Innocent in the Desert: The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin / The Sheikh's Convenient Virgin / The Desert Lord's Bride

She was bemused by his attitude and found being viewed with such acute distaste not pleasant, though for all she knew, this might be his normal expression. While she hadn’t expected thanks for not throwing him out the previous evening, a little civility would not, in her opinion, have been out of place.

‘There’s nothing much to discuss, is there?’

In the act of fastening the middle button on his jacket he paused and, one brow raised, shot her a look that brimmed with icy incredulity.

Puzzled by his inexplicable hostility, she shrugged and said, ‘Well, there isn’t.’ For all she knew this might be the norm for him, which had to make him a positive delight to be around.

‘Drop the innocent act.’

The terse advice made her blink owlishly up at him. As she did she was conscious where his gaze was levelled. The slow burning blush began like a prickle under her skin and worked its way out until her body was suffused by a rosy glow as she pulled her flapping robe across her chest and belted it firmly.

The top button of her pyjama top was presumably in the bed somewhere. Trying very hard not to think about how it had ended up there, she lifted her chin and retorted, ‘Look, I’d love to trade insults, but I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I have no taste for play-acting.’ His frown still in place, he reached inside his jacket with a frown.

When he withdrew his hand a pair of boxer shorts that had been spoiling the line of his perfect tailoring appeared.

Crawling out of her skin with embarrassment, Eva wondered if she wished hard enough would she vanish …?

He held the bright red boxers with the strategically placed suggestive logo out as though they carried a contagious disease, the film of icy contempt in his stunning eyes deepening as he observed, ‘Not mine, I think.’

Definitely not his, but the problem was Eva could see him in them and actually, as her imagination took another unscheduled leap, without them.

I am losing my mind—it is the only explanation.

Struggling to adopt an expression that did not scream ‘I’m thinking about you naked,’ Eva looked at Luke’s borrowed item of clothing swinging from his fingers and felt the blush extend to every part of her anatomy.

Was it really only yesterday that arranging Luke’s personal items around the flat had seemed like a brilliant idea?

She had opened her mouth to offer a hurried explanation when she thought, Why should I? What right does he have to look down on me from that great moral height?

She was willing to bet that when it came to moral depravity he could teach her a thing or two. Her gaze drifted to his mouth, drawn by the overtly sensual sculpted curve of his lips, and she thought, Probably considerably more than two!

She blinked to clear the sensual fog that was thickening in her brain and wondered if there was some physiological reason for this explosion of ill-timed hormonal activity as she lifted her chin and schooled her expression into neutrality, murmuring a soft thank-you.

He looked visibly taken aback by the quiet dignity of her response, but the flicker of uncertainty didn’t last. Eva wasn’t surprised—he was obviously not the type of man to doubt his own judgement and his judgement of her was clearly that she was some sort of predatory trollop!

In any other circumstances this fatally flawed casting might have appealed to Eva’s lively sense of humour, but nothing about this acutely uncomfortable situation made her feel like smiling.

While Karim had been enjoying his freedom with a series of like-minded ladies, he had never suffered a moment’s unease thinking about their previous lovers. So he was totally unprepared for the lick of sheer rage produced by the mental image of the faceless men who had occupied Eva’s bed before him. Unable to banish the image of another man’s hands caressing her taut, high breasts, Karim struggled for control as his emotions flamed higher.

‘You must have quite a healthy lost-property box.’

Her startled glance flew to his face and, registering the condemnation there, she embraced the rush of anger filling her as she snatched the boxers from his fingers.

Keeping her combative glare trained on his face, she squeezed them up into a ball and pushed them into her dressing-gown pocket.

‘I’m not the lost one.’

He didn’t look lost now, either—he looked like someone she would not have invited into her home. A secret shiver slid down her spine … He had danger written all over him.

‘And if it’s reputation you’re worrying about,’ she suggested calmly, ‘don’t. Luke won’t say anything.’

She hoped resolving to stress her request that he keep this to himself at the first opportunity. Luke had many fine qualities, but she knew that the ability to keep a good story to himself was not one of them.

‘So Luke is the owner of …?’ Karim gave a sharp nod towards the red fabric sticking out of her pocket.

Watching his nostrils quiver with distaste, Eva folded her arms across her chest, wondering who made him the Chief Justice of good taste?

If he wanted to think she had so many men she couldn’t keep track of their underclothes, let him, she thought as she admitted, ‘Well, I wouldn’t swear to it, but they are his sort of thing. Luke,’ she added, defiance slipping into her voice, ‘is a friend.’

Hate was a strong word for a strong emotion, but this man wasn’t a person who inspired tepid. Her expression set stiffly, she walked to the sitting-room door and held it open in invitation, saying with a smile that left her eyes unfriendly, ‘I’d say it has been a pleasure but …’ She deepened the smile, raised her brows and let her scorn show as she gave a suggestive shrug.

‘I fail to understand your unfriendly mood. You have achieved what you set out to …’

Her feathery brows knitted as she angled a questioning look at him. ‘What have I achieved?’

‘You might find marriage is not what you expect.’

‘Marriage?’ she parroted, oozing a hoarse laugh. ‘Are you mad? Or is that your idea of a joke? There is not going to be any marriage. I only agreed to see you because my grandfather asked me to. I was just being polite.’

Karim nodded towards the open bedroom door and allowed his grin to widen. ‘You have an interesting take on polite.’

Eva stared at him in horror. ‘You think we slept together?’

Her dismay appeared so genuine that Karim was forced to consider for the first time the unlikely possibility that she had genuinely not thought of the consequences when she had allowed him to share her bed.

Such a hedonistic attitude to life was alien to Karim, who could not remember a time when he had not known his actions had consequences. If this lost princess really thought she could carry on as she had she was facing a rude awakening and very steep learning curve!

He for one thought the rude awakening was overdue.

‘It is an assumption I make when I wake up in a woman’s bed.’

Eva’s eyes narrowed. Nasty sarcastic rat! ‘You really do think you’re a catch, don’t you? Well, for your information, this time you’d be wrong with your assumption,’ Eva told him, skimming over the uncomfortable fact that if Luke had arrived any later her footing on the moral high ground might be less secure.

‘I was not capable?’ He looked amused rather than chastened by the idea.

‘I really wouldn’t know what you were capable of!’ she retorted, acutely uncomfortable by the direction this conversation was taking. From his tone he might have been discussing the price of milk, not his sexual performance, which was a subject she wanted to leave well alone. ‘And I had no desire to find out,’ she assured him with a disdainful sniff.

He struggled to contain his impatience at this blatant falsehood. Presumably she thought she could gain something, what he had no idea, by acting as if the sexual tension between them that even now was an almost tangible presence in the room did not exist.

‘So that is the message you were trying to send when you were groping me.’ He gave a cynical smile as his glance drifted over her slim body; he was enjoying empty sex outside marriage and it appeared he could carry on enjoying the same thing inside marriage. ‘I can see now it was just a matter of crossed wires.’

His sardonic sneer drew a mortified squeak from Eva. ‘You were groping me.’ She swallowed and lowered her eyes as the memory of his lips on her skin, his hand on … Do not go there, Eva! ‘I woke up and found you in my bed. I suppose you’d sleepwalked or something, and then you grabbed me.’

He heard her out with an infuriating air of polite scepticism and then suggested, ‘And you fought off my advances?’

Eva compressed her lips, looked at him with seething dislike, but did not make the mistake of tackling that issue. Instead she just repeated the bare facts.

‘We did not sleep together, end of story. You were …’ An image of his appearance the previous night flashed into her head and she admitted, ‘Well, actually, I don’t know what you were, you looked terrible, and before I could find out what was wrong you fell asleep in that chair.’

She walked to the armchair, where it seemed she could see the outline of his body in the cushions, and punched the armrest wishing it were him.

‘You tell a nice story and I would like to suspend disbelief—but …’ He gave a fluid shrug.

Eva rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘But you don’t believe a word I’m saying.’

He shrugged again and touched a booted foot to the shabby chair as, eyes sparkling with platinum scorn, he held her eyes. ‘That’s not where I woke up, ma belle.’

‘And I don’t sleep with men I’ve just met, especially when they are egotistical, arrogant—’

‘Liking is not necessary for good sex. I thought we were a good … fit.’

The husky interruption sent a surge of heat through Eva’s body. The effort of not looking at him brought a fine film of sweat to her brow, but she was only delaying the inevitable. The compulsion to look at him proved too strong to resist and their eyes clashed, emerald on metallic silver.

She felt as if a fist had reached into her chest and while she wondered if this was what dying felt like she watched his eyes darken, the pupils widening until only silver rims remained.

Eva didn’t know how long she stood paralysed by lust until the hand she gripped the chair with slipped and sent a cushion tumbling to the floor, where it knocked over a half burnt candle in the hearth occupied by an ugly old electric fire.

‘All right, I’ll come clean—I took advantage of you in your weakened condition,’ Eva drawled, taking refuge in sarcasm.

‘That’s a lot more likely than me sleepwalking my way into your bed.’

‘You can’t actually think I want to marry you?’ The man had to be deluded, incredibly sexy but deluded. ‘Look, as I’ve already said, I only agreed to meet you to be polite, because my grandfather …’ She broke off and gave a choked laugh. ‘God knows how he thought we’d suit … but I imagine he sees an entirely different side of you.’

His eyes narrowed to silver slits. ‘I imagine that he sees an entirely different side of you too. I have no idea why he tolerates your lifestyle. I certainly will not.’

This casually autocratic warning drew a squeak of outrage from an incredulous Eva.

‘Look, you saw an opportunity and you took it.’ Karim passed a hand across his face. Eva, who didn’t want to feel any empathy for this man, ignored the weariness of the gesture. ‘I cannot blame you for that.’

Eva blinked at the concession and opened her mouth to ask him what on earth he was talking about when he added, ‘But do not expect me to admire you, Princess. We had our fun and now we both have to pay the price—’

‘I had no fun!’

Her shrill interruption drew a look of irritation from him. ‘You know as well as I do that when your grandfather learns we spent the night together …’

Lifting her hands to her head in an attitude of utter frustration, Eva was driven to stamping her foot as she ground from between clenched teeth, ‘I keep telling you nothing happened. Absolutely nothing! Why doesn’t anyone believe me?’

‘What I believe is not relevant. King Hassan—’

‘King Hassan won’t know unless you tell him.’

Karim’s jaw clenched as her pointless display of fake naïveté pushed his patience to the limit and a little way beyond.

‘That really won’t be necessary. I imagine your bodyguards will already have made a full report.’

Eva’s chin went up and, though she continued to glare, there was a sparkle of triumph in her eyes as she replied evenly, ‘I don’t have bodyguards. I’m kind of new to the princess stuff but my grandfather knows I’m more than capable of looking after myself.’

‘So the men sitting in the car across the street are decorative?’

Eva looked at him blankly. ‘Car?’ She struggled not to laugh. ‘What car?’

He nodded towards the window. ‘That car.’

‘It’s a street. People park.’ Just to humour him she walked towards the window and glanced out; the nondescript black hatchback parked on the kerb opposite was the first thing she saw.

In the act of swinging back to him she paused, a frown of disquiet forming on her smooth brow as she searched her memory. Hadn’t the same car been there last night … or yesterday or both …?

‘Surely you have noticed that car or one similar before.’

Eva tilted her face to his, ignoring the twinge of uncertainty, and she gave a scornful laugh, which unfortunately emerged as a panicky squeak.

‘Why would I need a team of bodyguards?’ The idea that people had been watching her every move sent a shudder of distaste down her spine.

‘Because you are the granddaughter of a king, because there are security issues, because …’ He arched a brow. ‘Shall I go on?’

‘Nobody knows who I am …’ Eva struggled to hide the flutter of panic his suggestions had caused, then, regaining perspective, added, ‘I’m not really a princess. It was just an accident of birth.’

‘I can’t decide,’ he mused, studying her face, ‘if you’re in denial or just stupid.’

‘And I can’t decide if you work at being a total pain in the neck or it comes naturally.’

The seamless rebuttal stopped Karim in his tracks. So, apparently people didn’t tell him he was a pain on a regular basis. Pity—a bit of humility might make him almost human.

Struggling to slow her laboured breathing, she raised her hands and waved her slender bare fingers at him.

‘Look, no jewels, no crown,’ she added, and pressed her hands to her burnished gold head. ‘I’m not really royal.’ She shook her bright head from side to side, adding, ‘I never even knew my dad.’

‘He was by all accounts a good man.’

Momentarily distracted by the comment, Eva lifted her eyes eagerly to his face. ‘Really?’

The wistfulness in her voice—she clearly had no idea it was there—hit Karim in a vulnerable corner of his heart. Refusing to recognise the feeling that swept through him as empathy, he nodded abruptly.

‘But you never met him?’

‘When I was a child,’ he admitted.

Eva’s chest lifted in a soft sigh that was audible. Karim searched her face, a part of him perversely wanting to see some sign that she was dissembling, that the emotion and the vulnerability were false, but he found none.

Up until this point he had viewed her unconventional upbringing as a soft option. She had spent her life free of the restrictions and responsibilities that came with being born into a royal family, the restrictions he had lived with all his life. Now for the first time he recognised the possibility that she had missed out too.

‘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.