by a thrilling glimpse of tanned, stubble-shaded skin above the crisp white business shirt … and the deep blue silk tie … and the dark, sharply tailored suit that was either Armani or Savile Row.
Armani, Casey guessed, instinctively smoothing her chain-store trousers. No. She was wrong. It was Ozwald Boateng. The kingfisher silk lining gave it away. God, he was so sexy. And she was so red-faced—and just everything she had vowed not to be.
‘What’s that you’ve got under your arm?’ he demanded.
She grimaced. Hair? Dear God! Damp patch? Almost worse. She had to replay the application of deodorant in her mind before she could relax. ‘Oh, you mean my folder?’
‘What else?’ He frowned attractively. ‘May I?’
She handed it over.
‘What is this?’ He turned it in his hands.
‘My preliminary survey of my findings at the shopping mall …’
‘You typed it up?’ He leafed through the pages.
‘I used the business centre at the hotel. My handwriting’s dreadful …’
Without even sunglasses to hide his extraordinary eyes, Casey felt as if she were under a particularly penetrating microscope, with her deepest, darkest secrets laid out on a slide while Raffa put his eye to the scope. ‘Will I do?’ she said, wishing she could cut the nervous laugh; it was making her nervous. She assumed a look of quiet confidence as Raffa’s gaze ran swiftly over her.
‘You look lovely,’ he said.
She did?
No one had ever told her she looked lovely before. She was frequently told she was too intense, too career-orientated, too serious, too driven. And in fairness all of the above was true. Lovely, however, was not a word anyone associated with her.
‘Shall we?’ he invited, gesturing towards the bank of elevators down the hall.
She had to rip her stare from his face first, which wasn’t easy.
So what now? Casey wondered, trying not to make it too obvious that she had to run every now and then to keep up with Raffa. The avenue they were speeding down, which could never be called a corridor in a million years, had a gilded roof that arced above them, decorated with cherubs and rosettes of flowers, while the marble floor was strewn with priceless rugs and guarded by towering pillars garnished with gold leaf, lapis lazuli, and enough light to illuminate small town. So, if this was merely Raffa’s flagship hotel, what would his palace be like? Not that she ever expected to see it, of course.
Casey swayed dizzily as they reached the apex of the glass atrium. Was it her fear of heights, her reaction to the sight of Raffa in a business suit looking even sexier than he had in jeans, or the wildest daydream of all—which, if she had been another, bolder person entirely, was to loosen that tie and peel back that jacket?
In front of his bodyguards?
Casey shuddered as the black-clad men emerged from the shadows. She viewed them nervously. Should she greet them or not? She decided not when they stared past her.
‘You’re a woman, and so invisible,’ Raffa informed her discreetly.
Oh, good … She had to get used to the idea that Raffa was never alone.
Was Raffa ever alone?
She refused to progress that thought. And as she preceded him into the glass elevator and felt him behind her, like a power source that made all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention, she wondered if he somehow sensed her attraction to him and her total ignorance of such things too.
‘How do you like the hotel, Casey?’
‘A lot—thank you …’ She stared fixedly ahead. This wasn’t the time to explain that she was terrified of heights, or to acknowledge that they were really high up and travelling down the side of one of the tallest buildings in the city at lightning speed. It was a relief when Raffa moved in front of her, blocking the view—or it might have been if he hadn’t been standing quite so close.
‘Are you scared of heights?’ he said, frowning. ‘You should have said. We could have travelled another way.’
Base-jumping, clinging to his back?
She’d put nothing past him.
And now she had nowhere to stare, but at Raffa, and the wide expanse of his chest. The suit he was wearing complemented the depth of his tan, and hinted at enough of the hard form underneath to tease her senses, while the dark blue silk tie picked up the raven’s wing highlights in his hair. She could only conclude that his face would always be stubble-shaded, since she had never seen it any other way, and those sensual lips—
‘Surely you’re not cold?’ Raffa observed as she shivered delicately.
‘No. I was just thinking.’
‘Share your thoughts?’
Her wild, erotic thoughts? Not a chance. She might be gauche and inexperienced, but there was nothing wrong with her imagination. She collected herself with difficulty as the ground rushed up to meet them. ‘I was thinking about an article I read in the newspaper.’ Out of time sequence, but she was almost telling the truth. ‘It mentioned the price paid for a car’s licence plate …’
‘Tell me more,’ he prompted.
‘It fetched three million dollars. That’s a lot of money. I just wondered if that was the usual result for an auction in A’ Qaban?’
Something sparked in his eyes. ‘It can be … with the right auctioneer. Why do you ask?’
There was definitely something more; something Raffa wasn’t telling her. ‘I’m just curious,’ Casey admitted. Curious, and wondering how to turn all the cash sloshing around A’Qaban to the good of the country at large. ‘Are we heading straight to a meeting?’ she asked as the lift slowed, thinking it the perfect opportunity to do some digging.
‘We’re going to start with a little more getting to know you time first.’
‘We are?’ Her throat constricted at the thought of Raffa getting to know her better.
‘After I introduce you to my team.’
Ah.
‘So you can relax now,’ he murmured as the glass and steel doors slid open.
How could she do that when he appeared to have perfected the technique of reading her mind?
She slotted in to his team as if she’d been working alongside them for years. They wore Armani, while Casey carried off her pick of chain-store items with effortless grace. She talked the same language, and added some words of her own. This wasn’t the ruffled woman who had landed in A’Qaban, but a competent, capable executive, whom anyone could see was more than ready to make the next move up the ladder. She was handling this first meeting with much more aplomb than he had anticipated. Had he been guilty so far of judging Casey on her fragile self-image rather than on her business acumen?
He
