that builder will be no problem—but somehow I think that getting past your dad is likely to be the biggest challenge.’
‘So it’s just as well that I’m not thinking of trying to get off with anyone!’ Kirsten whispered in feverish interruption. ‘Look, please don’t go talking about this, Jeanie. If my dad hears any gossip about me he’ll go mad! He does not have a sense of humour about things like that.’
‘Kirsten…’ Jeanie leant across the table, her plump face arranged in lines of sympathy. ‘I don’t think anyone would repeat gossip about you to your father. Since he had that row with the minister and the church elders and left the congregation folk have been very wary of rousing his temper.’
Kirsten jerked her head in mortified acknowledgement of the point.
When the housekeeper signalled her from the doorway, she was glad of the excuse to leave the table and go and speak to the older woman. Offered the chance to work extra hours to cover for a sick colleague, Kirsten accepted gratefully and phoned her stepmother to say that she would be late home.
It was a welcome distraction to be sent to a section of the castle that was new to her. The extensive service wing had been converted to provide state-of-the-art office facilities and a conference center, as well as accommodation for the constant procession of tradesmen and businessmen who visited the remote estate in a working capacity.
Unfurling a floor polisher in a corridor, Kirsten hummed a nameless snatch of music below her breath. He was from Poland; a builder from Poland. Had she imagined that upper class accent? But then from whom had he learned the language? Perhaps that had influenced the way he spoke? Suddenly she wanted to know everything there was to know about Poland. Her own ignorance embarrassed her.
At the same time she didn’t really know whether she was on her head or her heels. Why on earth was she thinking about a man she would never see again? He worked outside; she worked inside. The castle was huge, the staff extensive. In all likelihood they wouldn’t bump into each other again unless he sought her out—and why would he do that? She had shouted at him. Of course if she was the shameless hussy Jeanie had teased her for being she would seek him out for herself. Only thankfully she wasn’t. But the thought of never laying eyes on him again made her tummy feel hollow, and filled her with the weirdest sense of panic.
Without warning the floor polisher was switched off, and she straightened from her task in surprise.
‘Look, miss. We’re having a very important meeting in here, and that machine’s damn noisy…couldn’t you go and clean elsewhere?’ a young man in a suit demanded angrily.
‘Yes, of course,’ Kirsten muttered, cut to the bone.
Another man appeared behind him, and murmured with glacial cool, ‘Don’t let me hear you address another member of staff in that tone or in that language again.’
‘No, of course not, Your Highness,’ the first man framed in dismay, his complexion turning a dull dark red at that cold rebuke.
Kirsten had stopped breathing when the second male emerged into view, for he was taller, broader and altogether more impressive in stature. Her entire being was wrapped in the sheer challenge of recognition: it was the man on the motorbike. But she could not believe that it could be the same person for he looked so very different, in a formal dark business suit the colour of charcoal: sophisticated, dignified, the ultimate in authority.
Belatedly she registered the significance of the title the younger man had awarded him and incredulity sentenced her to shaken stillness. The guy she had met on the hill above the farm was the Prince? Prince Shahir—the enormously rich owner of Strathcraig and its ninety-odd-thousand acres? Surely that was impossible? This is my land, he had said, but she had assumed he was joking. How could she have possibly guessed that a young man, casually clad in biker leathers, might be so much more than he seemed?
Refusing to allow herself to look back at him, she began to reel in the cable of the floor polisher. Her hands were all fingers and thumbs, and clumsy with nerves. She seized a hold on the weighty machine, in preparation for carting it off to a less contentious area, but her perspiring palms failed in their grip and it toppled back on to the ground again, with a noisy clatter that made her wince in despair. She was supposed to be silent and invisible around him, she recalled in steadily mounting frustration. Was she supposed to abandon the polisher and just run?
‘Let me help you with that…’
‘No!’ Kirsten yelped in horror, when she raised her head to find him standing over her, and she backed away in panic, hauling up the polisher before the lean brown hand he had extended could get anywhere near it. ‘Sorry…’
Moving as fast as she could with the unwieldy machine, Kirsten hurried away and sped through the first set of fire doors. For a split second Shahir hesitated, a frown of annoyance and surprise at her behaviour pleating his brows, and then he strode after her.
‘Kirsten…’ he breathed, before she could reach the next set of fire doors.
Unnerved by the unfamiliar sound of her name on his lips, Kirsten whirled round. She was breathing heavily, her lovely face pink with the effort of carting the cleaner with her. ‘You’re not supposed to speak to me!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Shahir retorted crisply.
‘I’m not being ridiculous! What do you want from me? An apology? Right, you’ve got it. I’m sorry I told you off for riding that bike like a maniac. I’m sorry if I interrupted your important meeting…OK, Your—er—Highness?’ And, with that almost pleading completion, Kirsten continued to back away, until she hit the doors with her behind, then twisted round and quickly made her way through them.
Shahir followed her at speed, and long before she could draw near the next set of doors he spoke and arrested her in her tracks. ‘No—don’t move one further step,’ he murmured, with a quietness that was misleading; every syllable of that warning somehow contrived to bite into her like a whiplash. ‘When I’m speaking to you, you will stand still.’
Kirsten groaned. ‘But that’s against the rules!’
Shahir vented an unappreciative laugh. ‘What rules?’
‘The household rules. People like me are supposed to vanish when you appear—’
‘Not when I’m trying to speak to you,’ Shahir asserted in dry interruption.
‘But you’re going to get me into trouble… Nobody knows we’ve even met, and I don’t want to be seen talking to you.’
‘That’s not a problem.’ Shahir opened the nearest door and thrust it wide. ‘We’ll talk in here.’
Kirsten sucked in a steadying breath and walked into an empty meeting room furnished with a polished table and chairs. ‘Why do you want to speak to me?’
Shahir thought he had never heard a more insane question. Any man between fifteen and fifty would have wanted to speak to her. Her head was bent, her face half turned away from him, her spectacular hair tied back. But nothing could hide the silken shine of that pale hair, the stunning perfection of her profile or the flawless clarity of her complexion. Nor could a dreary overall conceal the fluid, willowy grace of her highly feminine figure.
But on another level her sheer lack of vanity and her naivety shook him. He had never had to pursue a woman before. Even without his encouragement
