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‘Why, because you met him? You spent a few hours in his home? Because Bonnaire’s would do business with him?’
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, even as his words were beginning to settle into a place that clicked with something already there in her mind.
‘Sia, if you are so good at spotting fakes, look at me and tell me whether I’m lying.’
She didn’t want to raise her eyes and meet his. Because she knew what she would find. And suddenly she was angry. Angry at Sebastian. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have known about theft, forgery, nepotism, trapped family members, forced marriages and possible backroom deals at the company that employed her.
‘You should go to bed. You’ve had a long day and will have another long day tomorrow.’
‘Why?’ she said, suddenly feeling the late hour of the evening against her skin.
‘Because tomorrow we’re going to the Caribbean.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to come. But I’m keeping to my offer, for you to be my shadow for fourteen days. And my business doesn’t stop for you, Ms Keating.’
‘But I thought your business was doing as little as possible.’
‘It is. I just like to be surrounded by exquisite beauty while doing it.’
How could he turn her feelings around with a carefully constructed and perfectly delivered line? Because whether she was the exquisite beauty he’d easily mentioned or the Caribbean, Sia couldn’t say—not to mention her frustration at effectively being sent to bed. But she was beginning to see the pattern with Sebastian. He gave both truths and lies in equal measure so that she never knew where she stood with him.
Sebastian stayed outside for at least an hour after Sia departed. She might have been mad at him—it wasn’t that hard to tell with her—but he’d had to send her away. He’d seen how the dawning realisation of what she’d got herself into had begun to chip away at her defences and he couldn’t watch them crumble. She was going to need her armour—every inch of it—for what was coming. Because he simply could not afford to hold back.
CHAPTER FIVE
INTERVIEWER ONE: So let me get this straight. The reason you didn’t answer our calls was because you got on a plane with the man you believed to have stolen a painting from Bonnaire’s and flew to the Caribbean?
MS KEATING: I believe he stole the painting from Sheikh Abrani—but yes.
INTERVIEWER TWO: Wouldn’t you have?
INTERVIEWER ONE: [sotto] That’s not the point.
MS KEATING: I thought it possible that the painting might be there.
INTERVIEWER TWO: And was it?
WIND BUFFETED SIA’S hair, whipped at her thin long-sleeved T-shirt and almost managed to push her back an inch from where she stood beside the folded down steps to a private jet. But she braced herself against the wind, just as she ground her teeth together to prevent herself from slapping the smirk from Sebastian’s handsome face.
The reason for the smirk was presently resting by his feet. The wooden crate, approximately twenty by twenty-four inches, also happened to be the exact measurements of the Durrántez painting Woman in Love.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to see inside of it?’ he taunted.
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
But she did. She really did. And he knew it. She couldn’t work out whether he would be either that reckless or that arrogant to wave the real painting in front of her. But she would lose if she did look and lose if she didn’t. At least by not doing so she could cling to the belief that it made her seem as if she didn’t care.
Despite the traces of aviation fuel on the wind, there was something startlingly fresh about being in the middle of this flat, sparse private airfield outside of London. And Sia had to acknowledge that she felt much more awake and refreshed than she would have thought.
She’d imagined that in spending the night in Sebastian Rohan de Luen’s townhouse she would have tossed and turned into the early hours, her mind whirling. But the moment her head had hit the pillow she’d fallen into a deep dreamless sleep. Before being woken up by Sebastian’s servant. Or house man? She still didn’t know what to call him.
All of which had meant that she hadn’t spent the night wondering whether she should or shouldn’t be going to the Caribbean with a suspected art thief, a confirmed international playboy. She’d been in too much of a daze to do anything other than agree when he’d first told her. And this morning?
If she said no she’d return to her flat in Archway, with no job for a month—and in all probability no pay either—and she’d be no closer to proving that she hadn’t made a mistake. No. The only way she could ensure her professional reputation remained intact was to find the painting, and the only way she could do that was to follow him wherever he went.
