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‘I’m Rashad,’ he murmured softly, and he extended his hand with a formality that took her entirely by surprise.
‘Tilda,’ she breathed, just touching his lean brown fingers.
‘May I drive you home?’
‘I get a lift with one of the other girls.’
Unexpectedly, Rashad smiled as if such an explanation was perfectly acceptable to him. ‘Of course. It is very late. Will you give me your phone number?’
That charismatic smile threatened her defences and she battened down the hatches, terrified of what he was making her feel. ‘No, sorry. I don’t date club members.’
The following evening the club manager, Pete, cornered her. ‘I hear you blew away our new royal VIP last night,’ he accused.
‘Royal?’ Tilda parroted, wide-eyed.
‘Prince Rashad, the heir to the throne of Bakhar and a string of oil wells.’ Pete dealt her an angry look. ‘Our two best customers-Leonidas Pallis and Sergio Torrente-brought him in. Those guys are minted, too. They spend thousands here and I don’t want any stupid little girl offending them. Is that clear?’
‘But I haven’t done anything.’
‘Do yourself a favour. Smile sweetly and give the prince your phone number.’
Pete changed the table rota so that, on her next shift, Tilda was serving the VIP table. Now that she knew who Rashad was, she noticed his thickset bodyguards trying unsuccessfully to stay in the background. Uneasily aware of his royal status, she tried very hard to put him out of her mind. But he dominated her every thought and response. It was as if an invisible wire attached her to him, so that she noticed his every tiny move. In comparison with him, his companions were immature. He seemed to be the only one of the group graced with morals or manners. He didn’t drink to excess, he didn’t fool around, he was always courteous. He was also absolutely, totally gorgeous and it did not escape her attention that every girl in the place had her eye on him.
The night she tripped and dropped a tray of drinks, everything changed. While his rowdy mates laughed at the spectacle she made, Rashad sprang to his feet and immediately helped her up from the floor.
‘You are unhurt?’
Her hand trembled in his and she connected with brilliant dark eyes enhanced by luxuriant ebony lashes.
‘When you fell my heart stopped beating,’ he breathed in a raw undertone.
That was the moment she went from being infatuated with his vibrant dark good looks to falling head over heels in love with him, but she still pulled her hand free with muffled thanks and hurriedly walked away. She saw it as being sensible and protecting herself from a broken heart. What future was there in loving a guy who was only a temporary visitor to her country and, even worse, destined to be a king? His two friends approached her later that evening. Making it clear that the shy stolen glances that betrayed her attraction to Rashad had not passed unnoticed, Leonidas and Sergio virtually accused her of being a tease.
‘How much do you want to go out with him?’ Leonidas demanded contemptuously, peeling off notes from the thick wad in his wallet.
‘You’re not rich enough!’ Tilda snapped in disgust.
She went home in tears that night only to find her stepfather, Scott, drunkenly upbraiding her mother with the club manager, Pete’s, complaint that Tilda had an unfriendly attitude towards the customers. The next weekend Pete told her that she had to stand in for one of the cage dancers who had called in sick. She refused. Threatened with the sack and worn down by what felt like everybody’s criticisms, she gave way, reasoning that the bikini-style outfit exposed no more than she would have revealed at the swimming pool. She persuaded herself that nobody really looked at the dancers except as gyrating bodies that added to the club atmosphere.
When Rashad arrived, a birthday cake was brought in for his benefit. Tilda still recalled the instant when he had registered who was dancing in the cage: the shock and consternation, the distaste he had been unable to hide. In the same moment cage dancing had gone from being what Tilda had told herself was essentially harmless to the equivalent of dancing naked and shameless in the street. When Rashad studiously averted his attention from her as though she were putting on an indecent display, she fled from the cage and refused to get back into it again. Chantal later revealed that Tilda had been set up.
‘It’s the prince’s twenty-fifth birthday. Sergio and Leonidas thought it would be a laugh to get you into the cage. They paid Pete to fix it for them.’
Tilda never did tell Rashad that truth. Telling tales about his best friends wouldn’t have got her very far. Instead, she blamed herself for not having had the guts to tell Pete where to get off. Eyes red from tears, she put on her uniform and got on with her usual waitressing. Already promised a full-time summer job at the firm owned by Evan Jerrold, she consoled herself with the prayerful hope that she would not be serving drinks for much longer. Unhappily, however, new employment would mean that she was unlikely to ever see Rashad again.
When she finished her shift, she emerged from the club to find the weather was wet and unseasonably cold, and that the girl who usually gave her a lift had gone off to a party without telling her. Shivering while she was trying to call a cab on her mobile, she tensed when a silver Aston Martin Vanquish pulled up in front of her with a throaty growl. Rashad sprang out and studied her in silence across the bonnet and she knew he wouldn’t ask anything of her because he had asked before and she had said no. He was too proud to ask again. Tears made her eyes smart; she still felt so utterly humiliated that she had let herself be pressed into dancing in the cage.
As Rashad walked round the bonnet and reached out to open the passenger door one of his bodyguards skidded up at speed to do it for him and prevent him from lowering himself to such a mundane task.
‘Thanks,’ she said gruffly and got in. At that moment she was not aware of having made a decision. She just couldn’t muster the mental resistance to walk away from him again. She told herself that if she kept things as light as though it were a holiday romance she wouldn’t get hurt.
‘You’ll have to tell me where you live,’ Rashad murmured as calmly as if she had been getting into his car every night for months.
‘Happy birthday,’ she said in a wobbly voice, as the excessively emotional surge of tears was still threatening her composure.
At the traffic lights he reached for her hand and almost crushed it within the fierce hold of his. ‘In my country we stopped putting people in cages when slavery was outlawed a hundred years ago.’
‘I shouldn’t have agreed to do it.’
