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They had reached the palace car park. Without a word to Keira Jay stopped the car, got out, and then went round to open the passenger door for her.
They were back inside the palace before Keira could find the courage to break the crushing silence Jay had imposed, telling him brightly, ‘I’d better go and thank my driver, and retrieve the samples…’
‘Wait,’ Jay demanded curtly. ‘There’s something I wish to discuss with you first. We’ll go to my office,’ he told her, gesturing towards the stairs.
Whatever he wanted to say to her it wasn’t going to be something she wanted to hear, Keira recognised as she took in the grim set of his mouth and the way he distanced himself from her as they walked up the stairs.
Once they were inside his office Jay closed the door with the same controlled ferocity with which he had closed the car door earlier, the small but definite thud of that closure causing Keira’s heart to jolt uneasily into her ribs.
Keira could sense that a storm was brewing as clearly as though she had seen thunderclouds building up and growling ominously on the horizon. It swept into the room without warning or ceremony, feeding on the oxygen in the air and leaving her chest tight as she struggled to breathe in the air that was left.
When Jay spoke, his words were like sheet lightning, slicing through the stifling silence.
‘You had no business travelling so far out of the city without advising me of your plans beforehand.’
‘You weren’t here, and—’
‘And you couldn’t wait?’ Jay challenged her coldly.
Keira gulped in air, bewildered by his anger.
‘You were the one who introduced me to the fabric merchant so that I could obtain some samples,’ she reminded him.
‘The merchant, yes. But I most certainly did not suggest that you, a woman on your own, should travel anywhere unescorted, and that once having done so—’
‘I was not unescorted,’ Keira protested. ‘I was with my driver. I’d gone there on business to—’
‘To flirt with one of your own countrymen?’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Since that is most certainly what you were doing when I saw you.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous,’ Keira defended herself.
‘But you knew that he would be there?’ Jay queried.
‘Well, yes,’ Keira admitted. ‘But—’
‘And immediately you knew that, you decided to go and check him out?’
‘No! This is crazy. It was the fabric merchant who suggested that I might want to meet the designer and see his work at first hand.’
‘Was it? Or did you suggest it yourself? Was it his work you wanted to inspect at first hand or the man himself? A fellow European…’
What he was insinuating was as insulting as it was incorrect, Keira thought angrily.
‘I went to check out fabric—Indian fabric. Not a European man, or indeed any kind of man,’ Keira told him fiercely. ‘I’m not interested in checking out men.’
Too late she realised her mistake. The look Jay slanted her was as steely sharp as a new blade.
‘No? That’s not the impression you’ve been giving me,’ he taunted her.
Another minute and he’d be reminding her of her response to him. Keira tensed herself inwardly for the expected verbal blow, but to her relief instead he accused her coldly.
‘You were flirting with him—you can’t deny that.’
Relief washed through her, chilling the heat of her earlier anger.
‘Yes, I can—and I do.’
Ignoring her protest, Jay insisted grimly, ‘Admit it. You were coming on to him so hard that you were oblivious to anyone and everything else—not that he was objecting. He was as eager to get you into his bed as you were to be there. That was patently obvious.’
‘That is not true, and I was not coming on to him,’ Keira denied truthfully again. ‘We were simply both being polite to one another.’ She was getting her courage back now that she had escaped the humiliation of him reminding her how passionately she responded to him. ‘Good manners are a highly valued trait in Indian society—something that Indian children are taught at their mother’s knee. As I should have thought you would know.’
