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‘You don’t need me to point out your duty, Karim, but while you are without a wife every politically ambitious ruling family lives in hope, they plot and connive. Being born who you are has given you status, power and wealth, but at a price. A hereditary leader’s first duty is to his country and people. They look to you for stability, a sense of continuity and permanence—an heir…’
‘And preferably a couple of spares.’
His flippancy, though not appreciated, had been tolerated, but it was not in the same league as refusing to meet the granddaughter of his neighbour with a view to marriage. Such an insult might not have returned the respective countries to war status, but it would have strained the relationship, so Karim had been willing to go through the motions and treat the suggestion with the gravity it did not deserve.
Karim could readily appreciate the King’s desire to see his granddaughter married, and of course by birth this girl fulfilled all the criteria for a royal bride.
But birth was not the only consideration.
Karim was one of the few who were privy to the story of the lost princess who had been ignorant of her birthright. It made for good romance and an even better headline when the media found out, which to his mind was inevitable. But to expect a woman brought up knowing nothing of tradition to take on such a role as his wife would be called upon to perform would be like expecting a ten-year-old to conduct a lecture on astrophysics!
Karim knew he had to marry and his expectations were realistic. He was not expecting to find a soul mate to make his wife—if such things existed outside the pages of romances—though someone who didn’t actively dislike the idea of sharing his bed would be a step up from the first time.
But the lost princess would not be his first or last choice.
And anyway there was no hurry—he was enjoying his freedom and he was only thirty-two. Young, but not as young as some—Amira was eight.
And he would have given all he had to exchange places with her. An image of her little face beneath the cap she’d taken to wearing since the chemo had made her sweet curls fall out flashed across his vision. If ever he had been under the illusion that life was either fair or certain he had learnt otherwise over the past weeks.
Pushing aside the dark thoughts, he concentrated on taking the next shallow, slightly shabby step and then the next. Best not to think too far ahead…marriage too was far in the future. Why marry now when he was enjoying his freedom, and enjoying sex without guilt or responsibility? He mentally skimmed over the post-coital emptiness that, had he been a man given to introspection, might have bothered him.
Of course, if Amira had been a boy things would have been different. Marriage would not be on his agenda and there would not be the ever-present pressure from those advising him to marry.
Karim did not need others to point out his duty. He would eventually have to remarry and provide the much-desired heir.
His face relaxed into a half-smile that briefly warmed the bleakness of his platinum eyes as his thoughts returned to his daughter. It amazed him that two people who could only make each other so unhappy had produced such a marvellous, perfect little creature.
It was 1:00 a.m. when Eva decided to head for a shower as she was too wound up and plain mad to sleep. Irrational really. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted him to turn up, but bad manners were bad manners even if she had no complaint about the result.
Her night had started badly and gone steadily downhill. For starters her computer had crashed and she’d lost a week’s work, and then the manager in the hotel bar where she worked to supplement her adequate but not generous post-grad funding had rung to ask her to cover a shift.
An offer she’d had to refuse so next time he wouldn’t ask her first, and with her computer on the blink she could do with the cash. Not that she was really broke—the startlingly generous allowance her grandfather had insisted on making her was sitting in the bank where it was going to stay. Using it somehow felt too much like relinquishing her freedom.
God, this entire day had been a waste. As if she didn’t have anything better to do than spend hours deciding what to wear that was completely unsuitable and more hours artistically arranging Luke’s personal items in her bathroom and several articles of his clothing around her flat to suggest cohabitation.
Of course she should have recognised the Prince wasn’t exactly keen as mustard when a flunky had rung to arrange the date a month previously—he clearly had a busy calendar.
‘Damn man!’ she muttered, kicking off her shoes. In a mood of righteous indignation she removed the rest of her unsuitable outfit. ‘Who does the man think he is anyway? Other than rich and powerful…obviously common courtesy and good manners don’t apply to royalty.’
It was just a pity, she reflected, that not all the men in her life were letting her down tonight.
Luke had arrived on cue. ‘Where is he?’
‘Not here.’
Her tetchy tone had not been lost on Luke, who had not done the tactful thing and vanished but instead had hung around, wanting the gruesome details, enjoying immensely the joke at her expense.
Eva liked to think that she didn’t take herself seriously, that she could laugh at herself with the best, but there were limits and someone laughing his socks off because she’d been stood up was definitely over her limit.
She’d been pretty cranky and terribly unappreciative with Luke, but anyone who observed with a grin, ‘Looks like the guy is not as enthusiastic as you thought, Princess,’ in her opinion deserved cranky!
Luke had carried on digging the hole when he’d added, ‘You’ve got to appreciate the irony, Evie!’
At this point Eva had opened the door and invited him to leave, ignoring the jibe about a sense-of-humour bypass.
As she stepped into the shower, Eva decided to draw a line under the entire ‘prince’s prospective bride’ scenario. If the wretched man’s flunky rang back to schedule a meeting again, she would be washing her hair.
In the meantime she was revolving in the warm spray of the shower when she heard the strident shrill of the doorbell.
Damn! It would be Luke, who, since he had made the big move out to the leafy suburbs, had got into the annoying habit of using her sofa when he had missed his last train home. Well, actually, she didn’t normally find it annoying, but tonight she wasn’t feeling exactly hospitable.
Lifting her face briefly to the water to rinse off the remnants of soap, she pulled off the shower cap and shook out her hair before fighting her way into a towelling robe, muttering, ‘Hold your horses,’ under her breath as she dashed to answer the door.
This time her sofa was not going to be available even if Luke did the ‘pathetic puppy dog’ look.
Her problem, she told herself, was she was too damned nice, and niceness, as her mother had always told her, was an open invitation for people to walk all over you.
Was it any wonder she got stood up? She clearly sent out victim messages even over the phone!
Mid-mental rant, she came to an abrupt halt when she saw the shadow of a large figure through the frosted glass of the door.
Too large to be Luke?
Surely the damned Prince wouldn’t have the cheek to think she’d still be dutifully waiting until he deigned to show up? Her eyes narrowed wrathfully at the idea as she reached up and slid the bolt on the door. In his world did women wait patiently? Eva’s temper fizzed. For sheer, mind-numbing vanity, this man really did take the cake.
Sucking in a deep sustaining breath, she really couldn’t wait to explain that she only gave a man one chance and he’d blown his. Pleased with the line, she closed her eyes before pinning a combative smile on her face and checking the towelling robe was covering everything it ought. It was and more—it reached her toes.
She opened the door with a flourish.
The tall figure who had been standing with his back to the door turned and Eva’s vocal cords froze. Actually pretty much everything she had, including her ability to think—correction, especially her ability to think—froze.
Chapter Three
FOR some reason Eva had been expecting the Prince to in some way resemble the royal male relatives of her new family—well, he was both male and royal—who were squarely built men whose height enabled them to carry the extra pounds that most did indeed carry.
The man she tilted her head up to look at was indeed tall but he had no spare pounds. Not that Eva immediately registered his lean, athletic frame—it was his face that initially totally transfixed her.
Never had she expected to connect beauty to a face that was so essentially masculine—if you made an exception for the sweep of those curling ebony eyelashes that any woman would have traded an inch of cleavage for.
But he was beautiful, each sybaritic carved line and sculpted angle of the face she gazed at, from the sternly sensual mouth, slashing cheekbones, strong jaw, strongly defined dark brows to the spookily silver—really silver—eyes was without flaw. Even his skin was flawless, a deep even gold.
Eva gathered her wits and, expelling a tiny gusty sigh, closed her mouth with an audible click. Her lashes came down in a protective screen as she dropped her chin and took a deep sustaining breath.
This was really her prince?
The one her grandfather had conceded was quite goodlooking when pressed.
Well, not hers, obviously. Men like this did not belong to women who looked like her, though belonged was actually the wrong word. Belonged implied a degree of domestication that she was unable to mentally connect with this feral, though admittedly completely magnificent creature.
He might be dressed in western clothes, but this was not his natural habitat. It was not a leap to imagine him framed against a cerulean desert sky, his tall, lean frame covered in flowing desert robes.
Eva imagined it and felt her stomach muscles quiver at the sybaritic image…what was her grandfather thinking of? Suitable match, he’d said! Suitable? For heaven’s sake, they were about as suited as an Arab stallion and a shaggy Shetland pony!
One thing was clear, she realised as she lifted her chin and tried to collect her wits, her elaborate plans to convince him she was unsuitable were fairly pointless. This tall man who oozed male arrogance from every perfect pore was not going to buy what was on offer.
On offer…like I’m a commodity on a market stall! Eva’s temper cut through the thrall that had held her immobile. She opened her mouth to say something cold and cutting, but before she could the eyes that had been focused on some place over her left shoulder suddenly connected with her own.
The unfocused blankness and lack of recognition, the pain mirrored in those silvery depths, sent the words from her head.
The last time she had seen an expression like that it had been in the eyes of a young man who had stood watching the car he had been thrown from consumed by tongues of orange flames.
‘I should be in that,’ he had said over and over when Eva, along with another driver who had pulled off the road to help, had tried to pull him back from the heat.
Shock, the paramedics, after one glance at the shivering figure, had explained as they led him to the ambulance.
She angled an assessing glance at her late-night caller, and struggled to be objective. It was hard when the person you were trying to be objective about oozed animal magnetism…It was frankly distracting even for someone like her, who did not go for the muscular macho type.
As she continued to subject the strong lines of his handsome face to a critical scrutiny the last sparks of annoyance in her green eyes morphed into anxiety. Despite that sinfully sexy mouth he did have the look of the walking wounded.
Had the Prince done the equivalent of walking away from a burning car? She was no paramedic, but the man standing there looking back at her but, she suspected, not actually seeing her seemed to be suffering from a similar trauma. And if the purple shadows under his eyes and the deep lines of strain bracketing his sensual mouth were any indicator, galloping exhaustion.
Concern conquered caution, common sense and instinct—the latter was telling her to close the door. She heaved a sigh and tried to inject a note of enthusiasm into her voice as she said abruptly, ‘You’d better come inside. I’m assuming you are the Prince?’ It didn’t seem a big assumption considering the hauteur he projected even in this clearly tormented condition.
He started slightly at the sound of her voice as if he’d forgotten she was there and his glazed eyes narrowed on her face. Eva was conscious of a strange sensation trickling down her spine.
‘I’m Karim Al-Nasr.’ The furrow between his dark brows deepened as his eyes swept her upturned features. There was too much intelligence lurking in those troubled depths to call his expression vacant, but he continued to look at her with an uncomprehending lack of recognition and the sensation she had noted stopped being a tickle and turned into a flood that spread out across her skin, crackling like an unearthed electrical current just beneath the surface.
‘I’m not sure why I’m here.’ His eyes narrowed to silver slits. ‘Do I know you?’ His voice dropped to little more than a husky murmur as his veiled glance brushed across her bright head, following the fall of the tousled curls as they fell down her shoulders. It made the fine hair on Eva’s arms stand on end.
‘Red hair, like flames…’
Heavens! The man could invite sin with a single syllable.
Eve had read of bedroom voices, but this was the first time she’d ever heard one—deep with an abrasive rasp beneath the rich velvet smoothness that was wickedly seductive.
‘I wouldn’t have forgotten that.’
He sounded as positive as she had yet heard him about this and Eva self-consciously reached a hand to drag a tangled Titian skein from her face.
‘Once seen never forgotten.’ Which for some people might be a good thing, but for someone like Eva, who didn’t enjoy drawing attention to herself, it was not. ‘We had a date, Prince,’ she reminded him bluntly.
And after all the names she had called him it looked as if he had a legitimate excuse not to show. What she wasn’t sure of was why he had shown up now, here of all places.
The frown that dug grooves into his broad smooth forehead tugged his strongly defined ebony brows into a straight line above his patrician nose.
‘Did we…? Yes, you’re King Hassan’s lost princess…’ The comprehension that had flared in his eyes faded as he appeared to lose track of what he was saying once more.
From the look on his face Eva got the strong impression that the place his thoughts had gone was not fun. Lost, he’d called her—it looked to Eva as if he were the lost one!
As she watched he swayed slightly and put out a hand to steady himself, clearly dead on his feet. Struggling against a swell of empathy, Eva let the hand she’d instinctively raised fall back to her side.
Even though her next move was obvious and Eva had never had trouble extending a helping hand to someone in trouble in her life, continuing to encourage this man over her threshold was one of the hardest things she had ever done.
Not only was she utterly sure that under normal circumstances he was the total antithesis of vulnerable, but she knew—every instinct, particularly the ones that did not work on a logical level, was telling her—that the kindly gesture would have unforeseen repercussions.
You’re being dramatic, Eva, she told herself, squaring her shoulders and murmuring, ‘Get a grip.’ Anyway, what choice did she have? She could hardly close the door in his face. Gritting her teeth, she took a sustaining gulp of air and, reaching out, laid a hand tentatively on his arm.
He appeared not to notice the hand, but she noticed the muscular hardness—it was hard to miss.
‘Come inside, erm…Prince,’ she said, pitching her voice to a soothing level as her fingers closed over muscles that did not give. Bad idea, said the voice in her head as her unselective stomach muscles responded to the innocent contact with a less than innocent series of butterfly kicks.
‘Inside…?’ she repeated hoarsely.
After a moment he responded. Eva’s relief was short-lived as the voice in her head very legitimately asked once more, What do you think you’re doing, Eva?
She said, ‘Duck,’ a moment too late and he didn’t. The top of his dark head—the man towered over her; he had to be at least six four—connected in a glancing blow that he appeared not to notice with the doorjamb.
‘Oh, my God, be careful!’ she groaned.
Explaining a royal prince with a fractured skull to the emergency services would really make the day complete.
‘Are you all right?’
‘All right?’ Karim repeated, lifting a hand to his head. His fingers came away damp and stained red. He couldn’t feel a thing, he felt weirdly disconnected from his body. Sleep deprivation, he thought as he made a concerted effort to clear the fog in his brain and in a moment of lucidity thought this was more than lack of sleep. Before he could figure what the more was, the moment passed.
He still retained the recognition that he ought not to be here. He was meant to be at the hospital…Amira was there and his inability to do anything was driving him slowly out of his mind.
How ironic was it he could influence the political stability of an entire region with a few well-considered words, he could transform the day to save the lives of an entire community by delivering power and running water, but when it came to his own child he was powerless…he had to stand and watch as she endured pain…as she slipped away from him?
He should prepare himself. Karim closed his eyes, rejecting the advice.
Preparing implied a resignation that he did not and would not feel.
‘I should go,’ he said, inhaling the scent of this woman’s body and wanting not to stop.
Please, Eva thought, and immediately felt guilty. It was odd, but when she looked at him her usually abundant kindness to strangers went out of the window. Any number of other things happened when she looked, but Eva was grimly determined not to go there.
Where’s your heart, Eva? she asked herself. She wouldn’t show a stray cat the door looking as he did. Of course, he wasn’t a stray cat, and if he had been this would have been a lot simpler.
‘I think you should sit down for a moment, Mr…Prince.’ The title sounded so ludicrous she fought off a smile. Then as she tilted her head back to look into his face, she lost all desire to smile…He really was stupendous to look at. ‘I could call a doctor…?’
‘No doctor!’ The hazy look was gone from the eyes that drilled into her like silvered surgical scalpels.
‘All right,’ she said, not willing to push the point. It was, after all, none of her business. ‘A cup of tea, then.’
‘A cup of tea?’ he repeated with a frown.
‘I don’t have anything stronger,’ she said apologetically, thinking, More’s the pity. She could do with something to steady her nerves.
His glazed gaze strayed from her face, wandered towards her hair, and an expression of edgy fascination that made her heart rate quicken spread across his lean face.
He lifted his hand and reached out. The gesture had all the hallmarks of compulsion as he touched her hair. Eva stiffened and thought, Don’t just stand there, do something, as she felt the light pressure of his long fingers moving across the silky surface.
In her head she had pulled back; in reality she stayed nailed to the spot, her heart racing as he lifted one strand and then another and let them fall through his fingers. As his brown fingers sank deeper, grazing her scalp, a tremor that reached her toes passed through Eva’s body.
‘Like silk…a flame…’
His voice broke the spell and with a gasp she stepped back, breathing hard. She dragged both hands through her hair, tucking it behind her ears as she tightened the knot on her towel and cleared her throat. The entire ‘naked under the layer of towelling’ thing had intensified the illicit thrill of being touched with such casual intimacy by this incredible-looking stranger.
‘Look, I think…’ She stopped. He wasn’t looking, at least not at her, which was a relief. It made it easier for her to think, not to mention breathe. If what this man exuded like a force field could be isolated and marketed no woman would be safe!
And she’d invited him in. Really great idea, Eva!
‘Sit down,’ she suggested hopefully—if he didn’t move of his own accord, she was in trouble. He was a big man and all of it was solid muscle.
Do not go there, Eva, she told herself as her stomach flipped.
‘For God’s sake, sit down or…’ She felt alarm and then relief when he took a step away from the sofa and folded his long length into her overstuffed wing-backed armchair. ‘Great.’
Now what, Eva?
Eva turned a deaf ear to the unhelpful voice and, frowning and praying for inspiration, dropped down on her knees beside the chair.
‘Are you all right?’ Eva rolled her eyes and bit her lip thinking, Sure, he’s great, Eva—that’s why he’s sitting there with his face in his hands.
She ground her teeth in sheer frustration. This man probably had an entire army of people to look after him. Why had she decided to play Florence Nightingale? She wasn’t even very good at it!
‘Is there someone I can call for you?’ She laid a tentative hand on his arm and felt the vibration of the invisible tremors that ran through his tense body. ‘My God, you’re wet through!’ she exclaimed, belatedly registering his wet hair and even wetter clothes. ‘We should get you out of these things, erm, sheikh…Prince.’ She stopped the mental image in her head causing colour to flood her face. ‘Maybe not…’ she added hoarsely as she sat back on her heels.
She swallowed as her eyes were drawn of their own volition to the golden skin of his throat where his tie had been pulled askew. His saturated white shirt clung like a second skin and Eva, seeing the shadow through it of dark body hair on his chest, averted her eyes quickly, but not before her stomach had lurched.
She scrambled hastily to her feet—at least he was in no condition to notice the scalding blush of shame that washed over her skin.
‘You wait there. I’ll get you something dry.’ Her eyes flickered to the blood on his forehead. ‘And something to put on that head.’ She cast a worried look at the blood oozing from the small but seemingly deep cut on his forehead. ‘Don’t move,’ she added sternly as she tightened the towelling robe across her heaving bosom and ran from the room, not waiting to see if her words had registered with him.
She really needed some time out to regain her equilibrium. In the bedroom she closed the door and leaned against it with her eyes closed. She lifted a hand to her head. It was shaking and her palm was clammy with nervous sweat. Maybe it was a proximity thing but she had never encountered anyone that had such a visceral effect on her before.
Not the best time for her dormant hormones to kick in. She had to…what…? She frowned in concentration and struggled to focus her thoughts. For a start get some clothes on. She pulled on the fresh pair of pyjamas laid out on the bed.
What she needed, she decided, picking up a tartan throw from the bed, was a number of someone to call for him. Or even an address and she could call a taxi and put him in it. Calling her grandfather’s number for advice was the very last resort. She was still shaky on royal protocol, but she was assuming it was a given that her present situation broke several rules and, though they had cut her a lot of slack and put down several of her worst faux pas to ignorance, this might be pushing it.