The Sheikh Who Blackmailed Her. Susan Mallery

apprehensively, ‘What do you mean, price?’

      ‘Miss Barton, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Speaking of which—I will arrange refreshments.’

      ‘No!’ Gabby grabbed his arm and Rafiq turned his head.

      Aware of the rapid progress of the deep flush that was working its way up her neck, Gabby dropped her hand. She resented the way that with the quirk of one flyaway black brow he could make an innocent tactile gesture seem something a lot more complicated.

      ‘I don’t want food, I want …’ I want my legs to start working, so that I can run somewhere I don’t have to deal with someone with weird pewter-shot eyes making it hard to concentrate.

      Gabby was instantly ashamed of her selfish reaction. This was about Paul. This man could save him—and what was she doing? Turning accepting his hospitality into a battle of wills. It wasn’t going to kill her to be civil to the man, was it?

      ‘Nevertheless you will have lunch.’

      She bit her lip. Civil was fine in theory, but did he have to present everything as a damned ultimatum?

      ‘The decision I will ask you to make should not be made when you are suffering from exhaustion.’

      ‘I am not exhausted.’ Even as she spoke Gabby was conscious of the uncontrollable tremor in her limbs and the cotton wool sensation in her head.

      ‘No?’ He raised a brow and studied her face objectively. ‘When did you last sleep? Eat?’

      It wasn’t until he introduced the subject that Gabby realised that it was a long time since she had done either. Once her adrenaline levels dropped she recognised she was not going to be able to negotiate her way out of a paper bag! Food was probably a good idea—and caffeine was an even better one.

      ‘Or, for that matter, bathe?’

      Gabby sucked in an offended breath. ‘Are you saying I smell?’

      The memory of the floral-scented female smell that had teased his nostrils when she had been in his arms came back to Rafiq, and without warning desire slammed through his body. An image formed in his mind of her, soft and warm, lying beneath him, her arms wrapped around him and her long blonde hair spread out on a pillow …

      The image was so strong that he was sucked into a wild sensual vortex as the room and reality receded.

      Gabby knew she was not drop-dead gorgeous, but she was vain enough to resent his pointed reminder that she looked like a wreck—especially when the comment had been made by the most spectacularly gorgeous man on the planet.

      ‘And you’re one to talk,’ she snapped, studying the drawn lines of his patrician face with a speculative frown. ‘When did you last have a decent night’s sleep?’ And how unfair, she reflected, her gaze lingering on the sensual upper curve of his mouth, that being sleep-deprived didn’t stop him looking incredible.

      Her challenging expression morphed into one of bemusement as he continued to stare at her. There was a sheen of moisture on his broad brow, and the expression in his dilated eyes was oddly blank.

      ‘Are you all right …?’

      Rafiq blinked, the effort causing beads of moisture to break out along his upper lip as he dragged himself clear of the sensual scene playing out in his head. A man who normally prided himself on his control, he was shocked to be caught displaying the restraint of a teenage schoolboy with raging hormones.

      A muscle in his lean cheek clenched. ‘I’m fine.’

      ‘If you say so.’ Gabby did not bother to hide her scepticism. ‘But if you ask me, if anyone looks like they need a good feed it’s you.’

      It was not the observation that startled Rafiq but the person it came from. His weight loss had gone totally unnoticed by those close to him.

      It seemed ironic that a total stranger had noticed what they had missed and he—he had ignored. If he hadn’t …

      He shook his head fractionally. There was no point going there. Such perception, however, would be useful for the role he had in mind for Gabby Barton.

      ‘It doesn’t matter who you are, you can only get away with burning the candle at both ends for so long,’ she pointed out, oblivious to the fact that people did not rebuke the Crown Prince of Zantara.

      ‘My life is one long party,’ Rafiq drawled sardonically.

      A party that probably involved a lot of women—the sleek, sexy sort. Well, they weren’t going to be ugly, were they?

      Gabby’s lips formed a moue of distaste. ‘You can swing from the chandeliers for all I care,’ she said, with a shrug that was intended to establish her total uninterest in his social life. ‘What do I know? All that inbreeding has probably bred out your need for sleep.’

      That would have been convenient, Rafiq reflected, giving a hard laugh. The night sweats and insomnia and his resulting constant fatigue had been some of the collection of insidious symptoms that had made him eventually seek medical advice.

      Having never suffered a day’s illness in his entire life, it had not crossed his mind that the doctors would discover any sinister cause.

      ‘Have I said something funny?’

      He shook his head. ‘Not funny, just insightful.’

      ‘You mean you don’t need sleep?’

      Only too aware of how badly he needed to sleep, Rafiq ignored the question. ‘Our gene pool is really not so stagnant as you appear to think. Over the years there have been many infusions of fresh blood.’

      And had those infusions been willing additions to the gene pool? Gabby speculated. Or had his relations—the ones he had inherited that mouth and eyes from—ridden around the desert abducting nubile maidens who caught their fancy?

      It was not exactly a big stretch to see Rafiq Al Kamil in the role of desert Sheikh, astride some high-bred stallion, his flowing desert robes flying as he scooped up another victim before riding off into the sunset with his prize and installing her in some silken tent.

      Gabby had only the faintest mental image of the tent, but a very vivid representation in her head of the sleek-bodied, bold-eyed seducer of innocents as he tore off his robes.

      Her waking fantasy was interrupted by his bored drawl. ‘I am merely offering you hospitality. I would like you to be rested and lucid when we discuss this matter further. Do not be rash, Miss Barton, because I will hold you to any promises you make.’

      Gabby didn’t know if the sinister note in his warning was a creation of her fertile imagination, but after he had swept away to God knew where, without offering her even a crumb of explanation, she sat reflecting on his departing comment.

      For the first time she asked herself what the price he put on her brother’s freedom was. What did she have that a prince who had everything wanted?

      She was sitting pondering this when her lolling head hit her chest, and she jerked upright with a cry. The last thing she wanted to do was fall asleep. She needed to keep her wits about her. Shaking her head to clear her muzzy thoughts, she got up and scrubbed her eyes with her fists. She began to pace the room.

      Of all the places she could have ended up when she ran she had found herself here—was it fate?

      What could she have that the Prince wanted?

      Catching sight of her reflection as she passed a full-length mirror in a heavily carved ornate frame, she let out a groan of startled dismay.

      Her hair that had started the day—or was it yesterday? She had lost track—secured at the nape of her neck in a ponytail now streamed down her back and curled in wild disarray around her face. Any trace of make-up was gone, and her face and wrecked clothes were liberally smeared with dirt from where she had landed face down in the dust when she had rolled from the delivery truck.