she found herself face to face with a familiar title in the fairy tale series.
She took it down, flipping through it, smiling at the remembered pictures, including the Prince, no longer a frog but respectably buttoned up to the neck in a fancy uniform as he stood beside the astonished princess.
On an impulse she picked it up, found another with every kind of nautical knot for Freddy, before realising that time was running out and hurrying back to the quayside car park. Zahir and Jeff were already there.
‘I’m sorry …’ she began as Jeff shook hands with Zahir, raised a hand to her and returned to his office.
‘No problem. We’ve only just got here. Did you find anything exciting?’ Then, seeing the name on the paper carrier she was holding, ‘Books?’
She’d been going to give The Princess and the Frog to him, just to make him laugh. Quite suddenly, it didn’t seem such a bright idea. ‘They’re children’s books,’ she said.
‘Oh? Whose children?’
Tell him …
Tell him and see that look? The speculative You’ve-got-a-kid? look. The one that says, Whoa! Easy …
While she stood there, frozen, he took the carrier from her, opened it and took out the thriller and held it up. ‘This is what you give children to read?’
She snatched it from him. ‘That’s for my dad.’
He took another look in the bag and this time came up with the book of knots that she’d bought for Freddy. ‘He’s a sailor?’
‘He was a taxi-driver. He had a stroke.’
That set him back. ‘I’m sorry, Diana.’
‘He’s not an invalid.’
‘But he can’t drive?’
‘No.’
He gave her a long measuring look, then took out the last book. And that made him smile. ‘Oh, I get it. You wanted to check your version against the original.’
She shook her head. ‘I was close enough, but when I saw it I thought of Ameerah,’ she said, fingers crossed. ‘Maybe she’d like it to go with her snow globe?’
‘I’m sure she’d love it.’
‘Good.’ She reclaimed the bag, put the books away. ‘I’ll wrap it for her,’ she said, tucking it beneath her seat. ‘You can give it to her on Saturday.’
‘Why don’t you give it to her yourself?’
‘She doesn’t know me,’ she said abruptly.
‘You can remedy that while we chug down the Regent’s Canal.’
She wondered if he’d be as eager for her company if she suggested she bring her five-year-old son along for the ride. The one whose father had been a villain.
‘I don’t think so. Are you ready to go?’
He nodded but, as she backed out of the car to open the rear door for him, she discovered that he’d walked around and opened the front passenger door.
‘If I sit in the back, Jeff, who’s watching us from his office window right now, might just get the impression that you’re no more than my chauffeur,’ he said in response to her obvious confusion. ‘You wouldn’t want that, would you?’
‘I don’t actually give a damn what he thinks,’ she replied. Definitely not a response out of the perfect chauffeur’s handbook, but then he wasn’t the perfect client. ‘But you’re the boss. If you want to sit in front, then sit in front.’
‘Thank you for that. I was beginning to wonder for a moment. About being the boss.’
‘Making me responsible for contract negotiation must have gone to my head,’ she replied, before replacing her sunglasses and sliding in beside him. Bumping shoulders as he leaned towards her as he pulled down the seat belt, so that she jumped. Smiling at her as he slid it home with a click.
He was much too close. It was more than the physical effect of his wide shoulders, overflowing the seat beside her. His presence was invading her space, along with some subtle male scent that made him impossible to ignore and, despite her determinedly spirited, in-your-face response, her hand was shaking as she attempted to programme the SatNav with their next destination.
Five years and she hadn’t once been tempted. Had never taken a second look at a man, no matter how gorgeous. Particularly if they were gorgeous.
Pete O’Hanlon had head-turning good looks. His only ‘good’ characteristic, but when you were eighteen and deep in lust you didn’t see that.
Since then, she’d never felt even a twinge of that lose-your-head, forget lose-your-heart—desire that she’d read about. Had heard her girlfriends talk about. Hadn’t understood it.
Not that she was taking any credit for that. Her life was complicated enough without making things even more difficult for herself. Motherhood, guilt had drained every scrap of emotion she’d had to spare. Add a full-time job and who had time?
And then … wham. Out of the blue there it was. The pumping heart, the racing pulse, something darker, more urgent, that was totally different, indescribably new, that she didn’t even want to think about.
Making a pretence of double checking the address, she said, ‘Do I get an explanation for what happened back there? The real reason you took me into your meeting with Jeff?’
He shook his head. ‘It was—nothing.’
‘Pretending that I was what? Your tame number-cruncher querying his figures? That was nothing?’
‘Jeff was always going to agree to those changes—they were fair, believe me—but, since you were there I realised I could cut short the haggling.’
‘Really?’ The question was rhetorical. Ironic.
‘Really. What man could resist flattering a pretty woman?’
‘Remind me never to do business with you.’
‘You wouldn’t have any reason to regret it, Diana.’
Was that a proposition?
She glanced at him and then just as quickly turned away as the tremor affecting her hand raced through the rest of her body so that she had to grip the steering wheel. It sounded horribly like one.
‘I’ve got nothing to offer you,’ she managed, ‘other than entertainment value and, just once, a short cut to a signature on the dotted line.’
‘Diana—’
‘I hope you both had a jolly good laugh when I snorted a mouthful of water down my nose.’
‘It was an interesting reaction to my invitation to visit Nadira.’
Without meaning to, she looked at him. He was not laughing. Far from it.
‘That was an invitation?’ she asked disparagingly, as she tore her gaze away from him.
‘You want a gold-edged card? Sheikh Zahir al-Khatib requests the pleasure …’
‘I want absolutely nothing,’ she said, furious with him. Furious with herself for letting him see that she cared. ‘I just want to do the job I’m paid for.’
‘It’s no big deal, Diana,’ he said carelessly. ‘There’ll be spare room on the media junket.’
‘Oh, right. Now I’m tempted.’
How dared he! How damn well dared he invite her to his fancy resort for a week of sex in the sand—including her as a tax write-off along with the freebie-demanding journalists—and say it was ‘no big deal’! That she would have no reason to regret it.
Too