voice or face from her mind although she had tried to blame her inability to sleep on the second cup of coffee she’d had at dinner.
At about two a.m. she had decided that she had imagined the hypnotic quality of his searing blue eyes and the inexplicable hostility she saw in them when they were turned in her direction.
Now a caffeine-free zone, she had to admit she had been fooling herself.
Even after having adjusted her stare to a point over his shoulder she could feel his eyes on her. The sort of eyes that layers of skin and bone seemed a poor defence against—it felt as if he could see inside her skull.
When she was this close to him she felt as though every protective layer she had built up over the years had been peeled away. Chastising herself crossly at the whimsical illusion, she kept staring into the safety zone over his shoulder, deciding it was preferable to have him assume she was cross-eyed than maintain direct eye contact and do something stupid like trip over her own feet, drool or forget her name.
This is stupid—you look ridiculous, Molly thought. Look at the man—you can’t talk to the wall! Surely nothing should scare a person who had stood in at the last minute for an absent colleague and delivered a sex-education lecture to a hall of sixteen-year-old girls?
It had turned out the girls knew a lot more than she did!
‘You startled me,’ she said, brushing the dust off the seat of her skirt before tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I didn’t hear you.’ And if I had I would have run in the opposite direction.
It was still an option, she thought, staring at his shiny boots.
‘Sorry,’ he said, not looking it, but not actually sounding as openly antagonistic as he had the previous evening.
It was possible she’d been wrong about the hostility, not that he had the sort of face that was easy to read if he didn’t want you to. And right now it would seem he didn’t want her to.
Her gaze flickered across the hard contours and angles of his lean face and a sigh snagged in her throat. He might not be easy to read, but he was damned easy to look at! A lot more than easy!
Her glance dropped to his feet shod in leather boots and then, as though drawn by an invisible magnet, worked its way upwards, lingering over some areas more than others, until she reached his face. Everything about him was worth looking at.
She applied the tip of her tongue to the moisture that broke out along her upper lip and struggled to disguise the fact that her feet were nailed to the ground with lust.
No man had ever elicited this type of raw response from Molly in her life and she found it both utterly mortifying and deeply scary.
As he reached across to take the sketch-book from her she opened her mouth to protest but nothing came out. With fingers clenched almost as tight as her teeth, she injected amusement into her voice as she held out her hand.
‘I doubt my scribbling will interest you, Mr al… Prince…’
His eyes lifted, meeting hers momentarily. He ignored the hand. ‘Or my opinion interest you?’
‘I’m holding my breath.’ Actually the entire breathing thing was currently something of a chore. She was twenty-four and had never been in a situation where sexual awareness caused her brain to malfunction before.
The acid sweetness of her retort caused his eyes to narrow before they dropped. Biting her lip, Molly watched in dismay as Tair Al Sharif, his dark head tilted a little to one side, continued to study the sketch.
So far he hadn’t been overly impressed by anything about her, so why, she asked herself dourly, should now be any different?
She stopped and blinked… Will you just listen to yourself, Molly? Have you any idea how pathetic and needy you sound?
She took a deep breath, lifted her chin and advised herself sternly to grow up. For goodness’ sake, he was not an art critic. Why should she give a damn what he thought?
She didn’t!
So why was she standing here shuffling her feet like a kid called to the headmaster’s study?
This was ridiculous. She was acting like some needy loser who wanted everyone to love her… Someone might be nice, but that someone was not going to bear any resemblance to Tair Al Sharif.
The internal dialogue came to an abrupt end as he lifted his raven head.
He was surprised that she actually did have the talent he accused her of lacking, a fact that was obvious even to his uneducated eye. The drawing leapt off the paper. It was detailed and delicate and if it did not meet with her approval the artist was an extremely harsh critic of her own skills.
He removed his eyes from the sketch-book and turned his attention to her, his dark gaze drifting over the outfit that was not what most women would have selected for a meeting with a lover, but clearly Tariq was able to see past the dowdy disguise. The thought of his smitten cousin brought a dark scowl of disapproval to his face and it was still in place when their eyes connected.
Molly went to push up the glasses on her nose only to discover they weren’t there. She experienced a moment of total panic, the sort she felt in nightmares.
She didn’t need his approval, she told herself sternly, and she didn’t need a safety blanket either. The glasses had been useful once, but she was no longer a precociously bright but gauche kid plunged into the university environment among people who were older.
Tair had seen the gesture. ‘You have mislaid your spectacles… Can you not see without them?’ It amused him that the teacher was looking at him as though she were a pupil expecting a reprimand from a headmaster.
She gave a shrug. ‘They’ll turn up.’
‘The picture is very good.’ He handed back the sketchbook, which she took and slowly closed.
A gratified smile lifted the corners of her sensual lips, and her eyes looked like polished amber as they shone with pleasure. The permanent groove above his hawklike nose deepened. Her reaction struck him as a wildly over-the-top response to what had been a grudging observation.
As if the same thought had suddenly occurred to her, the smile vanished and she lowered her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘I CANNOT be the first person to tell you that you have…talent.’
The harsh emphasis Tair placed on the last word confused Molly. ‘It’s a hobby…it’s just for my own amusement.’
And did it amuse her to steal another woman’s husband? The muscles of his brown throat worked as he regarded her with distaste.
His rigid disapproving stance made her shift uncomfortably, and she dropped her gaze. Seeing her glasses lying on the floor, she bent to pick them up with a grunt of relief. Unfortunately Tair did too, his brown fingertips brushing the skin of her wrist as he reached them just before her.
The brief contact sent a surge of tingling sensation through her body. She stepped back, almost stumbled, then, breathing hard, she straightened up.
Tair
