would have read them all. ‘I do like to think of myself as noteworthy.’

  Again, no reaction to speak of. Just that steady, impermeable, infuriating, Polaroid regard pointed firmly at the road ahead.

  ‘How about I set the first parameter, Brad?’ she went on.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What say whenever any one of us has something to say to the other we remove our sunglasses and make actual eye contact? Like polite people.’ She sweetened it with a smile.

  Oh, well...start as you mean to continue.

  The silence grew weighted—blue whale kind of weighted—but then Brad lowered his head just slightly, removed his glasses and folded them carefully into his breast pocket with the hand not steering, then turned back to meet her eyes square on. But his weren’t contrite, and the act didn’t weaken him. His regard burned into her as if he were scanning her DNA and, for just a moment, she wished she’d kept her big mouth shut.

  Pale grey eyes—combined with his dark colouring they were stunning.

  Yep, you’re going to need to leave those glasses on...

  ‘You do realise you’re textbook, I suppose?’ he said as he returned his focus to the traffic around them and she was able to breathe a little easier.

  ‘Textbook what?’

  ‘New client. Trying to control things.’

  She glanced out at the eight lanes of pristine highway cutting south through the open desert on the outskirts of the city and thought about making light of it. But then something about the unfairness of his judgement pushed a few of her natural justice buttons.

  ‘Listen, Brad, I’ve lived my whole life in the care of professional people. A couple of jerks, most of them nice. Some of them completely lovely. But all of them were paid to be there, too. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little eye contact when we speak. Just so I know you’re real.’

  He focused his grey gaze on the highway ahead—thinking, driving—until finally he came to some kind of conclusion. He swung his regard her way again, and a little puff of heat formed at her collar.

  ‘Parameter one,’ he agreed on a single nod before turning back to the road. ‘Courtesy in all its forms.’

  Meaning...?

  But
, before she could finish the thought, he barrelled onwards while he changed lanes to tuck their black SUV in behind a huge silver one.

  ‘Parameter two,’ he continued mildly. ‘I’ll respect your right to independence if you’ll respect my responsibilities as your specialist security detail.’

  And if his responsibilities and her rights failed to align...? ‘Is that your way of asking me to do whatever you say?’

  ‘It’s my way of asking you not to fight me just for the sake of it.’

  Hmm. Maybe he had read her file.

  ‘Fair enough. Parameter three...’ Time to really lay down the law. ‘I’m your responsibility, but not your friend. You get to be annoyed but not disappointed if things don’t go how you’d like them to.’

  Okay, so maybe that baggage wasn’t really his to be encumbered with but it couldn’t hurt to knock it on the head nice and early. The last thing she needed on her big desert time out was anything that reminded her of her father’s not-so-quiet disappointment.

  ‘I’m good with that. Very good, in fact. I’m not here for the conversation.’

  She sat back straighter against the plush leather seat. ‘Any final comments?’

  He considered. ‘Parameter four. If you need help—if you really need it—you come to me. No matter what else has gone down between now and then. I’ll manage whatever it is.’

  There was that word again...

  She’d been managed her whole life.

  ‘You really have a thing for control, don’t you?’ Which was tantamount to waving a red tea towel at the bull of her capricious nature.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m paid to control our environment.’

  Her environment, for the next four weeks.

  ‘Okay...’ Four weeks was a long time, she needed to lighten things up a bit. ‘Courtesy, cooperation, respect and emergency protocol. I think we’ve covered everything. Except maybe a safe word? I vote for “capsicum”.’

  His dark brows folded. ‘Capsicum?’

  ‘You know...in case either of us needs out of this arrangement at any time?’

  If she thought the muscles of his face capable of it, she would have pegged that tiny twist on the right of his mouth as a smile. Probably just gas. Except then he really blew her mind by making a joke.

  Kind of.

  ‘What if you’re ordering at a restaurant and you say it?’ he queried, eyes fixed on the road ahead.

  Her perception of him shifted just a little. In an upward direction.

  ‘I’ll call them peppers.’

  ‘And if you’re planting a garden?’

  She matched his straight face. ‘In the deserts of Umm Khoreem?’

  ‘What if you’re picking out wall colours?’

  She laid her hand on her heart. ‘I pledge to do no interior decorating until this month is up.’

  His eyes returned to hers and—miracle of miracles—they were just a hint warmer than before. More bark of oak and less Thames in winter.

  ‘Okay.’ He nodded. ‘Capsicum it is.’

  Why did it feel good to have had a small win over this man, even in jest? And exactly when had it started feeling a little bit like flirting?

  Copyright © 2015 by Nikki Logan

  ISBN-13: 9781460387368

  Proposal at the Winter Ball

  Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Gilmore

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.

  www.Harlequin.com