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But the sound of that unfamiliar light-hearted giggle emerging from her own lips had startled Kirsten. Her eyes veiled, and dropped from his in dismay. She was finally recalling the furrows ploughed on her father’s ground at the foot of the hill, and she was dismayed that she had contrived to forget what she had seen.
‘This isn’t your first visit here, though, is it?’ she said tautly. ‘You and your m
otorcycle have already made a mess of the field below the forest!’
Incredulous at the sudden accusation, Shahir surveyed her with narrowed eyes that had the subtle gleam of rapier blades. ‘Now you are talking nonsense. I respect the field boundaries. I am not a teenage vandal.’
Kirsten coloured, but persisted. ‘Well, it seems to me that it’s too much of a coincidence to be anyone else but you who was responsible. Someone has been in that field within the last few days, and there’s been a lot of damage done.’
‘It was not I. You should not make such an allegation without evidence to support it,’ Shahir condemned, with a gravity that was very much at odds with the apparent casualness of his motorbike leathers. ‘I find it offensive.’
His measured intonation made her pale. His dark gaze was uncompromisingly direct, and he spoke with a clear authority that unnerved her. Involuntarily, for she had lowered her scrutiny, she stole a glance at him. Her eyes glittered like jade in the pale oval of her face. ‘I find it offensive that you haven’t even said sorry for giving me the fright of my life.’
The silence lay like a charge of dynamite already lit.
An almost imperceptible touch of colour highlighted his superb cheekbones; Shahir had always cherished the belief that he was innately courteous. ‘Naturally I offer you my apologies for scaring you.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t you who cut up my father’s field,’ Kirsten said doubtfully, ‘I’m sorry I suggested it was.’
Shahir bent down with fluid grace and swept up the magazine lying abandoned on the ground and extended it to her. ‘You were reading?’
‘Yes…thanks.’ Suddenly aware of his keen regard, Kirsten blushed to the roots of her hair and dragged her attention from him, wondering in a panic of embarrassment if he was staring at her only because she had been staring at him.
A sweet, savage hunger gripped Shahir as he studied her downbent head and luscious pink mouth. He let his attention roam to the pouting fullness of her small full breasts. His body hardened with an ardent masculine urgency that shook him.
Kirsten was conscious of the tense atmosphere, and of the inexplicable sense of excitement trying to pull at her senses. She did not understand its source, for it filled her with too much confusion. While one part of her wanted to run away, the rest of her wanted to prolong the meeting. She fumbled frantically for something to say. ‘Is your motorbike going to be all right?’
‘I believe so.’ He had mastered his hunger with fierce self-discipline, and Shahir’s drawl was as cool and discouraging as a shower of rain. He was annoyed by his own brief loss of control. Admittedly, she was very beautiful, but he was used to gorgeous women. Perhaps, he reasoned, there was something especially appealing about such natural loveliness and unmistakable modesty when he was usually accustomed to meeting with boldness.
‘Have you far to go?’ Kirsten muttered, scarcely crediting her own daring. But at that moment all she was aware of was that he was about to walk away and she didn’t want him to.
‘Only to the castle.’ Shahir strode over to the fallen machine and hauled it up out of the flattened grass with strong hands. He could have told her who he was, but he saw no point in embarrassing her when it was unlikely that they would ever meet again. Someone else would soon tell her of the mistake she had made.
He was staying at Strathcraig Castle as a guest? Why hadn’t that occurred to her before? It was, after all, the most obvious explanation for the presence of a well-spoken stranger in the glen. Dismay replaced the daze that she had been wrapped in and her skin chilled. She had offended him, hadn’t she? Would he complain about her? Say she had been rude to him? Accusing him of vandalism had certainly not been the way to demonstrate a hospitable welcome to a visitor. What on earth had come over her? She shouldn’t have said a single critical word to him. After all, if she was sacked she would never find another job locally, and her father would be outraged.
Shahir replaced his helmet and fired the engine of the powerful motorbike, looking back at her only for an instant before he took off back down the track again. With him travelled the image of glorious green eyes pinned to him with anxious intensity. He wondered what sort of a life she had, with the fanatical father his estate manager had mentioned. She looked scared and unhappy.
A split second later, without any warning whatsoever of the trick his cool and rational brain was about to play on him, Shahir was startled to find himself wondering how Kirsten Ross might adapt to being a mistress. His mistress. The instant the idea occurred to him he was exasperated by the vagaries of his own mind; that type of arrangement was certainly not his style. He was a generous lover, who offered commitment for the duration of an affair. But the affairs began and ended without touching his heart or even his temper. Sex was a pleasure to be savoured, but his libido did not control him and he sought nothing more lasting from the women who entertained him in bed.
In short, a mistress would be a radical new departure for him. She would have a semi-permanent role in his life, and would be dependent on him in a way that he had never allowed a woman to be. It was an insane idea for a male who enjoyed his freedom to the extent that he did, Shahir acknowledged with a brooding frown. What was more Kirsten Ross was an employee, and as such strictly out of bounds; Shahir was a man of honour. What the hell was the matter with him? One minute he was thinking of taking a wife, the next a mistress—and all in the space of twenty-four hours!
Having dug a hole in the soft ground below the trees and buried the magazine, Kirsten ran most of the way home, with Squeak gasping at her heels. Unlocking the back door, she sped through it, only to be brought up short by the dismaying sight of the thickset man lodged in stillness at the back of the sparsely furnished kitchen.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to be home this early…is something wrong?’ Kirsten asked, dry-mouthed with fright at the tension in the air.
‘Mabel’s mother took ill and she’s staying the night with her. Where have you been?’ Her father’s harsh-featured face was ruddy with angry colour and his sharp eyes bright with suspicion.
‘I went for a walk…I’m sorry—’
‘If I’d been here you’d not have been idling away your time,’ he growled. ‘What have you been up to?’
Kirsten was rigid. ‘Nothing.’
‘You had better not be, girl,’ he warned her, closing a powerful hand round her thin forearm with bruising force. ‘Now, go and make my dinner. Then we’ll study the Lord’s Book and we will pray for you to be cleansed of the sin of idleness.’
When Angus Ross had stomped out of the kitchen Kirsten rubbed her aching arm with a shaking hand. She was trembling. Her father had never raised a hand to her in anger. She told herself that she had no reason to be so afraid of the older man. It was true that his temper was violent. And in a rage he ranted and raved and stormed up and down in a very frightening manner, but he had never yet become physically abusive with her—or indeed anyone else. So why did she get the feeling that that was in the process of changing?
CHAPTER TWO
