Sharon Kendrick Collection

It was not the answer he’d been expecting. Or wanted. But he forced himself to smile. ‘I’m going into the office for a couple of hours,’ he said.

‘But it’s Sunday!’ She pouted disapprovingly.

‘Princess,’ he said grimly, because much more of this and he really might lose his head. Or something even more dangerous. Like his heart. ‘I just about know my days of the week!’

‘You’re going to burn out before you’re forty,’ she warned.

He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Lecture over now, is it, Sabrina?’

They spent the rest of that week being extremely polite to each other. And more than a little wary.

He was home earlier than usual on Thursday. Just as he’d been home earlier on Tuesday. Funny how the office suddenly seemed to have lost some of its old allure. He’d picked up a take-away on the way home, and they’d stood together, unpacking the foil containers, while Guy tried very hard not to be diverted by the sweet sheen of her hair.

‘How about dinner tomorrow night?’ he asked suddenly.

Sabrina looked up, surprised that he was keen to repeat the experience after what had happened last time. Unless…‘You mean, with you?’

‘Yeah, and another client.’

Her heart fell, but she was damned if she would show it. ‘Not Khalim?’ she posed, wondering guiltily whether she ought to tell him that an exquisite orchid from the Prince had arrived by post yesterday. And it was hidden in all its scented beauty in the one place that Guy would never find it.

Her bedroom.

‘No, not Khalim.’ He spooned some rice onto his plate. ‘Actually, it’s a businessman who wants to buy a painting which has just come onto the market.’ He shrugged. ‘Even though he doesn’t particularly like it.’

‘Then why on earth is he buying it?’

‘As an investment. And as a coup.’ The ice-blue eyes were narrowed at him perceptively. She had a strange and infuriating habit of looking at him in that questioning way, and when she did he just couldn’t seem to resist telling her what she wanted to know. ‘He’s a bit of an idiot, actually.’

Sabrina put the spoon down. ‘And you want to give up your Friday night to have dinner with an idiot—and mine, too?’

‘It’s business.’

‘Oh, yes—business.’ She couldn’t keep the derision out of her voice. ‘Better not miss out, then, Guy—you really need that extra million bucks, don’t you?’

Guy froze. He hadn’t been the recipient of undiluted criticism for more years than he cared to remember, and even if it had more than a kernel of truth in it, it wasn’t her damned place to give it to him. ‘I take it that’s a refusal?’ he snapped, thinking that there wasn’t a single other woman of his acquaintance who would have turned him down.

‘Too right it is! I’d rather 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.’