‘I’m sorry, but there’s a call. It’s important or I wouldn’t have—’
Her companion breathed out, a long exhale that pushed his wide chest against her.
‘It’s okay, Taqi. I understand.’ Another slow breath. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’
Rosanna didn’t hear the man’s footsteps as he left because her pulse was thrumming in her ears.
But he must have gone because suddenly cool air wafted around her. Her companion’s hand slid from her breast and she had to stifle a cry of protest as he stepped back, holding her upper arms as if he realised how weak-kneed she felt.
‘My apologies,’ he murmured and this time that indefinable accent was much stronger.
Rosanna looked into ebony eyes and silently nodded. Was he apologising for the interruption or for getting so carried away in such a public place? They were lucky it was someone he knew, someone apparently discreet, who’d found them.
Yet as she stood there, trying to catch her breath, it wasn’t regret she felt, except at the interruption. She’d fallen headlong into a tsunami of desire and it had been the single most exciting event of her life.
Which said an awful lot about her life up until now!
She watched his Adam’s apple move jerkily in his throat and felt a burst of relief seeing proof that he too struggled to come back to reality.
‘I have to go. It must be important for Taqi to search me out.’
She nodded. ‘I understand.’
Still he didn’t move, just stood, looking down at her from dark, unreadable eyes. Then he inclined his head. ‘Thank you.’
A second later she stood alone as he strode with loose-limbed grace back towards the party.
Rosanna watched him go, hand to her throat as if to keep in her fast-beating heart that had risen there.
She moved away to the dark corner at the end of the terrace, waiting till her breathing returned to normal and the fireworks he’d set off in her body stopped detonating.
Rosanna couldn’t quite believe what had happened. She’d never felt such a visceral response to any man, even Phil, whom she’d once planned to marry! Such combustible passion was outside her experience. The realisation should shock her. Yet all Rosanna felt was a sense of inevitability, as if it were utterly natural for a woman who never did one-night stands and had learned to think twice about trusting men to respond this way to a stranger.
And to feel bereft at his departure.
She smoothed down her hair and straightened her jacket, doing up the buttons that had come undone during their embrace. Then she settled on a nearby stone seat, waiting for his return.
He didn’t come.
Not long afterwards the doors opened and guests spilled out. For half an hour everyone stood on the terrace, watching an impressive firework display in honour of the laird and his new bride. Tonight was part of a series of celebrations to mark their recent marriage.
But to Rosanna the pyrotechnics were a distraction. In their lurid light she moved through the crowd looking for a particular dark head and broad shoulders. Her fingertips tingled at the memory of his sculpted head and soft, short hair beneath her touch.
But he’d gone.
And she didn’t even know his name.
CHAPTER ONE
‘BUT,MARIAN,I’MNOTready for this!’
‘Of course you are. You’re a recruitment expert, aren’t you? This is just another recruitment job.’
‘Justanother job?’ Rosanna’s eyebrows rose as she stared, unseeing, through the huge window that gave out over her aunt’s lovely Chelsea garden. ‘Surely even by your standards, this isn’t just any other job.’
There was a pause on the line and Rosanna imagined her diminutive aunt leaning back in her hospital bed and setting her mouth in a firm line.
‘All right. It’s not average, even by my standards.’