capacity. Was what had happened last night a regular occurrence? Something he considered to be a perk of the job? If so, she had had a very lucky escape. She shuddered to think now of the kind of health risks she had run in coming so close to unprotected sex with a stranger. Why hadn’t she stopped him?
Inside her head she could hear her own voice, taunting her that she was after all her parents’ daughter, and that all the years of struggling to deny the fact, to reject it and prove to herself she could never be caught in the trap of her father’s sexuality, had been swept away by her physical desire for a stranger.
Her parents’ marriage had been the result of her father’s uncontrollable sexuality and her mother’s equally out-of-control emotional neediness. In a word: lust. She had sworn she would never be like them.
So what had happened?
She didn’t drink, and she most certainly didn’t do drugs, so she couldn’t blame either of them.
She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As she had already told herself, she couldn’t change what had happened, but she could refuse to dwell on it or endlessly analyse it. She could choose to ignore it, to seal it off and lock it away where she would never need to think about it again. And, thankfully, there was no reason why she would have to think about it again.
In three days’ time she would be back in London, having arranged for ownership of the apartment to be put in her name and having put it up for sale.
She just hoped it would sell quickly. Her plan was that once the apartment had been sold she would have all the money put into a trust fund for Anthony and Teresa. They were both her late father’s responsibility after all. Teresa was little more than a girl and Anthony was his son.
Gwynneth dried herself quickly, ignoring the small marks on her body that were evidence of last night’s passion. A mental image of herself raking a tanned male shoulder with her teeth, clawing a male back in hunger, flashed through her mind. Defensively she dipped her head, hurrying to get herself some clean clothes. As she left the room, she hesitated. What if he was still here somewhere in the apartment, waiting….? Waiting for what? A repeat of last night? Her belly clenched fiercely around the distinctive and very betraying surge of hot excitement that stirred inside her. He wasn’t here, she told herself. Instinctively she knew that. Taking a deep breath, she opened the bedroom door and stepped resolutely into the hallway.
Half an hour later, having been delighted to find some coffee in a kitchen that was otherwise bare of provisions, she was ready to leave for her appointment. Picking up her handbag, she frowned as she saw the thick wad of Zurani currency stuffed into her passport. How had that got there? Uneasily she removed the money from her handbag, her eyes widening as she saw the note that was with it. The words To professional services for last night were written firmly on the paper, and it was abundantly plain just what they meant.
Automatically she stiffened in angry rejection of both the meaning of the note and her own reaction to it. How could she possibly feel hurt because a man who was a complete stranger had made an error of judgement? Although even though he was a stranger, it was a very insulting error of judgement, she reminded herself shakily. After all, he was the one who had invaded her privacy and entered the apartment uninvited. Even so…
Hadn’t she always believed that she had to be guardian of her own reputation and her own values? That she had to do everything she could to prevent herself being labelled as her father’s daughter?
Maybe, but surely a woman could have sex with a man without being labelled a whore? By what right did a man who walked into an unknown woman’s apartment and then had a sexual encounter with her assume she was selling the sex? By the right of being male? Did she really need to tell herself that? Wasn’t it a given—something that all women instinctively understood? Outwardly things might have changed from the days when a woman’s virtue and virginity were something to be prized, but inwardly they hadn’t changed as much as people liked to think.
By leaving her money he was telling her brutally what he thought of her. She was a commodity he had bought and used. And having used her he was now discarding her.
Dry-eyed, but with her face burning and her heart hot with furious outrage, she left the apartment.
CHAPTER THREE
TARIQ frowned as he listened to the Ruler’s Chief of Police deploring the fact that because they had not as yet discovered the identity of the Zurani who was working for the gang he could not give the order for the gang to be deported, after a warning of the very long prison sentence they would face if they were ever found in Zuran again.
Knowing that it was almost time for the Ruler to hold his regular monthly public divan—traditionally an opportunity for the Ruler’s subjects to bring to him their problems and questions so that he might dispense with justice and answers—Tariq stood up and bowed formally to the Ruler, as did the Chief of Police.
On her way back to the apartment, following her appointment, Gwynneth had stopped off at a small supermarket to buy a few basic supplies. As she put these away in the empty cupboards and fridge freezer of the apartment it was what she had been told by the sympathetic young official she had met earlier that was occupying her thoughts.
It had never occurred to her that there might be a problem registering her ownership of the apartment—especially since she had followed the advice she had been given by the Zurani Embassy in London and had brought with her documentation to prove her father’s ownership of the apartment and to confirm her own identity. Fortunately, when her father had boasted to her about the apartment he had shown her the deeds and told her that he intended to deposit them with his London bank for safekeeping.
Now, though, it transpired that proving her father’s ownership of the apartment was not going to be as straightforward as simply producing the deeds—as the charming official had explained to her, in an extremely grave tone of voice.
Her heart had sunk just about as low as she felt it could sink as she’d listened to him telling her about the double-selling scam that had resulted in two separate sets of buyers believing they had purchased the same property. And then had come the additional blow of hearing about the length of time it would take to make painstaking enquiries to establish who had been duped and who in fact did own a property.
‘So what should I do now?’ she had appealed.
‘If you are able to do so, your best course of action would be to remain here in Zuran until we can establish whether or not your father owned the apartment.’
‘I’m actually staying in the apartment,’ Gwynneth had felt obliged to tell him, adding with concern, ‘And I certainly can’t afford to pay for a hotel. If there is another potential owner, then…’
‘I shall make a note on the file to the effect that you are currently occupying the flat, but that you are aware of the issue of its ownership,’ she had been told.
Now Gwynneth reached for her mobile and switched it on. She would have to tell Teresa what had happened, but first she had another phone call to make.
As she pressed the speed dial for her boss’s number she looked at her watch. It would be nine o’clock in the morning in the UK. Piers would have been at work for a while now. He was a workaholic who liked to be at his desk by eight.
He picked up the call within a couple of rings.
‘Hi, Piers—it’s Gwynneth,’ she announced herself, smiling
