Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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      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,’ he said, thinking how overly jovial he sounded. He handed her a slim, silver-wrapped present. ‘Happy birthday!’

      ‘For me?’ she said coyly. ‘What is it?’

      The question irritated him far more than it had any right to. ‘Why not open it and see?’

      Jenna’s perfectly painted fingernails greedily ripped open the paper. ‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘A book.’

      She said it, thought Guy wryly, as though he’d just given her a serpent.

      ‘Apparently, if you only read one book for the rest of your life, this is the one. It’s up for a prize, and most people in the industry think it’s just going to walk away with it.’ He was, he realised, repeating Sabrina’s enthusiastic praise almost word for word. She had recommended that he read it himself, and maybe he would. Maybe he would.

      ‘Oh,’ Jenna said.

      The blinkers seemed to drop from his eyes as he surveyed Jenna’s look of bemusement. It was going to be, he realised sadly, completely wasted on her. ‘Hope you like it,’ he finished lamely, and wondered just how long he could stay at this party without looking boorish.

      ‘I’m sure I will!’ Jenna’s green eyes slanted from side to side. ‘On your own?’ she quizzed softly.

      Something in her tone made his hackles rise. ‘Obviously.’

      Jenna shrugged. ‘Nothing obvious about it at all—I’m suprised you haven’t brought your new flatmate with you.’

      Guy stared at her. Funny how you could know someone for years and years, and a remark which should have been completely inoffensive should suddenly sound like the most intolerable intrusion. His grey eyes gleamed. ‘And why should that surprise you, Jenna?’

      ‘Well…’ Jenna drank some champagne and left some of the liquid to gleam provocatively on her lips. ‘You know what people have been saying, don’t you?’

      ‘No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?’ he suggested evenly.

      Jenna shrugged. ‘Oh, just that she’s not your flatmate at all—but your lover.’ She gave a shrill little laugh. ‘As if!’

      Some dark kind of explosion seemed to happen inside his head. ‘You’d find that such a bizarre scenario, would you?’ he asked quietly.

      ‘Well…’ Jenna shrugged, seemingly oblivous to the dangerous quality in his tone. ‘I think that most people would, don’t you? You’re…’ She gave a foolish, beaming smile, like someone who had decided to bet all their money on an outsider.

      ‘Hmm? What am I?’

      ‘You’re…well, you’re everything that most women would ever want, I suppose,’ she stumbled. ‘And she’s…’

      Guy froze. ‘She’s what?’

      ‘Well, I’m sure she’s very nice,’ said Jenna insincerely. ‘But she’s just a small-town girl who works in a bookshop, isn’t she?’

      ‘As opposed to a small-minded girl who lives off her daddy’s trust fund?’

      Jenna stared at him. ‘Guy!’ she protested. ‘That was completely uncalled for!’

      His grey eyes were as cold as ice. ‘What right do you think you have to criticise a sweet, beautiful woman who actually works hard for her living? Who has seen tragedy and looked it in the face, and managed to come to terms with it?’

      ‘I didn’t know anything about that!’

      ‘You don’t know anything about anything!’ he snapped. ‘Not about anything that really matters! Forgive me if I don’t stay, Jenna, but I have something waiting for me at home!’

      Or someone.

      Except that he didn’t—and why would he expect to? All he’d offered Sabrina had been some lousy dinner with a man he himself had admitted was a fool. And the only additional carrot he’d dangled in front of her had been a trip to the party of a woman who looked down her nose at her.

      Was this what his life had become? Some kind of extravagant but superficial game? Going to all the right places but with all the wrong people—and for the wrong reasons, too?

      And Sabrina was now out with Khalim—a man he liked and respected, but a man who was a veritable tiger where women were concerned. He had seen for himself that Khalim had been capitivated by Sabrina’s easy, uncomplicated charm—just as he had been. He’d also said that Khalim would never marry an Englishwoman—but what if Sabrina’s golden bright beauty was the exception to the rule? Khalim was used to getting whatever he wanted in life. Wouldn’t he move heaven and earth to possess a woman if she’d touched his heart in a way that no one else had?

      He drove like fury back to the flat, but it was, as he’d fully expected, empty.

      He’d never spent a longer evening in his life—bar the one where he’d sat with his mother and waited for news which they’d both known in their hearts would be the worst possible news.

      He tried reading, but that was useless, and he hated the television with a passion. He realised that he hadn’t eaten, but couldn’t face preparing any food. Or even eating some of Sabrina’s carefully packed leftovers which sat at the back of the fridge. And the sight of her slavish economising made him want to hit something.

      Or someone.

      Guy forced himself to face the fact that she might not come home at all. That Khalim might now be making love to her with all the skill acquired from having had women offer themselves to him since he’d been barely out of his teens.

      And if that was the case, then he must force himself to act like a rational man. He had no right to show temper or outrage. They weren’t committing any crime. He didn’t own her.

      He glanced down at his watch. Where the hell was she?

      He had just sprawled down on the sofa, a glass of wine in front of him, when he heard the sound of a key in the front door. He rose to his feet, but stood right where he was and waited. Because he knew that he might have to face the fact that Sabrina was not alone.

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