The Desert Prince's Mistress. Sharon Kendrick

were beautifully shaped and arched, and her skin looked soft—all roses and cream—like petals in the early morning when they had been kissed by the dew. It was skin that made her look as though she’d been brought up in the fresh air, raised on nothing stronger than milk and honey.

      She had answered her own question, he realised. She was exactly the woman he was looking for.

      ‘Take your jacket off,’ he said slowly.

      For a second Lara’s sang-froid almost deserted her. It was a perfectly normal request to make in the circumstances. It wasn’t as though he was asking her to perform a striptease. But that was exactly what it felt like. Inside, she was suddenly overcome with a bubbling mass of insecurity, which was crazy—crazy—and yet there was something about this darkly golden man which made his request seem like an intrusion. She didn’t move.

      Darian raised his eyebrows questioningly, ignoring Scott’s frown and the indignant glances of the other women.

      Lara flashed him a cool and professional smile and slid her jacket from her shoulders with hands which were miraculously steady. Then casually slipped her finger through the loop of the jacket and stood before him, feeling a little as she imagined the favoured member of a harem must feel. All the women vying for one man’s attention and only one of them receiving it. Her heart was beating fast. You’re concocting fantasy, she told herself sternly. That’s all. Just because you think he’s the brother of the Sheikh you’re attributing to him all those kind of primitive man-woman things which you wouldn’t dream of doing if he was any average man.

      ‘How’s that?’ she asked, in a voice which she hoped didn’t betray quite how unsettled he was making her feel.

      ‘That’s fine,’ he said evenly, trying to be objective, but for once it wasn’t easy. Her body was good. Very good. She was tall and slender, and yet curved in just the right places, and her breasts were quite simply perfect—not too full and not too small, the white tee-shirt emphasising their shape and not quite disguising the pinpoint thrust of her nipples, which made him tense in desire even though he tried not to.

      Darian looked around at the others. In terms of beauty there was not one woman present who could be faulted. There was every variety of womanhood represented here today. Most were slim—too slim, in his opinion, but that was the fashion. True, there were a couple whose curves were more luscious than slim, but the camera didn’t flatter real curves; he knew that.

      Leisurely, he ran his eyes over each and every one of them, until they came back to rest and stay on the girl in the jeans. She looked normal and healthy and glowing and…and something about her was still making his skin tingle.

      He nodded and turned to Scott. ‘Can I have a word, please? In private?’ he asked him.

      ‘Sure,’ Scott replied.

      The two men moved to the only vacant corner of the studio. ‘I think we’ve found our English rose,’ Darian said slowly. ‘Don’t you?’

      Scott turned to him. ‘But she’s a brunette!’

      ‘So? I don’t remember specifically asking for blonde!’

      Scott lowered his voice. ‘We haven’t even tested her yet, Darian,’ he said, a touch anxiously. ‘In fact, we haven’t tested any of them.’

      Darian gave an arrogant shrug. ‘There’s no need. She’s the one I want.’

      ‘But she might project completely the wrong image.’

      Darian studied the varying blondes in the studio, who were all looking at him hopefully. They looked…they looked…bland, he realised impatiently. He flicked another glance at the brunette, who seemed so full of life and vitality in comparison, and a steady pulse began to beat at his temple. ‘She won’t,’ he said steadily. ‘Trust me.’

      ‘The place will erupt if you don’t test the others, too,’ protested Scott.

      Darian shrugged. ‘Then test them.’

      ‘And show you the results?’

      ‘If you want. I’ll see them, but I won’t need to.’

      ‘How can you be so sure?’

      Darian gave a slow smile. Instinct. Simple as that. She had what he wanted. ‘I just am. She’s the one.’

      The atmosphere in the room was electric, and Lara felt decidedly odd. This wasn’t like a normal casting at all. Everyone was staring at her, and she wondered if the composition of her body had undergone some remarkable transformation, whether her blood could suddenly have become jelly. Because that was what she felt like—that was the way he was making her feel.

      The man with the golden eyes had turned back and was staring at her, and Lara felt as though she was helpless, caught in the honeyed intensity of that gaze. Like a rabbit hypnotised and blinded by the glaring headlights of a car, or a snake lured and seduced by the sound of the charmer’s pipe.

      ‘What’s your name?’ he asked softly.

      Lara took a deep breath. She just knew that he was going to offer her the job! This couldn’t really be happening. It shouldn’t be happening. She had turned up late, looking scruffy, and been rude to him—he should be sending her packing, not seriously entertaining the thought of employing her! But she kept her voice steady—as steady as his golden stare. ‘Lara. Lara Black.’

      ‘Lara Black,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’ He gave the room a cool smile. ‘Well, I’ll leave you all in the capable hands of Scott.’

      He moved away, and Lara watched him as he placed one foot on the staircase. He glanced up at that moment and their eyes met, and she was suddenly filled with an inexplicable feeling of disappointment and stupidity.

      Was that it, then? She bit her lip distractedly. What had she expected? That he would suddenly announce to everyone that she had got the job without bothering to test the others? As if that would happen! Especially to someone who had behaved with such utter disregard for professionalism.

      She felt a stupid sense of loss as she watched his dark, lustrous head disappear from view. He had gone and she had blown any chance of getting to know him better. But she knew one thing for sure.

      He was Khalim’s brother. The resemblance was unmistakable.

      So what was she going to do about it?

       CHAPTER THREE

      LARA put the phone down and stared at Jake. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said slowly.

      Jake looked up from the script he was studying. ‘Got what?’

      ‘That job I went for. You know—I told you.’

      Jake frowned. ‘Something about a mobile phone company? You turned up late, looking ghastly, and the owner was there and subjected you to a grilling?’

      It was still taking a moment or two to sink in. ‘That’s right.’

      Jake elevated one brow in a manner which would have caused almost any other woman in the country to swoon, but not Lara.

      ‘Does this guy have a death wish?’ he joked. ‘Or does he just like a challenge?’

      Lara didn’t say anything. She suspected that Darian Wildman did like a challenge, and something about that worried her—though it now appeared that her gut reaction had been the correct one, after all. She had thought that he was going to offer her the job, but then he had just disappeared and left them all to be photographed. Still, when she mulled it over now, he couldn’t possibly have done otherwise, could he? Not employed her without testing her and, more importantly, without testing all the others—otherwise he would have had a small riot on his hands.

      Yet she had sensed that he was about to do so. He looked like the kind of man who broke all the