she promised herself—her parents, that older generation of neighbours who gave her that no-better-than-she-should-be look—and she began tidily enough.
Her smile was regulation polite as she opened the door smartly so that nothing would impede his progress.
‘Good afternoon—’
She didn’t get as far as the ‘sir’.
A small boy, skidding through the terminal doors in her passenger’s wake, dived through the closing gap between the car door and Sheikh Zahir, to hurl himself at the woman who’d just pulled up behind them. Before Diana could utter a warning or move, he went flying over her highly polished shoes and cannoned headlong into Sheikh Zahir, sending the fancy package flying.
The Sheikh’s reactions were lightning-fast and he caught the child by the back of his jacket before he hit the ground.
Diana, no slouch herself, leapt for the ribbons.
The package was arcing away from her, but those ribbons had their uses and she managed to grab one, bringing it to a halt.
‘Yes!’ she exclaimed triumphantly.
Too soon.
‘No-o-o-o!’
She held the ribbon, but the parcel kept travelling as the bow unravelled in a long pink stream until the gift hit the concrete with what sounded horribly like breaking glass.
At which point she let slip the word she’d promised Sadie that she would never, ever use in front of a client.
Maybe—please—Sheikh Zahir’s English wouldn’t be good enough to grasp her meaning.
‘Hey! Where’s the fire?’ he asked the boy, hauling him upright and setting him on his feet, holding him steady while he regained his balance, his breath, and completely dashing her hopes on the language front.
Only the slightest accent suggested that the Sheikh’s first language wasn’t English.
‘I am so-o-o-o sorry …’ The boy’s grandmother, the focus of his sprint, was overcome with embarrassment. ‘Please let me pay for any damage.’
‘It is nothing,’ Sheikh Zahir replied, dismissing her concern with a graceful gesture, the slightest of bows. The desert prince to his fingertips, even without the trappings.
He was, Diana had to admit, as she picked up the remains of whatever was in the parcel, a class act.
Then, as she stood up, he turned to her and everything went rapidly downhill as she got the full close-up impact of his olive-skinned, dark-eyed masculinity. The kind that could lay you out with a smile.
Except that Sheikh Zahir wasn’t smiling, but looking down at her with dark, shaded, unreadable eyes.
It was only when she tried to speak that she realised she’d been holding her breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ she finally managed, her words escaping in a breathy rush.
‘Sorry?’
For her language lapse. For not making a better job of fielding the package.
Deciding that the latter would be safer, she offered it to him.
‘I’m afraid it’s broken.’ Then, as he took it from her and shook it, she added, ‘In fact it, um, appears to be leaking.’
He glanced down, presumably to confirm this, then, holding it at arm’s length to avoid the drips, he looked around, presumably hoping for a litter bin in which to discard it. Giving her a moment to deal with the breathing problem.
So he was a sheikh. So his features had a raw, dangerous, bad boy edge to them. So he was gorgeous.
So what?
She didn’t do that!
Besides which, he wasn’t going to look at her twice even if she wanted him to. Which she didn’t.
Really.
One dangerous-looking man in a lifetime was more than enough trouble.
Definitely time to haul her tongue back into line and act like the professional she’d promised Sadie she was …
There wasn’t a bin and the Sheikh dealt with the problem by returning the sorry mess of damp paper and ribbons to her. That at least was totally masculine behaviour—leaving someone else to deal with the mess …
‘You’re not my usual driver,’ he said.
‘No, sir,’ she said. He had twenty-twenty vision, she thought as she retrieved a waterproof sick bag from the glove box and stowed the package inside it where it could do no harm. ‘I wonder what gave me away?’ she muttered under her breath.
‘The beard?’ he offered, as she turned to face him.
And his hearing was … A1.
Oh, double … sheikh!
‘It can’t be that, sir,’ she said, hoping that the instruction to her brain for a polite smile had reached her face; the one saying, Shut up! had apparently got lost en route. ‘I don’t have a beard.’ Then, prompted by some inner demon, she added, ‘I could wear a false one.’
Sometimes, when you’d talked your way into trouble, the only way out was to keep talking. She hadn’t entirely wasted her time at school. She knew that if she could make him laugh, she might just get away with it.
Smile, damn you, smile …
‘If it’s essential,’ she added, heart sinking. Because he didn’t. Or comment on what was, or was not, essential. ‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you needn’t worry about that,’ she assured him, affecting an airy carelessness. ‘The office will know who I am.’ When he made his complaint.
She wasn’t even going to last out the day. Sadie would kill her. Sadie had every right …
‘Your office might,’ he said, ‘but I don’t.’
Busted. This was a man who left nothing to chance.
‘Metcalfe, sir.’
‘Metcalfe.’ He looked as if he might have something to say about that, but must have thought better of it because he let it go. ‘Well, Metcalfe, shall we make a move? Time is short and now we’re going to have to make a detour unless the birthday girl is to be disappointed.’
‘Birthday girl?’
Didn’t he know that it was seriously unPC to refer to a woman as a ‘girl’ these days?
‘Princess Ameerah, my cousin’s daughter, is ten years old today. Her heart’s desire, apparently, is for a glass snow globe. I promised her she would have one.’
‘Oh.’ A little girl …
