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“Sorry.”
There was a moment of silence punctuated only by traffic sounds outside the steel-wrapped oasis of their car. Val took a breath and turned to look at him.
“I was a little short before,” she said, in that soft, cultured voice with a hint of— It was bugging him. What was that accent? The American South? He’d had a classmate from Atlanta while attending school in London that spoke a little like her. “I appreciate your help. And I hope this won’t affect your opinion of Hind, or the family. She really is a good girl, just a little…bored.”
“Do you like working for the family?”
“I do.” Val sat up straight, and he saw, again, a distracting flash of lace and brown skin before it disappeared. “It’s not the most exciting line of work. But it pays well, and I need the money.” She said the last line almost too quietly to hear, in a way that was more reflective than anything else. She lifted a hand to fiddle with one of the small pearls earring she wore.
“Student loans?” he ventured after a moment. America was notorious for that, he’d heard.
She smiled a little. “No. Not many college degrees in how to be a nanny,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.
“What did you go to school for?”
“My mother was a dressmaker. She had a small business, back home.” She was still twisting the earring, almost nervously now. Long lashes swept down over her cheeks then lifted, and she fixed her enormous brown eyes back on him. “I went to trade school for a couple of years, intending that when I graduated I’d help her. I still design—kind of. Hind has a business selling hand-sewn abayas to her friends and other girls. I help her with the technical work. It keeps Hind out of trouble and brings something extra for me.”
“You seem very close.”
“I’ve been working with the family since she was nine,” Valentina said softly.
“How did you get to know them?”
Something in her eyes closed off subtly; there was a tightening around her mouth, and her lashes fluttered down.
“I got to know Sheikh Rashid through an old…acquaintance,” she said, after a long pause. “He is the best and kindest of men.”
A ringing endorsement of her boss was to be expected, but the very slight quaver he heard in Val’s voice, the first of its kind he’d seen in her all evening, was not. He felt his eyebrows lift; exactly what was the older man to her? “That’s a very telling statement. His reputation is that he’s a bit of a—”
“His reputation comes from people who don’t know him at all,” she said sharply. “Ido, and I know what he’s done for people. Myself included.”
Very interesting. “You know him well, then?”
“Well enough.” She cleared her throat, the moment gone. “Well enough to know that we need to find this girl and get her home where she belongs. And thank goodness, there it is.” She nodded, indicating the Royal Opera House a little way in front. She stopped speaking, leaving Desmond to his thoughts. Finally, some spark of emotion from Hind’s no-nonsense companion, and it’d been Sheikh Rashid who’d pulled it out of her. Her fearsome, older boss, of all people?
Could she and Hind’s father be—?
As soon as the thought flitted across his mind he banished it with an internal laugh. That was a fairly major leap of imagination, and not worthy of either of them. Val frowned at him. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Aside from it being completely inappropriate, Desmond strongly suspected Val Montgomery would not enjoy hearing that his first thought was that she was engaged in a liaison with her boss. “Let’s go and find our girl, shall we?”
“She’s hardlyours,” Val grumbled. The driver deftly pulled the car close to the curb.
“Don’t bother with the door—traffic’s a mess,” Desmond called up to his driver, reaching for the door handle. Val began scooting over, then yelped as the car jerked forward, pushing her hard against Desmond’s body.
“Henry!”
“Apologies, sir, there’s a van behind us letting down a wheelchair. I should have said,” the driver called back.
“For Christ’s sake. We’d have been flat on the curb if the door was open.” He opened the door quickly, freeing himself from the pleasant warmth of Val, who’d shifted back almost immediately. “Sorry,” he said, and held out a hand.
She was rattled enough to take it, and hauled herself out of the car with no further incidence.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Just fine!” She was shaking out her coat, looking disproportionately flustered. “I— Can we just go, please?”
“Fine,” he said, and they set off.