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Keira couldn’t remember how old she had been when she had first realised just what her mother was. But she could remember that she had been nine when her mother had told Keira that her father was a married man.
‘Loved him, I did—and he said he loved me. Mind you, they all say that when they want to get into your knickers. Not that he were me first—not by a long chalk. Had lads running after me from when I was fourteen, I did. That’s been my problem, see, Keira. I always liked a good time too much. It’s in me nature, you see, and it will be in yours too—see if it isn’t. We just can’t help ourselves, see. Come from a long line of women made that way, you and me have. Some lad will come along, and before you know where you are you’ll be opening your legs for him.’
Keira still shuddered when she remembered those words. They had filled her with a fear that her great-aunt’s unkindness had reinforced. Keira had decided long before she went to university that she would never allow herself to fall in love or commit to a man because of the risk of discovering she shared her mother’s weakness in controlling her sexual appetite, along with her inability to choose the right man.
Her horror of sharing her mother’s fate was burned into her heart.
After university Keira had moved to London and found a job working for an upmarket interior design company at a very junior level.
Through Shalini and Vikram she’d been familiar with the ethnically diverse Brick Lane area of the city, and she had quickly fallen in love with the creative intensity it had to offer, putting what she’d learned from it into her own work and adapting it to her own personal style.
Soon word had begun to get around that she had a sympathetic understanding of Indian taste, and rich Indians had started to ask specifically if she could be part of the team working on their interiors.
With the encouragement of her boss, Keira had eventually struck out on her own, finding for herself a niche market that was fresh and vibrant and matched her own feelings about design and style.
She’d met Sayeed through Vikram, and had let him sweet-talk her into doing some room schemes for the rundown properties he was doing up as buy-to-lets. Sayeed had done well, and an uncle in India had taken him into his own property development business—which was how Sayeed had become involved with Jay.
Jay. The thought of him—or rather of His Highness Prince Jayesh of Ralapur—was enough to have her tensing her body against her own inner panic. How could she have let such a thing happen to her?
It should have been impossible for him to have aroused her as he had done. Not once before had Keira ever felt tempted to ignore the rules she had made for herself.
Yes, she had kissed boys at university—she hadn’t wanted to be thought odd or weird after all—but once they had started wanting more than a bit of mild petting she had had no difficulty whatsoever in telling them no.
True, a certain scene in a film or a passage in a book might have the power to make her ache a little—she was human, after all—but she had never allowed herself to experience that ache with a real flesh-and-blood man.
Until last night.
For him. With him.
Keira paced the floor of her hotel room in agitation. She couldn’t stay and work for him. Why not? Because she was afraid that she might end up wanting to go to bed with him? Because she was afraid that she might, as he had taunted her, end up begging him to take her?
No! Where was her pride? Surely she was strong enough not to let that happen? Where was her courage and her self-esteem? Let him say what he liked. She would show him that she meant what she had said. She would remain detached and uninterested in him as a man. Would she? Could she? She was a twenty-seven-year-old virgin who in reality was scared to death she might be in danger of breaking a vow she had made almost a decade ago, and he was a man who looked as though he went through women faster than a monsoon flood went through a rice field.
She mustn’t think like that, Keira warned herself. She must remember the old adage that the thought was father to the deed, and not will her own self-destruction on herself.
The hard, cold reality was that she could not afford to lose this contract any more than she could afford to be sexually vulnerable to him. If she blew this, she would never get another opportunity to match it. Chances like this came once in a lifetime—if you were lucky. Her success here would elevate her to a much higher professional status. All she had to do was to keep the promise she had made herself not to allow herself to be physically vulnerable.
