by Kim Lawrence
Forehead creased against the pounding in her temples, Gabby clapped a hand to her aching head. She felt like a hamster in a wheel, going nowhere fast, her thoughts revolving around in ceaseless unproductive circles.
Bottom line: her life was chaos. She was standing in the middle of an emotional minefield and it didn’t make any difference what choice she made, which direction she went—she was going to be hurt.
She didn’t want to be a queen. She wanted to be with one man—a brave, stupid man, who was trying to push her into bed with his brother!
Expression stormy, she took a sip from her coffee cup and yelped as the liquid scalded her mouth. She slammed the cup down, splashing coffee all over the snowy table linen, and poured iced water from the pitcher into her glass.
She was greedily gulping it when she saw Sayed in the doorway.
‘Miss Barton…? I am sorry to disturb you.’
Gabby’s expression of polite enquiry morphed into one of apprehension when the normally imperturbable Sayed spoke again.
‘I am very worried about the Crown Prince, miss.’
She dropped the glass, spilling water over the already ruined table linen.
Her manner was at stark variance to the icy dread that was creeping over her as she smiled politely and asked, ‘Has something happened?’
If anything had happened she would be the only one, barring Hakim, who realised the ominous implications. Her jaw firmed and her hands balled into tight fists at her sides as she struggled to control her panic. Damn the man for a stubborn idiot.
‘I think something must have, miss…He…the Crown Prince…is…angry.’
Gabby expelled a relieved sigh. At least he wasn’t ill. ‘Is that all? He’s always angry.’
Even as she spoke Gabby realised he wasn’t—at least not with everyone else. By comparison with his cranky, critical attitude to her, he was capable of displaying an almost supernatural degree of tolerance with other people. Not that he suffered fools gladly, but on the other hand he gave praise where it was due, and people went the extra mile just to receive one of his rare smiles.
Gabby pushed away the image of Rafiq smiling and concentrated on Sayed, who was shaking his head in an emphatic negative motion.
‘No, this is serious. I have known the Crown Prince since he was a child, and I have never seen him like this. I am worried,’ he confessed.
So was Gabby, though she struggled to hide it. ‘Why are you telling me this, Sayed?’
‘I thought you might—’He stopped, looking awkward, and began wringing his gnarled hands together.
Gabby took pity on him and suggested, ‘You thought I might be stupid enough to risk getting my head chewed off?’ Despite her joking tone the genuine anxiety in the older man’s eyes filled her with increasing disquiet.
Sayed looked relieved. ‘Exactly so, miss. He might listen to you.’
Gabby stared at the man, wondering if he had been out too long in the midday sun. Listen to her? Rafiq did not listen to anyone. But her…She was the very last person he would listen to. Somehow the staff here had got the wrong message from her presence.
‘So he didn’t seem ill at all?’
‘Ill, miss?’ He shook his head, looking puzzled, adding with a touch of pride, ‘No, the Crown Prince enjoys excellent health. He always has, even as a boy.’
Gabby’s eyes fell. Even asking if he was ill went against the denial screaming inside her as she refused point-blank to contemplate a world that did not contain Rafiq.
It was bizarre. Not long ago she had not known he even existed, except as a name in the official guidebook. Now the idea of him not being here made bony, skeletal fingers of dread in her chest tighten until she couldn’t breathe.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She doubted it would be anything of substance, but Sayed obviously thought otherwise: his relief was obvious. The man clearly imagined she possessed supernatural powers. ‘Where is he?’
‘He is in his private room in the tower, miss. I think you know where it is.’
Gabby saw the man’s secret little smile. Clearly the grapevine was alive and well in the Palace. And she for one didn’t want to know what garbled version of the truth had been passed around.
Gabby had lifted her hand to tap on the door when she heard the sound of a loud, angry voice inside. She stopped and waited. There was a short silence after the rant ended, and then the even more alarming sound of crashing and smashing began.
Gabby gave up on the idea of announcing herself. Instead she pushed the door open cautiously. It gave. Wondering what on earth she was going to find, she squared her shoulders and stepped inside.
There was evidence of the destruction she had heard, but there was nothing systematic about it as far as she could see. Rafiq, who was pacing the floor like a sleek, feral caged animal, wasn’t simply walking around objects, but through them.
Rafiq turned, a snarl on his face. ‘What are you doing here?’
Their glances connected, worried blue on wrathful and smouldering black, and her breath snagged painfully in her throat. In his primitive anger all pretence of civilisation was washed away and Rafiq was quite simply magnificent. Of course she had always known he was a man of strong passions, and she had even seen him strain at the emotional leash at times, but now it had snapped!
As their glances connected his eyes, blacker than the darkest starless night sky, lit from within by twin flames, drilled into her. Every individual fibre and muscle in his body was bunched and taut. He was an explosion about to happen.
She didn’t want to supply the final trigger. Gabby ran her tongue lightly across her dry lips as something that was part trepidation and part excitement slid through her. Now that really did make her weird…
‘What has happened, Rafiq? Are you ill? Is—?’
‘Not ill—just dying.’ He saw her flinch, but pushed away the shaft of inconvenient guilt that slipped like a dull blade between his ribs.
Gabby, her face pale, bit down on her quivering lip and tucked her hair behind her ears. It immediately sprang free. ‘Well, something must have happened to put you in this mood.’
His upper lip curled into a sneer. ‘Something? Oh, yes, something has happened,’ he agreed darkly as he swung away from her.
Gabby watched, her frustration growing as he recommenced his restless panther-like pacing of the room. She chased after him, catching him as he reached the doors that lay open to the balcony where she had lost her balance the first time they had met.
Without thinking she caught hold of his arm and tugged him to a stop.
He stood breathing hard, staring with a look she couldn’t put a name on at her hand on his arm.
‘Sorry—I’m a tactile person.’ She sincerely hoped he didn’t correctly translate this as I can’t keep my hands off you. ‘I keep forgetting people don’t lay hands on the royal person without an invitation.’
She turned her head to one side and regarded him with a calm she was not feeling.
‘Will you stop being so damned enigmatic and stay still for ten seconds? You can be snide and superior just as well when you’re sitting down. I know this,’ she said, placing her hands flat on her chest, ‘because I’ve seen you do it.’
The fury still pounded inside his skull like a hammer, but Rafiq managed a flicker of a smile as he lowered himself into a chair.
‘Thank you,’ she said, dropping to her knees beside it. ‘Now, you can tell me that it’s none of my business,’ she began, thinking he most probably would, ‘but—’
‘It is your business.’
That threw Gabby off balance. ‘It is?’
‘I received a note form Hakim this morning. He has flown back to Paris.’
Rafiq watched as the colour drained from her face. If his brother had been on the same continent at that moment he would not have been responsible for his actions.
‘How could he? How could he leave now? After…?’ Gabby, her face as pale as paper apart from two bright spots
of angry colour on the apples of her cheeks, stopped and pressed a hand to her lips. How could he do this to Rafiq?
The pain in her horrified whisper penetrated a part of Rafiq’s heart that had never previously been exposed.
She lifted swimming blue eyes to Rafiq. ‘I really thought he had more—’ Her voice broke as she considered Hakim’s departure.
‘My brother is a fool, and I am sorry for what he has done to you. His actions are those of a—’ He used a word in his native tongue that she didn’t understand, but his expression was translation enough.
‘Done to me?’ she echoed, confused.
Rafiq swallowed, the muscles in his throat visibly rippling under his brown skin and his eyes glowing as he contemplated the pleasure of throttling his own brother.
‘You have suffered at the hands of the Al Kamil family.’ He gave a grimace of self-recrimination. ‘I have used you,’ he admitted stiffly, his rage visibly growing as he spoke, ‘but at least I haven’t slept with you, knowing all along I had no intention—’ He closed his eyes and cursed slowly and fluently in several languages.
Gabby, her eyes widening suddenly in angry comprehension, exclaimed, ‘Slept with me! You think I slept with a man I’d only known five seconds?’
Why not just call me a slut and have done with it? she thought, ignoring the sly voice in her head which suggested that two seconds would have done it if the man in question had been Rafiq.
A muscle clenched in his lean cheek as he shook his head in a stiff negative motion. ‘You will not speak of it.’
He could not allow himself to think of it, to torture himself with images and allow the jealousy to bite like acid into him.
‘But I—’
He cut off her protest with a look. ‘I saw him climb into your room.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘You saw…?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You were watching?’
‘I had something I wished to discuss with you.’
Rafiq had been struggling throughout the day to keep his feelings of guilt at bay, but following their dinner he had come to a decision. He would release her from their bargain. The irony was that, having studied her brother’s case in further detail, he doubted that the case against Paul Barton would have ever made it to court after the scheduled review.
Of course this irony had paled into insignificance beside his finding his own brother scaling her balcony—minus the rose between his teeth, but in all other ways the perfect romantic lover.
‘I had planned to use the door.’
Gabby bit her lip. ‘What did you want to discuss with me?’
‘It is no longer relevant.’ She was puzzling over his sharp retort when he added, ‘To think that I pushed you into his arms!’
His snarled recrimination made Gabby flinch. ‘I’m not some puppet. You’ve never made me do anything I didn’t want to, Rafiq.’
Her clumsy attempt to soothe him had the opposite effect.
‘So you have fallen in love with him?’ he said heavily. It was nothing he had not already suspected. He had seen women fall for his brother’s brand of charm before.
The absurd assumption made Gabby stare at this normally smart man. ‘Of course not. It was just—’
‘Sex?’ he finished for her heavily, before closing his eyes and slipping seamlessly into a flood of Arabic she could not follow apart from some spectacular epithets. She watched him slam his fist into the carved arm of his chair.
A cry of alarm was wrenched from the watching Gabby’s throat as she witnessed this loss of control.
‘For goodness’ sake, Rafiq,’ she cried, tugging at his arm.
She saw with horror blood well along the line of his knuckles as he ground his flesh into the hard surface. It had to be hurting, but he didn’t appear to notice—not the pain, nor her breathless panting efforts to pull his arm down. She could barely get a purchase. The muscles under her fingers were tense and bulging and they had about as much give as a steel bar. Her efforts were futile. He appeared not to even notice her.
He relaxed his arm suddenly, and, breathing a sigh of relief, Gabby knelt there, panting, her fingers still curled around his forearm.
‘Your poor hand.’ She winced, raising his hand to examine the broken skin across his knuckles. ‘You need—’
Rafiq sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and fixed her with a blazing stare so intense it stripped bare her defences, leaving her feeling emotionally exposed and trembling. ‘Need…?’he echoed, giving a laugh that made her heart twist in her chest in empathy.
Anger rose inside her as she lifted his hand to her chest and nursed it there. Tears filled her eyes. He needed life, and it was being denied him. Misery lodged in her chest like a lump of lead—there was simply nothing she could say that wasn’t utterly clichéd.
‘Sorry.’
Her whispered comment brought his eyes to her face. He felt tenderness twist his heart. No woman had ever touched him this deeply.
‘I am sorry too. Sorry that I did not imagine for a heartbeat…not for a heartbeat—’ He broke off, lifting the hand that she held to his own chest and pressing it against the area where his heart rested.
Gabby, her hand trapped beneath his, could feel the heat of his body and the steady thud of his heart.
Oh, God, but I love him! The anguished admission was drawn from her very soul.
‘I did not imagine that a brother of mine could be so totally without honour. He actually left me a note,’ he raged, lifting his other hand to frame her face with long brown fingers.
It struck Gabby that to the casual observer they would look like lovers. A shiver slid down her spine.
‘What did Hakim say in the letter?’ she asked, wondering if she ought to tell Rafiq why his brother had gone. It weighed heavily on her conscience that she had inadvertently broken her promise.
But, while unburdening herself might ease her guilt, it was not going to make Rafiq feel any better to know why his brother had run away.
Gabby felt livid every time she thought about the young Prince and his feeble behaviour. She was definitely not inclined to make excuses for him, especially as it seemed to her people had been making excuses for Hakim for too long.
She believed that everyone faced tests in their lives. This was the most important test Hakim had ever faced and he had flunked it! If she had Hakim here now she’d tell him exactly what she thought of him. Of course it hurt like hell to know someone you loved was in pain and that there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to help, but you had to put your own feelings to one side.
That was simply what you did when you loved someone. Time enough later to indulge your own pain—too much time, she thought bleakly.
In that moment she was conscious of nothing but Rafiq. Every other thought was obliterated from her head as she soaked in sensations: the warmth radiating from his lean, hard body, his masculine strength, the fresh male scent of his skin.
‘People use love as an excuse—as if that justifies everything.’
Gabby felt a moment of guilty panic—had he guessed?
Then he added with a sardonic sneer, ‘My brother is apparently in love.’ Rafiq’s fingers fell away from her face, and his upper lip curled with contempt as he contended, ‘He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.’
Rafiq’s eyes swept her face before he turned his head away from her, expelling a hissing breath through flared nostrils. ‘He writes to say he is getting married to some woman—a divorcee. Apparently I have said something which has made him realise he has to do this. He never has been able to take responsibility for his own actions.’ He flung up his hands in a gesture of disgust before giving a shrug and pronouncing, ‘Their children will be idiots.’
‘He’s getting married?’ Gabby cried, sinking back onto her heels. ‘I didn’t see that one coming,’ she admitted, wondering if there really was a woman, or if Hakim had invented her to explain his absence.
Rafiq looked at her downbent head and felt a rush of emotion he avoided analysi
ng. ‘My brother is an idiot…’ he said. He could have had Gabby, he thought. He is an imbecile!
‘You’re angry because all your careful plans have gone up in smoke,’ she said.
‘You think this is about my plans?’ It seemed to Gabby that he looked inexplicably startled by her comment.
‘But you have to look on the bright side.’
Rafiq followed her advice and realised he would not have to endure the agony of being forced to see her exchange vows with his brother.
‘There is a bright side?’ He was willing to play along. She was clearly putting a brave face on it, but her pride had to be in tatters.
She frowned at the sardonic interruption. ‘He will have a wife, and that’s what you wanted. She might be good for him.’
‘I no longer care.’
Gabby, who didn’t for a second believe him, patted his hand—an action that made him stiffen. She would have pulled her hand away, had he not covered it with his own and kept it there.
‘Hakim is never going to be you, Rafiq, no matter who his wife is.’ She paused to let this sink in. ‘You have to trust him.’
His fingers tightened over hers. ‘You of all people can speak my brother’s name and say the word trust in the same breath?’
‘This isn’t about me. I’m just saying you have to let him make his own mistakes, be his own man. This woman might be exactly the sort of wife he needs.’
Rafiq gave her of a look of utter disdain. ‘She is—’
‘I know—an idiot.’
Her bored drawl pulled him up short. He frowned. ‘That is irrelevant.’
This change of tack made Gabby blink. ‘Who runs your country is irrelevant? I wish you’d decided that before I handed in my notice and gave away my cat.’
He flushed under her sardonic glare. ‘My brother’s actions to you have been—’