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‘And I am amazed that you would want someone working for you who was not aware of their value,’ Sadie countered. When his eyebrows lifted and she saw the cynicism in his eyes, she added swiftly, ‘The fact that Monika cheated me out of my wages does not lessen the value of my qualifications.’
‘I agree. But it does raise questions about your judgement. Academic qualifications on their own are all very well, but the shrewdest and most successful entrepreneurs will admit that it is the instincts they have honed and come to rely on that create the alchemic effect to turn the base metal of mere scholarship into the pure gold of financial genius. And that, surely, is true of every sphere of achievement?’
‘You are the one who offered me a job, not the other way around,’ Sadie felt bound to remind him.
But instead of responding to the anger in her voice Drax changed the subject, demanding coolly, ‘Monika’s accusations against you interest me. What exactly did she mean?’
His question had caught her off guard. Sadie looked away from him, not wanting him to see her naked expression and read in it what she would prefer to keep hidden.
‘She wanted me to…to persuade her clients that certain investments were of better value and more promising than she knew them to be.’
A tactful and evasive answer, Drax acknowledged. But, knowing Monika as he did, it wasn’t one he had any difficulty in interpreting.
‘She wanted you to use your sexual allure to sell unsafe investments, you mean?’ he suggested. It was no less than he had worked out for himself, but it inter ested him to witness her obvious discomfort in talking about it. Because she had felt obliged to give in to Monika’s bullying?
Drax’s good humour evaporated. A woman who had sold herself sexually, even if she had been forced to do so by someone else, was not the kind of woman who could become the wife of a ruler of Dhurahn—even in a marriage that was to be both temporary and unconsummated.
When Sadie didn’t say anything his mouth com pressed. The light mockery disappeared from his voice as he demanded, far more sharply, ‘It was only sexual allure she expected you to use, I trust? And not some thing more intimate…?’
‘There was a suggestion from her that I might flatter some of the clients a little more than I felt was morally acceptable,’ Sadie told him reluctantly. He was, after all, a friend
of Monika’s husband, even if he had made it plain that he did not like Monika herself.
‘She wanted you to have sex with her clients in return for them giving her their business? Is that what you mean?’
‘She never said that in as many words, but it was plain enough what she expected me to do.’
‘And did you?’
Sadie was too outraged to think of being tactful.
‘No. I did not. That is not the way I live my life,’ she told him furiously. ‘And it never will be. So if you are thinking of suggesting that I—’
He stopped the car with such force that she was thrown against her seatbelt.
‘What? You would dare to suggest that I, a ruler of Dhurahn, would sink to such depths?’
Sadie could see how much she had offended him. Where before she had seen arrogance, now she could see a fierce, steely pride.
‘I wasn’t making any accusations. I was simply stating what I am not prepared to do,’ Sadie defended herself.
She was speaking the truth. Drax could see that. Everything was as he had hoped—and expected. She was perfect for Vere, and he was a genius for having found her—and for having seized the opportunity she afforded so swiftly and effectively, he congratulated himself.
He turned his attention back to the road, setting the car in motion again.
‘So it is agreed that you will accept the job I have offered you and will return with me to Dhurahn?’
Was it? Sadie hadn’t given any verbal agreement to do anything, but somehow she wasn’t able to say as much to him. And she couldn’t really blame him for taking her silence as a sign that she had accepted what he had said, she acknowledged, when several minutes later he told her, ‘We should be at the airport in less than half an hour.’
‘I’ll need my passport,’ Sadie felt bound to point out.
The look he gave her reduced her to immediate silence.
‘We will be returning to Dhurahn in my own private jet. Naturally, as an employee I have personally appointed, there will be no need for you to go through passport control either in Zuran or Dhurahn.’
However, he would have to telephone the palace and make his excuses to Zwar’s Ruler for returning to Dhurahn at such short notice, Drax acknowledged.
His own private jet. Sadie struggled not to look too overwhelmed.
