CHAPTER FOUR
KEIRA HAD JUST finished answering the last of her emails when she heard a knock on her hotel room door. Automatically she went to answer it, her body stiffening when she opened the door to find Jay standing there.
When Sayeed had told her that Jay would contact her she had assumed that he would telephone her, not arrive unannounced outside her room at such an early hour of the morning. Immediately she felt on edge and at a disadvantage.
‘I thought we’d make an early start so that we can drive out to the site before it gets too hot. Then we can come back and go through what I expect from you and the timing,’ Jay told her, stepping into her room so that she had to fall back.
It was a large room, with typical hotel anonymity, but somehow having him inside it with her made Keira acutely conscious of its intimacy and privacy.
‘If you’d rung me I could have met you in Reception,’ Keira told him sharply.
‘If you’d had your mobile on you’d have known that I did ring you—several times,’ he countered.
Keira could feel her face going red as she picked up her mobile and realised that he was right. She’d completely overlooked the fact that she’d switched if off when she was with Sayeed in the hotel foyer last night.
‘You’ll need to wear sensible shoes and a hat,’ he told her, causing Keira to grit her teeth.
‘Thank you, but I have visited building sites before.’
It wasn’t entirely true, but she wasn’t going to have him thinking she was totally incapable.
She paused, and then said steadily, ‘I can be ready to meet you in the hotel foyer very quickly. It won’t take me long to get changed.’
Jay’s mouth thinned. Was she daring to hint that she believed he had come to her room because he had some personal interest in her? After all that he had said to her yesterday? Was this yet another of her teasing games, designed to excite male interest? If so she was going to learn that he was not easily excited, and when it came to playing games he always played to win...
‘Any man who believes a woman when she tells him that is a fool,’ he answered. ‘You’ve got five minutes.’ And then, before Keira could object, he had settled himself in a chair and, having reached for the TV remote, was checking the stock market reports.
It took Keira precisely four minutes to get changed—behind her locked bathroom door—into a pair of sand-coloured and very businesslike cargo pants, a plain short-sleeved white tee shirt, and a pair of comfortable desert-style trainers.
Emerging from the bathroom, she gathered up a hat, her sunglasses, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt to wear over her tee shirt. She put them into the wicker basket which already held her notepad and some pencils, all without daring to look in the direction of the man seated in front of the TV with his back to her.
She wasn’t used to having a man in what was essentially her bedroom. His presence there was making her feel both acutely gauche and even more conscious of him, in a way that somehow caused her thoughts to slip sideways to a place that had her recklessly wondering if he would be watching television whilst he waited for her, if they were lovers who had just spent the night together.
Now her imagination was conjuring up images that made her hands shake, and she felt very glad indeed that he wasn’t looking at her. He would sleep naked—but would he hold his lover in his arms after the act of possessing her, keeping her close as he slept? Would she wake to the intimate drift of his hands on her skin and his kiss on her lips? He would be a passionate lover, but would he also possess a tender side?
She would never know, because she would never know any man’s passion or tenderness. The starkness of the feeling of loss that descended on her shocked her. She looked at the back of Jay’s head, willing the unwanted feeling to disappear.
As she reached for her laptop and put it into the basket, Jay switched off the TV and stood up for all the world as though he had been able to see everything she had done and felt, even though he had had his back to her. It was an unnerving thought.
Five minutes later he was driving them out of the hotel grounds in a sturdy four-by-four, his eyes shaded from the sharp sunlight by a pair of Ray-Bans that made him look even more intimidating than ever.
They turned off the new road that ran from the equally new airport past the old city to the hotel complex onto a rough track, sending up clouds of dust as they went along that made Keira glad of the four-by-four’s air-conditioning and comfortable seats.
‘How far advanced is the building work?’ Keira asked Jay.
‘We’re pretty close to completion and ahead of schedule at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we can afford to relax. We’re planning to launch the development well before the monsoon arrives, with TV and other media coverage in Mumbai, and a big event in the hotel, followed up by free look-and-see flights out for prospective buyers. That’s why I’ve stipulated in your contract that I want you based out here, where I can keep a day-to-day overview of your progress and your exclusive services until your contract with us is complete.’
Keira tensed in shock.
‘You want me based out here? I can’t do that. My office is in London and—’
She gasped as the front wheels of the four-by-four hit a rut, throwing her painfully against her seat belt.
‘I’m afraid that you are going to have to be. The contract makes our terms clear. Didn’t you read it?’
‘I must have missed that bit,’ Keira fibbed. She could see from the look he gave her that he didn’t believe her. It simply hadn’t occurred to her that he would want to oversee her work. If it had...if she had thought for one minute that she would be working closely with him on a day-to-day basis...she would have... She would have what? Refused the contract? She couldn’t afford to financially. But could she afford the emotional cost of the effect he might have on her?
‘I’m going to have to go back to London if only to source things,’ she told him.
He was looking really angry now.
‘It is my express wish that all materials used in the interior design of this development are sourced as locally as possible. That is a key requirement of the contract and a key feature of the project. We have been extremely fortunate in securing both the land and the planning agreement for this project from my brother, the Maharaja, and his granting of that permission was conditional upon us meeting certain set targets with regard to benefits from the project for local people. It is his desire and mine that as a second stage in the redevelopment of Ralapur, the old city itself will become the favoured destination of wealthy cosmopolitan travellers. In order for it to have that appeal it is essential that its unique living history is preserved. Surely Sayeed told you all of this, and informed you that we are working very closely with the Maharaja and his advisers to ensure that his conditions are met? Conditions which, as it happens, I totally support.’
Well, of course he would, seeing as the Maharaja was his brother. He himself was every bit the royal prince, all arrogance and aristocratic pride. No doubt he was used to having his way whenever he wanted it and however he wanted it, with women as well as in business. Well, he wasn’t going to have his way with her!
‘I can’t remember, Your Royal Highness,’ Keira lied again, not wanting to get Sayeed into trouble. Normally she would have been filled with admiration for the stance being taken by both the Maharaja and Jay, but on this occasion she was all too conscious of how difficult it would make putting as much distance as possible between Jay and herself.
The look he was giving her was openly contemptuous, as well as grimly angry.
‘It is not necessary for you to address me in such a manner. Since I have chosen not to play a role that requires me to use my title, I see no reason why I should be addressed by it.’
Now he had surprised her—but why should that bother her? She wasn’t afraid of him, was she? She wasn’t afraid that somehow she would end up begging him to make love to her? No, of course she wasn’t. The very idea was ludicrous, unthinkable. Because if she did then... Her heart had started to pound and a now familiar and very dangerous ache had started to spread slowly but unstoppably through her.
He was driving them up to the top of a steep incline, onto a small plateau, the wheels of the four-by-four were still throwing up clouds of dust, and Keira didn’t know what she would have done to stop that ache from spreading if she hadn’t suddenly caught her first glimpse of the development site and realised just what it was that Jay was creating.
‘You’re building a copy of the old city!’ she exclaimed in astonishment, as she looked through the dust towards the rose-red sandstone city walls and the open gateway into them, beyond which she could see a mass of buildings and workmen. ‘Sayeed said you were building apartments.’
‘We are. These are apartments,’ he told her, gesturing towards the buildings inside the city wall. ‘And once we’ve finished work on this we’ll be building the office blocks that will house the new IT industry on the other side of the new city. The office blocks are going to be mirror-fronted, so that they’ll reflect the natural landscape rather than intrude on it, and we’re using an up-to-date version of traditional building and design methods where the residential area is concerned. The idea of an ancient city excites everyone’s imagination, including mine, so we’ve decided to see if we can recreate it from the outside whilst making what’s inside more suitable for modern-day living, as well as environmentally sound. For instance, the new city will be a car-free area, and each group of homes will share an inner courtyard complete with swimming pool and private family spaces. Flat roofs will be converted into gardens. We want the new community to be serviced as far as possible from within the existing population, rather than bringing in a workforce from outside.’
It was a hugely ambitious project, and Keira could hardly take in the scale of it.
‘Ethically it makes good sense,’ Keira agreed, ‘but you have to consider that the local population may not have the necessary skills. Even if they do, they may not be able to service the demands of a large number of new households.’
‘Which is why I am already in discussion with my brother and some of the local family elders with a view to setting up training schemes to be run by skilled local craftsmen to teach the skills that will be needed. By the time the office blocks are ready for occupation, it is my intention that all the necessary infrastructure and practical aspects of comfortable everyday living for the people who will work in them will be in place and working efficiently.’
Jay stopped the car on a dusty expanse of hard flat earth.
‘The first phase of the housing development is almost finished. I’ll take you over so that you can have a look at them. We’ll have to walk from here.’
* * *
Two hours later Keira acknowledged that what she’d been shown was any designer’s dream—or nightmare, depending on that designer’s self-confidence and the support he or she would get from those in charge of financing the project.
The architecture of the residential area followed that of the old city very closely. The homes were grouped in clusters, each with its own personal, enclosed courtyard garden for privacy, and each grouping also shared a larger courtyard with formal gardens. The houses were mainly two-storey, with large balconies on the first floor and access to a sheltered flat roof space. They were either two- or four-bedroom, and each bedroom had its own bathroom. The master bedroom had a good-sized dressing room.
On the ground floor the smaller two-bedroom properties were open plan, with long galley kitchens that could be shut off from the main living area by a folding wall, while the larger properties had separate family-sized kitchens.
Each property had a small office space, and good access onto its courtyard, which was designed to serve as an extra outdoor living space. The concept was both practical and modern, whilst the look of the buildings was traditional, with the houses grouped around what would be an open ‘market square’. There was also what looked like a traditional bazaar, but in fact, Jay explained to Keira, it would be a set of buildings housing modern coffee shops and restaurants, as well as shops selling food and other necessary staples.
The houses were to have traditional hard floors, either in marble or mosaic tiles or, for a more modern feel, slate. The look Jay wanted for the interiors, as he had made plain to Keira, was one of simple elegance, in keeping with the whole concept, with a mixture of traditional and modern styles and furnishings to suit the tastes of the eventual purchasers of the properties.
‘I want a style for these properties which is unique, conveying a certain status and meeting the aspirations of the people who will live here. It must be individual with regard to each property, and yet at the same time create an overall harmony.’
That would mean using strong key colours that would both harmonise and contrast to produce individuality, whilst keeping to an underlying theme—perhaps with plain off-white walls throughout the interiors, but with very different fabrics and furnishings textures and styles, in a palette of colours. Sharp limes and cool blues, hot pinks and reds, bright yellows and rich golds. Indian colours, but used in ways that transcended the traditional whilst still respecting it.
‘I shall need to know if you want each house within a group to share the same style, with each group styled differently, or if you want a mix of styles within each grouping, repeated over several groups,’ Keira told Jay.
‘You’ll be able to see the overall plan more clearly when you see the scale model,’ Jay answered her. ‘Ultimately we intend to give people both the opportunity to work and live here, or to use it as a leisure facility. We plan to create a lake within walking distance of the development for leisure purposes, which together with the existing lake and hotel—as well, of course, as the attraction of the ancient city—will make this somewhere people want to come and visit, as well as live in. The hotel will be extended to include a facility for corporate entertaining, and we hope with irrigation to be able to source much of the food that will be needed for the new town and the visitors locally.’
Keira was stunned by the breadth of his vision. ‘It’s a very ambitious project,’ was all she could find to say.
‘I’m a very ambitious man,’ he told her.
And a very sexy man. An unnervingly charismatic and sensually disturbing man. Surely it wasn’t possible for the space inside the vehicle to have become smaller, so that she was forced to be more aware of his physical presence as a man? It was the fault of the bright sunlight that she had to turn her head to avoid its glare, and was thus obliged to look at the way his hands held the steering wheel—as knowledgeably and masterfully as he had held her last night.
How had her thoughts managed to slip sideways into that forbidden place she knew they must not go? Keira wondered angrily. It was almost as though her own body was working against her in some way, trying to undermine her.
So what if he was sexy and charismatic and...and sensually disturbing? He was also cruel and unkind and arrogant, incapable of judging her fairly, and she would be a complete fool to let herself be caught in any kind of sexual attraction to him. But wasn’t the truth that she was already acutely aware of him as a man?
Keira could feel her heart thumping. She must not give in to this unfamiliar and unwanted vulnerability.
‘There’s a fabric designer whose fabrics might work well here,’ she told Jay, putting aside her personal concerns to focus on her work. ‘He might be prepared to design and produce some fabrics specifically to order for us. What I’m thinking of is using the hot colours India is famous for, but in a more modern way—stripes and checks, perhaps, in thick hessian and slubbed linen, coarse cottons rather than sheer silks. Fabrics that have a modern appeal to them but still an Indian feel. We could have light fittings in coloured mosaic glass, but in modern shapes.’
Her own imagination was taking fire now, leaping ahead of her, illuminating the way just as the mosaic glass lanterns she was visualising would illuminate the cool shadows of enclosed courtyard gardens and rooms.
The fabrics she was envisaging would work just as well with modern pared-down minimalist furniture in plastic and chrome as they would with more ornate traditional things.
She was as fiercely passionate about her work as he was, Jay recognised reluctantly. He didn’t want to acknowledge that they shared a certain mind-set, he didn’t want to find that he admired her professionalism, and he certainly didn’t want to have to admit even to himself that he had actually enjoyed talking to her about his vision for the future of this development because he had sensed that, unlike so many other women he had known, she was genuinely interested in what he was doing.
Instead he focused on the sensuality of the way she talked about her work. It was like watching an image come to life, her passion illuminating her expression. The same way she herself would come to life in his arms in the heat of passion, offering him her body and her pleasure, inciting him to take it and to take her, exciting and denying him until he was driven to possess her in every way imaginable.
His body tightened with a desire he had to punish her for causing.
‘You paint a very sensual picture. Deliberately so, I suspect.’ His voice was harsh and accusatory.
‘I was simply describing a light fitting. If you choose to see something sensual in that then that is up to you.’ Keira defended herself even whilst her heart thudded into her ribs.
‘You did not consider it sensual yourself? There are those who believe that the underlying message of the Kama Sutra is that everything we are is designed for sexual and sensual pleasure.’
The shock caused by his words sent a sharp thrill zig-zagging down her spine, as though he had actually touched her there himself. She could feel the warmth of his breath heating her skin, just as his words were heating her already fevered imagination.
The Kama Sutra! It was unfair, surely, that he should refer to a such a book after what he had said to her about her having to beg him for sex? Was he deliberately trying to test her?
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she told him sharply. ‘It isn’t a book I’ve ever felt any inclination to read.’ There—that should make it plain to him that she was sticking firmly to
business.
‘Because you don’t feel you have anything to learn from it?’
‘Books instructing women to debase themselves for a man’s pleasure will never be something I’d want to learn from,’ Keira hit back.
‘The Kama Sutra contains no suggestion of debasement of anyone. Rather it is about the honing of mutual pleasure, the giving and taking of that pleasure, the sensual and sexual education of both male and female so that they can experience the greatest degree of mutual pleasure with and for one another. I am surprised that you did not know that.’
If she could have walked away from him she would have done so, Keira knew. Anything to get away from the taunting softness of that male voice, painting images inside her head that made her ache as though her whole body was on fire. Images which had no right to be there and which she did not want to be there.
‘It’s time for us to head back.’
His abrupt change of subject was a relief, but Keira still felt it wise to keep her distance from him as they headed back towards the four-by-four over the rutted and rock-strewn ground. He was walking very fast, his longer legs carrying him over the rough ground far more swiftly than her own, and in her haste not to look unprofessional and helpless she started to walk faster, ignoring the danger in the loose rocks and deep gulleys carved into the dusty road by the wheels of heavy excavation plant.
They had almost reached the four-by-four when it happened. A loose stone beneath her foot rolled away into one of the gulleys, causing her to lose her balance.
Jay heard Keira’s exclamation of alarm and turned back, moving swiftly towards her, reaching her just in time to catch her as she stumbled.
His chest was on a level with her eyes and Keira could see its fierce rise and fall. It mesmerised her as much as the hot male scent of his body, sending out a message that locked on to her own female hormones, dizzying and almost drugging them with awareness of his masculinity. She could feel the heat of the sun on her back, but it was as nothing compared to the heat burning through her from the grip of Jay’s hands on her arms.
All he was doing was steadying her. She knew that. But to her body his hold was dangerously reminiscent of the way he had held her when he had kissed her, and she had to fight down its instinctive urge to close the gap between them. If he kissed her now he would taste of salt and heat and male hormones...
It must be the shock of her unwanted sexual response to him that was responsible for the feeling that somehow time had slowed down, and with it the beat of her own heart, as though both of them were caught up in some kind of mystical spell, Keira thought dizzily. She could see where the shadow was just beginning to darken the line of Jay’s jaw, and she had an overwhelming longing to reach out and touch it with her fingertips, and then to trace the curve of his mouth. The sensuality of the contrast between them would, she knew, be burned into her touch in a way that would make her ache to feel that contrast against her own flesh. It would be so easy to do, so very easy.
He knew what she was doing, Jay assured himself. She was trying to use his own maleness against him, knowing what effect her proximity would have on him. He had never known a woman so skilled at using his own sexuality against him. Where other women were foolish enough to blatantly thrust themselves on him, for him to either take or repulse as his mood dictated, she was far more subtle and skilled. Dangerously so, he recognised grimly, since her subtle waiting game had already resulted in arousing him. He shouldn’t have referred to the Kama Sutra, Jay acknowledged. Doing so had conjured up images inside his head that had weakened his defences: images of sensuality and love-play in which her pale naked body was his to arouse and enjoy.
If he kissed her now...
Panicked by what she was thinking—and feeling—Keira told herself that it was relief she felt when Jay removed his hands from her arms and she was free to step back from him. What was wrong with her? Didn’t she recognise her own danger and how foolish it was for her to keep having these wholly inappropriate and unwanted thoughts? It was as though some stranger had taken possession of her, and she was no longer in control of her own thoughts and feelings.
‘Thanks,’ she told him huskily, striving to appear normal, but avoiding looking directly at him.
She had done it again, Jay thought grimly. She had aroused him and then walked away. No woman did that to him and got away with it—especially not this one.