Desert Prince, Defiant Virgin. KIM LAWRENCE

enjoy sharing any more than he would.

      She was, he mused, staring at that mouth, nothing like any woman he had ever kissed. She had nothing to recommend her beyond neatness, a conniving nature and a sexy—actually very sexy—mouth, and he had done worse to help a friend.

      The Mouse, perhaps sensing his study, suddenly stopped gazing at Tariq and turned her head, the action briefly causing her gaze to collide with his cold, hostile stare.

      He watched with clinical detachment, the guilty colour rise up her slender neck until her small face was suffused with heat.

      His lip curled in contempt as he smiled and watched her literally recoil before she looked away. At least she now knew that there was someone who was not fooled by her meek and mild act.

      Tariq was still wearing the dark formal suit that he had been wearing at dinner, but his tie now hung loose around his neck.

      Molly closed the door and motioned him to a chair. She perched on the edge of the big canopied bed suspecting her cotton pyjamas looked totally incongruous against the silken opulence, much the same way as she looked totally incongruous and out of place in the palace.

      Some of the awkwardness and wariness she felt in Tariq’s presence had dissipated over the past couple of weeks but she still couldn’t totally relax around him.

      She got the impression that he too was still feeling his way. Which wasn’t that surprising given this relationship was still very new for them both. Fortunately Khalid, with his naturally outgoing nature, had not been similarly stilted and Molly felt much more at ease in his company.

      Tariq, tall and lean, took the chair, turned it round, then straddled it, resting his hands on the back as he looked across at her. Molly realised that Beatrice had not been exaggerating when she had told her that her husband was not a man who felt any need to fill silences. Molly, impatient to know the reason for his visit, stifled her impulse to demand an explanation.

      ‘I have not disturbed you? You were not asleep?’

      She shook her head and there was another lengthy silence while she wondered some more why he had come.

      ‘Khalid is concerned he might have offended you.’

      Molly’s bewilderment was genuine. ‘Why would he think that?’

      ‘He introduced you to Tair as Beatrice’s friend.’ For once Tariq had not been pleased to see his cousin and he had been hard put not to show his lack of enthusiasm for the extra dinner guest. ‘He is afraid,’ he explained, ‘that you might mistake his reasons for not revealing your true identity.’

      Tariq’s voice receded into the distance as an image rose in Molly’s head of the tall man with the electric blue eyes who had arrived at dinner looking dusty but remarkably good considering he had apparently just made an emergency landing at the airport after flying through an unexpected dust storm.

      ‘The families are connected, loads of intermarriage. He’s a cousin and heir to the throne of Zabrania.’ Beatrice had explained the stranger’s presence in a quiet aside to Molly while the men spoke together in a bewildering mixture of rapid Arabic, French and English.

      ‘He has blue eyes!’ Deep cerulean blue, the most intense shade that Molly had ever seen.

      ‘You noticed?’

      Hard not to!

      ‘Apparently blue eyes crop up every so often in the Al Sharif family. There’s a nice story about that, according to family legend. How true it is, I don’t know, but they say a Viking got lost way back when. Rumour has it he got a bit too friendly with a royal princess and since then the blue eyes pop up every few generations. Tair is quite a looker, isn’t he?’

      Vaguely aware of Beatrice’s amusement but totally unable to control her own expression, Molly closed her mouth with an audible snap and lowered her gaze, wondering if it was the incredible level of testosterone circulating in the room that was responsible for her erratic heartbeat.

      ‘Really…?’ she said, adopting a look of wide-eyed, exaggerated innocence. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

      Her humour was a little shaky, though Beatrice seemed not to notice, responding to the husky irony with an appreciative chuckle.

      Molly’s gaze was drawn back to their dinner guest.

      Not notice! There was no way women hadn’t been noticing this man from the moment he began shaving, a task that the shadow on his firm angular jaw suggested he had not performed since at least that morning.

      Casting a covert look at the newcomer through her lashes, she noted the rest of his skin was the shade of vibrant gold and blemish-free if you discounted a fine white scar that began just beneath one razor-sharp cheekbone and terminated at the corner of his wide, mobile and almost indecently sensual mouth.

      Actually there was no almost about it—his mouth was indecent. The maverick thoughts that popped into her head when she looked at it certainly were!

      His strongly delineated brows were the same raven shade as his hair, which looked like black satin and touched the collar of the open-necked shirt he wore. Under the layer of red dust the shirt might be the same colour as his eyes, though she doubted it—that unique shade of blue was not one that would be easy to duplicate.

      Fortunately nobody seemed to notice her compulsion to look at him as her eyes roamed across the angles and strong planes of his face. She was staring, but how could she not? Beauty was a term that people flung around casually but here was someone who actually merited the description, although not in a Hollywood type of way. The newcomer had looks that affected the onlooker on a much earthier and more primal level.

      Or maybe it’s just me, she thought.

      It was a worrying thought, but she doubted her reaction was unique. She doubted any woman would not be inclined to stare open-mouthed when they saw the six feet four inches of lean muscle and hard sinew that was Tair Al Sharif. He really was the most extraordinary-looking man Molly had ever seen.

      But the prim voice in her head reminded her that looks were not everything.

      It was something her father, thinking he was being kind, had told her frequently as she grew up beside two stepsisters who were as beautiful as they were lovely-natured. Sometimes, Molly reflected, it would have been easier if Rosie and Sue had been mean and nasty. At least then she could have been jealous without feeling guilty. And there was something much more romantic about being oppressed and exploited by mean stepsisters than spoilt and indulged and told you were lovely inside.

      Only last month Rosie had offered her a makeover when she had wailed in frustration that she’d prefer to be lovely on the outside and happily exchange ten points of her impressive IQ for another inch on her flat chest.

      She snapped out of her reverie and drew herself back to the present to respond to Tariq. ‘I completely understand why Khalid said what he did. Please tell him not to worry. However, I don’t think the prince…’ She stopped, realising this did not narrow the field much in the circles she was currently moving in, where princes were pretty thick on the ground! She gave a rueful grin as she added, ‘Your cousin—I don’t think he likes me much.’

      The grin died as she recalled sensing, feeling, his extraordinary and unbelievably eloquent eyes upon her.

      ‘Tair?’ Tariq said, shaking his head. ‘You must be mistaken. He does not know you. Why should he dislike you?’

      Good question, but Molly knew there had been no ambiguity about the message she had seen in those glittering azure depths.

      Having never in her life inspired any strong feelings in gorgeous-looking men—obviously they remained oblivious to the fact she was lovely inside—to have someone looking at her with that level of hostility and contempt had been quite disturbing.

      His face floated into her mind gain; she tried to expel the image but it lingered. It was a face with a ‘once seen never forgotten’ quality. Even if you wanted to forget the golden