‘My cousin has a new designer, a man from your own country. He would like you to meet him so that you can discuss your requirements with him.’
Before Keira left the shop it was arranged that the merchant would contact his cousin, accepting his invitation on her behalf, whilst Keira would make arrangements via Jay’s servants for a car and a driver to be put at her disposal to take her to the fabric town.
If when Jay returned she had proper samples of the fabrics she wanted to use, having consulted directly with the designer and producer, it would surely prove to him that whilst he had been away she had been far too busy working to have any time to waste on thinking about him.
Keira was still desperately trying to convince herself that it was India itself that was responsible for the overwhelming of her defences: India, with its potent mystery and sensuality that thrummed in the air and filled the senses, stealing away reality and resistance. It was India that was responsible for the fact that she lay awake in her bed at night, trying to deny the ache spreading through her in slow waves of heat and need. India that somehow, like a magician, conjured up those unwanted and forbidden images inside her head, created those secret private mental films in which she and Jay lay together, their naked bodies veiled only by the sheer voile bed-hangings enclosing them in their own intimate world.
Yes, it was India that had the power to touch her senses and break through her defences. Not Jay himself, Keira reassured herself.
Mumbai was its normal highly charged cosmopolitan self, Jay acknowledged. With meetings overrunning into cocktail and dinner parties that went on into the early hours of the morning as the socialites of the city mingled with its movers and shakers.
Tonight he was dining with a fellow entrepreneur, an Indian in his early fifties, originally educated in England, who had returned to Mumbai to take over a family business. Amongst the guests was a Bollywood actress who was currently trying to engage Jay’s interest in something more intimate than dinner table conversation by asking him if he had yet visited the city’s latest exclusive nightclub.
She was very beautiful, with the kind of figure that could make a grown man cry, and her fingertips rested lightly on Jay’s suit-clad arm as she leaned closer to him to envelop him in a cloud of scent. Her movements were designed to be sensual and discreetly erotic, but for some reason they failed to stir his pulses. Her scent wasn’t the scent he wanted to breathe in, her eyes weren’t amber but dark brown, and whilst her touch did nothing whatsoever for him, he only had to think about Keira’s touch for his body to react.
What nonsense was this? That one woman could quite easily be replaced by another was Jay’s personal mantra—one he adhered to strictly. Jay moved restlessly in his chair, oblivious to the disappointment of his companion as she recognised his lack of interest in her. There was only one explanation he was willing to accept for Keira’s unwanted intrusion into his thoughts, and that was quite simply that he ached for her because he had not brought their intimacy to its natural conclusion. If he had done so then he would not still be wanting her. That was all there was to it. Nothing more. Nothing more at all.
Jay was still repeating those words to himself several hours later, as he lay alone and sleepless in his bed in his hotel suite, the business documents he had intended to study left ignored on the beside table.
Keira.
Jay closed his eyes, only realising his mistake when immediately his memory furnished him with a mental image of her in which her eyes burned dark gold with desire for him and her breath came in swift, unsteady little gasps of escalating arousal.
His own heartbeat picked up, hammering its message of need through his body.
He had been a fool not to take what had been on offer. She had probably had condoms to hand—women like her were always prepared.
The Bollywood actress had insisted on writing down her mobile number for him. He had two more days in Mumbai—could spend longer there if he chose. Longer? Since when did it take more than one night in bed with any woman to satisfy his desire for her? Wasn’t that why he had grown bored with the ritual of pretending to have to seduce a woman who had already made it plain that she was up for sex with him, taking her shopping for the present she had made it clear she expected, then finding that, like a tiger fed on tame game instead of having to hunt, his belly was full in the sexual sense, but his appetite was somehow not satisfied. It was no wonder that he had actually welcomed the celibacy that had become his only sleeping partner these last few months.