In The Arms Of The Sheikh. Sophie Weston
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fingers were cold from the brutal night, but his hold was not. Natasha felt as if a fire inside him arced across and set light to something in her too. It literally took her breath away.
He looked at her, surprised. ‘Are you all right?’
She gave that little shiver again. She did not answer. She could not.
Relax, damn you!
‘You are jumpy, aren’t you?’
Natasha found her voice—and brought herself gratefully back down to earth. ‘Try bloody frozen,’ she told him pleasantly.
He did not look as if he quite believed that. But he shrugged and led the way, threading between the orange and lemon trees as if they made up an obstacle course he could run blindfold. He opened the door into the main house with a flourish.
Still there was nothing Natasha could quite put her finger on. The gesture was just too theatrical. It was almost mocking.
She thought: It’s as if I’m standing on a stage and performing to an audience of one.
What does he know that I don’t?
But she was not going to let him see that he was getting to her. She went through the door he was holding and looked coolly round the oak-panelled entrance hall.
‘Impressive!’
The walls were hung with Victorian hunting prints and massive portraits of sober citizens in civic regalia. She pursed her lips in a silent whistle. ‘Whoever owns this place? They must be complete fossils.’
His spine was reinforced steel. ‘The owner values tradition, certainly.’ His tone said that she was a trashy modern thing, incapable of understanding.
Natasha decided it was time for a little mockery of her own.
‘Fun bunch,’ she observed, curling her lip at a severe family group. ‘Even the gun dog looks as if he’s wearing a corset.’
Kazim looked down his nose. ‘Not an art lover, Ms Lambert?’
‘Not a fan of pompous snobs,’ she said crisply.
He glanced at the picture they were passing. ‘The alderman does look as if he’s on his best behaviour,’ he admitted thoughtfully, to her surprise.
But before she could pursue her brief advantage, he led the way upstairs and turned along a discreetly lit corridor.
‘Ms Dare thought you would enjoy the Egyptian room. She said you’d like the chandelier. And it has a real nineteen-twenties bathroom.’
Natasha was inclined to be scornful. ‘What’s special about a nineteen-twenties bathroom?’
Kazim’s expression did not change. But Natasha knew she had made another mistake. Somehow, she had let him score a point.
‘I will be happy to show you.’ It was just too smooth, somehow. Like someone playing a butler on the stage.
Her brows twitched together in quick suspicion. But before she could challenge him, he had opened a massive oak door. He flicked a light switch. It seemed to Natasha as if a dozen lamps came on at least. He stood back to let her precede him. She stood in the doorway, blinking in disbelief.
The room had everything. Not just a chandelier, a velvet-hung four-poster bed, some serious antique chests and a painting that looked like an original Monet.
She gulped. But she had no time for the room to overawe her. Her feet were hurting quite badly now. In fact her left heel was burning. She must have bruised it as she’d scrambled after him over the paths and the twig-strewn grass. Refusing to let him see what he had reduced her to, she strode into the room, concentrating hard on not limping.
Kazim followed. He set down the small overnight case—with a great deal more ceremony than it deserved—on a bench at the end of the bed. He patted the rich brocade coverlet. As if he were testing the damned thing for bounceability, thought Natasha wrathfully. While he played the part of a classic butler in perfect tailoring.
‘Thank you,’ she said crisply, dismissing him.
He did not seem to notice. He just nodded, acknowledging her thanks. Was he laughing at her again?
Kazim opened a drawer, then several others, in quick succession, as if he was unsure for once. Natasha barely noticed. Her nose twitched at the smell of lavender and mothballs.
‘Traditional indeed,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘My grandmother’s house used to smell like that.’
Kazim did not like that. He shut the last drawer with considerable force.
‘You will find spare sweaters in there. Shirts. Please help yourself.’
Natasha came back to the present with a little jump.
‘Thank you,’ she repeated with emphasis and opened the door wide, standing beside it pointedly.
He ignored the hint. Instead he crossed the huge room and flung open a pair of double doors she had not noticed before.
‘And here is the answer to your question. Your bathroom!’
She could almost hear a flourish of trumpets, thought Natasha. It was clear that he was not going to move until she had inspected it.
She sighed ostentatiously. ‘There’s really no need to give me the guided tour. I know how taps work.’
‘But these are exceptional taps.’
Did his lips twitch? She stared at him suspiciously. He stared back, the expressionless butler to the life. She mistrusted him deeply.
But she wasn’t going to let him get the better of her.
A bathroom was too intimate, of course. But not more intimate than that proprietorial stroking of the bedspread. And she was quite sure that he knew it and was deliberately amusing himself.
Natasha pinned on a smile as deceptive as his own and limped over to stand beside Kazim. Not close beside Kazim. There was a crucial metre between their shoulders. She took good care of that.
‘Thank you. Very nice. That—’
Then she took in the full wonder of the room before her. She stopped dead. Her jaw dropped.
‘Decadent, would you say?’ said her tormentor, pleased.
Natasha gulped. ‘I’ve never—’ She pulled herself together. She was not going to let the damn man make her lose her cool so easily. ‘How interesting,’ she said faintly. ‘Egyptian?’
‘Well, Hollywood Egyptian,’ agreed Kazim. ‘It was designed by a movie art director. Impressive, isn’t it?’
Natasha shook her head, still staring. ‘Everything but the sheikh,’ she said with feeling, forgetting to be cool again.
For a moment he was no longer impassive. His lips twitched perceptibly. ‘That could be arranged.’
Natasha came back to the real world with a jump. ‘Sorry. What?’
He was striding round the bathroom, indicating its unique design with a helpful commentary. Natasha listened to one word in ten.
Every horizontal surface in the bathroom gleamed with marble—floor, ceiling, vanity table, even the window sill. The walls, where they weren’t gleaming decorated mirrors, were covered with hieroglyphs and pictures of stylised Egyptian houris with more eye make-up than draperies. The sunken bath was circular; at the marble rim there were indentations that she realised suddenly were head rests. Two head rests, to be precise.
If she had been with Izzy, they would have sat down on the edge of that preposterous bath and laughed until they’d cried. But it was not a joke she could share with this not-quite-butler. Not Kazim, with his unreadable eyes and his private laughter. And his theatrical butlering.
The truth was he was just too damn sexy to be a butler. He challenged