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He could admire the city’s beauty, but he could not feel entirely a part of it, Jay acknowledged. His self-imposed exile had broadened his horizons too much. The city would always hold a very special place in his heart, but he did not envy his elder brother his inheritance or his position. The status of second son—second best, as his father’s mistress had so often taunted him in the past—brought with it a freedom Rao could never have, and in a variety of different ways. He had lost count of the number of approaches he had received in recent years from families desperate to secure him as a husband for their daughters, but unlike Rao he did not have to marry and secure the succession. He was free to remain free, and that was exactly what he intended to do.
He would be leaving within the hour by helicopter to his private jet and his journey to Mumbai.
On the table in front of him were Keira’s plans. He had ordered a servant to retrieve them from her room. There were a couple of points he wanted to query with her before he left. The excellence of what she had done had caught him off guard. Like his loss of control and his reaction to her last night?
He had not lost control. Maybe not completely, but the extent to which he had come dangerously close to doing so had been a first for him. Irritated by the mocking tone of his inner voice, Jay put down his teacup.
The courtyard beneath his window looked so tranquil this morning it was hard to imagine that last night it had contained so much dark passion. A passion instigated by her, when she had taken that inviting step toward him. Maybe—but it was an invitation he could have refused.
He looked at his watch. It was still early, but there were a couple of questions he needed to ask Keira about her plans before he left.
As he stepped outside, the morning sunlight burnished the olive warmth of his skin, throwing into relief the strength of his facial bone structure.
The door to Keira’s quarters opened easily. Jay could hear the quiet hum of her laptop and smell the scent of her sleep and her skin. Through the open doorway he could see the bed, and Keira herself, lying on top of it and quite obviously still asleep.
Jay turned back to the door, only to stop and turn again, to walk slowly towards the bed as through drawn there against his will.
Keira was lying on her side, clad in a pair of pyjamas that looked more suitable in design for a girl than a woman, and he could see quite clearly the tracks of her dried tears on her face, below telltale mascara smudges.
She’d been crying? Because of him?
Deep down within himself Jay could feel something, a sensation of emotional tightness and tension, as though something was breaking apart to reveal something else so sensitive and raw that he couldn’t bear to feel it.
What was it? Compassion? Pity? Regret? Why should he feel pain for her vulnerability and her tears?
Angry with himself, Jay turned away from the bed and left as silently as he had arrived.
Women used their tears in exactly the same way as they used their bodies: to get what they wanted. He wasn’t about to be taken in by such tactics.
Jay had gone and she was safe. Because without his presence she could not be tormented and tempted as she had been last night.
But Jay would come back, and when he did…
When he did things would be different, Keira promised herself grimly. She would have found a way to protect herself from her own weakness. It wasn’t her pride that was insisting that she did that. Given the chance, she’d have preferred to run from what Jay aroused in her rather than battle with it. But she simply did not have that freedom. Her contract tied her to the work she had taken on and through that to Jay, and she was not in a position to risk the financial implications of breaking that contract.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS three days since Keira had last seen Jay—three days in which she had had time to focus on her work and rebalance her own sense of self.
Where another woman might have found it galling and humiliating to have a man walk away, having started to make love to her, Keira could only feel relieved that Jay had done so. She had been given a second chance to protect herself from her own weakness, and for that she could only be profoundly grateful.
But being grateful wasn’t doing anything to ease the ache that had woken her from her sleep last night—and the night before, and the night before that. Keira stared grimly at her laptop screen, battling determinedly to will away such potentially dangerous thoughts. Was this the way her mother had felt about the married man she had once told Keira was her father, whose desertion she claimed had pushed her into the arms of a series of other men?
