The Desert Prince's Mistress. Sharon Kendrick

high-necked dresses. There was even one woman clad in floor-length muslin who looked as if she would be more at home eating cucumber sandwiches on a quintessential English lawn, instead of packed into a crowded studio with a load of competitive peers.

      And every woman in the room shared one unmistakable characteristic.

      They were all blonde!

      ‘S-sorry!’ gulped Lara as each sleek golden head turned in her direction.

      Then, just as quickly, the women turned away from her again, and it took a moment or two while she caught her breath for Lara to realise that they were now all looking at one person. Or, rather, one man.

      Lara hadn’t noticed him at first, because he had been standing in the shadows in one corner of the room, but once she had seen him she wondered how on earth he could have escaped her attention—because he seemed to radiate a vitality which made everyone else in the room look as though they were only half-alive. She narrowed her eyes in his direction and felt her heart clench in her chest, as if an iron fist had crumpled it between cold, hard fingers.

      ‘I—I’m 1-late,’ she stammered.

      ‘Damn right you are,’ he agreed, in a silky murmur.

      She kept her face composed—she never quite knew how she did it—not when she was feeling this faint and dizzy and weak—and surreptitiously snaked her tongue out over lips which had dried so thoroughly that she felt she would never be able to speak again.

      Sometimes you knew the truth about something by instinct alone, and if she had ever doubted the claim made by the writer of that letter then that doubt was vanquished instantly as she stared across the room at Darian Wildman.

      Was it just her imagination working overtime—fuelled by the information she had received—or was everyone else in the room, Darian included, blind to what was as obvious as the blazing glare from one of the studio lights?

      This man had royal blood running through his veins, setting him apart from everyone present. Marking him out as a different breed altogether—as different as a lion standing amid a group of mewing kittens.

      He was tall—impressively tall—even taller than Khalim—yet his skin was not so dark as Khalim’s. But then this man was only half-Marabanese, Lara remembered. His flesh glowed gold and tawny and his eyes were gold, too. She had never seen eyes like them—they were like shards of golden glass, deep and gleaming, except that gold was a warm colour and this man’s eyes were cold.

      His hair was very dark—though not quite black—and was shaped to a head which was held with confidence and a certain arrogance. And pride. And irritation.

      ‘Do you make a habit of turning up late for jobs?’ he questioned tersely.

      Lara was having to fight an uncomfortable desire to run over to him, whisper her fingertips wonderingly down the side of his hard, beautiful face and tell him that she alone had the secret of his ancestry.

      With an effort, she pulled herself together. ‘Of course not!’

      Her complete absence of an apology made Darian tense, and he narrowed his eyes, feeling the tiny hairs prickle at the back of his neck as he looked at her. Her rain-sprinkled dark hair was awry and her cheeks were flushed. And her eyes were the bluest he had ever seen. They made him think of summer skies and cornflowers and Mediterranean seas. Momentarily, and inexplicably, he was sucked in by the sheer beauty of those eyes and the distraction irritated him.

      ‘And are you in the habit of poor time-keeping?’

      Be bold, Lara, she thought. You don’t need this job.

      She shrugged. ‘Not usually.’

      Not usually? It was not the reaction that Darian had been expecting. Didn’t she care that there were women in this room who looked as if they would kill to get the job? And, judging from some of the shameless glances they had been directing at him, they would also offer far more sensual incentives if they thought that might work.

      ‘Looking as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards?’ he continued, in an acid tone.

      ‘So much for the tousled look!’ retorted Lara flippantly. ‘Actually, the reason I’m late is that my agency nearly didn’t send me.’

      He met the challenge in her gaze, and something about her directness made him carry on staring at her. He wasn’t used to a challenge—and certainly not from a woman.

      ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said softly.

      She arched her brows, hot and bothered and not just from her hurried journey. Something in the way those gold eyes were studying her made her wish that she was looking as cool and unflappable as every other woman in the room. But Lara knew that nobody could guess what you were feeling on the inside; it was what you projected from the outside that counted. Which meant that her one-word reply shot back at him sounded cool, and only just on the right side of insolent. ‘Really?’

      ‘Yes, really,’ he mocked. ‘The brief was to look like an English rose,’ he added impatiently. ‘Since when did that entail looking as if you’re in the middle of hitching a ride to a rock concert?’

      Lara heard a little buzz from the other models, and she guessed that they were enjoying seeing the delectable Mr Wildman losing his cool with one of the competition. She glared at him.

      ‘Do you want me to ask her to leave, Darian?’ murmured Scott, in a low voice.

      ‘No, I don’t,’ demurred Darian. ‘I asked a question and I’m waiting for an answer.’

      She felt like asking him sweetly if he always got whatever it was he wanted, but she refrained. It was neither the time nor the place, and she suspected that the answer would be yes anyway.

      ‘It depends what your interpretation of an English rose is, surely?’ she answered confidently. ‘Even they have to run for taxis or buses sometimes, don’t they? They can’t spend the whole of their lives sitting on pretty wicker furniture and fanning themselves! Not modern English roses anyway!’

      There it was again, he thought, with a cross between grudging admiration and irritation. She was talking to him in a way which he could have confidently predicted no one else in the room would have dared try! And she did have a point, he conceded. Modern was what he was really looking for. A modern look for modern technology.

      Ask for someone who summed up everything that it was to be English, and everyone immediately jumped back a century or two! He glanced around the room at the lace and the flower-sprigs and the muslin and he frowned. Modern and English—surely the two weren’t completely incompatible?

      ‘You do have a point,’ he admitted grudgingly.

      Lara lifted her chin, telling herself that she definitely wasn’t going to get the job now, so what did she have to lose? How far could she push him? She had seen for herself that he was grumpy—as well as successful, powerful and devastatingly attractive—would his temper really turn ugly if she challenged him a little bit more?

      ‘Tell me, how do you see the woman you’re looking for?’ asked Lara calmly.

      Scott bristled. ‘I think you’ve said quite enough, don’t you?’

      But Darian shook his head. ‘No, let her speak.’

      ‘Gosh…thanks!’ said Lara sarcastically.

      Darian knitted his brows together, wondering if this rather unusual tendency to answer back at what was essentially a serious job interview was simply a way of getting herself noticed. Didn’t people sometimes act outrageously in order to detract attention from their glaring faults? And did she have any?

      He let his eyes travel from the top of her head to the tips of her pointed leather boots. If you discounted the fact that her hair looked as though she had spent a large part of the morning being pulled through a particularly thorny hedge it really was the most glorious colour—the deep, burnished mahogany of a lovingly polished piece of