AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’ll contact you when I require you to attend an event with me,’ he said, trying to keep his mind on business and off the soft sway of her unfettered breasts.
She nodded. ‘Okay. But what am I supposed to be doing in the meantime?’ she asked.
He could think of far too many answers to that question. Every one of them only making the visceral need that had been riding him all evening increase, so his reply was sharp enough to make her jump.
‘Waiting for my instructions.’
He unlocked the door and held it open for her, getting a lungful of that provocative scent for his pains that seemed to stroke the erection growing in his pants.
‘Do you understand?’ he asked.
He saw the mutinous expression in her eyes, and hated himself even more for noticing how it turned her irises to a rich emerald.
‘Of course, Your Highness,’ she said, but before he could take her to task for the mocking comment, she shot past him into the house.
He closed the door as he watched her disappear down the hallway.
The urge to go after her clawed at his gut. But just as vivid was the memory of her eyes—so wary, so vulnerable—as he’d carried her out of the ballroom. Something tightened in his chest as he remembered how she’d clung to him for that split second as trusting as a child.
As he made his own way through the dark house, the antique grandfather clock in the vestibule chimed midnight.
Taking this any further would be a mistake.
Sex was one thing, intimacy another, and he would never risk mixing the two.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘ORLA, I CAN’T believe you’re actually engaged to a prince—that’s mad.’ Dervla’s shocked voice made Orla’s fingers tense on her phone in the upstairs lounge. ‘I mean, I know he’s super-hot and all, but I didn’t think you were actually serious.’
‘Dervla, I told you we’re not really dating,’ Orla whispered, worried that the staff might overhear her. Although she suspected they had realised she and Karim were not a real couple by now. After all, they had to have noticed the two of them had never shared a bed and she’d been living in his house for a week. ‘It’s not a proper engagement,’ she added, even though it didn’t feel entirely in name only either any more.
Not after their first—and only—event together as a couple.
‘But I saw the pictures of him carrying you out of the Jockeys’ Ball. It’s in all the magazines over here.’ Dervla sighed. ‘It looks so romantic. Are you sure he hasn’t fallen hopelessly in love with you by accident?’
Orla felt the familiar pang in her chest and swallowed down the foolish lump of emotion that had derailed her a week ago when he’d come to her rescue like an avenging angel… Or a protective fiancé. And the times she had run the memory of those moments through her head. But in the days since, it had become clear, whatever had happened that night, it wasn’t going to be repeated.
She’d hardly seen him—but for the two breakfasts they’d shared.
Karim had been distant and pragmatic both times she’d managed to catch him before he disappeared for the day, keeping any conversation to a minimum. And when he did speak to her, the discussion was about the horses, never anything more personal. He had been picking her brains for everything she knew about the sport and the stock at Calhouns. She’d found the two discussions they’d had surprisingly stimulating—Karim knew much more than she’d assumed, his decision to buy the stud and establish himself as an owner of superior bloodstock not a vanity project after all. As much as she had regretted having to sell her family business, she could see Karim was going to invest and build on the work they’d done there. That he had chosen to keep the Calhoun name had also pleased her. But those breakfast meetings had still been extremely disconcerting. She’d felt his gaze on her, and that masculine magnetism that had tripped her up before. The events at the Jockeys’ Ball and even the one kiss they’d shared had played through her mind whenever she was with him—and the many hours she was not.
But it was three days now since she’d last seen him. And she’d felt the sharp sting of disappointment each morning as she’d walked into the breakfast room and found it empty.
She’d tried to be philosophical about that. It wasn’t really him she missed, surely it was just that she felt so rootless here, her life in the last week so far removed from her daily routine in Kildare. When she’d agreed to this arrangement, she really hadn’t factored in what it would mean to be the trophy fiancée of a man as rich and powerful as Karim Khan. She’d never felt so useless in her life. Not only did she miss the horses desperately, but Calhouns and the work there had given her life purpose and meaning, and it was clear she had no purpose or meaning here.
With no horses to exercise, no final demands to juggle, no stud business to deal with, no bank managers to placate or stalls to muck out, and no mention of any events to attend with Karim, she’d struggled to find anything to do. The house was run like a well-oiled machine, the staff so efficient all her offers to help out had been met with puzzled frowns followed by polite refusals.
The truth was, the yearning she felt when not seeing Karim at the breakfast table was probably just disappointment. Because without that shot of adrenaline to liven up her morning—and the chance to at least talk about the business she loved—she’d become unbelievably bored.
She had no idea what she was even doing here any more, or why Karim continued to refuse to allow her to return to Kildare.
‘No, he hasn’t fallen in love with me,’ Orla murmured to her sister. She’d explained the circumstances of the engagement to Dervla a week ago—in the scant twenty minutes Karim had allowed her before they left—and every time she’d spoken to Dervla since. But Dervla didn’t believe her.
Orla had always been the realist and Dervla the drama queen, but her sister’s ludicrous romanticism—her determination to make this engagement something it wasn’t—wasn’t helping Orla keep everything in perspective.
As a result, she’d started screening her sister’s calls—which was a pain. Because the conversations with Dervla, however aggravating her attitude towards the engagement, were one of the few bright spots in her monotonous days in London. She was desperate for news of what was going on at the stud, something she couldn’t quiz Karim about—because he was never here.
‘How’s everything going at Calhouns?’ she cut into Dervla’s continued dreamy dialogue about how hot the photos of her and Karim were in her magazines. Time to change the subject before Dervla drove her totally nuts.
