When the house had been habitable, she had taken in a lodger to help with the mortgage—Kat, who was now in her last year of studying languages at a nearby university. And only then had Sienna given herself the luxury of turning her attention to the garden and the challenge of making something pretty out of the small square of ground which had looked like a builders’ yard.
‘Coffee’s ready!’ called Kat.
‘Coming!’
Sienna got up and went through to the kitchen, where Kat was just putting the cafetière and mugs onto a pretty spotted tray, her red hair falling over her shoulders. She looked up as Sienna came in and smiled. ‘Shall we drink it in the garden?’
‘That would be lovely,’ said Sienna, but she could hear the flatness in her own voice as she went out into the sunshine.
She felt like an outsider to the rest of the world. Usually she revelled in pride and pleasure at the small oasis she had created in the middle of the city, but not today. She could see the sunlight dappling through the honeysuckle, but she couldn’t seem to smell the fragrant blooms, nor appreciate its simple beauty. Hashim’s reappearance in her life seemed to have sucked the vibrancy out of everything except the memory of his dark and cruel face, and his hard, virile body.
She took the coffee that Kat poured for her and stared into the cup as gloomily as someone with a fear of heights being told to do a high dive.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’ said Kat.
Sienna looked up. Her teeth gritted into the bright, cheery smile which she had become rather good at perfecting. ‘Oh, just work. You know. It’s frantic at the moment.’
‘You don’t usually complain,’ observed Kat, her eyes narrowing. ‘You’re usually glad when it’s like that.’
‘Well, it’s hot, too. Isn’t it?’ Sienna wiped her damp brow with a jokey and exaggerated gesture—because how could she tell Kat what was troubling her, andwhat could she tell her?
Oh, I had a fling with a sheikh until he discovered that I’d done some topless photos, and then he…he…
Little beads of sweat studded her forehead and she wiped them away with an angry hand. How awful it sounded when pared down to the basic facts.
She wouldn’t tell Kat. Because if she told Kat about Hashim then that would give him an identity which would live on for ever. Kat would want to know all about him—who wouldn’t? No, she wouldn’t tell anyone. She would do what he wanted her to do and then hopefully he would leave her alone.
Hopefully?
That was part of the trouble, too. He had forced her into this corner and yet a part of her wanted to impress him. To engineer the most wonderful dinner party for him and dazzle him—leaving him with an altogether better memory of her than he currently had.
And wasn’t there another part of her—a stubborn and stupid and romantic one—which wished that she could just go back and rewrite history?
Sometimes she started thinking about how it might have been if she’d never done those photos—but then she made herself stop. Thinking like that was a pretty pointless exercise. If she hadn’t been able to come up with the money quickly then her mother’s life would have collapsed around her—and how could she have lived withthat ?
And even if he hadn’t found out it would never have been anything more than a fling—for how could it have been? What had she been imagining—that he’d buy her a whopping great ring and marry her, take her back to Qudamah as the Sheikh’s wife? Sienna took a mouthful of too-hot coffee and winced.
‘Steady,’ warned Kat, only half jokingly.
‘Oh, listen—there’s that wretched phone again!’ Sienna leapt to her feet and gave her housemate an expression which said sorry. But in truth she was glad to get away—to keep herself busy instead of fending off Kat’s concerned questions.
‘Posh Parties,’ she said as she picked the phone up, and then gripped onto it with whitening knuckles.
‘Hello, Sienna,’ Hashim said softly.
He had the kind of voice which made your skin shiver in spite of yourself, and Sienna closed her eyes in despair. She hadn’t spoken to him since that night in the restaurant, and sometimes she had half imagined that she’d dreamt the whole thing up.
But life was rarely as kind as that.
‘Hello, Hashim,’ she said calmly.
Most people might have asked if it was convenient to talk, but not him.
‘It is done?’ he questioned, watching as a blonde on the other side of the foyer crossed one slim, silk-stockinged leg over another and slanted him a smile.
‘Everything is arranged,’ she said mechanically. ‘You got my photos of the venue?’
‘Yes.’