‘I don’t know how much my wife owes you, but…’
There was a look in the ice-green eyes that burned her pride. Her reaction was instinctive and immediate. Shaking her head, she stepped back mutely.
‘Please…’ the Professor was insisting.
‘No,’ Sadie refused fiercely. Whether his act was a kindness to protect her or a bribe designed to protect his wife, she didn’t know; all she did know was that she would not and could not take his money, his charity. She had earned her wages, and it was her wages she wanted—not the professor’s generosity.
‘No,’ she repeated in a calmer, more rational tone, even if her voice was shaking slightly. She grabbed hold of her suitcase and hurried towards the still open courtyard gates.
Drax watched her go, protectively shielding the intensity of his desire by lowering his eyelids to hood his focused concentration on her. The familiar, dry, sand-blown scent of the desert in the air he was breathing into his body was sharpened and flooded by the heat of his own arousal. Dismissively he mentally shrugged off the warning his body was activating. He was man, wasn’t he? And a man who had perhaps been voluntarily celibate longer than was wise. Drax didn’t take women to his bed on sexual impulse. His sense of his position was too strongly developed for that. Actions that potentially shamed him did not just shame him, they shamed Vere—and they shamed the reputation that had been handed down to them. Nevertheless, while it was not his habit to go in for casual serial partner sex, it was perhaps time that he found himself a discreet mistress.
The gates had been closed behind the young woman for several seconds when, as though she had been surreptitiously watching from inside the house, Drax recognised, Monika came into the courtyard, beckoning them both inside. Reluctantly following the Professor, Drax almost missed seeing the small maroon oblong lying on the ground. Bending to pick it up, he frowned when he realised that it was a passport. He opened it, flicking through. Sadie Murray, twenty-five years old, single, light brown eyes, dark blonde almost brown hair, her only distinguishing mark a small mole on the inside of her left thigh…
‘Vere—it is always such a pleasure to see you,’ Monika was gushing, causing Drax’s eyes to narrow as she hurried forward to envelop him in the overpowering strength of her scent. Tucking the passport away, he stepped back from her.
‘Sadly for both of us, I’m not Vere,’ he told Monika coolly. Over a decade ago, in the early days of her marriage to the Professor, when Drax himself had been a young man in his early twenties, Monika had offered herself to him. She would never forgive him for rejecting her, Drax recognised, and he would never forget that she had so easily planned to betray her husband.
‘I appreciate that you have your reasons for doing so, my dear, but, really—that poor child…to dismiss her like that…’ the Professor was saying with a worried frown.
‘She deserved it,’ Monika returned sharply. ‘She refused to carry out my instructions with regard to one of my clients, and in doing so cost me a great deal of money.’
‘But, my dear, she’s so young, and all alone in a foreign country,’ the Professor wavered unhappily. ‘And morally—’
‘Morally? Hah! It is her morals that have caused me so much of a problem. Why should I have to suffer the disadvantages of employing a young western woman who has chosen to behave like a traditional virgin?’
‘My dear…’
Drax could hear the distress in the older man’s voice, but Monika chose to ignore her husband’s shock.
Tossing her head, she continued sharply, ‘I need a female employee who knows how to persuade men to become my clients, not one who freezes them away.’
‘Sadie should surely be praised for her virtue, Monika?’ the Professor protested.
‘I did not employ her for her virtue. She is pretty enough, but plainly she doesn’t know how to use that prettiness to her own advantage.’ Monika gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Now she has to learn the hard way that that does not make good business sense.’
‘You have ensured that she has sufficient money to pay for her air ticket home?’
Drax watched as Monika’s mouth hardened. ‘That is not my concern. If she hasn’t, then it will teach her much needed lesson. Let me summon the maid and get her to bring you both some coffee,’ she told her husband, determinedly changing the subject.
As a Lebanese woman, Monika lived a far more independent life than that of a traditional Zurani wife, who would never have dreamed of even appearing in front of a male guest of her husband, never mind addressing him directly. She was certainly far too strident for his taste, Drax acknowledged, and he shook his head and refused. ‘Not for me, Monika. I’m afraid I can’t stay. I have an appointment.’
It might only be March, but Zuran did not have a spring. Its climate went straight from a welcome ‘cool’ winter temperature of around twenty-five degrees in February to a swiftly climbing forty-five-degrees-plus in the middle of summer.
For Sadie, having to walk all the way into town with her case, and without the hat she normally wore for protection, the rising temperature felt distinctly too hot. Her hair might be thick and long, its burnished light brunette warmed with natural gold highlights, but it was no protection against the sun. At least she had her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the harshness of the sunlight as it bounced off the white-painted walls of the houses lining the roadside.
No one walked in Zuran—which was no doubt why so many male drivers slowed down as they drove past her. At least, that was what she was going to tell herself, Sadie decided, gritting her teeth as she ignored yet another car driver crawling along beside the kerb, murmuring to her words she was relieved she could not understand before thankfully he drove off when he realised that she had no intention of acknowledging him.
Her dismissal was so unfair. She had been good at her job, she knew that, but no way had she intended to coax and tease men into signing up with Monika by hinting at providing them with a sexual reward that she was not going to deliver. Sadie loathed that kind of female behaviour, and she loathed even more the kind of men who expected it.
Perhaps she was naïve, but it had shocked her to discover that a female employer should expect it of her—especially out here in this predominantly morally conservative part of the world. About her reaction to the man who had been accompanying Monika’s elderly husband she did not want to think at all.
Drax was just about to put his foot down to join the fast lane of traffic when the car phone rang. He knew it would be Vere calling him. It was typical of Drax that he never questioned why or how he should know that without looking at his phone. It was just an accepted part of their twinship.
‘How did the meeting go with the Ruler?’ Vere asked.
‘Well enough—although I don’t think he was too pleased that I turned up in your place. And, speaking of people who weren’t as pleased to see me as they would have been to see you, I’ve just seen the Professor. Monika asked to be remembered to you.’
‘So you’ve been too busy to find me a wife, I take it?’ Vere responded, ignoring Drax’s dig about Monika.