‘But there is an heir—the prince’s younger brother,’ Elinor pointed out.
‘He has to be the real catch in the family, then.’A calculating glint shone in Louise’s gaze. ‘But after three months you still haven’t met him, even though you’re living in his house with his relatives, so that’s not too promising.’
Elinor didn’t waste her breath pointing out that falling in love with an Arab prince hadn’t done her late mother, Rose, any favours. Rose had met Murad at university and they had fallen head over heels in love. Elinor still had the engagement ring that Murad had given her mother. The young couple’s happiness had proved short-lived, however, because Murad had been threatened with disinheritance and exile if he married a foreigner. He had eventually returned to Quaram to act the dutiful son and do as he was told, while Rose had ended up marrying Ernest Tempest on the rebound. The marriage of two such ill-matched people had proved deeply unhappy.
‘You haven’t got any foreign travel out of the job either,’ Louise reminded her sourly. ‘At least I got ten days out in Cyprus with my family.’
‘I’m not that fussed about travelling,’ Elinor heard herself lie, her irritation at her companion’s snide remarks and putdowns strong enough to make her wonder why she had bothered to maintain such a one-sided friendship.
In the exclusive club they were treated to free drinks on the strength of Prince Murad’s vouchers, which was just as well as they could never have afforded to pay the high bar prices. Elinor reminded herself that it was her birthday and tried to shake off the sense of disappointment that had dogged her all week.
Her job was a lonely one and she often craved adult company; she knew that she needed to make the most out of a rare night out. Although she had the use of a car, Woodrow Court was deep in the Kentish countryside and within easy reach of few attractions beyond a small town. Zahrah’s parents travelled a great deal and preferred to leave their daughter at home rather than disrupt her schooling. As a result, Elinor had found her own freedom severely curtailed, as when her employers were absent they expected their nanny to be in constant attendance on their child. Elinor was travelling back to Woodrow Court in a limo later because leaving her charge in the care of the household staff overnight was not an option the prince was willing to allow. Even so, after being exposed to Louise’s bitter comments, Elinor was no longer feeling deprived by the fact that she had been denied the chance of a girlie sleepover.
‘You’re already getting the eye,’ Louise sighed enviously.
Elinor tensed and refused to look in the same direction. She found socialising with the opposite sex a challenging and often humiliating experience. She was unusually tall and made six feet even in modest heels. Guys happy to chat her up while she was sitting down wanted to run once she unfurled her giraffe-long legs and stood up to tower over them. Men, she had learnt from her awkward adolescent years when she was frequently a wallflower, preferred small dainty women at whom they could look down and feel tall beside. She knew she had an attractive face and a good figure, but neither counted for anything against her ungainly height. While men noticed her, they rarely approached her.
Some hours later she said goodbye to Louise, who had picked up an admirer. Elinor, on the other hand, had experienced a particularly painful evening when a young man had come up to her table to ask her to join him and then snarled, ‘Forget it!’ the instant she’d got up and he’d realised in horror that he barely reached her shoulder. He and his mates had heckled her and sniggered for what remained of the night as if she were a freak at a sideshow. As a result, she had had a little too much to drink to power the nonchalant expression she’d been forced to put on to conceal her misery.
She heaved a deep-felt sigh of relief when the limo turned down the long, winding, tree-lined drive to Woodrow Court. It passed between the towers of the imposing arched gatehouse entrance into a gravelled courtyard that stretched the length of the magnificent Tudor house. It struck her that there were more lights burning than usual. She climbed out and the cool evening air went to her head as much as the alcohol had earlier. She sucked in a sustaining breath in an effort to clear her swimming head and struggled to negotiate a straight path to the front door that was already opening for her.
Her steps weaved around a little as she crossed the echoing hall. A man was emerging from the library and her attention locked straight on to him. He was a stranger and so absolutely beautiful that one glance deprived her of oxygen and brain power. She came to a wobbly halt to stare. Black hair was swept back from his brow, bronzed skin stretched taut over his high slashing cheekbones, arrogant nose and aggressive jaw line. There was something uniquely compelling about his lean, arrestingly handsome features. He had gorgeous eyes, dark, deep set and bold, and when he stepped below the overhead chandelier they burned a pure hot gold. Her heart started to hammer as if she were sprinting.
Jasim was not in a good mood. He had not been amused when he’d arrived for the weekend only to discover that his brother and sister-in-law and even his quarry were all out and unavailable, making his presence as an interested onlooker somewhat superfluous. ‘Miss Tempest?’
‘Er…yes?’ Elinor reached out a trembling hand to brace herself on the carved pedestal at the foot of the massive wooden staircase. He had a gorgeous face that inexplicably continued to draw her attention like a powerful magnet. She just wanted to stare and stare. ‘Sorry, you…are?’
‘Prince Murad’s brother, Jasim,’ he breathed, surveying her with forbidding cool, in spite of the powerfully masculine interest she fired in him.
He immediately wanted to know if she looked at his brother in the same awestruck way. Any man might be flattered by a woman looking at him with a wonder more worthy of a supernatural being. In the flesh, Elinor Tempest was, he already appreciated, a much more dangerous entity than he had ever imagined she might be. In a dress that hugged the sensual swell of her breasts and revealed her incredibly long legs, she was out-and-out stunning. Hair that had looked garishly bright in the photo was, in reality, a rich dark auburn and a crowning glory that hung in a luxuriant curling tangle halfway down her back. Only the finest emeralds could have equalled the amazing green of her eyes. With that spectacular hair, those wide eyes and a lush pink mouth set against flawless creamy skin, she was literally the stuff of male fantasy. It was a challenging instant before Jasim, universally renowned for his cool head, could concentrate his thoughts again.
‘You appear to be drunk,’ Jasim breathed icily, his stern intonation roughened by the disturbing hardening at his groin as his body reacted involuntarily to the sexually appealing vision she made.
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Colour flared in Elinor’s cheeks. ‘P-possibly…er…a little bit,’ she stammered in great discomfiture, dragging in a long deep breath that made the rounded mounds of her breasts shimmy beneath the fine fabric of her dress. ‘I don’t usually drink much but it was a special occasion.’
Jasim was finding it a challenge to keep his attention above her chin. ‘If you worked for me, I would not tolerate you appearing in this state.’
‘Luckily I’m not working for you,’ Elinor flipped back, before she could think better of it. ‘Nor am I working at this precise moment. I’m on my own time. I had the evening off—’
‘Nevertheless, while you live beneath this roof I consider such conduct unacceptable.’
Elinor registered that he had drawn closer and that she actually had to tip back her head to take all of him in. He was very tall, she noted belatedly, at least six feet four inches, considerably taller than his older brother. In fact there was nothing about him that reminded her of Prince Murad, for Jasim was broad-shouldered and muscular in build. He carried not an ounce of excess weight on his lean, lithe physique. Of course, the two men were only half-brothers, she recalled, born to different mothers.
‘What if Zahrah was to wake up and see you in such a condition?’ Jasim demanded, meeting her intense gaze with his own and stiffening at the rampant response of his body to her encouragement. If that was how she looked at his brother, he totally understood how Murad could have been tempted off the straight and narrow. The ripe fullness of her soft pink mouth was a sensual invitation all on its own.
‘The nurse who has been with Zahrah since she was born sleeps next door to her. I think you’re being very unreasonable,’ Elinor told him tightly.
Jasim was staggered by that disrespectful rejoinder and decided that she was utterly without shame. Nor had it escaped his notice that she apparently had a limousine at her private disposal. That was a flagrant display of his brother’s special favour, which could only add weight to Yaminah’s worst fears. ‘Is this how you speak to my brother?’
‘Your brother, who is my employer, is a great deal more pleasant and less critical. I don’t work for you and I’m entitled to a social life,’ Elinor declared, her chin at a defiant tilt even though she could feel a tension headache building like a painful band of steel round her temples. Her selfesteem, already battered by the treatment she had earlier withstood at the nightclub, refused to bear any more in saintly silence. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to bed.’
Jasim only knew in that moment of red-hot outrage at her impertinence that he wanted to take her to that bed, spread her across it and make love to her until she begged him for more and ached from his passion. As he struggled to master the fierce desire threatening his usually rigid self-control he was shocked by the sheer novelty of a lust that powerful. No woman ever came between Jasim and his wits, not even the one he had once briefly planned to marry. But as he watched Elinor Tempest endeavour to mount the stairs without swaying and stumbling from the effects of the alcohol she had consumed, he knew that he would know no peace until he had bedded her and made her his.
Her foot, shod in a sandal with a thin slippery sole, slid off a step and she lurched back with a cry of alarm breaking from her lips as she clutched frantically at the solid balustrade for support.
‘Safety is yet another reason why you shouldn’t drink like this,’ Jasim breathed hatefully close, a splayed hand like an iron bar bracing her spine to prevent her from falling backwards down the stairs.