Desert Prince, Blackmailed Bride. Kim Lawrence

to do so had been his mother. It was an irrational response to rudeness, but he found himself even more curious about the blonde.

      Why not invite her for a dinner date as you have so much time to waste?

      He frowned in unappreciative response to the ironic voice in his head, and allowed his glance to wander to the neatly trimmed pearly fingertips she was rubbing along the slightly tip-tilted end of her small nose. This woman was like none he had encountered in his thirty-two years. And he wasn’t talking about her dress code—though it was nothing short of a miracle that she still managed to look feminine dressed like that!

      He watched as she lifted her hand and dashed it across her face. Her hair was honey-gold, with paler shades woven in with the silky mesh that fell to her shoulders.

      As his eyes slid down her body it became obvious that his curiosity was not the only thing this woman had awoken. The ache in his groin was increasingly hard to ignore. He might be dying, but nobody had told his libido, it seemed!

      Gabby turned her head at the sound of his laugh, her darting blue gaze moving indignantly across his lean features. ‘You think this is funny?’

      ‘I think it is extraordinary that I am laughing.’ Not to mention lusting.

      Gabby glared, bemused by the cryptic response.

      ‘Who are you, Gabby Barton?’

      Feathery brows several shades darker than her hair twitched into a straight line above her neat nose. The intensity of his narrowed stare made her uneasy. ‘Not a thief, if that’s what you’re thinking. I didn’t come to steal the family silver.’

      ‘I believe you,’ he soothed. ‘But you have a purpose…what have you come here for?’

      Gabby was gripped by a sudden irrational compulsion to pour out her troubles to this total stranger. Tell him the whole tangled tale…Appalled that she was about to go all weak—little woman crying on the shoulder of a big strong man—she closed her mouth with an audible snap and shook her head.

      Of course if her problem could be solved by brute force it might well be worth getting him on her side. But she wasn’t the type of person who off-loaded her problems onto anyone—least of all someone she had just met!

      CHAPTER THREE

      RAFIQ watched as she lowered her eyes, causing the tips of her lashes to brush against her slightly grubby cheek. She remained silent.

      ‘A woman of mystery…’

      ‘No mystery,’ she denied, shaking her head.

      ‘How did you get into the palace?’

      ‘How do you know I wasn’t invited?’

      One black brow slanted satirically as he glanced towards the door.

      Gabby’s slender shoulders lifted. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I wasn’t. I sort of slipped in.’

      His brows hit his hairline. ‘Slipped in?’ He shook his head in a firm negative motion. ‘That isn’t possible.’ Incredulity deepened his voice a husky octave, and it feathered across Gabby’s nerve-endings as he repeated, ‘You slipped in past Security?’

      ‘In the back of a delivery van.’ It had been one of those moments when you acted on instinct and didn’t have time to think about the consequences. That came later, she thought bitterly, when you were trapped in a room with armed men outside the door. Not that she regretted it for a second. If she hadn’t at least tried she would never have forgiven herself.

      Rafiq thought about the substantial budget earmarked each year for palace security, and a muscle clenched in his lean cheek once more as he fought the unexpected desire to laugh. The girl was more than unusual, she was unique—though he had not dismissed the possibility she was mentally unbalanced just yet.

      ‘And when it slowed down I…I got out…’

      This casual confidence sent Rafiq’s eyebrows in the direction of his dark hairline. ‘It was moving?’ He tried to imagine any of the women he knew leaping out of a moving vehicle and failed.

      He felt reluctant admiration stir once more. Whoever this woman was, she did not lack courage—or for that matter recklessness. And today had taught Rafiq that when all other alternatives were exhausted reckless was sometimes the only thing left.

      ‘Not very fast…’ She lifted a hand to the shoulder seam of her shirt. The skin beneath was grazed and starting to bruise.

      His brow furrowed in concern as he saw the specks of bright blood on the cotton. ‘You are injured?’

      He didn’t wait for her denial. Gabby watched with horror as he strode with purpose towards the door, his white robe billowing around his tall frame.

      He was going to let them in!

      She acted without thinking and threw herself between him and the door. Shrill panic threaded her voice as she caught his arm.

      Their eyes met, and there was a long, still, nerve-shredding silence, Gabby’s world narrowed until the only things she was conscious of were his mesmerising sloe-dark eyes and the thunderous beat of her heart as it pounded in her ears.

      It was Rafiq who broke the tableau, the breath expelled from his lungs in one slow, audible hiss as his dark glance moved from her wide, beseeching eyes to the small pale hand on his arm.

      Gabby saw the direction of his gaze, saw the inexplicable astonishment in his expression, but she didn’t let go. If anything she clung harder, her fingers tightening into the taut, rock-hard muscle of his arm.

      Her breath came in panicky gasps as she appealed with husky urgency, ‘Please—don’t let them in.’

      Rafiq’s glance flickered across the soft contours of her face. Her full lips trembled, and under the smudges of dirt the freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out against the dramatic pallor of her skin. Her electric blue eyes held the zealot-like glow of sheer desperation.

      He shook his head. ‘I must. You need a doctor.’

      Gabby unpeeled her fingers from his arm, finding her digits strangely reluctant to respond to her commands. Mission accomplished, she absently rubbed her palm across her thigh. The impression of sinewy strength in his forearm seemed to have imprinted itself on her hand.

      ‘It’s nothing,’ she promised, ripping the fabric of her shirt a little more than it already was to prove her point, revealing the smooth curve of her shoulder and the beginning of a large area of bruising in the process.

      ‘I can’t feel it,’ she said, between clenched teeth.

      But she could feel the brown fingertip he slid down the exposed curve. And her nervous system’s reaction to a touch that was so light it barely stirred the soft invisible down on her pale skin was totally disproportionate. Every nerve-ending in her body came alive, and a heavy, creeping warm lethargy invaded her suddenly uncooperative limbs.

      There was not a breath of air in the room. She doubted this sort of stillness existed outside the eye of a hurricane, where the fragile illusion of security was coloured with the anticipation of the storm that was just waiting to break.

      She could feel the pressure in her eardrums as her heart-rate began to race. The air thrummed with tension—unacknowledged and almost tangible.

      Gabby struggled to maintain her indifferent pose, and to control her shallow, uneven breathing as his fingertip moved upwards, tracing the angle of her collarbone in a light, feathery motion. Unable to bear the prickling heat under her skin and the dragging sensation low in her belly another second, she pulled away.

      ‘I told you—I’m fine.’ Gabby glared at him, resentment shining in her eyes as they connected with his and stayed connected. She was utterly mesmerised by the febrile glow smouldering deep in his dark eyes.

      Rafiq did not speak until the heat in his blood had cooled—which