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‘Yes,’ she said, with a firmness and determination she didn’t feel. ‘Yes, we do have a deal, Mr Khan.’
‘Call me Karim,’ he said, although it sounded like an order rather than a request. He tugged his smartphone out of his pocket and she realised she had already been dismissed. ‘You have half an hour to pack—don’t forget your passport,’ he said as he checked something on his phone. ‘We can do all the necessary paperwork on the sale and the engagement contract after we get to London.’ His gaze locked back on her face. ‘I wish to take another look round the stud, so I’ll meet you at the Puma at a quarter to two,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave me waiting this time.’
Moments later, his footsteps had faded down the hallway.
Orla stood in the empty room and wrapped her arms round her midriff to hold in the shudder of panic and something a great deal more volatile. She walked to the window and gazed out on the land that had always been her home. The only place where she felt grounded and whole and significant.
What she’d just agreed to do was madness. The arrogant, entitled, overwhelming man had even refused to tell her why he needed a fake fiancée. And why on earth he might have picked her for such a role.
Karim Khan, Crown Prince of Zafar, held all the power in this situation and she none.
But beggars could not be choosers, and she refused to regret taking his devil’s bargain—Dervla and the horses and their home were worth it.
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To have a future free of debt, and the opportunity to continue living in the place she’d thought they’d lost, was something she couldn’t even have dreamed of when she’d woken up this morning before dawn. Life had been so hard ever since her father passed in a car accident a year ago—much longer than that, truth be told, ever since her mother’s tragic death while riding on the gallops five years ago had effectively robbed her and Dervla of their father too.
She and her sister deserved this chance.
All she had to do now was find a way to show everyone she had what it took to make a crown prince fall hopelessly in love with her—when she knew full well she didn’t. Not even close.
This will be an adventure, she told herself staunchly.
But then the bottom dropped out of her stomach and heat careered through her veins as she spied the tall, indomitable, commanding man she had just agreed to attach herself to for the foreseeable future walk out of the house and take long strides across the lawn towards the stables.
She hadn’t even managed to convince Patrick she would make him a good wife, and now she was going to have to pretend to be engaged to a man who could give her breathing difficulties and inappropriate goosebumps just by looking at her. A man she knew virtually nothing about. And what she did know only made him a hundred times more intimidating.
Orla Calhoun, what in the name of all that is holy have you gone and done now?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘MISS CALHOUN, YOU must wake up now. Mr Khan wishes to see you downstairs.’
Orla blinked furiously, waking from a particularly vivid dream, to find an older woman smiling at her. She jerked upright, taking in the feel of expensive cotton sheets and the bright sunlight streaming through the large multi-paned window opposite and shining onto a suite of luxury furniture.
‘Hi,’ she said, as the reality of where she was and what she had agreed to yesterday spun back through her groggy brain.
Standing in the stables, dripping wet, her nipples so hard they ached as Karim Khan’s golden gaze awakened every one of her nerve-endings. His overpowering presence in her faded parlour, asking, no, demanding she become his fiancée. The mad scramble to ensure Dervla would look after the horses to her satisfaction before Khan’s team arrived. The helicopter ride across the Irish Sea and the British countryside, before they’d flown over the nightlights of London to land on the rooftop heliport of Khan’s mansion in Belgravia.
He’d hardly spoken to her since she had agreed to become his fake fiancée, spending the time while piloting the chopper talking to a series of subordinates through his headphones. Once they’d arrived, she’d been ushered into the house and served dinner alone in the suite of rooms she now occupied, and then she’d dropped into bed…
‘Is it Mrs Williams?’ she asked, trying to remember the woman’s name from the night before. She was one of Mr Khan’s staff. His housekeeper, Orla was fairly sure, but everything about the evening before had been a blur, the extravagant luxury of Khan’s home and the thought of what she’d agreed to do making it hard for Orla to concentrate when she’d been introduced to about twenty people before being brought to her own luxury suite.
She’d dreamt of him, she realised, during the night. That intense gaze had woken her frequently causing the hot weight in her sex, and the tight ache in her breasts.
‘Call me Edith, dear,’ the woman said as she laid a breakfast tray on a table by the window with practised efficiency. ‘Mr Khan has employed a stylist to acquire a new wardrobe for you. But I had your clothes from last night washed and pressed for the meeting this morning.’ The housekeeper smiled. ‘I hope that’s okay, but I couldn’t find anything else in your luggage that looked suitable when I unpacked it.’
‘That’s perfect,’ Orla said, remembering the one humiliating conversation she’d had with Khan before boarding the helicopter in Kildare.
‘Do you have any suitable clothing with you?’ he’d asked, casting a cursory glance at the rucksack she’d packed hastily in the half-hour he’d given her.
‘You didn’t give me much time to pack,’ she’d replied, not wanting to admit she had nothing suitable for the sort of rarefied social gatherings he was probably expecting her to attend. She hadn’t had money for new clothes in years. Plus she lived in boots and jeans and T-shirts to work with the horses, and was already wearing her best clothing.
He’d nodded and lifted the rucksack into the helicopter. End of conversation. Obviously he had made a note of her lack of a decent wardrobe and arranged for new clothing.
She tried not to feel even more humiliated—at the thought of having to be dressed by him—as she climbed out of the bed and tugged on the silk robe that Edith had laid out at the end of the bed.
‘The solicitor has already arrived to finalise the sale,’ the housekeeper said. ‘Mr Khan is keen to see you as soon as possible downstairs.’ The woman sent Orla a warm, uncomplicated smile. ‘He’s even more impatient than usual. You two must be very much in love.’
