say that he approached you?
MS KEATING: Is that so hard to believe?
INTERVIEWER TWO: If you could just answer the question.
MS KEATING: He approached me.
SEBASTIAN ROHAN DE LUEN, raised the cut-crystal glass of whisky into the air, clinking it against the champagne flute, and relished the feeling of pure unadulterated pleasure running through his veins.
‘To a dish best served cold,’ he proclaimed, before taking a very welcome mouthful of ice-cold peaty alcohol. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you, so thank you.’
He looked into a pair of dark eyes outlined with thick kohl and most likely devastatingly attractive to anyone other than him. But he’d known Aliah for far too long and for that entire time they’d been united by one goal to the exclusion of all else. And that had clearly altered the usual dynamic he engaged in with women. Objectively, she was incredibly beautiful, but...
No. Nothing.
‘And I wouldn’t be here without you, so thank you,’ Aliah replied sincerely.
‘Dare I ask what you’re going to do with your new-found freedom?’ Sebastian asked before taking another sip of his drink.
‘I have some business to attend to.’
‘How suitably cryptic,’ he observed wryly, genuinely uninterested. They had both played their part. Now it was time to...
‘And you?’ Aliah’s melodic voice slid into his thoughts. ‘Back to Siena? Or will you be visiting Maria while you’re in town?’
Sebastian couldn’t help the way his lips curved into a smile at the thought of his younger sister. Even if she had recently done the last thing he’d ever expected and run off with a Swiss billionaire on the eve of his best friend’s engagement party.
‘Maria has found herself a husband and is presently living on the edge of Lake Lucerne,’ he managed to say without betraying his distrust of Matthieu Montcour, his very new brother-in-law.
‘Oh. That’s lucky.’
‘Is it?’
‘Some might say. Is she well?’ Aliah asked, her genuine interest for his sister lessening his anger for the moment.
‘She’s nearly eight months pregnant, so I’m guessing that she is.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ she said, and Sebastian didn’t miss the note of longing, or the slight sheen that dusted the edges of her dark eyes. ‘Uncle Sebastian, now that is a sight I’d like to see.’ Aliah’s smile was both mocking and envious, the shadows hinting at the unhealed wounds from the recent separation from her own family. ‘Indulge them and appreciate them,’ she commanded.
‘I do,’ Sebastian replied honestly. ‘That is why it had to happen now,’ he said, his grip momentarily tightening on the thick glass. ‘Before Maria’s child is born. A fresh start and the past behind us.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, gently tapping the rim of her glass against his.
As the amber liquid burned down his throat Sebastian wondered if that feeling of peace would come now that everything was as it should be. A feeling that he’d been chasing for ten years that nothing and no willing woman had been able to appease.
With his father finally settled with his stepmother Valeria in Rimini, each happily making the other’s life a living hell, and Maria with Matthieu Montcour, it felt as if it was the first time that he’d had no responsibilities. The world was his oyster. His hotels were doing incredibly, the opening of the Caribbean flagship was less than a week away—an event that would allow him to wrap up all loose ends from the Bonnaire’s situation. Maybe then he’d find that sense of...
‘I lost you there for a minute,’ Aliah said.
‘Never,’ he replied, forcing a smile to his lips as it came time to say goodbye. ‘If you ever need anything, I mean it. Anything. Let me know.’
He leaned forward to let her kiss him on the cheek. It was a chaste kiss from a friend. And it was most definitely not responsible for the sudden slap of adrenaline and arousal that cut through him when he looked over Aliah’s shoulder and caught a glimpse of the woman sitting at the bar, her gaze locked onto him like a laser beam.
‘Seb?’ Aliah asked, the husky tone of her voice barely cutting through the power of whatever it was that had him in its grasp.
Ignoring her question, he stared deep into the pair of startling blue eyes as they clashed with his and he felt it like a punch to the solar plexus. For a moment he simply felt awed. A rich, almost terracotta-coloured swathe of gentle curls poured over slender shoulders and dropped almost halfway down pale-skinned and very toned arms. Silk in a