Sienna replaced the phone and stood staring at it for long, countless moments. After Saturday it would all be over.
And suddenly she couldn’t wait.
Clunking up the grand drive in her battered old car, Sienna arrived at Bolland Hall just after teatime and let herself in.
‘Hello!’ she called, but there was no response. She walked through the arched hallway into the dining room and saw the table laid for dinner. She was unable to resist a smile of satisfaction. It was perfect.
Beside Georgian silver and priceless crystal, crisp damask napkins were folded into pristine rectangles and tall candles were ready to be lit.
Everything was as it should be.
There was a stunning floral centrepiece. Fragrant flowers of pink and ivory, dotted with the occasional yellow rose—chosen especially because they were the Sheikh’s colours. The colours his jockeys wore. The colour of the Qudamah flag—pink and cream, with a tiny splash of gold in one corner. She breathed in their scent appreciatively.
Similar arrangements of flowers were dotted around the place, and Sienna made her way through the silent house, briefly wondering where all the staff had disappeared to—but they were probably having a well-earned break, since they had clearly been busy.
In the vast kitchen, berry-dark and luscious individual summer puddings lay cooling in the fridge, along with marinades and champagne. Crisp meringues sat snowy-light on a tray next to a bunch of perfect grapes and a dish of white peaches. Several bottles of claret had already been decorked, ready to be carefully poured into the eighteenth-century crystal decanters.
Sienna smiled again. Let Sheikh Hashim Al Aswad try to find any fault with her arrangements!
She heard the crunch of gravel on the drive and wondered if the staff were back. She glanced at her watch. Probably. But as she glanced out of the window she saw a low and screamingly expensive black sports car drawing to a halt. Well, if that was one of the staff then she needed to switch career—and sharpish!
She clip-clopped her way into the hall as the doorbell rang and pulled open the door, her face and her body freezing as she saw Hashim himself standing there, a lazy smile touching the corners of his lips.
Sienna swallowed. She had somehow expected to see him clad in an impeccable dinner jacket, with black tie and snowy white shirt, and dark, tapered trousers which would make his legs look endless. The Western style he seemed to favour the majority of the time.
But he was not. Tonight he was dressed in clothes which heralded far more exotic climes…in fine silk the colour of a pomegranate which clung faintly to hard muscle and lean sinew. It provided the perfect backdrop for his rich black hair and golden-dark skin, but it reminded her of another time—a bitterly erotic one. She felt shame and desire and regret bubbling up inside her, but most of all she felt longing—felt it with an intensity which took her breath away.
Please don’t let it show, she prayed silently.
Hashim saw the play of conflicting emotions which crossed her features, and an emotion which was almost alien to him caught him in its silken snare.
Excitement.
‘Hello, Sienna.’
‘Hashim!’ she said softly, in a tone he couldn’t quite work out. ‘You’re…you’re early.’
She stood bathed in the soft yet fierce light of the setting sun and he thought that he had never seen her look more beautiful—that thick, shiny hair caught up and woven with glittering clips, making him aware that her neck was classically long and swan-like.
Her dress was made of some light, delicate fabric, layer upon gossamer layer of it, in swirls of rose which made him think of the petals of her mouth. The dress was modest by anyone’s standards, even his—and yet he was struck, not for the first time, by how the hint of a body could inflame the senses far more than if it was on show.
As if his senses needed any inflaming!
But he kept his face calmly impassive. This had, after all, been a long time in coming—and he was a master at keeping his feelings hidden. He must not strike until he was certain…
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ he queried mockingly.
She knew she should tell him that it was not her place to invite him in—that this was his party, and his money paying for it—but all those thoughts just flew straight out of her mind. For his proximity was making her head spin. She shrank back as he passed by her—as if that could make her immune to the raw virility which seemed to radiate from him. But nothing could make her immune to him.
The black eyes were studying her face as a fox’s might just before it devoured a chicken—whole—and a smile was playing around his lips. A smile that made her feel hot and prickly and distinctly…odd.