Her fingers trembling, Rose took the proffered card with a dawning sense of inevitability. She stared down at the envelope, and the distinctive handwriting which spelt out her name.
‘Well, aren’t you going to open it?’ demanded Lara. ‘Don’t you want to know who they’re from?’
‘I know exactly who they’re from,’ said Rose slowly. ‘Khalim sent them.’
‘You can’t know that!’
‘Oh, yes, I can.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘I may have had a few sweet and charming boyfriends, but not one who would spend this much on a bunch of flowers.’ But curiosity got the better of her, and she ripped the envelope open to find her hopes and her fears confirmed.
The message was beautifully and arrogantly stark.
‘The yellow is for your hair; the blue for the sapphire of your eyes. I will collect you at noon. Khalim.’
‘Oh, my goodness! How utterly, utterly romantic!’ squeaked Lara, who was busy looking over her shoulder.
‘You think so?’ asked Rose tonelessly.
‘Well, I’d be in absolute heaven if I got flowers like these from a man! And what a masterful message! You’d better get a move on!’
But Rose wasn’t listening. ‘What a cheek!’ she exploded as her eyes roved over the message again. ‘How dare he just assume that he can tell me a time and I’ll be meekly sitting here waiting, like a lamb to the slaughter?’
‘But you aren’t going out anywhere else today, are you?’ asked Lara in a puzzled voice.
‘That isn’t the point!’
‘Well, what is the point?’
‘The point is that I don’t want to go out with him!’
‘Don’t you? Honestly?’
Honesty was a bit more difficult. Rose had worked hard on her independence and her sense of self-possession—both qualities which she suspected Khalim could vanquish with the ease of a man who had sensual power untold at his fingertips.
‘A tiny bit of me does,’ she admitted, and saw Lara’s face go all mushy. ‘But the rest of me is quite adamant that he would be nothing but bad news!’
Lara sighed. ‘So what are you going to do? Tell him that to his face? Or just pretend to be out when he calls?’ She brightened a little. ‘I could go instead, if you like!’
Rose was unprepared for the shaft of jealousy which whipped through her with lightning speed. She shook her head. ‘I’m a realist,’ she said proudly. ‘Not a coward. If I turn Khalim down again, then he’ll just up the ante—and I am not prepared to be bombarded with charm and expensive trinkets.’
And wouldn’t he just wear her down anyway?
‘He’s the kind of man who thrives on the chase,’ she said slowly. ‘The kind of man who isn’t used to being rejected—it’s probably a first for him!’
‘So what, then?’
Little shivers of excitement rippled down Rose’s spine as a decision formed in her mind. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, in a voice which wasn’t quite steady. ‘And I’ll convince him that I’m not the sort of woman he wants.’
‘What sort of woman is that?’ asked Lara, mystified.
‘A temporary concubine!’ said Rose, and then, seeing Lara’s expression of mystification grow even deeper, added, ‘Someone who will live with him as his wife, until he tires of her, and then on to the next!’
‘You don’t sound as though you like him very much,’ said Lara thoughtfully.
And that was just the trouble. She didn’t. And yet she did. Though how could she form any kind of opinion about the man, when she didn’t really know him at all? She was simply sexually captivated by a man who exuded an animal magnetism which was completely foreign to her.
‘I’m going to go and get ready,’ she said, looking down at her faded jeans.
‘What shall I do with the flowers?’