‘You’re wearing a shirt.’ Although, to be fair, it was one hell of a lot sexier than hers, the white cotton so fine she could see his skin tone and the darker circles of his areolae where the fabric skimmed his chest. Damn. She looked away and concentrated on her coffee.
‘Couldn’t you find something more appropriate?’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ she said with a smile, refusing to be pulled into Rashid’s dark cloud of a mood, ‘but, for some strange reason, I seem to have left all my resort wear at home. Go figure.’ She shrugged. ‘Besides I actually like my uniform. It’s comfortable, practical and it scares men away—well, it usually scares men away...present company excepted, of course.’ Her friend Sally had always joked that she’d worn her uniform as a form of self-defence against unwanted attention, and she wasn’t right exactly, but it generally didn’t bring Tora too much interest from the opposite sex. ‘Men aren’t supposed to like bookish-looking women. Come to think of it, did you miss that memo?’
He scowled. ‘What’s got you so cheerful?’
‘You mean aside from seeing you?’ she said, smirking as she sipped her coffee, savouring the heady aroma of the spiced brew, before she continued, ‘Red letter day. Atiyah smiled this morning. Maybe you should try taking a leaf out of her book some time.’
‘She smiled,’ he said, frowning a little. ‘Is that good?’
‘It’s better than good, it’s great. It’s the first smile I’ve seen her give. You want her to be happy, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he said, with as much conviction as if the concept had never occurred to him. And then he nodded and his eyes softened. ‘Of course, yes, I want her to be happy.’
‘There you go,’ she said, feeling that he was not the lost cause he made out and that he would overcome whatever was holding him back from embracing his new role. ‘I swear, you won’t be able to resist falling in love with her when she smiles at you. I wish I’d brought her now, so you could see for yourself.’
He looked at a loss for what to say next, as if once again he was in unfamiliar territory. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you’re supposed to be the wife of the Emir. You can’t wear that every day—you’d look ridiculous. Kareem told me last night he’d organised an entire wardrobe of clothes for you.’
‘Oh.’ Is that what that was about? She’d opened the door to the walk-in wardrobe last night wondering where she could stash her suitcase and found it bursting at the seams with garments. Robes of silk and the finest cottons and in all the colours of the rainbow. And she’d shut the door again because they obviously weren’t hers and found another place to leave her case. She picked up her spoon to try her yoghurt.
Rashid glanced at his watch. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
Right. She put her spoon down again. Clearly this wasn’t a breakfast meeting where one actually expected to eat breakfast. In spite of her good mood, her heart gave a little trip at having to broach the subject again. But there was no point beating about the bush. She pulled a folded paper from her pocket. ‘Here are the bank details for you to transfer the funds.’
He took it, checking the details before his eyes flicked back to hers. ‘Not your account?’
‘It’s a trust account for a firm of solicitors.’ Matt’s solicitors, she thought, biting her lip. Damn. She really wanted nothing to do with Matt or his cronies, but it would just have to do for now.
‘A trust account?’ His eyebrows raised, he cast his eyes over her shirt again. ‘You know, you’re much more interesting that that uniform lets on. But then, we already knew that.’ He put the paper down on his others. ‘So, was there anything else?’
‘You’ll do it?’ she said, hardly believing it would be that simple after the grief he’d given her on the plane. ‘Today?’
His eyes narrowed, as if they were trying to find a way inside her to gain the answers he wanted, but still he said, ‘It will be done today. Was that all?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘There is one more thing. I’d like Internet access. I see it’s password protected.’
‘You wish to Tweet that you’re now sheikha of Qajaran?’
She grimaced. ‘Hardly. I need to contact my work and let them know there’ll be a delay in me getting home so they can start reallocating assignments.’ And tell Sally the funds are on their way. But he didn’t need to know that.