The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

isn’t funny,’ she protested.

      Unable to stop himself, Kamel began to laugh.

      A laugh bubbled in her throat. ‘I want to delete the image from my mind. I really do.’ The laugh escaped.

      Five minutes later Hannah was all laughed out, and Kamel was sprawled on the bed, one arm under his head, telling her that when he had walked in he had thought there had been some major disaster.

      ‘Your face! Honestly it was...’ He sat up and sighed. ‘I should get back to it. I’ve got a stack of—’

      ‘I’m sorry I stopped you working.’

      He gave a sudden grin. ‘No, you’re not.’ He patted the bed beside him and leaned back against the pillows.

      Hannah came across the room, hesitating only a moment before she manoeuvred herself to sit straddling him.

      ‘I like your thinking,’ he purred, his eyes flaring hot as she pulled the top over her head. ‘I like other things even more.’

      * * *

      ‘Are you all right?’

      Hannah shrugged and put down the book she had been holding. Her interest in the novel was feigned but her confusion was not. ‘With flying, you mean...?’

      A spasm of irritation crossed his face. ‘Your father and the cook? It happens—the attraction between people from different backgrounds.’

      Her brow smoothed and she laughed. ‘You think I didn’t know? Or that I have some sort of problem with it?’

      His brows lifted. ‘You are telling me you don’t?’

      In defiance of his open scepticism, she shook her head from side to side. ‘Beyond the fact that discovering that your parent has a sex life, which is a bit...uncomfortable...no, I like Sarah.’

      ‘And the fact she is the cook?’

      ‘I know you think I’m a snob. She’s probably the best thing that has ever happened to my dad. I just wish he... I wish they’d come out into the open about it. I wish...’ She caught the expression on Kamel’s face and, taking it for boredom, brought her ramble to a juddering stop.

      It would be a massive mistake to assume that, because Kamel had seemed to have an endless fascination with her body, his interest extended beyond the bedroom. She knew that any woman would only ever be a substitute for the woman he had lost, Amira. Kamel must have thought nothing could be worse than seeing the woman he loved happy with another man—until he’d found out that there was something much worse.

      ‘You wish?’

      I wish I could look at you and not ache. ‘Forget it.’

      It was sex—fantastic, incredible sex—but she had to stop thinking about it.

      ‘I don’t want to bore you.’

      He unclipped his seat belt and stretched his long legs out in front of him. ‘Don’t worry. If you bore me I’ll let you know,’ he promised.

      ‘I think that Sarah deserves more than to be a secret...’ She gave a self-conscious shrug.

      ‘Maybe this Sarah is happy with just sex.’

      She looked away. Was there a message, a warning even, in there for her?

      ‘Maybe she is,’ Hannah agreed without conviction. She turned her head to angle a curious look at his face. ‘You expected me to be devastated to find my father in bed with the cook, didn’t you? Sarah has been my father’s mistress for the past five years that I know of. Probably longer.

      ‘The truth is I’ve no idea how Sarah is content to be treated like some sort of...’ She stopped, wondering whether that wasn’t exactly what she was doing. ‘We both worry about her.’

      ‘We?’

      ‘Sarah’s daughter, Eve, and I. She’s a year younger than me.’ She noticed the airstrip below and pressed her face to the window to get a better view. ‘Is it far to the villa?’

      ‘Not by helicopter.’

      ‘Helicopter?’

      He nodded. ‘It beats being stuck in a traffic jam.’

      That, she thought, was a matter of opinion.

      * * *

      As the helicopter landed Hannah closed her eyes—but even with them squeezed tightly shut she retained the stomach-clenching image of them falling directly into the ocean.

      The pilot landed the helicopter smoothly but Hannah appeared oblivious, her eyes tightly shut, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Her lips continued to move, presumably in a silent prayer. Watching her silent but abject terror, he had felt like an inconsiderate monster for subjecting her to what had clearly been an ordeal. He wanted to be irritated with her but she looked so fragile, her big eyes reminding him of a scared child. But she wasn’t a child. She was all woman—his woman. The reminder should have made him feel resentful—after all, he was paying the price for her stupidity—but instead the thought came with an accompanying shaft of possessive pride.

      ‘You can breathe now.’

      Hannah opened her eyes and collided instantly with Kamel’s dark, intense stare. The feeling of falling into the abyss didn’t go away; if anything it intensified as, with a thudding heart, she fumbled with her seat belt.

      ‘What time is it?’ she heard herself ask.

      ‘You have somewhere you need to be, ma belle?’ His eyes drifted to the wide, full, plump curve of her lips and he felt the barely damped fires of passion roar into life.

      She was the most responsive woman he had ever had in his bed. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact that the cool, distant virgin had turned out to be a warm, giving woman who held nothing back. In the middle of figuring how long he could wait until he got her into bed again he found himself wondering about the sequence of events that had led her to hide her passionate nature behind a cool mask.

      He had never felt the need to look beyond the surface of a beautiful woman, and he had no intention of looking too far now.

      ‘Relax.’

      This struck Hannah as ironic advice from someone who, as far as she could tell, never totally switched off, someone who was never totally off duty. Duty always came first with Kamel. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t be married.

      While Kamel was speaking to the pilot she took the opportunity to look through the glass without fear of gibbering. The helipad was not, as it had seemed, positioned perilously on the cliff’s edge, but several hundred feet away, and screened from the villa by an avenue of trees. Hannah could just make out through the branches the terracotta roof, but the rest of the villa was totally concealed by the lush greenery.

      Above the whirr of the blades she could hear the men’s voices. She was struggling to catch what they were saying when it happened. Previously it had only occurred when she was in a small space—the lift between floors, or in the pantry in the kitchen—but now there were no walls to close in on her, just glass. Even so, the urge to escape and the struggle to breathe were equally strong.

      Her knees were shaking but Hannah was so anxious to get back on terra firma that she didn’t wait. She didn’t wait for Kamel, who was still deep in conversation with the pilot; she just had to get out of there.

      Hannah watched as her luggage was piled onto a golf cart by two men—one of whom she had almost flattened when she missed the bottom step in her anxiety to escape the helicopter. Both men nodded respectfully to Kamel and vanished through an arch cut in the neatly trimmed green foliage.

      Hannah could feel Kamel’s disapproval—she’d sensed it before but it had upped several notches.

      ‘You should have said that you have a problem with helicopters.’ Seeing the surprise