clothing. Something about his intense stillness caught at her. He was dark, dark enough to stand out against the lush city garden, his short thick black hair making her think bizarrely of military precision. His hands rested on the stone wall, just like hers had been, and he was looking out over the garden broodingly, much as she must have been.
A tug of something made her breath shorten. Crazy. Just because he too was looking out at the garden—to imagine he was thinking of similar things? And even though quite a distance separated them, she was aware that he was big. Well over six feet tall, broad and powerful. Instantly something sizzled to life in her belly. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Lust.
Without even realising she was doing it, because the camera around her neck was as familiar as an extra limb, Nat lifted it to her eye and looked through the lens, adjusting it for focus. When his face sharpened into view, she sucked in a breath. He was in profile to her but it was possibly the most beautiful male profile she’d ever seen.
Proud. Haughty. Strong. Flawed, with a bump in his nose, but still perfect. His skin was deeply olive making her wonder if he was middle-eastern. High cheekbones and a full mouth was almost ridiculously sensual in such a masculine face, but then his jaw provided a hard uncompromising line of strength and power.
And then as if sensing her intense focus, he turned to look right at her and on a shocked reflex to see him revealed face on, Nat’s finger depressed the button and a loud whirring click broke the silence, along with a flare of light that jarred her.
He moved so quickly—vaulting over the dividing wall with all the lithe grace of an animal—that he was almost upon her before Nat had lowered the camera. Suddenly she found the wall pressing into her back, breath strangled in her throat.
Nothing could have prepared her for such close proximity. He towered over her, dark, menacing. Formidably masculine. And yet, she didn’t feel scared. She felt excited, heart racing.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ His voice was low and deep, accented. And then, still struck dumb by some strange paralysis, she didn’t stop him when he reached out and lifted her camera over her head in one swoop of a big hand.
As soon as she saw it in his hands Nat came back to life, reaching for it instinctively. ‘Hey, wait a second.’
She made a grab for it but he held it out of her grasp easily. He turned her camera around, clearly looking to find the images. Eyes as black as obsidian narrowed on her. ‘How did paparazzi get in here?’
It took a second for what he said to sink in and then she said hotly, ‘I’m not paparazzi, I’m a photographer.’
He made a snorting noise. ‘That’s what they all say.’
She could see him clicking the buttons now and panic made her throat dry, as she registered the latent sense of danger that clung to him. A kind of danger she recognised but which was incongruous in this setting.
‘Give that back now,’ she demanded, ‘I’ve got at least an hour’s work on the memory card.’
He seared her with a scathing glance. ‘Work? What you do isn’t work, it’s the equivalent of a parasite sucking the life out of its host’s body.’
Just then a female voice called from the other end of the patio, something indistinct that Nat couldn’t make out. The man turned his head and then looked back to Nat. He backed away and anger flashed up Nat’s spine; she started after him. ‘Wait, you can’t take my camera. It’s worth a lot of money, it’s my work.’
The man was grim, that beautiful face etched in stark disapproving lines. She wanted to slap it.
‘We’ll see what security says.’ With that he turned away and walked back down the terrace, examining the camera, clearly busy trying to find incriminating evidence. She saw a woman in a suit waiting for him anxiously. His lover? An assistant? To Nat’s utter chagrin, something dark lanced through her to think it might be a lover.
Just who the hell was he anyway? She watched him vault easily over the dividing wall again and was about to start after him when her assistant popped out. ‘Nat? They’re ready to go again.’
Rage caught in her throat. What was wrong with her reflexes? She’d just let an arrogant stranger walk away with one of her most prized possessions—one of her father’s cameras. The stranger had thought she was paparazzi. Her skin crawled.
Torn, but knowing that the exacting fashion editor of the magazine was inside and waiting, Nat had no choice but to go back. She had another camera with her and she’d downloaded the morning’s first shots onto her laptop, a lucky force of habit from her years of knowing how useless the images were unless they were backed up.
But whoever the mysterious stranger was, she was going to find him and let him know exactly who she was and leave him in no doubt that his judge and jury act had been completely over the top and unnecessary.
* * *
Salim Segal watched the woman work with mesmeric grace. The fact that he’d been mistaken about her didn’t sit easy within him. He didn’t usually read situations wrong, but when he’d felt that prickle of awareness of someone’s eyes on him and had turned and seen the slim woman, he’d only registered the camera when the flash had gone off.
He would have thought he’d be used to that by now—the thousand flashes of light a second as his image was captured a million different ways. But for the first time, he’d understood what it was to feel as if a secret part of your soul was taken when someone took a picture.
He’d been thinking…about things that he hadn’t thought of in a long time. Dark things that he thought he’d left behind amidst the rubble of so many ruined cities he’d lost count. Under a million twisted and torn bodies. And then he’d looked and seen her, and she’d caught that feeling of rawness. He’d seen it for himself in the image she’d taken, unwittingly.
She stood up now from her crouched position on the floor in front of the blonde model who had been pouting moodily, and said something in Russian to her and the girl smiled in response, looking like a teenager again. Salim caught the gist of it, something like, good job, we’re done.
His gaze skated over the model, dismissing her. She was beautiful, yes, but too young, too skinny. Still a person who was forming.
Her on the other hand…he’d been able to tell from his first glance at her earlier, that she was a fully formed woman with all her mysteries and allure. His gaze traveled up over slim legs encased in soft leather, cupping a curvy backside. As he watched from where he stood in the shadows near the door she stretched to ease out kinks, arms over her head, lifting her loose top up to reveal the naked indentation of a small waist and just like that, blood throbbed in his veins, like it had earlier when he’d noticed how huge her eyes were and that they were the most unusual shade of gold and green. Tawny. Like a lioness.
She pulled something out of her hair and it tumbled down now, thick and messy around her shoulders, golden lights glinting among darker strands. She massaged her skull and Salim wanted to replace her hands with his. Lust was so urgent within him that he almost turned and walked out, not liking to be in the grip of anything out of his control.
But then someone said something to her and she turned and looked. He’d been spotted. And now he couldn’t move, as she walked towards him. For a man whose reflexes were honed enough to melt out of sight in an instant, this was not welcome.
