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Shaking his mind free of the disturbingly vivid memory, Kaden narrowed his eyes on Julia. Her voice was husky; it had caught him from the first moment they’d met. She’d been wearing a T-shirt and dusty figure-hugging jeans. Her long hair had fallen in bright tendrils over her shoulders. A safari-style hat had shaded her face from the sun. Her figure had been lithe and so effortlessly sensual he’d lost the power of speech.
If anything she was more beautiful than that first day he’d seen her. Time had hollowed out her cheeks, adding an angularity that hadn’t been there before. She’d only been nineteen. Her face had still held a slight hint of puppy-plumpness. As had her body. From what he could see now, she looked slimmer, with a hint of enticing cleavage just visible in the V of her dress. In fact there was a fragility about her that hadn’t been there before.
She was a million miles from that first tantalising dusty image he held in his mind’s eye; she was elegance personified now, with her long blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail. The heavy side parting swept it across her forehead and down behind one ear. Her groomed appearance was doing little, though, to stop the torrent of carnal images flooding Kaden’s mind—and in such lurid detail that his body started to harden in response.
He would have anticipated that she’d have no effect on him. Much like any ex-lover. But the opposite was true. This was inconceivable. He had to concede now, with extreme reluctance, that no woman since this woman had exerted such a sensual hold over him. He’d never again lost control as he had with her—every time.
And he’d never felt the same acrid punch of jealousy to his gut as when he’d seen her in another man’s arms, with another man’s mouth on hers, tasting her … feeling her soft curves pressed against him. The vividness of that emotion was dizzying in its freshness, and he fought to negate it, too stunned by its resurgence to look too closely into what it meant.
This woman had been a valuable lesson in never allowing his base nature to rule his head or his heart again. Yet the years of wielding that control felt very flimsy how he was faced with her again.
More than a little bewildered at this onslaught of memories, and irrationally angry that she was here to precipitate them, Kaden felt his whole body radiate displeasure. Just then a rumble of laughter trickled through the gathered crowd in reaction to something she’d said. Kaden’s mouth tightened even more, and with that tension making his movements jerky he said something about getting some air and stalked towards the open patio doors.
As soon as Julia’s speech was over he was going to get out of there and forget that he’d ever seen her again.
Julia stepped down off the dais. She’d faltered during her speech for long seconds when she’d noticed Kaden head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, at the back of the room like a forbidding presence, those dark eyes boring through her. And then with an abrupt move he’d moved outside. Almost as if disgusted by something she’d said. It had taken all her powers of concentration to keep going, and she’d used up all her reserves.
To her abject relief she saw her boss at the fundraising foundation come towards her. He put a hand to her elbow and for once she wasn’t concerned about keeping distance between them. Ever since her divorce had come through a year ago Nigel had been making his interest clear, despite Julia’s clear lack of encouragement. Tonight, though, she needed all the support she could get. If she could just get through the rest of the relentless schmoozing and get out of there perhaps she could pretend she’d never seen Kaden.
Nigel was babbling excitedly about something as he steered her away, but she couldn’t even hear him above the din of chatter and the clink of glasses. People were making the most of the gratis champagne reception. Julia craved that sweet oblivion, but it was not to be.
With dread trickling into her veins and her belly hollowing out, she could already see where they were headed—towards someone at the back of the room, near the terrace. Someone with his back to them: tall, broad and powerful. Thick ebony-black hair curled a touch too much over the collar of his jacket, exactly the way it had when she’d first met him.
Like a recalcitrant child she tried to dig her heels into the ground, but Nigel was blithely unaware, whispering confidentially, “He’s an emir, so I’m not sure how you have to address him. Maybe call him Your Highness just in case. It would be such a coup to interest him in the foundation.”
In that split second Julia had a flashback to when she’d met Kaden for the first time. She’d only been working on the dig for a couple of weeks, had still been getting used to the intense heat, when a pai
r of shoes had come into her line of vision. She’d barely looked up.
“Don’t step there. Whoever you are. You’re about to walk on top of a fossil that’s probably in the region of three thousand years old.”
The shoe had hovered in mid-air and come back down again in a safer spot, and a deep, lightly accented voice had drawled seductively, “Do you always greet people with such enthusiasm?”
Julia gritted her teeth. Since she’d arrived she’d been the object of intense male interest and speculation. She was under no illusions that it was most likely because she was blonde and the only female under fifty on the dig. “If you don’t mind, I’m in the middle of something here.”
The shoes didn’t move and the voice came again, sounding much more arrogant and censorious. “I do mind, actually—I am the Crown Prince and you will acknowledge me when I speak to you.”
She’d completely forgotten that the Emir was due to visit with some important guests that day—and his son. Dismay filling Julia, she put down her brush and finally looked up, and up, and up again, to see a tall, broad figure standing over her. The sun was in her eyes so all she could make out was his shape—which was formidable.
Taking off her gloves, she slowly stood, and came face to face with the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life. Robes highlighted his awe-inspiring height and broad shoulders. He wore a turban, but that couldn’t hide the jet-black hair curling down to his collar, or the square cut of his jaw. The most mesmerising dark eyes.
Feeling more than a little overwhelmed she took off her hat and held out her hand …
“And this is Dr Somerton, who you just heard. As our funds manager she’s been instrumental in making sure that funding reaches our digs all over the world.”
Past merged into present and Julia found that she was holding out her hand in an automatic response to the introduction. She was now facing Kaden, and much as she’d have loved to avert her gaze he took up a lot of space, completely arresting in a dark suit with a snowy-white shirt open at the neck, making him stand out from the men in the crowd who were more formally dressed. He looked darker, and infinitely more dangerous than any other man there.
There was no such thing as sliding towards middle age with a receding hairline and expanding gut for him. He oozed virility, vitality, and a heady, earthy sexual magnetism far more powerful than she remembered. There was not a hint of softness about him, or his face. He was all lean angles. The blade of his slightly crooked nose highlighted a sense of danger and a man in his vigorous prime. She remembered the day he’d got that injury, while playing his country’s brutal national game.
Her heart squeezed as she recalled that moment and saw the new harshness stamping the lines of his face. She wondered how long it had been there. Her eyes slid down helplessly … his mouth hadn’t changed. It was as sensual as she remembered, with its full lower lip and the slightly thinner, albeit beautifully shaped upper lip. She’d used to love tracing that line with her finger. Heat flared in her belly. And with her tongue. It was a mouth which held within it the power to inspire a need in the most cynical of women to make this man hers.
The strength of that need washed through Julia, and dismay gripped her. She couldn’t still want this man—not after all these years. Her hand hovered in mid-air as the moment stretched out between them. He was looking at her as intently as she was looking at him, but it was no consolation. There was no polite spark of recognition, only an extreme air of tension. He knew her, but clearly did not relish meeting her again.
Julia realised that just as his big hand enveloped her much smaller one, and a million and one sensations exploded throughout her body.
Far too innately civilised to be deliberately rude and ignore Julia’s hand, as he perversely longed to do, Kaden reached out to take it. He instinctively gritted his jaw against the inevitable physical contact but it was no good. At the first touch of his fingers to that small, soft hand he wanted to slide his thumb with sensual intent along the gap between her thumb and forefinger in a lover’s caress. He wanted to curl his fingers around her palm and feel every delicate bone.
He wanted to relearn this woman in an erotic way that was so forceful it set off a maelstrom of biblical proportions inside him. And somewhere in his head he wondered when had just shaking a woman’s hand ever precipitated such an onslaught of need.
