Virgin for the Billionaire's Taking

‘I was simply trying to buy the photographs, that was all,’ she told Jay fiercely.

Her teeth had started to chatter, despite the fact that it was warm. The sickening fear she had never been able to subdue surged through her, smothering logic and reason. Somewhere deep inside herself the child who had heard her mother’s words as though they were a curse on her still cowered under the burden of those words.

The present slipped away from her, leaving her vulnerable to the past and its pain. She could feel it gripping her and refusing to let her go.

The way the colour suddenly left her face and the bruised darkness of her eyes caught Jay off guard. She was looking at him as though he had tried to destroy her. Looking at him and yet somehow past him, as though he simply wasn’t there, he recognised. He had never seen such an expression of tormented anguish.

He took a step towards her, but immediately she turned and almost ran up the stairs, fleeing from him as though he was the devil incarnate. Unwanted male guilt mingled with his anger as that very maleness made it a matter of honour for him to let her go, rather than pursue her and demand an explanation for her behaviour.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE had worked like someone possessed from the minute she had closed the door of the guest wing behind her, focusing all her energy on what had to be achieved and deliberately leaving nothing to spare that might trap her with the ghosts Jay’s accusation had raised.

But they were still there, pushing against the tight lid of the coffin she had sealed them into like the undead, denied true oblivion and existing in a half world that made them desperate to escape. And it was Jay’s words to her that had fed them and given them the strength to try to overpower her.

She looked down at her laptop and at the work she had just completed. Images of room layouts lay printed off and neatly stacked to one side of the laptop—rooms with walls painted in traditionally made paint in subtly different but toning shades of white. In the main she’d opted for modern, stylish furniture in black, chrome and natural wood, accenting the rooms with fabrics in colour palettes that went from acid lemon and lime through to hot sizzling pinks and reds, and from cool greys and blues through to creams and browns. Modern lighting and the use of mirrors opened up the smaller spaces and highlighted features. It was, Keira knew, probably the most complex portfolio she had ever produced at such short notice.

It was late—nearly three o’clock in the morning. She ought to go to bed, but she knew she wasn’t relaxed enough to sleep.

Outside, the courtyard garden was bathed in the light from the almost full moon. Keira got up and opened the door that led to it.

The night air was softly warm, without the stifling heat that would come later in the year at the height of summer.

A mosaic-tiled path led to a square pool in the centre of the garden, and surrounded it, and Keira paused to look down at it, studying it more closely.

Jay couldn’t sleep.

He threw back the bedclothes and stood up. He should have followed his initial feeling and brought in another designer—preferably one who was male.

He walked over to the high-arched windows of his room, which he’d left open to the fresh air. Beyond them was an enclosed balcony that ran the whole length of the suite of rooms that had belonged to the Maharaja for whom this palace had originally been built.

This was the only place in the palace from which it was possible to look down not only into his own private courtyard garden but also into that attached to the old women’s quarters. Naturally only the Maharaja himself had been allowed to look on the beauty of his wives and concubines. For any other man to do so would have been an offence for which at one time he would have had to pay with his sight and probably his life.

Now no modern man would dream of thinking that no one else should look upon the face of a woman with whom he was involved. A woman was a human being of equal status, not a possession, and the very idea was barbaric—and yet within every man there was still a fierce need to keep to himself the woman he desired, and an equally fierce anger when that need was crossed.

As his had been earlier, when he had seen the way the young shop boy had looked at Keira and the way she had smiled back at him?