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* * *
‘If I’d taken my looks seriously I’d be...’ She paused and brought her lashes down in a protective sweep before adding lightly, ‘I was five-ten at twelve years old. My nickname was freak or giraffe. As for my face,’ her fingers moved lightly across the delicately angled features, ‘someone said I looked like their cat and it kind of followed me, not that I expect you to understand,’ she said without heat—people couldn’t help the way they looked, and he probably didn’t even realise that he made other men feel insecure, especially other men with wives, she mused, not struggling at all to imagine the effect he had on her own sex.
She was just grateful that she possessed the ability to consider her own reaction to his sexual aura with objectivity... Yeah, you carry on telling yourself that, Abby.
‘Why wouldn’t I understand?’
She resisted the temptation to dodge the question while she endured the heat as a flush travelled up her neck, but delivered her reply with as much composure as she could manage.
‘Because I’m doubting you were ever an ugly duckling, Prince...is that what I call you...?’
‘You call me Zain.’
Abby suppressed the childish impulse to tell him she didn’t want to call him anything, she wanted to go back home.
‘You think of yourself that way? As an ugly duckling?’
Abby was thrown enough by the question to miss a beat. Yes, she supposed deep down, no matter how other people saw her, she was still the ugly duckling. It was ironic really that what had set her apart at school had been the reason for her success. The length of her neck or her legs was no longer mocked but admired... ‘Have I wandered into a therapy session?’ How, she wondered, had this conversation got so personal so quickly?
‘Aha!’ He pounced on her response. ‘It’s classic avoidance technique, answering a question with a question.’
A much better technique in her experience was to pretend she didn’t understand the joke, especially when she was the joke. It was the only way to prevent the outside world realising they were getting to her...to that end she’d cultivated a mask, the same mask that was much in demand at photo shoots, only now they called it enigmatic.
And Zain’s reference to her love life being well-documented... She had her agent to thank for that, leaking stories about her ‘romances’ on social media, because, as she put it, ‘Abby, darling. you’re as dull as ditchwater, and beggars can’t be choosers. You’re not one of the elite... Relax. It’s win-win and you’ll get the odd free dinner out of it.’
The romances were usually with male celebrities who needed the publicity because their career had dipped or younger, media-hungry newbies out to make their mark. It was all part of her image.
‘Sorry to disappoint you but I’m not a needy basket case. I always had a warm home to go back to at the end of a bad day.’
‘So what did your parents think of your career move?’
‘My grandparents,’ she corrected, her brow pleating as she recalled his earlier comment. ‘My parents died when I was very young and Nana and Pops supported my decision because they understood that I didn’t want to leave uni with a massive debt. I wanted to be financially independent.’ And after Gregory’s betrayal her modelling career had been the lifeline that had helped keep her virtually penniless grandparents afloat.
‘It was a hard time for them, though, when I first started out. They were swindled out of their life savings and pensions.’ She swallowed as she felt her throat thicken with tears. ‘An investment in a project,’ she continued in a flat voice that she hoped revealed none of the devastation and frustration and guilt she still felt, ‘that never existed and a financial advisor who vanished off the face of the earth.’
His expression was thoughtful as he listened to her. ‘You’re really very good, aren’t you, at pretending it doesn’t hurt?’
Her eyes fluttered wide in shock before she coaxed a laugh from her aching throat. ‘Are you always this sure of your infallibility or is it the medication? Speaking of which...’ Her concern became genuine as she scanned his face; the bruises seemed to have deepened in colour since she’d been in the room, which, now that she thought of it, had to have been a long time ago. ‘I should be going...’
‘Where?’
It was a good question.
‘You missed out one thing in your story. It was your boyfriend who scammed them and stole their life savings.’
Her face flamed with shocked guilt before the colour fled, leaving her lily-pale. ‘Have you got a file on me in a drawer somewhere?’
‘In a safe.’
He said it so casually that her jaw dropped.
* * *
Zain took advantage of her dumbstruck silence. ‘I have a proposition to put to you. How would you like to be in a position to buy back your grandparents’ bungalow and restore their savings?’
He really did know everything! ‘I fully intend to...’ She shook her head. ‘You have a file on me...?’ Her eyes flashed with outrage.
He registered that outrage suited her but didn’t allow his appreciation to divert him. ‘I don’t mean in a year or two years, I mean now, today.’
