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‘We were not aware that the apartment had a second entrance,’ Rafiq admitted gravely, shifting a large brown hand in an imperious gesture to indicate that she should be removed from his presence.
‘Look, I’m really sorry about the mistake. I shouldn’t have been here this late in the day but if you report me, I’ll lose my job!’ Izzy exclaimed.
‘And why would I care about that?’ Rafiq asked, stalking lazily into the bedroom as lithe as a panther prowling through the jungle.
‘Because I’ve already had a really horrible day! I’m sitting my final exams and I ran out of time before I could finish the paper, so I might’ve failed,’ Izzy told him flatly.
‘You’re a student?’
Izzy nodded jerkily.
‘Wait next door while I get dressed,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll speak to you then.’
Izzy drew in a quivering breath, deposited her pile of fresh linen on the ottoman at the end of the bed and backed out, the two goons on her heels.
‘Can you cook?’ the guy in the towel asked her abruptly.
Izzy blinked in bewilderment and turned her head. ‘Yes...er...but why?’
‘Later.’ As she was herded into the spacious reception area, the bedroom door thudded shut behind her.
‘You sit there,’ one of the goons told her in a thick accent.
‘I’ll get on with my job,’ Izzy overruled without hesitation, trundling her box of cleaning supplies into the other bathroom to start work.
Why on earth had he asked her if she could cook? Of course, she could cook. Learning had been a necessity with a mother who could barely handle toast without burning it. Both she and Maya had been making meals from an early age. Even her father was handier in the kitchen than her mother was, but she didn’t blame her mother for that failing because in all the ways that mattered in making children feel loved, appreciated and safe, Lucia Campbell excelled, she thought fondly.
She would finish the bathroom, head into the kitchen and then hopefully the bedroom would be free for her to change the bed, she planned, refusing to allow her brain to dwell on what had occurred...that guy, that totally unbelievably, indescribably gorgeous guy. Izzy blinked, shocked and mortified by her brain’s inability to suppress the images still shooting through it on constant repeat. Yes, like any normal woman she noticed attractive men but certainly not to the extent she had noticed bathroom guy, whose wide-shouldered, lean-hipped, long-legged perfection had imprinted on her like ink she couldn’t wash off.
In fact, until that very day she had never realised that a guy in all his half-naked splendour could even appeal to her in such a very physical way. She had truly believed that she was a little cool on that side of things because no previous man had ever sent an embarrassing flush of heat washing through her entire body and welded her attention to him as though there were nothing else but him. There in the midst of her most embarrassing moment she had been wholly mesmerised by those eyes of his, those hard, dark perfect features, that sleek bronzed torso indented with lean muscles that shifted with his every movement, not to mention the fabled V that ran down from his hip bones... Sucking in a steadying breath, Izzy blanked her mind and got on with the cleaning while scolding herself for behaving like a convent schoolgirl who had never seen a real man before.
There she was, an unapologetic feminist being sexist in the most mortifying way, she thought, shamefaced. She had objectified ‘bathroom guy’ in exactly the same way women complained that men did women, without seeing him as a person, an individual. And sheer lust had dug painful claws into her body, her nipples snapping taut, an awareness she had never felt before slicking over every inch of her exposed skin as insidious heat curled up from her core. It had been mind-blowing, terrifying to feel gripped by something that seemed so much stronger than she was. She had never dreamt that sexual attraction could be that powerful or that instantaneous. Way out of control, not at all the sort of thing she had ever expected to feel.
She had always been far too sensible for stuff of that nature, not remotely like Maya, who, for all her genius, remained a romantic dreamer at heart. No, Izzy was a realist and knew very well that such a very good-looking man would never look back at her with the same hunger. She also suspected that he was, very probably, another woman’s husband or boyfriend and guilt at that likelihood made her shudder at his effect on her. He was far too spectacular to be running around on his own, she thought crazily. No, had he belonged to Izzy he wouldn’t have got more than twenty feet from her and he certainly wouldn’t be stepping almost naked out of a shower in front of some random strange woman!
Rafiq strode out of the bedroom in search of his quarry and asked one of his guards where she was.
‘She doesn’t listen to orders,’ he was told.
Rafiq grinned at the sight of her bending over the bath, her peachy bottom twitching as she energetically scrubbed it. He had never gone for really skinny women. He loved curves and softness and femininity. The lush feminine swell of flesh above and below her tiny waist turned him on hard and fast. He checked his watch and lounged in the doorway. ‘So,’ he murmured softly, making her jump nervously and twist round. ‘Can you cook an omelette?’
Rattled at being taken by surprise yet again, Izzy threw back her stiff shoulders, wishing for only the fiftieth time in recent years that she were tall enough to be taken seriously and not so small that she was regularly taken for an adolescent rather than the woman of twenty-one years that she actually was.
‘Yes...but why would you ask me that?’ she asked impatiently as she swung round to be welded to the spot by dark-as-midnight velvet eyes that had remarkable intensity.
Her mouth ran dry. He was lodged in the doorway, rampantly masculine in his infuriatingly complete relaxation.
‘I want you to cook for me. You have an hour before I have to go out to keep my appointment.’
‘Why wouldn’t you just order food in?’ Izzy prompted in wonderment.
‘I don’t eat junk food. I like a freshly cooked meal served in private,’ Rafiq told her, strangely entertained by the new experience of being treated like an equal by someone who clearly had not the smallest suspicion of his true status.
‘I’m only here to clean and change beds,’ Izzy pointed out abstractedly, taken aback by the demand.
‘But I could throw you out of here and complain about your intrusion if I so desired and you could lose your job,’ Rafiq reminded her with silken immediacy. ‘In return for my generosity in overlooking that offence, you could cook lunch for me and everybody will be happy.’
‘Is that so?’ Izzy gasped, shattered by the ease with which that blatant blackmail attempt had emerged from his perfectly shaped lips.
