‘Shaan?’
She blinked, bringing her mind back to the man sitting at right angles to her. He was watching her narrowly and she realised that, once again, he had known the very moment when Piers’ name had popped into her head and was responding accordingly—snapping her out of her reverie before it took too tight a hold.
‘Do you think,’ he went on once he had her full attention, ‘you could transcribe that lot for me if I find you a word processor to use?’
‘Of course,’ she said, feeling more comfortable with this bass-secretary relationship than their other, much too intimate one.
‘Good.’ He nodded, then bent down to open the large bottom drawer in his desk. To her surprise he came up with a lap-top computer which he put down on his desk in front of her. ‘Ever used one of these?’ he asked, and at her mute nod dumped a set of cables on her lap. ‘Then I can leave you to set it up while I pour us some coffee?’
He got up, stretching out his lean frame in a long, lazy way which drew her reluctant gaze to the muscles flexing along the rigid walls of his stomach. Her mouth went dry and she looked quickly away, fingers suddenly all thumbs, because a strange kind of heaviness was attacking her own muscles.
Jet lag, she decided firmly. The sensation had nothing to do with Rafe. After all, his constant closeness was something she had become more than familiar with over the last few days.
Yet, when he moved away, she let go of the breath she had not realised she had been holding until that moment and frowned, not liking the suspicion that she was becoming more and more aware of him as a real flesh and blood man.
By the time he brought two cups of coffee back to the desk, Shaan had the lap-top jumping into life. The machine was loaded with the same kind of software she was used to using, and she opened up a new file and set her mind to the task in hand while Rafe immersed himself in yet more paperwork.
They worked in companionable silence for a while, he flicking through papers, picking up his pen to score the odd remark across a paragraph, or just lazing back in his chair to read.
It was a strange kind of situation, Shaan mused at one point when she paused to sip at her cup of coffee. Here they were, strangers—enemies to a certain degree—but newly married and, as far as any outsider was concerned, supposedly here on their honeymoon. Yet at the first opportunity he got, Rafe kept on putting her to work!
‘What’s the smile for?’ His deep voice intruded.
Did the man ever miss anything? she wondered ruefully as she glanced up to find that far from concentrating on his own work, as she’d thought him to be doing, he was sitting back in his chair, concentrating on her instead.
‘I was wondering what your staff must be thinking of you, putting me to work like this,’ she told him truthfully.
‘I would rather know what you think of me,’ he countered softly.
Shaan lowered her eyes, cheeks suffusing with self-conscious colour. ‘I think you’re a slave-driver,’ she said lightly, deciding to put his potentially loaded remark in the context she had placed her own remark in.
But the colour remained high in her cheeks for a long time afterwards, and every time she glanced up she found him still sitting there just watching her.
It was disturbing. It was troubling. It made something deep down inside her coil up tightly, as though it was making ready to spring wide apart a
t the slightest provocation.
Jet lag; she blamed it all on that once again—desperately. I’m going mad with the need for sleep, she told herself firmly. That’s all it is.
An hour after that they were back in the lift. Then swiftly back to the futuristic foyer.
‘Where to now?’ she asked, hoping he was going to say back to the hotel for a rest.
But he didn’t. ‘To get you fixed up with some clothes.’
‘Oh, Rafe!’ she groaned. ‘Please, no!’ She was so tired she was almost dropping. ‘You’ve just dumped a whole load of new clothes on me without my knowing it. I don’t want any more!’
‘There’s a shopping mall across the road from here,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘You can buy anything from Chanel to Joe Bloggs there.’
Two hours after that, he had her sitting in an Italian style café in the same mall, sipping strong black espresso to help keep her awake.
‘I think I hate you,’ she murmured when she caught him watching her with an annoyingly wry smile on his face. ‘Why are you doing all of this?’ By ‘this’ she meant the criminal array of exclusive designer bags stacked all around them both. ‘It’s not as if I’ll ever get around to wearing them all!’
‘I had to keep you awake somehow,’ he replied, seemingly indifferent to the amount of money it must have cost him to ‘keep her awake’. ‘No pills tonight, remember?’
‘Keep your silly pills,’ she told him. ‘Just find me a cushion, and I’ll fall asleep right now, with my head on this table. How long have we been awake now, anyway?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Only twelve hours since you woke up on the plane,’ he said blandly.