outstandingly pretty in her crimson and blue embroidered ghaghara gathered skirt, her odhni tucked into the waist of her skirt. She pulled the odhni round to drape it modestly over her head, her movements delicate and graceful, her hands and feet carefully patterned with henna.
When Keira saw the fabrics the merchant was spreading out on the floor in front of her she felt her heart skip a beat in delight. She studied the samples that were so excellently in tune with her own ideas, combining as they did tradition with a certain stylish modern twist.
‘My cousin would like to invite you to visit his factory, so that you can see more of their work,’ the merchant told her.
‘Go to his town?’ Keira queried excitedly ‘Oh, yes. I would love to.’
‘My cousin has a new designer, a man from your own country. He would like you to meet him so that you can discuss your requirements with him.’
Before Keira left the shop it was arranged that the merchant would contact his cousin, accepting his invitation on her behalf, whilst Keira would make arrangements via Jay’s servants for a car and a driver to be put at her disposal to take her to the fabric town.
If when Jay returned she had proper samples of the fabrics she wanted to use, having consulted directly with the designer and producer, it would surely prove to him that whilst he had been away she had been far too busy working to have any time to waste on thinking about him.
Keira was still desperately trying to convince herself that it was India itself that was responsible for the overwhelming of her defences: India, with its potent mystery and sensuality that thrummed in the air and filled the senses, stealing away reality and resistance. It was India that was responsible for the fact that she lay awake in her bed at night, trying to deny the ache spreading through her in slow waves of heat and need. India that somehow, like a magician, conjured up those unwanted and forbidden images inside her head, created those secret private mental films in which she and Jay lay together, their naked bodies veiled only by the sheer voile bed-hangings enclosing them in their own intimate world.
Yes, it was India that had the power to touch her senses and break through her defences. Not Jay himself, Keira reassured herself.
* * *
Mumbai was its normal highly charged cosmopolitan self, Jay acknowledged. With meetings overrunning into cocktail and dinner parties that went on into the early hours of the morning as the socialites of the city mingled with its movers and shakers.
Tonight he was dining with a fellow entrepreneur, an Indian in his early fifties, originally educated in England, who had returned to Mumbai to take over a family business. Amongst the guests was a Bollywood actress who was currently trying to engage Jay’s interest in something more intimate than dinner table conversation by asking him if he had yet visited the city’s latest exclusive nightclub.
She was very beautiful, with the kind of figure that could make a grown man cry, and her fingertips rested lightly on Jay’s suit-clad arm as she leaned closer to him to envelop him in a cloud of scent. Her movements were designed to be sensual and discreetly erotic, but for some reason they failed to stir his pulses. Her scent wasn’t the scent he wanted to breathe in, her eyes weren’t amber but dark brown, and whilst her touch did nothing whatsoever for him, he only had to think about Keira’s touch for his body to react.
What nonsense was this? That one woman could quite easily be replaced by another was Jay’s personal mantra—one he adhered to strictly. Jay moved restlessly in his chair, oblivious to the disappointment of his companion as she recognised his lack of interest in her. There was only one explanation he was willing to accept for Keira’s unwanted intrusion into his thoughts, and that was quite simply that he ached for her because he had not brought their intimacy to its natural
When Keira saw the fabrics the merchant was spreading out on the floor in front of her she felt her heart skip a beat in delight. She studied the samples that were so excellently in tune with her own ideas, combining as they did tradition with a certain stylish modern twist.
‘My cousin would like to invite you to visit his factory, so that you can see more of their work,’ the merchant told her.
‘Go to his town?’ Keira queried excitedly ‘Oh, yes. I would love to.’
‘My cousin has a new designer, a man from your own country. He would like you to meet him so that you can discuss your requirements with him.’
Before Keira left the shop it was arranged that the merchant would contact his cousin, accepting his invitation on her behalf, whilst Keira would make arrangements via Jay’s servants for a car and a driver to be put at her disposal to take her to the fabric town.
If when Jay returned she had proper samples of the fabrics she wanted to use, having consulted directly with the designer and producer, it would surely prove to him that whilst he had been away she had been far too busy working to have any time to waste on thinking about him.
Keira was still desperately trying to convince herself that it was India itself that was responsible for the overwhelming of her defences: India, with its potent mystery and sensuality that thrummed in the air and filled the senses, stealing away reality and resistance. It was India that was responsible for the fact that she lay awake in her bed at night, trying to deny the ache spreading through her in slow waves of heat and need. India that somehow, like a magician, conjured up those unwanted and forbidden images inside her head, created those secret private mental films in which she and Jay lay together, their naked bodies veiled only by the sheer voile bed-hangings enclosing them in their own intimate world.
Yes, it was India that had the power to touch her senses and break through her defences. Not Jay himself, Keira reassured herself.
* * *
Mumbai was its normal highly charged cosmopolitan self, Jay acknowledged. With meetings overrunning into cocktail and dinner parties that went on into the early hours of the morning as the socialites of the city mingled with its movers and shakers.
Tonight he was dining with a fellow entrepreneur, an Indian in his early fifties, originally educated in England, who had returned to Mumbai to take over a family business. Amongst the guests was a Bollywood actress who was currently trying to engage Jay’s interest in something more intimate than dinner table conversation by asking him if he had yet visited the city’s latest exclusive nightclub.
She was very beautiful, with the kind of figure that could make a grown man cry, and her fingertips rested lightly on Jay’s suit-clad arm as she leaned closer to him to envelop him in a cloud of scent. Her movements were designed to be sensual and discreetly erotic, but for some reason they failed to stir his pulses. Her scent wasn’t the scent he wanted to breathe in, her eyes weren’t amber but dark brown, and whilst her touch did nothing whatsoever for him, he only had to think about Keira’s touch for his body to react.
What nonsense was this? That one woman could quite easily be replaced by another was Jay’s personal mantra—one he adhered to strictly. Jay moved restlessly in his chair, oblivious to the disappointment of his companion as she recognised his lack of interest in her. There was only one explanation he was willing to accept for Keira’s unwanted intrusion into his thoughts, and that was quite simply that he ached for her because he had not brought their intimacy to its natural
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