ABBY TOOK A deep breath, lifted her chin and walked through the door held by someone who looked more Security than medical, and who bowed low as she passed.
The soft, respectful murmur as she walked down the hallway seemed to be addressed to her. It would have been disconcerting had she had any thoughts to spare for anything but the question of what waited for her inside the room she was about to enter.
She slipped inside and as she closed the door behind her she hitched in a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and turned, wishing in that moment that she had asked more about Zain’s condition. She had no idea what she was about to be confronted with—tubes, machines...was he even conscious?
Her sense of disorientation deepened as she found herself looking at what appeared to be an office, an office where a meeting seemed to be in progress at a long, rectangular table between several men wearing traditional Arab dress, and several more wearing business suits.
One of the men stood in front of what appeared to be a PowerPoint presentation, but moved towards Abby, who was already backing away mumbling apologies when he noticed her.
‘Sorry. I think must be in the wrong...’
The man bowed and, after a momentary pause, the other men seated around the table got to their feet and followed his example.
This situation was just getting weirder, she thought, fighting the urge to curtsey or something.
‘Not at all. This way, Amira...please...’ His attitude deferential, he gestured for her to precede him towards a half-open door.
After a pause, she responded to the softly spoken invitation, even though as she approached the door the conviction that this was a case of mistaken identity grew stronger.
Then say something, idiot!
She half turned, ready to explain that this was a mistake, but her guide was backing out of the room with his head bent in a bow and it was hard to explain anything to someone you couldn’t make eye contact with.
Her nerves were so stretched by this point that the soft sound of the door closing with a definitive click was enough to make her jump. Ignoring the chill of trepidation skittering down her spine, she turned.
This second room was not as large as the one she had entered, but still, was not small. It had the look of an upmarket hotel bedroom complete with a TV covering half of one wall and leather sofas around a glass coffee table covered with artistically stacked books.
The only thing that suggested she should not ring for Room Service was the hospital bed. It was empty, though the rumpled condition of the sheets and the drops of blood standing out against the white linen suggested it had been recently occupied by someone who had been attached to the bag of fluid that hung empty on a stand beside it.
She released a sigh, tried not to look at the blood and walked warily across the room towards the bed. Without thinking she put her hand on the sheets...they still retained the body heat of their recent occupant.
Abby clutched her head—all she wanted to do was get this over with and go home and she couldn’t even find the man! ‘Where the hell is he?’ she murmured to herself.
‘Behind you.’
At the sound of the soft, deep voice Abby jumped a foot off the floor as if a starting pistol had been unexpectedly fired in the room. She spun around, the action causing the silk veil on her head to slide off the slippery satin of her fiery curls.
She blinked and fought against the urge to retreat as the owner of the voice took a single step through a doorway that was half-concealed behind a screen and, without taking his eyes from her face, casually captured the fluttering fabric in his hand.
While his reflexes were clearly in excellent shape, Zain’s bruised and battered body was not. Though he clenched his teeth against the pain zigzagging through his body as he straightened up, a muffled groan escaped his compressed lips.
The shock that had frozen her to the spot disappeared and was instantly replaced by concern. Abby laid a hand on his arm, her eyes widening as she registered the tense, rock-hard muscle through the fine fabric of his white shirt—more blood was spattered down one arm. Her stomach tightened before she looked away.
‘Are you all right?’
Ah, well, someone always had to ask the stupid question. Might as well be her.
One hand pressed to his ribs, Zain lifted his eyelids and produced a look that managed to be both ironic and lazy through eyes that were every bit as blue as she remembered. They were shaded by lashes which looked almost ridiculously long and dark against the pallor that had robbed his vibrant, toned skin of its usual golden colour.
The memory of the first time she’d seen him floated into her head and, for a moment, the antiseptic room vanished and Abby was back in the desert encampment, the scent of woodsmoke and sour sweat almost as strong as the metallic taste of fear in her mouth.
At first she hadn’t understood why the raucous cries and yells had faded, but then she’d seen the magnificence of the figure who rode into their midst, entirely ignoring the hostile stares and rifles aimed at him.
‘Do I look all right?’
He looked incredible!
In that first startled moment when she had turned all she’d got was a blurred impression of the man she remembered—perfect face, perfect body and an aura of high-voltage maleness that had delivered a gut-punch blow to her unprepared nervous system.
‘Should you be—?’
Standing there looking gorgeous?
Rising above the unhelpful prompting of her subconscious, she took a breath and tried again, focusing on the fact that, though her first impression was correct—he was still off-the-scale gorgeous—he also looked as though sheer willpower was the only thing keeping him on his feet.
‘I decided that it might be hard to garner respect when any false move is likely to reveal my rear; however, getting dressed was not quite as simple as I thought.’
It was not his growled admission that brought a rush of colour to her cheeks but the mental image that flashed into her head. She was not in the habit of imagining men’s bottoms...
‘You could have asked someone for help...’ Abby imagined that his position of power would make it likely that the staff would knock the door down to offer him assistance. ‘Shall I...?’ She paused and felt a flush bloom on her cheeks as she struggled to banish the half-formed image in her head of herself performing the required assistance...only in her mind she was taking the clothes off rather than helping him put them on.
‘Shall I get someone to help you?’
‘Someone who is not you?’
Her alarmed eyes flew to his face... Relax, Abby; he can’t read your mind. ‘One of those men in the—’
‘No!’ He barked out the injunction and then paused and took a deep, obviously painful breath before continuing in a more moderate tone. ‘They are not nurses.’
‘Who are they...? Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy—’
‘They are the men who run Aarifa.’
The comment shocked her into an uncensored response. ‘Isn’t that your father?’
‘My father lost interest in the job a long time ago.’
Her curiosity was interlaced with empathy as an image of a frail and elderly ruler flashed into her head. ‘So he relied heavily on your brother.’
The suggestion drew an odd laugh that terminated in another wince.
‘I think I should call a nurse or—’ Her concern morphed into something far less elevated when he lifted a hand, causing his unbuttoned shirt to gape open a few extra inches, revealing a hard, taut, muscle-ridged torso. The tendrils of shameful heat unfurling in the pit of her belly cooled into empathy as he winced and she realised his injuries were not restricted to his face.
Abby dragged her eyes upwards towards his face. Under the long-sleeved ankle-length silk dress she wore her heart continued to thud hard as she tilted her head back to meet his heavily lidded eyes. That in itself was a novelty—her own height meant it was rare that she ever had to look up at anyone.
‘I think this is a mistake...’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘No, it is a mistake; I really don’t know why I’m here...we could do this by email when you’re feeling better, or...’
He placed a hand on the side of her cheek. The touch of his long fingers was light but the electrical tingle it sent through her nervous system was anything but.
‘I prefer the personal touch.’
Abby fought the hypnotic tug of his electric-blue eyes and focused on the damage to his face, the bruising along the crest of one razor-sharp cheekbone that extended over the chiselled planes of his dramatically handsome face. Bruising that the dark shadow of stubble dusting his lean cheeks and angular jaw could not disguise.
‘I don’t.’ She got nowhere near the level of cool she was aiming for but to her relief his hand fell away, though that may have been simply because he looked as though he needed all of his control just to stay standing up.
‘Even if you manage to get dressed, you’ll probably pass out...is that really worth it?’
An expression of hauteur spread across his lean features as he responded with chilly dismissal. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Well, you can be snooty if you like but I was only trying to help.’
The hauteur faded from his face, to be replaced by a smile that she found much more disturbing. ‘As forthright as ever... I had forgotten.’ His eyes slid from her face down her body, his gaze possessing a caressing quality that made her stomach muscles quiver. ‘You scrub up rather well...’
She looked quickly away from the heat in his eyes, but not soon enough to stop the lick of flame that slid through her body.
‘And it is very hard to tell that your feet are mismatched.’
Her wide eyes flew back to his face. ‘You remember that?’
Something moved at the backs of his eyes. ‘I remember everything.’
‘You have a photographic memory?’ she said, searching her own memory for any incriminating things she might have said.
He gave a low chuckle then stopped, lifting a supportive hand to his ribs. ‘You take things very literally. I just meant that you are memorable.’
She lifted her chin. ‘I’m assuming that’s not a compliment.’
‘It is a statement of fact. For a beautiful woman,’ he observed, ‘you seem to find taking a compliment graciously a struggle.’
The heat in his eyes was hard to escape, but then escaping when you didn’t really want to was never going to be simple. It took her to the count of ten to regain control of her chaotic, jagged respirations. This was far too close and personal for her taste...injured or not, this man had a raw sexual aura that she found massively disturbing, but she had fought the hypnotic tug of his eyes before so she knew it was achievable if she tried.
Her confidence wilted when she lifted her eyes and found his gaze now trained on her mouth. While the heat low down continued to unfurl its very disturbing tendrils she fought to maintain a passive expression...or, at least, a relatively passive expression.
* * *
Zain quite literally couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. He put down his lack of self-control to his weakened condition but in his head he saw that lush pinkness parting under the pressure he applied before he sank into...
The sabre-sharp stab of pain helped him distance himself from the sexual fantasies swirling in his head. Having her here was not about indulging his fantasies—it was far more prosaic.
His views on marriage had not changed but his position had. He was no longer the spare, he was the heir, and the forced desert marriage to this enticing redhead was all that stood between him and Kayla, who was waiting in the wings like a praying mantis in Prada.
He understood that continuity and the smooth transition of power was important, and he was fully prepared to accept the burden of duty that came with the role that he had been thrust into, a position the several people who he had awoken from the crash to find standing around his hospital bed had been eager to inform him of.
But, they added when several of the machines he was attached to had begun to beep loudly, he was not to concern himself with securing a bride. A wedding to his late brother’s widow, a union that would ensure stability and the line of succession, could be performed as soon as he could leave his hospital bed.
He had felt the darkness coming to claim him and there had been no time for subtlety as he’d croaked out, ‘I’m already married, Jones at the British Embassy will confirm.’
He had slept through the subsequent diplomatic storm his revelation had created, and by the time he’d been conscious again the marriage had been confirmed as genuine.
Abby had adopted a businesslike expression, though it was clear maintaining it was becoming difficult. ‘So, is there something you want me to sign?’
‘You’re in a hurry.’
‘The thing is, I think I’d prefer to get out of here before you kill yourself with all this unnecessary effort,’ she husked out as her glance moved from his bloodstained shirt sleeve to the beads of moisture he could feel along his upper lip...and the deep lines of strain he knew were bracketing his mouth.
Her concern spilled over into exasperation. ‘For heaven’s sake, I know you’re big and tough, but you’re in pain. It doesn’t make you a lesser man to admit it!’ She rolled her eyes.
Her outburst startled him into silence but that quickly gave way to a low, throaty laugh. ‘Fine, I’m not too proud to ask for help.’ He nodded towards the bed. ‘Will you lend me a shoulder?’
Abby’s eyes were wide as she moved seamlessly from lofty female superiority to something approaching panic.
He lifted an arm. ‘I’m swallowing my pride, and asking for your help.’