A few weeks ago they had certainly acknowledged her—by declaring her an enemy. Or, to be more precise, her baby was the enemy.
She shivered, recalling that memory, recalling too what had happened after it. Raschid felt that shiver and understood exactly what was causing it.
‘Look at me, Evie!’ he commanded. ‘Look into my eyes and see what you always see written there!’
Blinking herself into focus, she found herself staring at strong brown fingers tightly interlaced with delicate white ones like a love knot that was too intricate to break. And there, nestling amongst this mingling of brown and white, was a gold-crested wedding band that seemed to be telling her that this was it. The moment when she finally took on board what it really meant to be joined to this very special man.
You stand proudly beside him, and boldly take them all on—or why are you here at all?
And really, she told herself, she could have no argument with it. She had married him for good or bad. If the good was in looking forward to spending the rest of her life with him, then the bad had to be where they were going to live out that life.
Then she made herself look into those dark gold, passionately glowing eyes. Made herself see what he was insisting she see. Made herself acknowledge it. I love you! those eyes were telling her. You are my heart, my life—my soul! I would lay down my own life before I would let anyone get close enough to hurt you again!
‘Will I have to cloak and veil myself?’ she asked. ‘And make sure I walk two paces behind you?’
It took a moment—more than a moment—for what she was actually saying here to finally sink in. But when it came his reaction took her breath away. The husky growl of exultation he emitted was all the warning she received before she found herself flat on her back with him lying on top of her.
‘I knew you were brave,’ he uttered proudly. ‘I knew you were the right woman for me!’
‘I should really be telling you to go to hell,’ she said. ‘Get my own back on you for the way you refused to listen to reason about Julian’s wedding. But you like to pick your moments, don’t you?’ she sighed. ‘Nowhere for me to run,’ she dryly pointed out as her eyes made a rueful scan of their present surroundings. ‘Nowhere for me to—’
His mouth stopped the words of complaint with a kiss that was both hot and possessive. But before Evie could turn it into something much more satisfying he was, frustratingly, breaking them apart again.
‘No.’ He refused her yet again. Only, this time Evie was not offended—but challenged.
‘I’ll break that iron will of yours,’ she vowed as he made quickly for the door. ‘I will whittle away at it at every opportunity I’m offered.’
‘Part of my penance,’ he accepted with a sigh. ‘It will be interesting to discover how long I can hold out.’
Or how long I can maintain this brave face, Evie mused heavily when he had left her.
His father…
She shuddered, turning to curl into a ball on her side as if making herself smaller would diminish the dread that name filled her with.
Did Crown Prince Hashim know they were on their way to Behran? Had Raschid told him?
She was to find out soon enough…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS late into the evening local time when the plane finally touched down at Behran Airport. Dressed more casually now, in a turquoise silk wrap-around skirt and long-sleeved cotton top, Evie stared out of the window at a scene that was, as with most airports, a hive of activity irrespective of the lateness of the hour.
‘I didn’t realise that Behran Airport was such a busy one,’ she remarked to Raschid who was sitting beside her.
‘It isn’t—not by international standards anyway.’ He frowned, dipping his dark head so that he too could glance out through the small porthole window.
In the next second he was calling sharply for Asim who came hurrying down the aisle towards them. Reverting to Arabic, Raschid shot out a couple of curt questions that had Asim ducking his covered head to peer out of the window himself before he murmured something and walked off towards the flight deck.
And Evie felt the tension begin to seep back into her system because neither man looked happy. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked Raschid.
‘I don’t know yet.’ He was still frowning. Like herself he had changed just before they were due to land, only the difference between them was that he had reverted to Arab robes, and suddenly looked all the more alien for it with that black frown marring his face. ‘But there is too much activity out there for this time of night.’
Perhaps not the most comforting thing to tell her, Evie mused as she glanced out of the window again. They were still taxiing towards the main airport building. It was dark, of course, but the darkness had been diminished by the excessive amount of halogen lighting that seemed to be spotlighting the plane as it moved. And beneath the lights she could see people—lots of people standing watching their arrival as if they had nothing better to do.
Asim came back, his expression more sombre than when he had walked away. He relayed some information to Raschid in Arabic that had Raschid angrily freeing himself from his seat belt and standing up.
Pushing past the other man, he strode off towards the flight deck himself.
‘Be calm,’ Asim told Evie soothingly when he saw her expression. ‘It is nothing to worry about.’
Then why are both you and Raschid looking distinctly worried? she wanted to ask, but managed to keep the challenge to herself while her eyes remained fixed on the doorway Raschid had disappeared through.
The tension began to heighten the longer he was away. By the time he did finally reappear, the plane had come to a standstill some way off from the main building itself.
‘Don’t be too alarmed,’ he warned, which thoroughly alarmed her. ‘But my father has been interfering with my plans again.’
‘Wh-why?’ she said nervously. ‘What has he done?’
‘He has arranged a reception committee to meet us here at the plane. I’m sorry,’ he sighed, coming to sit himself down beside her. ‘This was not what I wanted. But—if you will just try to see it as a positive manoeuvre—in his own way he is trying to offer you a welcome.’
But you’re not feeling very positive about this, Evie thought as she felt all that bravery he had attributed her earlier drain right away.
‘What do I have to do?’ she asked, glancing warily sideways to see what looked like a dozen people in flowing robes making determinedly for the plane.
Her stomach flipped, her legs turned to jelly. Maybe she even trembled a little, because Raschid reached across her and slammed the shutter down over the window.
‘You will be yourself,’ he firmly replied. ‘I ask no more of you.’
‘Be myself in a cloak and veil?’ she drawled suggestively, expecting him to instantly deny the challenge.
But he didn’t. Instead his expression darkened perceptibly. ‘I would request that you wear the gown you married me in today,’ he said. ‘As a sign of respect,’ he quickly explained. ‘For those people who have come here so late in the evening to officially greet you.’
‘One being your father,’ Evie murmured grimacingly.
‘No,’ he denied. ‘My father is not quite strong enough to leave his palace. So we,’ he added slowly, ‘are to go to him.’
‘What, now?’ Evie jerked out, twisting her head to stare at him. ‘Tonight?’
‘It is perhaps a sensible alternative, when my father’s palace is only a few minutes’ drive away from here,’ he said. ‘Whereas my palace is still another hour’s flying by helicopter away.’
But, sensible or not, Raschid was still angry at the way his plans had been outmanoeuvred; Evie could see that in the grim set of his jaw. He was also uneasy about what all of this really meant; she could see that in the frown that still pulled at his brows, and in the perturbed glitter he was trying hard to hide beneath the heavy droop of his lashes.
‘What do you rea
lly think this all means?’ she questioned huskily. ‘And be honest with me, Raschid,’ she added. ‘I would rather be prepared for the worst than have it suddenly dumped on me so late that I have no time to react.’
‘As I dumped this trip on you too late for you to react?’ He grimaced.
‘No.’ Evie smiled, and to her own surprise the smile relaxed some of the tension out of her. ‘Because your instincts were right and if you’d warned me that you were going to bring me here before we left England, I would probably have refused to come,’ she admitted.
Seeing the smile seemed to relax him too, and he reached out to touch a gentle finger to the corner of her upturned mouth. ‘I am going to take my own advice and be very positive about this,’ he murmured softly to her. ‘So I am going to put to you that I think my father’s intentions are entirely honourable, and he is attempting here to heal the breach at the first opportunity we are handing him.’
‘And you want me to do the same,’ Evie concluded from that.
‘Can you?’
‘I can try,’ she agreed. ‘But I can’t say I’m looking forward to any of this.’
It took only a few minutes to change back into her antique gold wedding gown. Asim found her a long white silk scarf from somewhere, which he advised her to drape loosely around her face.
Stepping back into the main cabin, she found that Raschid, too, had changed the dark blue outer robe he had been wearing for a much more dramatic black silk one trimmed with gold. And as he turned to face her she saw that a wide gold sash was now wrapped around his lean waist.
The black and gold made him look different somehow, taller, darker—disturbingly alien as he ran golden eyes still sharpened by anger over her covered head to her satin-shod feet.
‘Well?’ she said, smiling tightly across a tension that was beginning to make her face muscles feel very brittle. ‘Do I look presentable enough for your welcoming party now, do you think?’
Those lushly fringed, heavy-lidded eyes lifted up to clash with mocking blue. They saw the anxiety hiding behind clear-cut crystal, and the strained pallor behind the creamy smoothness of her skin framed by the silk scarf.
Without saying a word he came to her, placed the tips of his long brown fingers beneath her chin to raise it—then kissed her, hard and hot, arrogantly uncaring that Asim stood by the closed exit door witnessing the embrace.
By the time he let her back up for air again, the pallor had altered to a soft flush of pink pleasure, and those cut-crystal eyes had darkened. ‘Now you look delicious,’ he murmured huskily, a teasing amusement suddenly dancing in his eyes. ‘Quite the shyly blushing bride in fact.’
Shyly blushing bride indeed! Evie thought caustically. ‘Well, whatever you say, this blushing bride is not walking two paces behind you,’ she warned, taking a firm grip on one of his hands while valiantly hiding her fears behind a mask of black humour.
The sound of his deep warm burst of appreciative laughter was the last thing Evie’s consciousness absorbed as she floated through the ordeal of meeting several prominent dignitaries and their wives, all smoothly introduced to her by the man whose hand her own remained glued to.
A long black limousine awaited them. It was a relief to disappear inside it. But it seemed that the ordeal was not yet over.
Sitting there beside Raschid, Evie gazed out of the car window as the car sped off towards the wire fencing that surrounded the airport complex. Big mesh gates swung open as they reached them, and without a pause the car drove smoothly out on to a tarmacadam road then turned right towards the city she could see lighting up the dark skyline in the distance.
But they hadn’t gone many yards before the inky darkness on either side of them was suddenly ablaze with light. Evie sat forward, felt as she did so Raschid’s increased tension as he too did the same, staring out of his own side window.
At the very same moment a loud noise erupted, startling her enough to make her gasp. The road was alight with car headlights, the noise deafening with horns being pressed as their car swept by.
Beside her, Raschid muttered something, sank back into the soft leather seat and was then oddly silent.
‘What is it?’ she questioned worriedly. ‘Why are they doing this?’
Turning to look at him, Evie was utterly dismayed to see his face had gone strangely grey. And he seemed to be having difficulty swallowing.
‘Raschid?’ Concern for him had her hand reaching out to grasp one of his.
‘Be at peace,’ he soothed her. ‘It is nothing to worry about.’
His voice was unsteady as he said the words, and if he wasn’t worried then something extreme was certainly disturbing him.
‘You look—hurt,’ she whispered, feeling her own throat thicken in aching response to his distress.
‘No,’ he denied. And at last turned suspiciously moist eyes in her direction. ‘They are welcoming us,’ he informed her gruffly. ‘They…’ One long-fingered hand lifted to make an expressive gesture towards the car window. ‘My people,’ he extended, ‘are welcoming us…’
Evie’s heart flipped over, the breath seized in her breast as full understanding finally hit her. His people were welcoming them and Raschid was so moved by the gesture that he could barely contain his feelings.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked softly.
‘Yes,’ he replied, but it was very obvious that he wasn’t. This had come as a real shock to him. He had not expected it and that was why it was having such a powerful effect on him.
An effect that had Evie’s own eyes glazing over as she wisely said nothing more while she gave him the chance to get himself together.
My people, he had called them. My people, in the truly possessive sense of the words. My people, whom he so obviously loved and whose love and respect he had been prepared to sacrifice for her sake.
As Evie sat there beside him while they drove between the cavalcade of lights and sounding horns that lined their route as far as the eyes could see, she finally began to understand what Raschid’s Kismet was doing for them here.
And she was humbled. Humbled by its force and by the man beside her who’d had the courage to reach out and grasp his own personal Kismet no matter what the cost might be.
For she hadn’t been the brave one here, not really. All she’d done was follow where her heart led her, but Raschid possessed two hearts, one of which had been in conflict with the other since the day he’d set eyes upon her. He must have always known that one day he was going to have to risk breaking one of those hearts. The heart that belonged here with his people, or the heart that belonged to Evie.
What he had done was place his trust in Kismet.
And this was his reward—not hers.
She was so very, very humbled by that.
‘I love you,’ she told him softly, although why she did she didn’t really know now; those words seemed so inadequate when set against all of this.
Yet he turned and smiled at her, and that smile was so warm and dark and soul-stirringly tender that she knew the words were not inadequate to him.
‘Look,’ he said then, drawing her attention back to her own window. ‘My father’s palace,’ he said.
Out there, beyond the glaring headlights, Evie found herself staring at a gold-lit stone building standing on its own raised piece of desert with a star-studded black velvet sky as its backcloth.
Surrounded on all sides by what looked like a twenty-foot-high boundary wall, complete with domed lookout towers on each of its four corners, it was as if the whole scene had leapt straight out of an Arabian nights picture book she remembered having as a child.
Awesome, mysterious, breathtakingly dramatic.
Two huge wooden gates cut into the wall swung inwards as they approached them. As tall as the wall itself, they were a commanding sight on their own, but when Evie realised that they guarded an entrance that was as deep as it was tall she began to understand what true awe was.
Inside was a vast courtyard, softly lit
by concealed lighting that sparkled against fine sprinkles of water spouting from ornamental statues set within the exotic shrubs that grew in abundance on either side of the driveway.
The entrance to the house was a flower-hung archway of pure white marble. Clear blue light was seeping out from beyond it, and as the car stopped by a pebbled area that covered the last ten feet or so to the entrance Evie saw a woman step out from beneath the archway.
She was beautiful, dark-haired and slender but exquisitely rounded, and was wearing a long dark red silk dress that shimmered as she moved.
‘Ranya,’ Raschid murmured softly, and climbed out of the car to stride quickly towards her, too eager to greet his sister to remember his usually impeccable manners.
It was therefore left to Asim, who had travelled in the front of the car with them, to open Evie’s door and help her to alight.
Despite the fact that the hour was so late, the air was hot and very humid, and redolent with the fragrance of gardenia, oleander and heavily scented jasmine—all overlaid by a seductive aroma of some exotic spice Evie couldn’t quite capture. Music was playing somewhere—that distinctly Arabian sound that was so evocative of her surroundings.
Strange, alien, yet so disturbingly seductive it made her toes tingle and her heart thump heavily in her chest. Or maybe those feelings had more to do with the way Raschid and Ranya were embracing each other with an affection that reminded her of herself and Julian.
And why should they not? she asked herself. They were brother and sister—true brother and sister, born to the same mother and the only children of a man who, on the distinction alone of being a rich Arab Prince, should have produced a hundred children to a hundred different wives.
Yet he had not. Crown Prince Hashim Al Kadah had only ever taken one wife. When she’d passed away while his children were still young, he hadn’t bothered to replace her.
But then, she mused as she stood there by the car waiting to be remembered, if his wife had looked anything like his daughter Ranya, then it was perhaps understandable why the Crown Prince had never found another woman who could take his wife’s place.
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