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‘So why didn’t you fancy her?’ she questioned, like someone determined to rub salt into an already raw wound. As if by hurting herself, it meant nobody else would be able to. ‘If she’s so beautiful?”
Xan stared at his lobster which had already congealed on his plate. There was no need to explain that somehow, Tamsyn Wilson made every other woman look almost tame in comparison. That he hadn’t been able to shift the stubborn memory of how her skin had tasted or how it had felt to have her legs wrapped around his thrusting hips. Why flatter her with the knowledge that she was the fire which made every other woman seem like a mere flicker? He swallowed. That kind of information was irrelevant.
‘Chemistry is intangible,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s not like a shopping list you just tick off as you go along.’
For the first time during the entire conversation, she smiled. ‘You do a lot of shopping do you Xan?’ she questioned. ‘Somehow I can’t really imagine you pushing a trolley round the supermarket,. I’ve certainly never see anyone like you when I’m stacking the shelves.’
Xan was unable to stop the brief curving of his lips in response. ‘I buy cars and planes and works of art. The purchase of food I leave to my housekeeper. But you’re trying to change the subject, Tamsyn. Is that because you find my suggestion unpalatable?’ he said softly.
Tamsyn shrugged. She wasn’t sure how she felt. About anything. Something told her to walk away while she still could, but she couldn’t deny that the delicious food had lulled her into a state of sluggishness. And wasn’t Xan’s powerful presence only adding to her languor? Wasn’t she stupidly reluctant to turn her back and never see him again? ‘It’s a crazy idea,’ she said weakly.
He leaned forward as if sensing a window of opportunity and suddenly she could see why he was such a successful businessman.
‘Imagine no longer having to work unless you wanted to. You could go back to school—you are an intelligent woman,’ he said, his Greek accent dipping into a sultry caress. ‘Imagine being able to live somewhere which isn’t a...
Tamsyn’s shoulders stiffened as tactfully, his words faded away. ‘Isn’t a what?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
Somehow his careful diplomacy was more insulting than if he’d come right out and told her she lived in a slum. ‘Of course it does! It matters to me. How the hell do you know where I live anyway?’
He gave her an odd kind of look. ‘I had you checked out, of course.’
‘You had me checked out,’ she repeated slowly. ‘By who?’
‘There are people on my payroll who can find out almost anything. How else do you think I knew where you worked, Tamsyn?’
‘I just assumed... I thought you might have asked the Sheikh.’
‘No.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Kulal and Hannah know nothing about this.’
It was the mention of her sister’s name which startled Tamsyn out of her lazy stupor. She had been about to tell Xan exactly what he could do with his offer—without letting him know how much he’d managed to hurt her. She would have told him that she mightn’t have a job right now, but she would find one soon enough. She always did. Because one of the advantages of casual labour meant there were always vacancies for women like her. Women who had slipped through the net at school and at home. Who’d never had the comfort of regular meals or someone gently nagging at them to do their homework. She would get by because although she might not have any formal qualifications to her name, she was a graduate from the School of Survival. You didn’t sleep in a room with winter frost inside the windows listening to sounds of arguments bouncing off the thin walls next door, without developing a tough exterior.
But what about Hannah? Her sister was in an entirely different situation. She might now be the wife of the world’s richest men but that didn’t necessarily mean she was safe. When she’d been in Zahristan for the wedding, Tamsyn had sensed all was not well in the new marriage. How could it be—when it had taken place between a powerful sheikh and someone as humble as Hannah? They had married because Hannah had been pregnant with the Sheikh’s baby—but what if Kulal had only married her sister to get some kind of legal hold over his offspring? The Sheikh had all the power now that he had married her, didn’t he? While Hannah had none. Not really. She might be the new Queen of a powerful desert region but she couldn’t even speak the language of her adopted home.
Tamsyn folded up her napkin and placed it neatly on the table beside her empty plate. What if she agreed to Xan’s crazy proposal, but on her terms? What if she demanded a whole load of money—more even than he’d probably contemplated giving her? Enough to bail out her sister, should the need ever arise. Wouldn’t it be beyond fabulous to have enough cash to buy Hannah and her baby airline tickets out of Zahristan, if marriage to Kulal should prove intolerable? To give her a wad of that same cash to purchase a bolthole somewhere? Wouldn’t it mean something to be able to do that—especially after everything her sister had done for her when they’d been growing up? To redress the balance a little. Even though...
Tamsyn swallowed down the suddenly acrid taste in her mouth.
Even though Hannah had been the reason Tamsyn had never met her father and it had taken her a long time to forgive her for that...
She looked up to find Xan watching her closely, the way she imagined a policeman might scrutinise a suspect from behind a piece of two-way glass. Well, he certainly wouldn’t be able to read very much from her expression! Hadn’t she spent all her formative years hiding her emotions behind the blasé mask she presented to the world?
‘How long would this marriage last?’
‘Not long. Three months should suffice. Any less than that and it will look like a stunt.’
She nodded. ‘And how much money are you prepared to offer me?’
She saw him flinch—but that didn’t surprise her either. Rich people never wanted to talk about money. They thought it was vulgar. Beneath them. Had Xan forgotten was it like to be poor, she wondered? Was that something else he’d blocked from his mind—like an agreement made by a teenage boy to marry a woman so his father could claw back an important piece of land?
‘How much did you have in mind?’ he questioned.
Her birth father had taught her everything she needed to know about desertion and rejection while her foster father’s life lessons had been abo
ut infidelity and gambling. No wonder she distrusted men so much. But some of those lessons had been useful. She’d overheard enough bluster around card games to realise that you had to start high and be prepared to be knocked down whenever you were bargaining for something. So she mentioned an outrageous sum of money, prepared for yet slightly shamed by the brief look of contempt which hardened Xan’s cobalt eyes. But it was gone almost immediately, because he nodded his head.
‘Okay,’ he said.
