Her eyes flew wide in her startled face and her breath caught in her throat. She coughed and spluttered, then lifted a hand to cover her mouth, all the while her big green eyes accosted him for his impertinent question.
“That is seriously not your business,” she said, finally, when able to speak.
“I am paying a lot of money to make it my business.”
“No. You are paying me to facilitate your life; not to reveal the finer details of mine.”
“Are you so ashamed of this man that you will not discuss him?”
Her eyes sparked with a heated emotion; and Zamir was charged with an answering emotion.
“Nothing about my personal life has anything to do with you.”
“I asked because you will not be seeing him for the time I am here. I wondered how he might cope.”
She stood up and began to place the teacups back on the tray, her mouth set in a resolute slash.
“Leave it.” His words were softly spoken but firm as cement. “That is not your job.”
“Nor is making you tea or sitting with you and being interrogated about my personal life,” she remarked waspishly.
And Zamir found himself having to hide a smile despite his frustrations. “You surprise me.”
“Yeah? Really? You haven’t met many women who tell you to butt out?”
“No,” he agreed with a soft laugh. And it was a dangerous sound, because it sent something off in her gut. A vibration of desire that she recognised and would have, in an alternate universe, have loved to indulge. He stood and curled his hands around the tray. “I told you to leave this.”
Olivia ignored the pounding of her heart; the flushing of her pulse and the burning in her abdomen. She released the tray and took a step backwards. “I trust you’ve been entertained sufficiently for this evening?”
He considered asking her to stay.
He considered telling her to stay.
But he did not.
She was right.
The sombre thoughts of Ra’if were no longer forefront in his mind. She had done what he’d needed. He placed the tray back down and fixed her with a stare that was far from an ending. “You may go, for now.”
CHAPTER TWO
The ceiling of her hotel room was covered in thirty-seven swirls in the plaster work. Olivia knew because she’d counted them over and over and over again the night before. With each recitation, she’d hoped sleep would claim her before the end.
It hadn’t.
She took a large gulp of her third coffee and straightened her shirt. Beyond her room, the day looked glorious. Christmas was on its way, and back home in Australia, Liv would have been getting around in flimsy cotton dresses and wide-brimmed hats by now. But in Vegas, the weather was finally turning cold and Olivia was relishing it.
She focussed on the weather, and not him.
His eyes had glowed like fire and ash when he’d said goodbye to her the night before.
And she’d sat across from one of the most powerful men in the world and spoken to him as though he was just a random man she’d met in a bar.
Her stomach swirled with regret.
Johnny had trusted her with this job, and she wasn’t completely sure she hadn’t done something ridiculously stupid.
A knock sounded at her door and she almost spilled her coffee down her shirtfront. “Coming,” she called, fixing another pin into her bun. She rarely wore makeup, but the disrupted night had taken its toll on her appearance. She’d smoothed a small bit of concealer beneath her eyes and brushed some bronzing powder across the bridge of her nose to bring some colour back to her complexion.