and it just showed how unlike her real self she was behaving to even think such a thing. It would be better though, wouldn’t it, for her to wait a little longer before she did see Ash in order to give herself time to feel less vulnerable.
Ash didn’t much care for the new temporary steward who had been taken on while his usual man, Jamail, had gone home to look after his sick mother. The man hovered too much and too closely. There was something in his eyes that Ash didn’t like, although he told himself that he was probably being unfair to him as he shook his head, refusing the drink the steward had offered. He looked at his watch. Just gone 1:00 a.m. It was a six-hour flight to Mumbai at least and, with the time difference, it meant it would be 9:30 a.m. before they landed. He had arranged for his meeting to take place in his office in his penthouse apartment in the city, to save time and also to allow him to leave for Nailpur—the Rajasthan state of which he was the ruler and from which he derived his title—the following day to attend to his business there.
A new message from Hassan caught his eye. In it his old friend was complaining that they hadn’t had a chance to catch up at the engagement party.
It was true that Alex, Hassan and Ash didn’t get much opportunity to catch up with one another in person. They all had busy lives. Ruefully, he emailed back—Perhaps you should get engaged yourself, and throw another party—and then went back to concentrating on the key points he wanted to discuss with the consortium that was going to renovate one of Nailpur’s smaller palaces and turn it into an exclusive luxury hotel.
Whilst he personally did not need the money this venture would bring in, the people of Nailpur did. Ash sat back again in his chair as he contemplated the problems he and the highly trained young managers he had hired were having persuading the people of the benefits of growing their crops in a more modern and cost-effective way. For the hotel and the other plans he had to bring tourists and money into the area, which needed to become more self-sufficient. They had the land and the climate with which to grow much of the food visitors would require, but the local farmers were afraid of committing to the new methods of agriculture Ash wanted to introduce. In order to get round that he was encouraging their sons—and daughters—to go to agricultural colleges so that hopefully they would come back and persuade their families to adapt to modern ideas.
The door that led to the small kitchen beyond which lay the flight deck opened and the steward came out asking Ash if he would like anything to eat or drink.
In the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dim glow from the brilliantly star-lit sky outside—she hadn’t dared switch on the light in case it alerted Ash to the fact that she was here before she was ready to face him—Sophia took a deep breath. She couldn’t hide herself away in here forever. She got up, heading for the door into the main cabin, then stopped as she heard voices and realised that Ash was talking to someone.
She couldn’t go in there now. She’d have to wait until he was alone. She went back to the bed and sat down on it, stifling a yawn as she did so. It had been a long and exhausting day and the bed looked very tempting. Too tempting to resist, Sophia admitted as she had to stifle another yawn.
Two minutes later, having automatically removed her shoes and her dress, she was tucked up beneath the beautifully welcoming and expensive sheets, her eyes already closing.
CHAPTER FOUR
FOUR o’clock. Another couple of hours or so and they’d be touching down in Mumbai. He might as well get some sleep, Ash acknowledged as he closed down his laptop and then made his way to the jet’s bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light as he headed for the bathroom where he stripped off his clothes and then stepped into the shower. Emerging from it he dried himself and then pulled on one of the two thick towelling robes that hung on the inside of the bathroom door.
This time he did switch on the bedroom light and then froze in disbelief as he saw what—or rather who—it revealed.
‘Sophia! What the …’
The angry sound of Ash’s voice brought Sophia out of her shallow sleep to struggle into a sitting position as she clutched the bedclothes around her naked upper body, and wished that her heart was not hammering so fast.
‘I’m sorry, Ash,’ she apologised immediately. ‘I was going to come and tell you that I was here but you were talking to someone and then I was so tired that I must have fallen asleep.’
This was the last thing he needed right now, Ash thought. In the intimacy of the cabin he could smell the scent of her skin, lush and warm, subtly demanding that his male senses respond to it as nature had designed them to do.
‘You’ve done this deliberately, haven’t you?’ he accused her. ‘Even though I told you that I couldn’t help you. I don’t like having my hand forced, Sophia.’
Sophia bristled. How dare he accuse her of that kind of subterfuge and deceit. ‘You’re wrong,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not trying to force your hand. I came to the airport thinking I’d be able to get a scheduled flight to London but all the normal flights were cancelled because of the number of guests arriving for the party on their own private jets. When the girl at the airport said that yours would be the first to leave I just—’
‘You just got on board? Have you any idea of the diplomatic reverberations your behaviour is going to cause? And not just with your father. How do you think your husband-to-be is going to react to the news that you’ve disappeared with another man within hours of your engagement to him being announced?’
‘He will never be my husband. Never. I wish this was any plane but yours, Ash, I really do, but I had no choice. I will not let my father sacrifice me for his dynastic ambitions. All I want is to get to London. I’ve got my passport. After your plane puts down in Mumbai you need never have anything to do with me again. In fact, I don’t want you to. I thought you were someone special, Ash, a true hero, and someone I could turn to, but you aren’t. Stupid of me when I already knew the danger of putting my faith in you and then being rejected as a result.’
He knew immediately what she was alluding to and her criticism stung.
‘You offered me your virginity and I refused it for your own sake as much as anything else. You were sixteen. To have taken your innocence from you would have been dishonourable.’
They shouldn’t be having this conversation. It took him too close to a dangerous place he didn’t want to be.
‘All I want from you is a lift to Mumbai,’ Sophia told him. ‘No one need know that I left the island with you.’
‘You’re damned right they don’t because the truth is that you did not leave with me. And why London?’
‘I’ve got friends there.’
She was avoiding looking at him, causing Ash to demand curtly, ‘Friends, or a man? A lover who—’
‘No!’ Sophia denied truthfully. Please don’t let Ash ask her if she was really sure those so-called friends would welcome her and help her, she prayed, because the honest answer was that she didn’t know.
Now that the shock of being woken up by Ash’s angry voice was abating, another and far more dangerous awareness was spreading quickly through her body and that was the realisation that under that robe he had tied so carelessly Ash was probably completely naked. Why should that either concern or disturb her? She didn’t want him any more.
And yet she couldn’t remove her gaze from where the robe gaped
