by Kim Lawrence
The blonde whose astonishing neon blue eyes had not yet left his face.
She really was not the sort of woman you would miss in a crowd—not with those eyes and that head of decadent blonde curls that spilled down her back, framing a vivid little face that reminded him of a Titian portrait. But below the neck, he decided, staying with the art analogy, she was pure Degas. Her slim, supple and gently rounded body might have belonged to one of that artist’s ethereal ballet dancers.
She looked like a wilted rose, with her grubby face and the purple smudge of exhaustion beneath her eyes. She was the delicate, petite type of female that aroused the protective instinct in a lot of men.
Rafiq’s assessing glance drifted from her stubborn chin and defiant, wary eyes to the pouting lower lip, and he thought they would be the same men who failed to notice that she had stroppy written all over her.
She began to struggle to her feet. Rafiq noted the tremor in the hand that reached to clutch for support and extended his own. She looked at it for a moment with the sort of enthusiasm that most people reserved for a striking snake, then deliberately ignored it, carrying on struggling.
Rafiq withdrew his hand and with a derisive shrug made no further attempt to help her, even though she looked about as weak and shaky as a newborn kitten.
He liked independent women—but not when they felt the need to make pointless displays of self-sufficiency.
Gretchen, his lover for twelve months previous to their non-acrimonious split in May, was a highly independent-minded woman, who made no apologies for being ambitious, but she took the little courtesies offered by a man as her due.
Gretchen was a divorce lawyer based in Paris; before her there had been Cynthia, a fashion designer in Milan—long-distance relationships, with women who’d wanted what he did: sex. Not casual, anonymous sex, but sex that came with no emotional strings attached.
Rafiq had never understood why people felt long-distance love affairs put a strain on relationships. For him, the arrangement was perfect. It made it easier to compartmentalise his personal and public life. He never had unrealistic calls on his time when he had duties to perform, there were no draining emotional melodramas, and there were no outside distractions—just mutually satisfying sex.
He was not even sure why he and Gretchen had split up. She was everything he wanted in a woman—totally self-absorbed, of course, but that had its advantages, and she didn’t make small talk.
Gretchen hadn’t changed, so why had boredom and dissatisfaction set in?
There was never more than one woman in his life at a time, but there generally was one. Sex was important—or it had been! He had put this barren period in his love life down to a jaded appetite. Had his life acquired a certain cyclical predictability? Was the effort worth the reward? But now, for the first time, he was confronted by the possibility that his recent loss of libido might be another insidious symptom of the disease that was robbing him of his future, of the opportunity to decide that he wanted the emotionally draining drama he had been actively avoiding.
He looked at the blonde’s mouth and felt his body stir lustfully—and thought maybe not…
He had never been attracted to women who treated their femininity like an affliction, and he got the distinct impression this woman would take it as an insult if a man opened a door for her. She looked all prickles, aggression, and pink sulky lips, he decided, his critical gaze lingering longer than was polite on those lips.
In short, not his type—physically or otherwise. But by anyone’s standards she’d definitely fulfil the role of distraction.
It would be a simple matter to have her removed, and that was clearly the logical course of action, but curiosity won out over practicality. How did a blue-eyed blonde come to be in here?
He recognised it was a very poor piece of prioritising, but at that moment this was the mystery that had captured his total attention—maybe he was attracted by its light relief value?
He searched his brain for a plausible explanation for her presence and came up empty. There simply wasn’t one. True, tourism was a developing industry in Zantara, but to his knowledge they had not begun offering escorted tours of the palace.
His father was in many ways a moderniser, but the mental image of curious camera-clicking crowds being shown around the King of Zantara’s private apartments caused the corner of Rafiq’s stern mouth to twitch.
Gabby was conscious of his intense scrutiny—she now understood why people spoke of feeling someone’s eyes.
Reluctant to reveal her weakened condition to this stranger, she surreptitiously leaned her elbow against an armoire set against the wall. Being a fugitive was certainly exhausting!
It wasn’t just her reluctance to show vulnerability that had made her reject his offer of assistance. She couldn’t explain it, but the idea of those long brown fingers touching her…She frowned and shook her head, confused by the violence of her gut rejection.
The sound of his bitter-chocolate voice made her jump.
‘You are well?’
She tilted her head. He didn’t look as if he’d lose much sleep if she said No, I’m damned well not. This was not a man who oozed empathy. Under the cool exterior she sensed an explosive, combustible quality that was reflected in his dark stare.
Some women might find that quality attractive, but she had never felt drawn to dangerous or brooding moody men. He probably practised that expression in front of the mirror, she decided uncharitably.
Gabby dragged a tangled skein of blonde hair back from her face and threw it over her shoulder, pushing back stray tendrils of hair from her sweat-dampened face.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied, trying to straighten her creased and torn shirt as she continued to regard him warily.
It was a struggle not to show that she was slightly intimidated—all right, a lot more than slightly—by his raw physical presence. Of their own volition her eyes travelled to his toes and made the journey up to his face. A little shudder traced a shivery path up her spine—God, the man had an aura that was almost electric. She had never encountered anything like it—or like him!
‘You startled me. I didn’t know anyone was in here.’
Not that he was anyone. This man was definitely someone. She breathed in the outdoorsy scent that drifted from his direction and felt her stomach flip.
His arrogant self-assurance was that of a man who had never heard the word no from a woman in his life. This was an alpha male, with raw sex appeal oozing from every pore. He was a man women were programmed to want to say yes to—a man they’d want to father their children. And my goodness, she thought with an inner sigh, as her eyes travelled back to his face, with his gene pool they would be extremely beautiful children.
And so far the utterly gorgeous creature had not opened the door and invited her to leave.
Maybe he wasn’t meant to be there either…? she speculated hopefully.
This was an idea she could warm to—and after the last forty-eight hours she needed a break.
She let her fertile imagination go into overdrive. Could this be an upstairs-downstairs situation? Maybe he didn’t want to be found out any more than she did? His were definitely the first dusty boots gracing the marble floors she had seen, so it was a real possibility. Had she intruded on a secret assignation?
Admittedly he didn’t look like star-crossed lover material—it was sensuality and not sentiment that you saw when you looked at his mouth. Its wide, firm contours sent out a conflicting message of control and passion.
Before Gabby could drag her distracted gaze from his lips and summon up an inventive explanation for her own presence there was a loud bang on the door behind her. Gabby turned and, staring fearfully at the door, began to back away.
‘Miss Barton, if you don’t open this door immediately I will be forced to break it down.’
No need for that explanation, then.
She wondered uneasily how the tall stranger would react now her fugitive status h
ad been established. She turned her head and was none the wiser. He had a great poker face—actually, he had a great face…Her eyes dropped…A great body…
A great everything!
Despite the uncustomary harassed note, Rafiq immediately identified the voice as belonging to Rashid, a senior member of his father’s personal bodyguard—not an easy man to rattle.
He turned his head in time to see a flash of despair and fear in the blonde’s wide blue eyes. It only lasted seconds, before she literally and mentally squared her slender shoulders, stuck out her softly rounded chin and adopted an air of studied defiance.
Gabby muttered, ‘You and whose army?’
The door looked pretty solid to her. Solid enough to withstand an earthquake. She was trapped, but for the moment safe—if you discounted her companion. Not an easy thing to do. The man was a distraction she could do without.
‘Who are you?’
A frown of concentration on her face, Gabby glared at the door. She did not turn her head, and therefore missed the look of stark incredulity that chased across Rafiq’s lean dark features when she waved a hand in impatient dismissal.
‘Not now, please—I’m trying to think,’ she snapped. Trying, but not really getting far. And she blamed this partly on her rotten luck.
There might be times when being trapped in an enclosed space with a man who appeared to have been gifted with a dangerously generous share of pheromones was not a hardship, but this wasn’t one of those times. Actually, that wasn’t true. She had never been attracted to overtly macho men. She went more for the intellectual type, a man who wasn’t afraid to show his emotions and his vulnerability, but such men were thin on the ground. Actually, she was unsure whether they existed outside literature and her imagination—it could be she was doomed to settle or remain single.
Rafiq was accustomed to being treated with a level of deference by virtually everybody he met. He had not been so casually dismissed since he was a boy—and then the only woman in a position to do so had been his mother. It was an irrational response to rudeness, but he found himself even more curious about the blonde.
Why not invite her for a dinner date as you have so much time to waste?
He frowned in unappreciative response to the ironic voice in his head, and allowed his glance to wander to the neatly trimmed pearly fingertips she was rubbing along the slightly tip-tilted end of her small nose. This woman was like none he had encountered in his thirty-two years. And he wasn’t talking about her dress code—though it was nothing short of a miracle that she still managed to look feminine dressed like that!
He watched as she lifted her hand and dashed it across her face. Her hair was honey-gold, with paler shades woven in with the silky mesh that fell to her shoulders.
As his eyes slid down her body it became obvious that his curiosity was not the only thing this woman had awoken. The ache in his groin was increasingly hard to ignore. He might be dying, but nobody had told his libido, it seemed!
Gabby turned her head at the sound of his laugh, her darting blue gaze moving indignantly across his lean features. ‘You think this is funny?’
‘I think it is extraordinary that I am laughing.’ Not to mention lusting.
Gabby glared, bemused by the cryptic response.
‘Who are you, Gabby Barton?’
Feathery brows several shades darker than her hair twitched into a straight line above her neat nose. The intensity of his narrowed stare made her uneasy. ‘Not a thief, if that’s what you’re thinking. I didn’t come to steal the family silver.’
‘I believe you,’ he soothed. ‘But you have a purpose…what have you come here for?’
Gabby was gripped by a sudden irrational compulsion to pour out her troubles to this total stranger. Tell him the whole tangled tale…Appalled that she was about to go all weak—little woman crying on the shoulder of a big strong man—she closed her mouth with an audible snap and shook her head.
Of course if her problem could be solved by brute force it might well be worth getting him on her side. But she wasn’t the type of person who off-loaded her problems onto anyone—least of all someone she had just met!
CHAPTER THREE
RAFIQ watched as she lowered her eyes, causing the tips of her lashes to brush against her slightly grubby cheek. She remained silent.
‘A woman of mystery…’
‘No mystery,’ she denied, shaking her head.
‘How did you get into the palace?’
‘How do you know I wasn’t invited?’
One black brow slanted satirically as he glanced towards the door.
Gabby’s slender shoulders lifted. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I wasn’t. I sort of slipped in.’
His brows hit his hairline. ‘Slipped in?’ He shook his head in a firm negative motion. ‘That isn’t possible.’ Incredulity deepened his voice a husky octave, and it feathered across Gabby’s nerve-endings as he repeated, ‘You slipped in past Security?’
‘In the back of a delivery van.’ It had been one of those moments when you acted on instinct and didn’t have time to think about the consequences. That came later, she thought bitterly, when you were trapped in a room with armed men outside the door. Not that she regretted it for a second. If she hadn’t at least tried she would never have forgiven herself.
Rafiq thought about the substantial budget earmarked each year for palace security, and a muscle clenched in his lean cheek once more as he fought the unexpected desire to laugh. The girl was more than unusual, she was unique—though he had not dismissed the possibility she was mentally unbalanced just yet.
‘And when it slowed down I…I got out…’
This casual confidence sent Rafiq’s eyebrows in the direction of his dark hairline. ‘It was moving?’ He tried to imagine any of the women he knew leaping out of a moving vehicle and failed.
He felt reluctant admiration stir once more. Whoever this woman was, she did not lack courage—or for that matter recklessness. And today had taught Rafiq that when all other alternatives were exhausted reckless was sometimes the only thing left.
‘Not very fast…’ She lifted a hand to the shoulder seam of her shirt. The skin beneath was grazed and starting to bruise.
His brow furrowed in concern as he saw the specks of bright blood on the cotton. ‘You are injured?’
He didn’t wait for her denial. Gabby watched with horror as he strode with purpose towards the door, his white robe billowing around his tall frame.
He was going to let them in!
She acted without thinking and threw herself between him and the door. Shrill panic threaded her voice as she caught his arm.
Their eyes met, and there was a long, still, nerve-shredding silence, Gabby’s world narrowed until the only things she was conscious of were his mesmerising sloe-dark eyes and the thunderous beat of her heart as it pounded in her ears.
It was Rafiq who broke the tableau, the breath expelled from his lungs in one slow, audible hiss as his dark glance moved from her wide, beseeching eyes to the small pale hand on his arm.
Gabby saw the direction of his gaze, saw the inexplicable astonishment in his expression, but she didn’t let go. If anything she clung harder, her fingers tightening into the taut, rock-hard muscle of his arm.
Her breath came in panicky gasps as she appealed with husky urgency, ‘Please—don’t let them in.’
Rafiq’s glance flickered across the soft contours of her face. Her full lips trembled, and under the smudges of dirt the freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out against the dramatic pallor of her skin. Her electric blue eyes held the zealot-like glow of sheer desperation.
He shook his head. ‘I must. You need a doctor.’
Gabby unpeeled her fingers from his arm, finding her digits strangely reluctant to respond to her commands. Mission accomplished, she absently rubbed her palm across her thigh. The impression of sinewy strength in his forearm seemed to have imprinted itself on her hand.
�
��It’s nothing,’ she promised, ripping the fabric of her shirt a little more than it already was to prove her point, revealing the smooth curve of her shoulder and the beginning of a large area of bruising in the process.
‘I can’t feel it,’ she said, between clenched teeth.
But she could feel the brown fingertip he slid down the exposed curve. And her nervous system’s reaction to a touch that was so light it barely stirred the soft invisible down on her pale skin was totally disproportionate. Every nerve-ending in her body came alive, and a heavy, creeping warm lethargy invaded her suddenly uncooperative limbs.
There was not a breath of air in the room. She doubted this sort of stillness existed outside the eye of a hurricane, where the fragile illusion of security was coloured with the anticipation of the storm that was just waiting to break.
She could feel the pressure in her eardrums as her heart-rate began to race. The air thrummed with tension—unacknowledged and almost tangible.
Gabby struggled to maintain her indifferent pose, and to control her shallow, uneven breathing as his fingertip moved upwards, tracing the angle of her collarbone in a light, feathery motion. Unable to bear the prickling heat under her skin and the dragging sensation low in her belly another second, she pulled away.
‘I told you—I’m fine.’ Gabby glared at him, resentment shining in her eyes as they connected with his and stayed connected. She was utterly mesmerised by the febrile glow smouldering deep in his dark eyes.
Rafiq did not speak until the heat in his blood had cooled—which meant he was silent for some time.
What he had felt when he touched her skin had been raw and primitive. It didn’t take enormous powers of analytical deduction to conclude it was some form of delayed reaction, because he was not a man who allowed his passions to rule him, but it was easy to understand why some men finding themselves in his position might chose to blot out the bleak reality of their situation. They might turn to alcohol, jump in the driver’s seat of a fast car or sit astride a horse and try and outrun the devils within.
And then others might bury themselves physically and mentally in the soft body of a desirable woman…