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Try and obliterate the past, she told herself, but she stared down at the food on her plate without really seeing it.
‘You aren’t really hungry at all, are you, Sienna?’ he said, his silken voice weaving its way into her troubled thoughts.
He breathed her name in a way she remembered him once breathing it in passion, putting the emphasis on the last syllable and holding it in his mouth as if it were a mouthful of fine wine.
‘Not really, no.’ He was looking at her in a way which was making whispers of longing tiptoe over her flesh—and she had to snap out of it.
She needed to protect herself against his enchantment, and she found herself wondering how other women coped. Surely she couldn’t be the only woman he bewitched with his curiously old-fashioned air of mastery and chauvinism? And women weren’t supposed to be bewitched by qualities such as those. They were supposed to look for tolerance and compassion—not simply the desire to be swept off their feet by a flashing-eyed Alpha man.
She laid her fork down and pushed her plate away. ‘Well, since we’ve tied up the business side of things, and neither of us looks as if we’re about to tuck into the food, then you’ll forgive me if I take my leave—’
‘No.’ The word was emphatic. ‘I will not. You aren’t going anywhere because I haven’t finished with you. Not yet.’
Did he mean to make her sound disposable? she wondered. Like something he could just crumple up and throw away? And suddenly it wasn’t easy not to be intimidated, to take charge and be calm and unflappable—all the things she had learnt to do in order to survive and succeed.
Maybe this was one conversation she couldn’t get out of having, and maybe it was a waste of time to try. Like having a tooth pulled—wasn’t that ravaging moment of pain worth it just for the blessed relief you felt afterwards?
‘Well, fire away, Hashim,’ she said, using her last bit of bravado. ‘And get whatever it is you want to say off your chest.’
He traced a thoughtful forefinger along the edge of his lips. ‘I simply cannot understand why you chose obscurity,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’
He gestured towards her, as if he was about to introduce her to someone at a party. ‘Oh, there is no doubt that you have become successful—’
‘Why, thank you,’ she said drily.
‘But only in a purely relative sense.’ His gaze was very steady. ‘It puzzles me that you have stayed working in hotels.’
‘Lots of girls do.’
‘But lots of girls do not look the way you do.’
‘Hashim, please—’
‘You could have earned a fortune by capitalising on your body, and yet you chose this. So tell me…’ His question hung on the air and Sienna waited breathlessly. When it came out it was disguised with the silken cloak of civility, but the look of disgust which hardened the ebony eyes told its own story. ‘Why did you never pursue your career in topless modelling?’
CHAPTER FIVE
WHYdid you never pursue your career in topless modelling?
With Hashim’s critical question ringing in her ears, Sienna felt like someone who had put a piece of expensive lingerie away in a drawer, only to pull it out and discover that it had become faded and moth-eaten. He made her feel cheap. Tawdry. Something she hadn’t felt for a long, long time, and she glanced around them, as if the other diners might have overheard.
‘You worry that people might be listening?’ A cruel smile curved his lips. ‘So you have not boasted of your days working in glamour?’ The word dripped with contempt. ‘You are concerned about what others think, perhaps? I cannot believe that, Sienna—for why reveal your body if you are afraid of people finding out about it? Why allow men to feast their eyes on your nakedness if you then act coy about it?’
‘I’m surprised you bother asking me questions to which you obviously have all the answers,’ she said quietly. ‘Or rather, you have decided you know the answers. You think I am a certain kind of woman—so why don’t we just leave it at that?’
‘Because I am…curious.’
Yes, of course he was. He was fascinated in the same way that people couldn’t help themselves looking at a roadside crash—they didn’t want to be part of it, but something compelled them to watch. ‘Why do you think I didn’t pursue it, Hashim?’
He shrugged. ‘Because I suspect you saw that in the end it would work against you. Would spoil your greatest ambition of all.’
‘And what ambition would that be?’ she asked faintly.
The tip of his forefinger rested thoughtfully against the dark shadow of his jaw. ‘I think that you saw the seamy side of the industry, as girls who expose themselves often do. You anticipated that real dangers existed—and so you decided to work in the real world instead. An honest though a much harder living. But I suspect that you found it even harder than you imagined, and so you looked for an escape—an easier way—easier even than taking your clothes off.’
