65

Sitting in the back, listening to Sebastian take a call on his phone, he was a million miles from the man she’d met that night in Mumbai, and when she looked back on it now, it all seemed like a flimsy mirage, because this man was acting as if he wouldn’t kiss her again if his life depended on it.

‘… and then Daddy said that I simply must have the house in Holland Park, and I said …’

Sebastian let the woman’s irritating voice tune in and out, nodding occasionally to signal his interest when really he had no more interest in the anaemic blonde sitting opposite him than he would in the overweight maître d’ who’d shown them to the table. Which was strange as up until recently blondes had been his preference—the cooler, the better. He scowled inwardly. Until he’d met an exotic Indian princess.

It had been too late this afternoon to cancel the date and some rogue part of him had wanted to keep it, make boundaries clear with Aneesa. But he hadn’t been able to get the wounded bruised look fr