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It had been a last thought: I need a detail, something that a stranger wouldn’t know. Something that will tell her I’m one of the good guys.
Hannah froze, her wild eyes returning to his face at the specific reference to the rescue dog she had adopted.
‘Yes, I’m the cavalry—’ he watched as she took a shuddering sigh and closed her eyes ‘—so just do as you’re told and cover up.’ His glance moved to the honey-blonde tresses that were tangled and limp. ‘And be grateful you’re having a bad-hair day.’
Hannah didn’t register his words past cavalry; her thoughts were whirling. ‘My father sent you?’
She gave a watery smile. Her father had come through! She exhaled and sent up a silent thank you to her absent parent.
She took the fabric and looked at it. What did he expect her to do with it? ‘Who are you?’
Possibilities buzzed like a restless bee through her head. An actor? Some sort of mercenary ? A corrupt official? Someone willing to do anything for money or the adrenalin buzz?
‘Your ticket out of here.’
Hannah tilted her head in acknowledgement. The important thing was he had successfully blagged or bribed his way in here and represented a shot at freedom.
Her jaw firmed. Suddenly she felt the optimism she had not allowed herself to feel during her incarceration. It had been an hour to hour—hard to believe there had only been forty-eight, but then, in a room illuminated twenty-four-seven by the harsh fluorescent light, it was hard to judge time.
‘Is Dad...?’
He responded to the quiver of hope in her voice with a stern, ‘Forget your father and focus. Do not allow yourself to become distracted.’
The tone enabled her to retain her grip on her unravelling control. He had the shoulders but he clearly had no intention of offering them up for tears, which was fine by her. If a girl didn’t learn after two failed engagements that the only person she could rely on was herself, she deserved everything she got!
‘Yes...of course.’
Her fingers shook as she took the shimmering blue fabric. It fell in a tangled skein on the floor, the fabric unravelling... Just like me, she thought.
She took a deep breath and released it, slowly able to lift her chin and meet his gaze with something approaching composure as she asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’
Kamel felt an unwilling stab of admiration.
‘I want you to keep your mouth closed, your head covered, and follow my lead.’
He bent forward and took the fold of fabric from her fingers. The fabric billowed out of his hands and she was suddenly swathed in the stuff, covering her head and most of the ugly shift.
He stood back to see the effect, then nodded and threw the remaining fabric over her shoulder. His hand stayed there, heavy, the contact more reassuring than his stern stare.
‘Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ she said, hoping it was true.
‘Right. You are going to leave here and you are going to do so with your head held high. Just channel all your...just be yourself.’
She blinked up into his dark eyes, noticing the little silver flecks, and struggled to swallow a giggle—she knew that once she gave in to hysteria that was it.
‘And they are just going to let us out?’ His confidence bordered the insane but maybe that was a good thing for someone in charge of a jail break.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know why they let you just walk in here but—’
‘They let me just walk in here because to refuse me access would have caused offence and they have a lot of ground to make up.’ They could arrest, interrogate and imprison a foreign national on charges that carried the death penalty, but not the bride-to-be of the heir to the Suranian throne.
Maybe if she had chosen another moment to stray across the border his uncle’s influence alone would have been enough to gain her freedom, but with impeccable timing Hannah Latimer had wandered into an armed border patrol at a time when the ruling family of Quagani was politically vulnerable. Accused by rival factions of being unable to protect the country’s interests against foreign exploitation, the royals had responded by instigating a draconian zero-tolerance policy: no second chances, no leniency, no special cases...almost.
His uncle had not ordered, he had not played the duty card—instead he had spoken of a debt he owed Charles Latimer and asked with uncharacteristic humility if Kamel would be willing to marry Hannah Latimer.
‘She is not ideal,’ the King admitted, ‘and not the person I would have wanted for you, but I’m sure with guidance... She was a lovely child, as I recall. Very like her mother, poor Emily.’ He sighed.
‘She grew up.’
‘It is your decision, Kamel.’
This was the first thing ever asked of him by his uncle—who was not just his King but also the man who had stepped in after his father’s death and treated him as his own son. Kamel’s response had never been in doubt.
Hannah heard the irony in her rescuer’s voice but didn’t have a clue what it meant. ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’ Though he said it in a voice that had a tactile shiver-down-your-spine quality.
‘You will.’ Despite the smile that went with the words, she sensed an underlying threat that was echoed in the bleakness of his stare.
‘Look, no one is about to ask you anything, but if they do, don’t say anything. Burst into tears or something.’
That would not require much effort. The walking might, though—her knees felt like cotton wool.
‘Just pretend you’re running away from some sucker at the altar.’
Her shocked violet eyes widened to their fullest extent. The reputation she pretended not to care about had followed her to a jail halfway around the world. Ironically she had come here in the hope of rebuilding her reputation, or at least escaping the cameras.
‘I believe you’ve had some practice,’ he murmured before seamlessly raising his voice from the soft, for-her-ears-only undertone, to an authoritative command to the prison guards.
The words were unintelligible to her but the effect was magic. The guards she recognised stood either side of the open door, their heads bowed. Along the corridor there were uniformed figures standing to attention.
The man beside her spoke and the guards bowed lower. Hannah stared, astonished—it wasn’t just their reaction; it was the man himself. He seemed to have assumed a totally new persona, and it fitted him as well as the flowing robes. He was clearly immersing himself in his role; even his body language had changed. The arrogance was still there but it was combined with an air of haughty authority as he strode along, shortening his step so that she could keep pace.
What the hell was happening?
She had expected to be smuggled out of some back entrance, not to receive the red-carpet treatment.
Like a sleepwalker, Hannah allowed her tall escort to guide her down the corridor. Nobody looked directly at her or her companion as they walked past. The silence was so intense she could feel it.
Outside, the heat hit her—it was like walking into a shimmering wall, but the sun was infinitely preferable to the ten-foot-square, white-walled cell. It was the thought of being discovered and ending up back there and not the temperature that brought Hannah out in a cold sweat.
A leashed guard dog began to bark, straining at the lead as they walked on. Could dogs really smell fear? As his handler fought to control the animal the man beside her turned, clicked his fingers and looked at the dog, who immediately dropped down on his belly and whimpered.
Neat trick, Hannah thought, momentarily losing her balance as a jet flew low overhead. She had heard the sound before many times over the last days but it was a lot quieter in her cell.
‘I’m fine,’ she mumbled as the hand on her elbow slid to her waist. In that moment of contact she registered the fact that his body had no give—it was all hard muscle. For a moment she enjoyed an illusion of safety before she was released.
Hannah, who had been totally disorientated when she had arrived in darkness, realised for the first time that she had been incarcerated on a military base.
Almost as if some of his strength had seeped into her, she felt more confident, enabling her to adopt a fatalistic attitude when they were approached by a mean-looking man with shoulders the size of a hangar, dressed similarly to the man she struggled to keep pace with.
Hannah wanted to run, every survival instinct she had was screaming at her to do so, but the hand that reached down and took her own had other ideas. Her escort had stopped when he saw the other man and waited. Under her blue silk and grubby shift Hannah sucked in a shaky breath and began to sweat—but the hand that held her own was cool and dry.
‘This is Rafiq.’
So clearly friend, not foe. She managed a shaky half-smile when the big man acknowledged her presence with a respectful tip of his covered head. He responded with calm, one-word replies to the questions her escort threw at him, even earning a tight smile that might have been approval.
Hannah, who hadn’t been able to follow a word, was unable to restrain herself. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘You mean are you about to escape justice?’
‘I’m innocent!’
Her protest drew a sardonic smile from her rescuer. She had the impression he wasn’t her greatest fan, but she didn’t mind so long as he got her out of here.
‘We are all guilty of something, angel. As the man said, there’s no such thing as a free meal, but, yes, your taxi awaits.’
Hannah spun to face the direction in which he had nodded and saw a jet with a crest on the side that seemed vaguely familiar.
CHAPTER TWO
AT THE SIGHT of the private jet Hannah felt her heart race. Her anticipation of imminent escape and the possibility that her father was inside waiting were mingled with the equally powerful conviction that any minute someone would catch on. To be caught when freedom was literally within sight, touch and smell would be so much harder than if she had never hoped.
‘Keep it together.’
She turned her head sharply, the action causing the silk to fall away from her cheek. She could not believe he could look so relaxed. Did the man have ice in his veins? No—she remained conscious of the warmth of his guiding hand on her elbow.
Hannah twitched the silk back into place and in doing so caught sight of someone who was approaching across the tarmac. Her eyes widened to large pools of blue terror in a face that had become dramatically pale.
‘Do not run.’
Fear clutched her belly. ‘He...’
Kamel watched as she licked her dry lips. Her eyes were darting from side to side like a cornered animal seeking an avenue of escape, but they kept moving back to the army colonel who carried a cane and an air of self-importance as he approached them, flanked by a small armed guard.
It didn’t take a second for Kamel to experience a flash of vengeful rage that reminded him strongly of a time in his youth when, after escaping the security that he hated, he had encountered three much older boys in a narrow side street. He had not known at first what was lying on the ground there, but he had seen one boy aim a kick at it, and they had all laughed. It was the laughter he had reacted to with sheer, blinding, red-mist rage.
He had arrived back at the palace later, looking worse than the poor stray dog the trio had been systematically kicking the hell out of. He had freed the dog in the end, not by physical means but by offering them the ring he wore.
His father, the antithesis of a tyrannical parent, had been more bemused than angry when he’d discovered the ring was gone.
‘You gave a priceless heirloom for this flea-ridden thing?’ He had then progressed to remind Kamel how important breeding was.
It was an important lesson, not in breeding but in negotiation. In a tight situation, it was often a clear head rather than physical force that turned the tide. He controlled his instinctive rage now. Summing up the man in a glance, he knew he had come across the kind before many times: a bully who took pleasure from intimidating those he controlled.
‘Did he interrogate you?’
Hannah shivered, not from the ice in Kamel’s voice, but the memory.
‘He watched.’ And tapped a cane on the floor, she thought, shivering again as she remembered the sound. The man’s silence had seemed more threatening to her than the men who asked the questions. That and the look in his eyes.
Kamel’s jaw was taut, and his voice flat. ‘Lift your head up. He can’t do a thing to you.’
* * *
‘Highness, I am here to offer our sincere apologies for any misunderstanding. I hope it has not given Miss Latimer a dislike of our beautiful country.’
And now it was his turn.
His turn to smile and lie through his teeth. It was a talent that he had worked on to the point where his diplomacy looked effortless even though it frequently veiled less civilised instincts.
He uncurled his clenched fingers, unmaking the fists they had instinctively balled into, but he was spared having to produce the words that stuck in his throat by sudden activity around the waiting jet.
As something came screaming down towards them, one man raised a pistol. Kamel, who had the advantage of faster reflexes, reached casually out and chopped the man’s arm, causing him to drop the gun to the ground. It went off, sending a bullet into a distant brick wall.
‘Relax, it’s just...’
He stopped as the hawk that had been flying above their heads dropped down, claws extended, straight onto the head of the uniformed colonel. His hat went flying and he covered his head protectively as the hooded hawk swooped again—this time escaping with what looked like a dead animal in his talons.
The colonel stood there, his hands on his bald head.
Releasing a hissing signal from between his teeth, Kamel extended his arm. The hawk responded to the sound and landed on his wrist.
‘You are quite safe now, Colonel.’ Kamel took the toupee from the bird and, holding it on one finger, extended it to the man who had curled into a foetal crouch, his head between his hands.
Red-faced, the older man rose to his feet, his dignity less intact than his face, which had only suffered a couple of superficial scratches, oozing blood onto the ground.
He took the hairpiece and crammed it on his head, drawing a smothered laugh from one of his escorts. When he spun around the men stared ahead stonily.
‘That thing should be destroyed. It nearly blinded me.’
Kamel touched the jewel attached to that bird’s hood. ‘My apologies, Colonel. No matter how many jewels you put on a bird of prey, she remains at heart a creature of impulse. But then that is the attraction of wild things, don’t you think?’
The other man opened his mouth and a grunt emerged through his clenched teeth as he bowed.
Kamel smiled. He handed back the pistol to the man who had tried to shoot it, having first emptied the barrel with a mild reproach of, ‘Unwise.’ He then turned to Rafiq and issued a soft-voiced command in French that Hannah struggled to make sense of.
The big man bowed his head, murmured, ‘Highness,’ and took Hannah’s elbow.
Hannah, who had remained glued to the spot while the drama had played out around her, did not respond to the pressure.
Kamel, his dark eyes flashing warning, touched her cheek.
Like someone waking from a deep sleep, she started and lifted her blue eyes to his face. ‘Go with Rafiq. I will be with you presently, my little dove.’ Without waiting to see if she responded, he turned to the bleeding and humiliated colonel. ‘Please forgive Emerald. She is very protective and responds when she senses danger. She is...unpredictable. But as you see—’ he ran a finger down the bird’s neck ‘—quite docile.’
Kamel could feel the effort it cost the man to smile. ‘You have an unusual pet, Prince Kamel.’
Kamel produced a smile that was equally insincere. ‘She is not a pet, Colonel.’
He could feel the man’s eyes in his back as he walked away. Still, a poisonous stare was less painful than the bullet he would no doubt have preferred to deliver.
* * *
‘No.’ Hannah shook her head and refused to take the seat that she was guided to. ‘Where is he?’ she asked the monolith of a man who didn’t react to her question. ‘My father! Where is he?’
As the door closed behind him the hawk flew off Kamel’s hand and onto her perch, the tinkle of bells making Hannah turn her head. ‘Where is my father? I want my—’
He cut across her, his tone as bleak as winter, but not as cold and derisive as his eyes. ‘You should know I have no taste for hysteria.’
‘And you should know I don’t give a damn.’
Kamel, who had anticipated her reaction to be of the standard ‘poor little me’ variety, was actually pleasantly surprised by her anger. If nothing else the girl was resilient. Just as well—as it was a quality she was going to need.
‘I suppose it was too much to hope that you have learnt anything from your experience.’ He arched a sardonic ebony brow. ‘Like humility.’
Now wasn’t that the ultimate in irony? She was being lectured on humility by a man who had just produced a master class in arrogance.
She hadn’t expected to be told she’d done brilliantly or receive a pat on the back...but a lecture?
‘You got me out of there, so thanks. But I’m damned if I’m going to be lectured by the hired help!’ It came out all wrong. But what did it matter if he thought she was a snob? She needed to know what the hell was happening and he wouldn’t even give her a straight answer.
At last she was now living down to his expectations. He peeled off his head gear, revealing a head of close-cropped raven-black hair. The austere style emphasised the classical strength of his strongly sculpted features. ‘I suggest that we postpone this discussion until we are actually in the air.’
It wasn’t a suggestion so much as an order, and his back was already to her. She had just spent two days in a cell experiencing a total lack of control—this man was going to give her answers!
‘Don’t walk away from me like that!’
Dragging a hand back and forth over his hair, causing it to stand up in spikes, he paused and turned his head towards her without immediately responding. Instead in a low aside he spoke to his massive stone-faced sidekick, who bowed his head respectfully before he whisked away—moving surprisingly quickly for such a large man.
His attentions switched back to Hannah. ‘It’s called prioritising, my little dove.’
Hannah felt her stomach muscles tighten at the reminder that the last hurdle was still to be negotiated. At least most of the quivering was associated with fear. Some of it...well, it wasn’t as if she were struck dumb with lust, but a little dry-mouthed maybe? Previously her fear levels had given her some protection from the aura of raw sexuality this man exuded, but she felt it even more strongly when he hooked a finger under her chin and looked down into her face for a moment before letting his hand drop away.
The contact and the deep dark stare had been uncomfortable, but now it was gone she wasn’t sure what she felt. She gave her head a tiny shake to clear the low-level buzz—or was that the jet engines? She was clearly suffering the effects of an adrenalin dip; the chemical circulating in her blood had got her this far, but now she was shaking.
‘Sit down, belt up and switch off your phone,’ he drawled, wondering if he hadn’t been a bit too tough on her. But she acted tough, and looked... His eyes slid over the soft contours of her fine-boned face. She was possibly one of the few women on the planet who could look beautiful after two days in a ten-foot-square prison cell.
She sat down with a bump because it was preferable to falling. Had she thanked him yet?
‘Thank you.’ Hannah had been brought up to be polite, after all, and he had just rescued her.
She closed her eyes and missed the look of shock on his face. As the jet took off she released a long, slow sigh and didn’t open her eyes again, even when she felt the light brush of hands on her shoulder and midriff as a belt was snapped shut.
Was it possible that she had jumped from the proverbial frying pan straight into...what? And with whom? It was only the knowledge that he carried the personal message from her father that had stopped her tipping over into panic as her imagination threatened to go wild on her.
‘If you would like anything, just ask Rafiq. I have some work to do.’
She opened her eyes in time to see her rescuer shrug off his imposing desert robes to reveal a pale coffee-coloured tee shirt and black jeans. The resulting relaxed image should have been less imposing, but actually wasn’t—even though he appeared to have shrugged off the icy-eyed hauteur that had reduced the aggressive colonel to red-faced docility.
He might be dressed casually, his attitude might be relaxed when he glanced her way, but this didn’t change the fact that he exuded a level of sexuality that was unlike anything she had ever encountered.
He took a couple of steps, then turned back, his dark, dispassionate stare moving across her face. So many questions—Hannah asked the one that she felt took priority. ‘Who are you?’
His mouth lifted at one corner but the dark silver-flecked eyes stayed coolly dispassionate as he responded, ‘Your future husband.’
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IS THERE ANYTHING I can get for you?’
The words roused Hannah from her semi catatonic state. She surged to her feet and flung the man mountain before her a look of profound scorn before pushing past him into the adjoining cabin, which contained a seating area and a bed on which her tall, rude rescuer was stretched out, one booted foot crossed over the other, his forearm pressed across his eyes.
‘I thought you were working.’
‘This is a power nap. I want to look good in the wedding photos.’
Breathing hard, she stood there, hands on her hips, glaring at his concealed face—noticing as she did the small bloody indentations on the sides of his wrist, presumably from where the hawk had landed on his bare skin.
‘Can you be serious for one moment, please?’
He lifted a dark brow and with a long-suffering sigh dropped his arm. Then, in one sinuous motion, he pulled himself up into a sitting position and lowered his feet to the ground.
He planted his hands on his thighs and leaned forward. ‘I’m all yours. Shoot.’
Hannah heard shoot and shuddered, recalling the scene on the tarmac where but for his lightning reflexes there might have been more than one bullet discharged—a disaster narrowly averted.
‘You should put some antiseptic on those.’
His dark brows twitched into a puzzled line.
She pointed to his arm. ‘The bird.’ She angled a wary glance at the big bird. ‘You’re bleeding.’
He turned his wrist and shrugged in an irritatingly tough fashion. ‘I’ll live.’
‘I, on the other hand, am feeling a little insecure about being on a plane with a total stranger going...’ she gave an expressive shrug ‘...God knows where. So do you mind filling in a few blanks?’
He nodded. She didn’t sound insecure. She sounded and looked confident and sexy and in control. What would it take to make her lose it? It could be he was about to find out.
‘My father sent you?’
He tipped his head in acknowledgement and she gave a gusty sigh of relief. ‘He sends his love.’
‘I’m sure Dad appreciates your sense of humour, but I’m a bit...’
‘Uptight? Humourless?’
Her blue eyes narrowed to slits. She had very little energy left, and being angry with him was using it all up. She took a deep breath and thought, Rise above it, Hannah. People had said a lot worse about her and she’d maintained her dignity.
It was a power thing. If they saw it got to her they had the power and she lost it. It didn’t matter who they were—school bullies, journalists—the same rule applied. If you showed weakness they reacted like pack animals scenting blood.