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Suddenly Kat looked stricken, and those eyes which had been so unreadable were now full of something far more readable. Sympathy.
‘I never mentioned your father. I’m sorry for your loss. I know you weren’t particularly close, but still it can’t have been easy.’
Zafir’s insides clenched. Plenty of people had offered empty platitudes when his father had died, but few had known just how barren their relationship had been. But he’d told Kat. And her simple sincerity now tugged on a deep part of him that had mourned his father—or at least mourned the fact that he’d never been a father in the real sense. The loving sense.
The steward arrived then, with Kat’s food and the coffees, and Zafir said gruffly, ‘Eat. We’ll be landing soon and we have a busy schedule this evening.’
After a few moments Kat picked up her cutlery and ate with single-minded absorption.
When she’d finished, he mused out loud, ‘You always did have a good appetite.’
Kat went still and pushed the plate away from her before taking up her cup of coffee. She glanced at Zafir without letting him see her eyes properly. Her mouth had gone tight and she said, ‘When you grow up hungry it gives you an appreciation of food that others might not have.’
‘Was it really that bad, Kat?’
She glared at him. ‘You read that article along with everyone else in America, didn’t you? The lurid details of my life in a trailer park?’
Zafir shook his head, his irritation mounting. ‘I still don’t know why you couldn’t tell me the full details. There’s no shame in growing up poor, or in a trailer park.’
‘No,’ she said, avoiding his eyes again. ‘Only in the choices we make to survive.’
Kat felt bitterness corrode her insides even as she knew that this was her chance to spill it all out to Zafir. He was listening and receptive, and she’d always wanted to tell him, hadn’t she? But suddenly the thought of laying it all out felt too huge. She still felt vulnerable after appearing in public again for the first time last night, and like a coward she clammed up, avoiding the opportunity.
Instead she looked at him and said, ‘You called me a liar the other day, but I never lied to you. I just...didn’t tell you everything.’
‘A distinction that hardly exonerates you,’ Zafir pointed out.
He felt frustration mount when she didn’t respond, aware of a niggling sensation that she was still hiding things from him.
Just then the air steward arrived to clear Kat’s plate and inform them that they’d be landing shortly, and to make sure they were ready. The tension dissipated and Kat broke their staring contest to turn her head and look out of her window.
The plane circled lower and lower over the private London airfield and Zafir addressed his question to the back of Kat’s glossy head, unable to resist pushing her for a response. ‘You never told me why you didn’t go back into modelling full-time once you’d recovered.’
Zafir could feel her reluctance as she finally turned to look at him again, eyes guarded.
‘It wasn’t a career I’d ever really chosen for myself, and I discovered that if I had the choice I wouldn’t necessarily step back into it.’
Which was more or less the truth, Kat reassured herself as Zafir’s incisive gaze seemed to laser all the way into her soul. Even if she hadn’t lost her leg she wouldn’t have wanted to step back into that vacuous world. Being forced out of her old existence and into a new one had revealed a desire to find a more meaningful role in her life. What that might be, she wasn’t even sure herself yet. She only knew that she wanted to help people as she had been helped...
The plane touched down with a brief jolt and Zafir finally looked away. Released from that compelling gaze, Kat took a breath. She’d tried to rest earlier, in the plane’s luxurious bedroom, but sleep had proved elusive. She was too wound up after those illicit fantasies in her bath last night and the prospect of another public exhibition this evening.
Perhaps, she thought to herself a little hysterically, this was Zafir’s retribution? Expose Kat to the ravenous judgmental hordes who would pick her over until there was nothing left?
Although, from what she’d seen of the headlines in the papers that Rahul had been poring over in the car earlier, there didn’t seem to be much dredging up of the past—only feverish speculation as to why Kat had re-emerged and where she’d been and the nature of her relationship with Zafir. Kat wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or even more anxious at the thought that someone from the rehabilitation clinic might recognise her and sell the story of what had really happened to her.
Before she could dwell on that too much Zafir was standing, holding her bag in one hand and his other hand out to her. She looked at it for a moment, and then realised how futile it would be to try and resist. She put her hand in Zafir’s and let him pull her up. She stumbled slightly, falling against Zafir’s chest. His eyes flared and his hand came up to steady her, curling around her arm tightly.
For a moment their bodies were welded together and the heat between them surged.
Roughly he said, ‘Kat, why can’t you just admit—?
?
‘Sire, the cars are ready.’
Zafir clamped his mouth shut and didn’t look around at Rahul, their interrupter.
Relief flooded Kat, because she realised that if Zafir had kissed her in that moment she’d have responded helplessly. She pulled free and walked to the entrance of the plane, taking care on the steps down, telling herself it was her prosthetic limb and not the throbbing arousal rushing through her body making her feel wobbly.
