Sarah Randall - His Irresistible Darling

Jumal was pleased that she was making her own assumptions about his turning up at her birthday party. For once, it worked in his favour.

“I don’t dance,” he said sharply, shaking his head.

She dropped her hand from his and strangely he missed the comforting contact. He wasn’t a “hand-holding” kind of person, even with his family or Faridah. “You’re kidding?” She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to the side. God she was beautifully annoying.

“As you have told me on numerous occasions, I don’t have a sense of humour when it comes to you,” he replied, straight-faced.

“Fine, you can just stand like a sulking Muppet and I’ll dance around you like a bloody maypole.” And she was off again, twirling around him whilst holding his shoulders as he kept his focus straight ahead, fighting the need and desire to track her every movement.

“A what?” he asked, when she finally came to a stop.

“Oh never mind.” She sulked again with her hands on her hips. Was she aware that the action caused her perfectly sized breasts to jut out even further? “It’s just as I thought,” she ranted at him.

“What is?” he asked, impatiently. The girl spoke in riddles.

“You’re too old to have fun. You act like an old fart. I can’t believe that I—” she waved her arms dismissively at him “—never mind. Your loss.” And with that she was off, leaving him standing there in the wake of Hurricane Halle, his mouth hanging open like a fish—or to use her earlier phrase, a Muppet.

He tracked her movements again as she laughed and joked with her friends at their table and finished off a long dark drink before she made her way back to the dance floor.

“She didn’t manage to get you dancing then?” Malik enquired as he handed him another beer and took up position at his side.

“Not a chance,” he replied, taking a long swig. He surveyed Malik and shook his head. “So what the hell have you come as and why didn’t you tell me it was fancy dress?”

“Me? Well I’m the American President.”

Jumal looked him up and down and gave him a puzzled look. “Which one?” he asked.

“Any. See, I’m wearing the little stars-and-stripes pin on my suit jacket.” He turned to show him the pin.

Jumal couldn’t help but chuckle. “That has got to be the worst fancy dress I have ever seen,” he teased, smiling.

“Hey, I have a slave driver for a boss and I was at work till late on a deal that’s going to get him in next year’s Forbes richest list. This was the best I could come up with. I thought it was inspired when I saw the pin in my desk drawer. Melina brought it back from her trip to New York last year. And I did try to tell you it was fancy dress but you hung up on me cursing, so—”

Their heads turned in unison towards the shrieks of delight coming from the dance floor as someone appeared to be trying their hand at breakdancing. Jumal had never understood the appeal of spinning on one’s head but then again, as Miss Darling had so eloquently put it, he was an old fart…and right now, yeah, he felt like one.

Chapter Four

Jumal glimpsed occasional flashes of orange on the dance floor but despite being a couple of inches over six foot he couldn’t quite see over all the bobbing heads and writhing and gyrating bodies. Where the hell has she gone? he thought, as he was forced to stand on tiptoe—a fact that grated on him no end.

“Who the hell is that guy?” he growled at Malik, having finally spotted her.

“Which guy?” Malik asked, trying to see through the human medley.

“ Which guy ?” Jumal repeated incredulously. “That one,” he shouted, pointing, “with his hands all over Pippa.”

“Ah right, that guy. Yeah well he’s the reason I called. Well one of the reasons, the other being I know you promised her brother when she came out here that you’d look after her and I have a feeling the night is going to get riotous quickly.” Jumal scowled as Malik took another swig on his bottle as if needing it for confidence. “Well anyway, she came with him.”

“She came with him,” Jumal repeated in disbelief. “What do you mean?” he asked, unable to stop his voice from rising. Oh this just got better. Not. He raked his hand through his hair. The bloody girl was going to make him go bald if he kept having this reaction to her youthful escapades.

“Just that, well actually she came with two men; one is a tall handsome blond bastard who seemed far too comfortable with his arm around Melina. I can’t see them anywhere.”

Jumal would have analysed his friend’s comments in more detail if he wasn’t completely focused on getting his head around the fact that Pippa had come with a man, correction: two men.

“I think this one’s her date, but I could be wrong,” Malik told him, nodding towards the dance floor. “In fact the rumour mill at the office is that she’s already stayed the night with him.”

Jumal choked on his beer. “Jesus who told you that?” he probed, trying to maintain some dignity as he cleared his throat and continued to cough up his lungs.

“Well, Reeta on reception told Conrad in accounts who told my secretary that he came into the office to bring her lunch box, which she’d apparently left at his place that morning.”

Jumal watched Malik wiggle his eyebrows and smile knowingly but quickly stop and clear his throat as he no doubt took in Jumal’s stony gaze.

Jumal took another swift drink and turned his attention back to the dance floor and away from Malik, but the view of Pippa gyrating her hips with another man was not appealing.

“It’s probably just gossip, Jumal,” Malik suggested, shrugging his shoulders. “You know what the office is like.”

Office gossip or not, Jumal was confused by his reaction to the news about Pippa. He didn’t like it—being confused, the gossip or his reaction. Ah great, more of those alien feelings she brought forth in buckets.

“Well, she looks pretty damn comfortable in his arms and he looks far too smug. He looks about eighteen for God’s sake. What is she dancing with him for anyway?”

“Presumably, because he asked her and he looks about her age, mate.” Jumal was tempted to throttle his friend. “But that’s just my guess,” Malik continued, shrugging his shoulders.

Jumal crossed his arms in front of him to avoid the temptation. “Well, whatever—” he said, shaking his head, knowing he now sounded like a sixteen-year-old, but he was worked up like a coiled spring. Again, only Pippa could shake his apparent legendary control.

“So did the IT team come back to you and confirm that they’d changed all the security access codes and shored up the firewall?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the bouncing orange bikini and the man who was dangerously close to losing his hands if he didn’t remove them from around Pippa’s waist.

“Yep, all done and they’ll continue to monitor over the next few weeks just to make sure there’s no attempt to hack our system.”

“Good.”

“So, erm, are you sure you shouldn’t call in the police?”

“No. We don’t need the negative publicity it would attract—not when we’re so close to signing the deal. I’ve appointed alternative counsel who is tying it all up and I’m going to go out there next week to put it all to bed and get it signed.”

“Okay, still, seems she got off lightly, Jumal.”

“She’ll never work in law again,” he said, his face deadpan and breaking his gaze from Pippa temporarily. “Plus she knows that I won’t hesitate to have a little chat with her parents about what she’s been up to with her friends in Dubai, and that would cause too much family embarrassment for her. She’ll just crawl back under a rock somewhere.”