CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
W ITH HIS BACK to his guests and his eyes closed tight, Desmond Tesfay was counting backward from ten. No, twenty. Ten seconds was nowhere near sufficient to clear the clouds of irritation now hovering like a mist over his senses.
The origin of these clouds was teenage heiress Hind Al-Bahri, who was chattering away behind his back. She’d been shadowing him in his office since nine o’clock that morning at the behest of her father, who was the new president of aviation for the oil-rich nation of Bahr Al-Dahab and the biggest potential client Desmond had welcomed that year.
Hell, the biggest potential client he’d ever welcomed. There was money, and there was money . It also meant a way into a market with unlimited possibilities. He’d have tap-danced naked in front of Buckingham Palace in order to get this man’s attention, so letting a spoiled teenager trail him for a day in order to get a “feel for business” was easy in comparison.
And, if all went well, he would land a deal that would not only make Tesfay International a giant in the aviation industry, but would also ensure its reputation as an innovator. A pioneer .
Ten long years of hard work would finally pay off.
Desmond shifted a bit and ran a finger under the collar of his snow-white shirt. It felt as if it were choking him beneath his midnight blue, slim-cut suit. His whole body was sparking with nervous, devastated energy.
Father. His heart cried out the word, though his lips were still.
It had been nearly ten years since his father, Abram Tesfay, had lost his life in the smoking remains of EssentialAire Flight 0718. Ten years since his father’s business, as broken as Desmond’s heart, had been passed to him, a graduate with barely a year of work experience.
Ten years since his whole world had shattered.
Ten years since his vow to rebuild his father’s legacy, whatever the cost.
He’d spent years clawing upward toward the sun. And he’d finally—finally!—broken through to light.
Desmond closed his eyes and tried to picture his father’s face. The most frightening thing was how poorly he was able to recall his father’s features outside of photographs.
Those pictures were hidden in his office now, buried by the PR teams that had come and gone after the tragedy in a bid to ensure potential clients forgot what had happened.
But they hadn’t forgotten, had they?
No major international airline wanted to be seen doing business with the firm, but all that was about to change.
Desmond finished counting, rearranged his features, and mentally snapped back into the persona he donned every morning like the custom suits he favored. He wrapped himself in it so tightly that nothing could escape.
Laconic. Wry. Charming. Light.
Not a hint of the grief he carried could show in anything he said or did. Though the memorial of his father’s death was a mere twenty-four hours away, his dark mood was buried deep down inside where no one could see it.
He took a breath, turned around and blanched. With her slim gold-plated mobile, Hind was zooming in on one of the many model airplane interiors he had displayed on the boardroom table, thinking that something visual might be of interest to the teenager. She was mouthing the lyrics to a song he vaguely recognized and flashing the peace sign at her imaginary audience.
Was she streaming live ?
“Hind!” he snapped.
She peered up at him through several layers of mascara, lips tilted in a glossy pout.
“Those are confidential .” Even he could hear how stuffy he sounded. He hadn’t shown her any of the really confidential work of his firm—he wasn’t a fool—but he didn’t want any unfinished work leaked on the internet, no matter how good it was. “As I mentioned earlier, it’s work for a client who wouldn’t appreciate it being leaked to the competition before launch day.”
Hind blinked, bringing to mind a confused puppy, albeit a very expensively dressed one. She pushed a lock of glossy dark hair behind one ear, Cartier dangling from both her earlobes and her wrist. “But you said, yanni , they were toys?”
“Models, Hind.” A vein was beginning to throb at his temple, and he glanced discreetly down at his watch. Four forty-five. “Anyway, kindly delete that footage and let’s take a walk down to advertising, where you’ll see some of the specifics of our latest campaign, and then, finally , we can head out for an early dinner…”
Hind sighed loudly.
“You’ll feel better once you get some food into you,” Desmond said dryly. “Come on, Sheikha.” He waited for Hind to gather herself together with much dramatic effect, restraining the impulse to roll his eyes until her back was to him. He pressed the button for the automatic doors, and followed her out.
It must be nice, he thought, to have a life so uncomplicated that one could afford to squander opportunities.
* * *
Val Montgomery had been forgotten. Again. On her birthday, no less.
A bare two days after Valentine’s Day, which she’d also spent alone.
Another person might have decided to wallow in self-pity. Val shrugged it off in the darkened conference room and stood, slipping her feet into the sensible pumps she’d been wearing since morning.
She was used to being invisible, and she was used to being alone. It didn’t bother her; on the contrary, she supposed it meant she was doing her job well. Being a personal assistant to one of the wealthiest heiresses in the Gulf did require a certain degree of discretion, and the most successful domestic servants knew how to be both invisible and indispensable at the same time. As to the birthday bit, well… She hadn’t celebrated one since that disastrous milestone nearly ten years ago when her husband had shown her his true colors.
She’d been happy to be alone since then, and reminded herself of that at every opportunity. There was no solitude that was worse than being mistreated.
Val scooped up Hind’s custom lipstick-red couture handbag, hoisting her own high-street leather satchel onto her shoulder, and hurried for the door.
Just ahead of her, Hind and Desmond’s voices were bouncing off the walls of the corridor. This part of the office was designed to look like a high-tech but extremely luxurious hangar bay, with vivid lighting, sleek furniture in icy chrome that looked uncomfortable but somehow hugged the body in the most ergonomic way, and mock-ups of aircraft that hung from high ceilings on thin chains.
Tesfay International had clearly been designed to impress everyone who stepped foot inside, and although Val had spent nearly a decade in some of the finest architectural structures the Gulf had to offer, she still found herself gawking at the interior.
She’d barely managed, thank goodness, to keep from gawking at the sight of its owner. Not that it would have mattered, she thought with an internal sigh, quickening her pace. For all the notice Desmond Tesfay took of her that morning she might as well have been one of the leather chairs that circled the marble-topped boardroom table.
Val had seen him before, of course. He’d been courting Sheikh Rashid for months, and no one who saw the Englishman could forget him. He’d left his stamp all over Europe, transforming budget airlines into everyday luxuries, and now he was expanding into the Middle East.
It was a wise decision. The oil-rich oasis of the Gulf had been Val’s home for more than a decade and the wealth she saw on a daily basis still amazed her, even now. Bahr Al-Dahab, while the smallest country by far out of the many that clustered round the balmy turquoise-blue waters of the Gulf, was the richest. It had been a small cluster of Bedouin settlements a couple of generations ago, and then oil had been discovered in the region. Now it surpassed its bigger cousins in riches, and investors were pouring into the region, making men like Hind’s father into billionaires practically overnight.
“But I’ll need my bag for that,” Val heard Hind whine, and she snapped back to attention, hurrying forward to hand over the handbag.
“Thank you so much, Val,” the girl said sweetly, although she didn’t look up because she was scrolling through her mobile. “We’re to go to dinner with Desmond this evening, he tells me, and I’ll need to change.”
Val looked up from placing the bag on Hind’s arm and then arranging her sleeve to meet Desmond’s eyes, and her skin heated.
She thought she’d been dead to the effects of men for years, and for very good reason. But Desmond had been having this effect on her all day, much to her confusion. It was because he was basically a celebrity, she told herself. A celebrity with warm bronzed skin, brandy-dark eyes framed by heavy lashes, and his mouth—
What was wrong with her? She closed her eyes briefly, willing the apparition to disappear. Unfortunately, doing so merely heightened her other senses, and she was overwhelmed by the clean, crisp scent of him. Something woodsy, spicy and soft all at once…
When she opened her eyes he was peering down at her curiously, and she took a step back, casting her eyes down to the floor. She was thirty-nine, she reminded herself sternly. One year left until forty. Much too old to be fluttering round any man in this manner. He’d just taken her by surprise, was all…
“Will you be joining us?” he asked.
Hind answered for her, huffing through her nose. “She has to,” she groused. “Daddy won’t let me go anywhere in London without a companion. Like it’s 1890 or something…”
“He wants to keep you safe,” Desmond said, soothingly.
Hind snorted. “You would take his side. I’m going to freshen up,” she announced, and clattered off for the toilets before either of them could answer. Val was left with Desmond, her stomach curling into an impossible knot. The corners of his mouth tipped upward, although he wasn’t actually smiling. His face screamed irritation.
“Are you her…nursemaid, or something?” he asked. She could hear the tints of London in the rich baritone of his voice, and something else, something reminiscent of the Gulf. She ignored the sarcasm and replied in the dulcet tones she always adopted at work with the standard answer.
“I am Sheikha Al-Bahri’s companion and personal assistant. I…travel with her.”
“Because she’s not married.”
So Desmond Tesfay was familiar with the country’s upper-class culture, then. Valentina compressed her lips, tasting the waxy lipstick she’d worn that morning. It served as a distraction only for a moment.
“Do you have a name?”
A flush rose under her skin. “Of course I do.” Why had her voice risen three octaves?
He waited patiently.
“Val Montgomery,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Miss Montgomery,” he said softly, as if committing it to memory. Her stomach roiled with the unexpected intimacy of it. She took a breath, craning her neck to peer up at the air-conditioning vent—was the thing even working? “Did you come from an agency, or are you on a free visa?”
That was unexpected. Val was able to look him directly in the face for the first time. She registered his utter handsomeness, of course, but then the small details you couldn’t get from a distance began to seep through. It was a kind face, and its businesslike sternness contrasted with eyes that looked almost…amused. It was the face of someone who’d never been bothered with the sort of burdens she carried. And he was…young.
Too young for her skin to be as hot as it was now, and much too inappropriate.
Pull yourself together!
Val lifted her chin. Her hands immediately went to smooth the creases in her tailored wool dress. The shapewear she wore beneath—and which felt like a steel cage—was specifically designed to banish even the suggestion of unsightly lumps and bumps. She straightened her spine until it no longer pinched, and she felt in control again.
She was human, after all—occasionally her body reminded her that desire existed—but her brain and sensibility would always prevail. She would make sure of that.
“I’m afraid I cannot divulge the specifics of my employment with His Highness—”
His heavy black brows jumped upward. “You’re American,” he stated. “Or Canadian?”
“American, but—”
“How on earth did you end up in Bahr Al-Dahab, of all places, and babysitting her ?”
“I’m not babysitting.” Though some days it felt like she was. Irritation yanked her chin up another fraction of an inch. “I suggest,” she added haughtily, “that we limit our conversation to business matters.”
“Fine.” The insufferable man leaned back with a glint in his eye that made him even more absurdly good-looking. Really, he was almost a caricature of a book billionaire at this point. There was an ease to his manner, too, that for some reason she didn’t believe. He smiled, but the lightness wasn’t quite convincing; his eyes were darting around as if she were boring him. “Tell me how I can get on well with Sheikh Rashid, then. I want his business.”
“How you can get on well with—” Val was at a loss for words.
“I want his business,” he repeated.
“And you’re asking me?”
“Why not?” Desmond flashed her a smile, one that transformed his face from being ridiculously attractive to being devastatingly handsome. It was no closer to changing that odd detachment in his eyes, however. “Let’s not dissemble, Miss Montgomery. You’re as much an outsider to Bahr Al-Dahab as I am, and you know as well as I do that connections and personal relations are more important than profit.”
So he knew that much, at least. Val’s estimation of him rose a bit; she’d seen many expats with their heads far enough up their own asses that they didn’t even realize when they’d blown it with her volatile boss. “I—”
“I take any advantage where I find it.” He tilted his dark head. “You understand.”
“What makes you think I have an advantage?” Val countered. “I just babysit his daughter, as you said.”
“Fair enough.” Desmond laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “But I’m going to count the fact that he sent her to me today as a good sign.”
Val restrained a snort with some difficulty. While her primary function was “babysitting,” as Desmond had pointed out, she’d worked for the sheikh for over eight years now and had witnessed enough family meals and functions to know that there was little about this man that had made a lasting impression with her boss. Hind’s father was notoriously straitlaced and conservative, and Desmond Tesfay’s flashy persona wouldn’t impress the man at all.
She rearranged her features back into the cool blankness she’d cultivated over the years, but it was too late. Desmond’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled, taking a step backward.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Desmond was stepping closer as she stepped back, that gleam in those brandy-dark eyes darkening them all the more. “You were going to say something. Or you were thinking something, at the very least. Spit it out.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Spit it out, Miss Montgomery.”
What was it about the way the man’s voice wrapped around the vowels of her surname that turned her lower belly to melting honey? Val lifted her hands to pat her cheeks. She took a breath and pictured herself encased in ice, a trick she’d learned from one of her meditation apps and which she put to use on Hind’s particularly bratty days. Snow, mountain peaks glittering white, a pool of still, turquoise-blue water. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Tesfay.”
“Yes, you do.”
Was he going to wrangle with her like a three-year-old? “Mr. Tesfay—”
He had the gall to lift his finger as if to wag it at her, but the reappearance of Hind thankfully interrupted his interrogation.
“I’m ready!”
Flustered, Val turned to her, clearing her throat. Hind thrust her handbag in Val’s direction without a word and set off down the hallway, chattering into her mobile as she went.
Val’s face burned with embarrassment, and Desmond had seen it all. She knew because her skin was tingling where his eyes grazed her.
“She’s normally not…” Val’s voice trailed off. What was the point?
“Miss Montgomery…” he began.
“Dinner!” she said, clapping her hands to break the tension as she skittered forward. She jumped when Desmond slipped up behind her, and a large warm hand hovered over hers, but stopped short of touching her.
“Allow me,” he said, and she nodded. She sincerely hoped her light-headed breathlessness was the result of not drinking enough water today, and not as a result of her proximity to Desmond. His hand closed over the handle of Hind’s behemoth handbag, and his fingers rested on her elbow a fraction of a second before he stepped away.
“My man will take it at the door. Come on, let’s go.” He began striding toward the door, and Val gave herself a good shake, reprimanding herself severely.
Years ago, she’d had an intense physical reaction to a man just as young and just as handsome, if not quite as successful. All she’d gotten from that was a heart that was smashed to bits and a colossal mess she was still cleaning up.
Well, she told herself, this was different; she had about as much chance of starting anything with Desmond Tesfay as she did of flying to the moon. And, frankly, she was grateful for it.
She was content just to look, and comforted to know that no one would ever know how silly she had been.