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If he was surprised she’d done her homework, he didn’t show it. He merely inclined his head.
‘Indeed, but that came with conditions I was willing to accommodate. Your brother’s misdeeds don’t fall under the same purview. Not even close,’ he said with a definite snap in his tone.
‘How can I convince you to consider it?’
He uncrossed his legs and slowly rose to his feet. Stepping away from the divan, he strolled to one end of the living room, hands clasped behind his back. Lauren tried not to let the slide of muscle beneath his tunic distract her, but it was as difficult as attempting not to marvel at a sleek predator owning his habitat.
‘Tell me one thing, Lauren. Did you get involved with me back then because you knew something like this might happen? That somewhere down the line, you’d need a sheikh or a king in your corner to bail you and your family out of some such a predicament?’ he demanded without turning to face her, his voice tight with some peculiar emotion. ‘And remember if you lie to me, I’ll know,’ he warned.
Because he wasn’t facing her, Lauren squeezed her eyes shut, her heart sinking. The hot, unequivocalnoshe wanted to shout out stalled in her throat. Because hadn’t she heard Matt and her parents calculating just such a thing when she’d started seeing Tahir? Hadn’t she heard them loftily accommodating her fling with Tahir because they believed it might benefit them at some future date?
At the time, she’d been hurt and horrified enough to confront them. At first, her father had dismissed her protest. Lauren knew now that she should’ve walked away. Because by exposing how much Tahir meant to her, how unwilling she was to jeopardise her new relationship, she’d played right into their hands.
‘I’ll take your silence to mean yes, shall I?’ he bit out coldly, his shoulders tight.
‘I can only tell you thatIdidn’t,’ she said finally. ‘It was never about your position or your connections for me.’
He whirled to face her and the fury in his face shrivelled her insides. In the head-to-toe black he wore, he was a stunningly arresting pillar of affront, like a beautiful tsunami that would devastate once it arrived but was mesmerising to watch unfolding. ‘And yet here you are, asking me to save your self-absorbed, selfish brother when all evidence says he needs to be behind bars.’
‘No!’ She rushed to her feet. ‘That can’t be your final answer.’Tell me what I need to do.The words remained locked in her throat, mild terror at uttering them keeping them wisely hidden.
The fury seemed to drain out of him, a whisper of bewilderment flashing through the gaze that traced her face and lingered on her lips before it neutralised and resettled on the hourglass.
Lauren didn’t need to look to know her time had run out.
That they’d circled back to his arena.
‘For the next fifteen minutes, I don’t want to hear your brother’s name,’ he said stiffly.
Butterflies beat an urgent tattoo against her belly, the sense of the ground shifting beneath her feet real and disconcerting. ‘What do you want to talk about, then? The weather?’
‘Hardly.’ His gaze dropped to her hand.
She followed his gaze, almost needing visual confirmation that she wasn’t fidgeting. This was what he did to her. Made her lose her equilibrium.
‘Are you married? Do you have a lover?’
A gasp left her throat. ‘That’s what you...’ She paused, shook her head. ‘Didn’t your report provide an answer to that question?’
His expression grew more brooding, his jaw clenching for a tick. ‘Answer me, Lauren.’
Her chin lifted, a vital need not to cower before him taking root inside her. ‘I know you don’t think that highly of me, but I wouldn’t have kissed you if I was involved with someone else.’
His eyes darkened, his tongue resting betrayingly on his inner lip before he slanted an eyebrow at her.
She exhaled noisily. ‘No, I don’t have a husband. No lover. No significant other. I prefer my work to...all of that.’
He sauntered towards her, not stopping until only a few feet separated them and the very air around them was charged with snapping electricity. ‘Prefer? No oneprefersthe monotony of mindless drudgery over great sex and the stimulation of challenging work. Certainly not the Lauren I remember, who worked hard and played hard. So you’ll have to do better to convince me that reducing yourself to this mere...shadow is what you really aspire to.’
‘Are you speaking from experience?’
He lowered his head until their cheeks were aligned but not touching. Until his scent filled her nostrils, and she closed her eyes to stop herself from launching herself at him. Begging for him to kiss her again.
‘Of course,’ he said after an age, then brushed her jaw with his in sizzling contact before retreating.
She was bewildered and not quite ready for his frank admission, and it caught her somewhere raw and unwelcome. Which was ridiculous because she had no right to this man. There was no value in wondering what liaisons he’d had since they parted. Whether, like many men of his ilk, he was contemplating settling down and producing heirs to carry on his legacy.
She’d been lucky enough to cycle through his orbit once upon a time and revel in the brilliance of his rapier-sharp intelligence, astonishing charisma and effortlessly powerful presence he wore like layers of skin. Her actions might have hastened her departure, but Lauren didn’t doubt it would’ve happened anyway.
