Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ stay in and read my book, if you must know.’

      ‘Fine,’ he said tightly. ‘Then do that.’

      ‘I will!’

      They had just sat down in a frosty silence to eat their meal when the telephone began to ring.

      ‘You’d better get that, Guy,’ said Sabrina sweetly. ‘You virtually bit my head off the last time I answered it when you were here!’

      And no wonder. He stood up. Ever since that day his mother had taken to ringing him at work and bombarding him with all kinds of questions about Sabrina. Where had they met, and what was she like? And the more he seemed to protest that she was nothing more than a girl who happened to be staying for a while, the less his mother seemed to believe him.

      ‘You’ve never had a woman living with you before,’ she’d pointed out.

      ‘She’s not living with me,’ he’d explained tersely. ‘Just living in the same flat. It’s no big deal, Ma—people do it all the time these days.’

      ‘Not someone like you,’ his mother had said serenely. ‘I know how you like to be in control.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘Well, as every year passes you become more and more eligible—’

      ‘Ma,’ he’d objected on a note of drawling humour.

      ‘It’s true. And an attractive young woman invading your space would normally have you running screaming in the opposite direction.’

      ‘Who says she’s attractive?’ Guy had asked suspiciously.

      ‘Well, is she?’

      ‘Mmm,’ he’d agreed, without thinking. ‘She is. Very.’

      His mother had sounded oddly triumphant. ‘So when are we going to meet her? Your brother and I are itching with curiosity.’

      ‘Then itch away. You are not going to meet her,’ he’d said patiently. Then, having heard his mother’s offended silence, he’d sighed. ‘Not just yet, anyway…’

      He picked the phone up. ‘Guy Masters.’

      ‘Guy? Khalim here.’

      ‘Khalim!’ He forced enthusiasm into his voice. ‘What can I do for you?’

      ‘May I speak with Sabrina, please?’ came the honey-smooth response. ‘I was going to ask her out to dinner on Saturday.’

      Resisting the urge to slam the phone down, Guy marched back into the dining room. ‘It’s Khalim on the phone,’ he said accusingly. ‘For you.’

      Infuriatingly, Sabrina found herself thinking about the orchid, and felt the blood rush hotly into her cheeks. ‘I wonder what he wants.’

      ‘To ask you out for dinner.’ He stared at the pink cheeks and wondered what had caused her to blush. ‘But we’ve been invited out to a party on Saturday.’

      ‘We?’ she asked disbelievingly.

      ‘Well, I have,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m sure that Jenna won’t mind if I bring someone.’

      Oh, sure. Sabrina could just imagine how much Jenna would like her there. ‘Jenna doesn’t like me, Guy—on the only two occasions I’ve met her, she’s looked at me as though I was an insect she found squashed onto the sole of her shoe.’

      ‘She’s better with men than with women,’ he observed.

      Understatement of the year. Sabrina paused by the door, thinking that she was fed up with only being good enough for client dinners with idiots or as the unwanted guest at the party of a predatory woman who obviously wanted Guy for herself.

      ‘Actually, I just might go out with Khalim,’ she said. ‘It could be rather fun.’

      Guy could hear her on the phone to his friend, and his pulse began to hammer. He pushed his barely touched plate of food away, and scowled. She could do what she damned well liked.

      Inexplicably, Guy found himself cancelling the client dinner on Friday, and then spent the next evening prowling the sitting room like an edgy jungle cat as he waited for Khalim to arrive. He seethed when Sabrina breezed into the sitting room and he saw that she was wearing that same silky silvery grey dress she’d worn in Venice. The night he’d taken her to his bed.

      It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her whether she intended an action replay with his friend, but some last vestige of sanity made him bite back the jealous words that he instinctively knew she would never forgive. Words that deep down he knew he didn’t mean—so why the hell did he keep imagining the whole scenario, as if someone were running a film reel through his mind?

      Sabrina felt slightly on edge, wondering if she was equipped to cope with a man who, as Guy had already said, ate women like her for breakfast.

      Suddenly she wished that she hadn’t been so proud, or so stupid. Fancy letting Guy go alone to a party where Jenna would no doubt be waiting to get her hooks in him. ‘Aren’t you going to be late, Guy?’ she asked tentatively, and then almost recoiled from the anger in his eyes.

      ‘Want me to get out from under your feet?’ he asked silkily.

      ‘Don’t be so insulting!’

      He picked up his jacket with a careless finger. ‘Just be careful, huh? You’ve got the number of my mobile, haven’t you?’

      ‘Why, do you think he’s about to drag me off to his palace with him to make mad love to me all night?’ she asked sarcastically.

      ‘I wouldn’t blame him if he did,’ he drawled. He looked at the silver-grey fabric, which clung so enticingly to the slender curves of her body, and swallowed. If Khalim attempted to do that then as one man to another he would completely be able to understand it. ‘But just remember this, Sabrina—he’ll never marry an Englishwoman. His destiny has been mapped out for him since birth.’

      ‘I’m not looking for a husband!’ she snapped.

      ‘Good.’ He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Have a good time.’

      ‘What, after that little pep-talk?’ she asked acidly.

      After Guy had gone, she felt like ringing up Khalim to cancel—but, apart from the fact that she didn’t have a number for him—even Sabrina realised that such a loss of face would be intolerable to a man like the Prince.

      Even so, she felt as if the executioner’s axe was about to fall while she waited for the doorbell to ring.

      Guy walked into the party and wished he could walk straight out again. He narrowed his eyes against the mêlée. Too many people, too much noise, too much smoke, and the music was hellish.

      ‘Hello, Guy,’ came a low, husky voice by his side, and he turned round to see Jenna, an expression he didn’t quite recognise making her lovely face look a little less lovely than usual.

      ‘Hi,’ СКАЧАТЬ