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‘I wish I had met him … I—’ She caught him staring at her and, feeling suddenly self-conscious and exposed—his eyes did have that ‘strip a soul bare’ quality—she lifted her chin and gave a soft gurgle of laughter.
‘It’s not as if anyone is going to write about me in the tabloids or kidnap me!’
She nearly had him until the seductively suggestive laugh that made the hairs on his neck stand on end in primal awareness. Nobody who laughed that way could be that naïve!
‘So you had no idea you’ve had a team of men following you for weeks.’
‘Months,’ she corrected, going pale as her stomach churned in sick rejection of the possibility. ‘I’ve been back home for two months.’ The first week or so she had been a bit nervous that the news would leak and she’d be the victim of intrusive interest, but when nothing had happened or changed she had relaxed.
Until now!
Her resentful glance lifted to the dark sardonic face of her overnight guest.
‘Are you calling me a liar? Are you …?’ She stopped, the colour seeping from her face leaving spots of angry pink on her smooth cheeks.
Her green eyes flashed as she said in a deceptively quiet voice, ‘You think I knew that they were there reporting, you think I let you stay here because I wanted to compromise you …’
‘So such a thing did not cross your mind.’
‘You think I planned … how?’ she demanded, waving a furious finger of triumph at him as she saw the flaw in his accusation. ‘Even if I wanted to marry you, and let me tell you I’d prefer to remove my spleen with a spoon, how was I to know you’d turn up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, looking like a …?’ She paused, losing some of her focus as she recalled the haunted bleakness in his eyes.
He gave an impatient shrug and picked a bleeping mobile phone from his pocket. ‘I am not accusing you of being a mastermind, just an opportunist.’ His eyes scanned the phone. ‘This will have to wait. I’m late.’
Annoyed at the implication that anything he was late for would automatically be more important than anything she had planned brought a glitter of dislike to Eva’s green eyes—the man had an ego the size of a continent!
And if he looked down his nose at her again, prince or no prince, she was going to sock that supercilious, superior smirk off his face.
The good thing about being mad with him was she didn’t have to think about her shameful physical response to him—and being mad with him didn’t even require any effort on her part.
‘Well, I’m so sorry your schedule is thrown,’ she sympathised with saccharin-sweet insincerity, ‘but I didn’t invite you to stay the night.
‘Though of course you wouldn’t remember that,’ she added sarcastically.
It seemed to Eva his selective recall was awfully convenient and she was starting to tire of being made to feel like some sort of scarlet woman.
‘And if I don’t get a move on I’ll be late for work too.’
‘Work …?’
He said it as though it was an alien concept. Maybe it was to him?
Maybe he had someone to tie his shoelaces? Maybe he strode around all day looking enigmatic and masterful?
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you were a student.’
‘I am, but like most students, even ones with scholarships,’ she added, trying to hide her pride in the achievement, ‘I have a job. Two actually. I work in a bar and walk dogs.’
His dark brows twitched into a straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘I’m amazed your grandfather permits it.’
‘I didn’t ask his permission.’
‘And surely you do not need to work.’
Her expression hardened at the suggestion she was a sponger. ‘I can pay my own way … and I value my independence. I’m not looking for anyone,’ she said, emphasising the word, ‘to look after me.’
‘And I, ma belle, also value my independence, and I was not looking for a wife, but sometimes a man must make the best of an imperfect situation.’
Eva gave a gasp of wrathful indignation. ‘Some people would not think marrying me such an awful thing.’
Standing in the doorway, he turned back.
Eva shivered as his heavy-lidded eyes moved slowly across the soft angles of her heart-shaped face. ‘I can see,’ he admitted, ‘how that might happen.’ With a last enigmatic non-smiling look, he turned and left without a word.
She expelled the breath she had been holding in one gusty sigh. You had to hand it to the man—he knew how to do an exit! And that cryptic parting comment, what was that about …? Was he saying he would like to marry her?
Not that she cared. Right?
A frown knitting her brow, Eva walked slowly to the window. As she looked down onto the street below she saw Karim emerge.
As she tried to analyse what it was about the way he moved that made something as simple as walking across the street riveting she saw him approach the stationary vehicle.
He tapped the roof and almost immediately two beefy figures emerged.
She gave a little grunt of satisfaction at the sight of the men dressed in jeans and tee shirts. There was nothing at all covert about them; he was wrong!
Her feeling of smug triumph lasted as long as it took them to start bowing obsequiously towards Karim. Even when they stopped their body language remained visibly respectful.
They spoke, or rather listened, for several minutes, then got back into the car.
Karim turned his head and glanced up to her building. Eva guiltily jumped back, biting her lip and almost groaning when she thought about what a fool she must have looked, and she waited a few minutes before looking back out.
There was no sign of Karim or the men in the car.
‘Well …’ she sighed heavily ‘… I think you could safely say that that date did not go well.’
CHAPTER SIX
LOST in her thoughts, her hood pulled over her head to protect against the rain, Eva didn’t see the long, low car with the blacked-out windows until it slowed down, spraying her skirt and boots with muddy water.
‘Great!’ She still had one more dog to deliver to its owner and didn’t know if she would have time to go back to the flat to change before she started her shift in the hotel bar.
‘Get in!’
The terse order made her stumble and forget her wet skirt and mud-spattered legs and the tiny dog she had popped into the conveniently big pocket of her duffel coat. Small in stature but large in personality, the Peke inevitably flagged after playing in the park with the bigger dogs.
She turned her head in disbelief. The voice was the same, but with his jaw cleanly shaven and his head covered in a traditional headdress he looked different from earlier … not different enough to make her consider for one second responding to the command with anything other than a laugh of sheer disbelief.
Ignoring him, she set off, her jaw set, her knees getting less shaky as she strode down the crowded street, hood up, shoulders hunched and staring fixedly ahead. As she weaved her way around people, Eva muttered the occasional rueful sorry when she collided with someone.
While she continued to ignore the car that shadowed her she was aware that the window had rolled up, but it continued its relentless but leisurely pursuit. She kept up a pace that just stopped short of running.
Not a single person came to her aid.
Typical, she thought as a group of teenagers made some laughing comments. I could be kidnapped in broad daylight and nobody would lift a finger. Eva let out a relieved sigh as she approached a busy intersection; the light showed red for pedestrians and green for the lane of traffic that the limousine occupied.
Her relief was short-lived when, rather than proceed, the gleaming monster hugging the kerb came to a total halt beside her, oblivious to the cacophony of hooting horns.
Eva turned her head. This was utterly ridiculous. ‘Go away!’ she wailed above the horns.
The window rolled down.
‘Why are you running away?’
Her chin went up a defiant notch. ‘I am not running away. I’m going home.’
‘Have you thought of taking regular exercise?’ Karim asked, his eyes moving from her flushed cheeks to her heaving bosom.
‘Have you thought of taking a hint?’ she cut back sarcastically. ‘And for your information there’s nothing wrong with my fitness levels.’ It was a shame that the same couldn’t be said of her hormone levels. ‘Even if I don’t have a stomach like a washboard.’ Like you, Eva thought as an inconvenient image of his lean, streamlined body flashed across her vision.
She blinked hard to banish the image and added defiantly, ‘And I happen to think that people, especially men who are obsessed with their bodies, are narcissistic and boring!’
‘So do I.’
She gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Am I meant to believe that your six pack is natural?’
‘I am flattered that my … sixpack has occupied your thoughts, but actually I don’t want to discuss my exercise regime.’ He tilted his head back and heard himself say, ‘I like your body.’ What man wouldn’t?
The low husky words had more effect on her breathing than the impromptu cardiovascular workout had. Eva was glad her face was already red as her heart attempted to climb into her throat.
‘Get in, Eva,’ he said, bored irritation in his voice and twin lines of dark colour etched across the crest of his chiselled cheekbones.
‘Yeah,’ yelled the man in the car behind, ‘do us a favour, Eva—for pity’s sake, get in!’ The comment was endorsed by several more voices from inside cars.
The limousine door swung open in silent invitation.
Muttering, ‘I know I’ll regret this,’ Eva threw her bag inside, deriving some satisfaction from the fact it hit him square in the chest before she followed it.
As the car pulled smoothly away from the kerb and into the now slowly moving traffic Eva maintained her grip on the door.
‘You are planning to jump out, possibly?’
Eva ignored the sarcasm and gave up waiting for her breathing to return to normal, finally accepting it wasn’t going to happen while she was in an enclosed space that amplified the testosterone-fuelled-aura thing her travelling companion radiated like a force field.
The car was so ridiculously big that there was no question of anything uncomfortable like touching thighs.
Not that he looked as if he wanted to touch her—strangle her, possibly …? Back rigid, she turned her head slowly, willing her expression to stay neutral. ‘If you have something to say, say it. I want to go home.’
‘That might not be possible.’
Karim saw the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, but a moment later she tilted her chin to a challenging angle. He fought off an unexpected stab of admiration. The lost princess might have a red-headed, bloody-minded attitude, but she also had spirit.
‘Is that meant to scare me?’ she jeered. ‘What is this?’ she added when a newspaper was placed unceremoniously on her lap.
She swallowed, conscious of the shiver of apprehension trickling like ice down her spine as her eyes flickered across the headline. Two phrases leapt out at her: Virgin Princess and Night of Passion.
She closed her eyes and thought, Let me die.
‘Tomorrow’s tabloid—it gets better inside,’ he promised.
‘Tomorrow’s …?’ Hope flared—did that mean there was still time to kill the story?
‘Read it,’ he suggested, watching the emotions flicker across her face. ‘It will save explanations.’
‘I’ve seen enough. I already feel sick. They can’t write this sort of stuff, can they? Not once you tell them it’s all lies.’
A spasm of irritation contorted his lean features as he leaned back in his seat. ‘The editor gave it to me as a courtesy, so he said, but it was clear he was hoping for a quote. Why would I give him one?’
Eva pursed her lips and slung him a furious glare. ‘So you didn’t tell him it was all lies?’
He expelled a sigh through clenched teeth, muttered something in his native tongue and bowed his head before retorting, ‘It is one version of the truth and, frankly, a lot more believable than yours.’
Eva didn’t want to, but the lurid headline exerted a sick fascination and she found herself scanning it once more.
It did not read better the second time around … ‘I feel sick.’
‘Feeling I can cope with. Do us both a favour, though, and control your gag reflex.’
This heartless response drew a narrow-eyed glare from Eva. ‘How did they get this?’ she choked, shaking her head in utter mystification.
‘From your reaction I’m assuming I can discount the possibility you are the source.’
Eva was not conscious she had raised her hand until he caught her wrist and leaned into her. The action was a signal for every nerve in her body to go haywire.
‘Bad idea.’ The unmistakable warning in his steely eyes belied the lightness in his tone.
Eva twisted her wrist and to her intense relief his fingers unfolded and his hand fell. She sat there, rubbing her wrist. ‘You actually thought that I would …?’
‘It was a possibility, but your friend was always the obvious candidate.’
‘Luke!’ she exclaimed. ‘He would never betray …’
‘You would be surprised how often people will betray you when there is a cheque involved … and sometimes,’ he added, dragging his hair back from his broad brow with a hand, ‘it doesn’t even take a cheque.’ In his experience revenge for an imagined slight was often enough.
Eva began to shake her head in instinctive rejection of the cynical interruption. Was he born this distrustful or had life made him this way?
‘Luke is the least avaricious person I know. He definitely wouldn’t …’ She stopped, recalling how he became very willing to confide his life history to total strangers after a beer or two.
