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When Jaul had approached her in the library where she was stacking shelves one day a few weeks after their first meeting to ask for her help in finding a book, she had been polite and helpful as befitted a humble employee keen to keep her job.
‘I’d like to take you out to dinner some evening,’ he had murmured after she’d slotted the book into his lean brown hand.
He had the most stunning dark eyes, pure lustrous jet enticement in his lean, darkly handsome face. In his presence her mouth had run dry and her breathing had fractured while she’d marvelled at the weird way she’d kept on wanting to look at him, an urge so powerful it had almost qualified as a need. Infuriated by the dizzy way she was reacting, she’d thought instead of how he had treated Nessa. Jaul had chased sexual conquest, nothing more complex. Once the chase was over and he had got what he wanted he’d lost interest and casual sex with young women as uninhibited and adventurous as Nessa had suited him perfectly. He hadn’t been looking for a relationship with all the limits that would have involved. He hadn’t been offering friendship or caring or fidelity.
‘I’m sorry, no,’ Chrissie had said woodenly.
‘Why not?’ Jaul had asked without hesitation.
‘Between my studies and my two part-time jobs, I have very little free time,’ Chrissie had told him. ‘And when I do have it, I tend to go home and visit my family.’
‘Lunch, then,’ Jaul had suggested smoothly. ‘Surely you could lunch with me some day?’
‘But I don’t want to,’ Chrissie had confessed abruptly, backing off a step, feeling cornered and slightly intimidated by the sheer height and size of him in the narrow space between the book stacks.
A fine ebony brow had quirked. ‘I have offended you in some way?’
‘We just wouldn’t suit,’ Chrissie had countered between gritted teeth, her irritation rising at his refusal to simply accept her negative response.
‘In what way?’
‘You’re everything I don’t like,’ Chrissie had framed in a sudden burst of frustration. ‘You don’t study, you party. You run around with a lot of different women. I’m not your type. I don’t want to go to Paris for dinner! I don’t want diamonds! I haven’t the slightest intention of going to bed with you!’
‘And if I didn’t offer you Paris, diamonds or sex?’
‘I’d probably end up trying to kill you because you’re so blasted full of yourself!’ Chrissie had shot at him in a rage. ‘Why can’t you just take no for an answer?’
Jaul had suddenly grinned, a shockingly charismatic grin that had made her tummy somersault. ‘I wasn’t brought up to take no for an answer.’
‘With me, no means no!’ Chrissie had told him angrily. ‘Persistence only annoys me—’
‘And I am very persistent as well as full of myself,’ Jaul had acknowledged softly. ‘It seems we are at an impasse—’
Chrissie had stabbed a finger to indicate the directional arrow pointing down to the nearest study area. ‘You have your book—go study.’
And without another word she had walked away with her trolley, heading for the lift that would let her escape to the floor above.
CHAPTER THREE
CARRYING A TWIN in each arm, Chrissie was greeted by Sally at the front door of Cesare and Lizzie’s home. Her nephew and niece, Max and Giana, clustered round the two women eager to see their cousins. Tarif whooped with excitement when he saw Max and opened his arms to the older boy.
‘He knows me!’ Max carolled in amazement.
‘Once Tarif’s walking, he’ll plague the life out of you,’ Chrissie quipped, passing over Tarif while Sally took charge of Soraya because Giana was too young to manage her.
An elegant and visibly pregnant blonde with green eyes and a ready smile came out of one of the rooms leading off the spacious hall. ‘Chrissie...lovely. I wasn’t expecting you until later,’ Lizzie confided warmly.
The tears still burning behind Chrissie’s eyes suddenly spilled over without warning. As she saw her big sister look at her in astonishment Chrissie swallowed back a sob and blundered into her sibling’s outspread arms. ‘Sorry.’
