‘Sheer chance. And you’ll soon be out of here,’ she told herself. ‘Then you can forget about this interlude.’
But even as she turned away and dressed she knew she’d never forget Rafiq de Couteveille.
The tropical twilight was draping the hills in a hazy robe when she made her way down the stairs. At the bottom of the flight, a table stood with a huge vase of flowers, some completely alien to Lexie. Entranced by their colours and shapes, she stopped to admire them, but her attention was caught by a photograph beside the urn.
A girl—in her mid-teens perhaps, and clearly a close relative of Rafiq. Her bright, beautiful face was a softened version of his features.
From behind, Cari said, ‘The Emir’s sister.’
‘I didn’t know he had a sister,’ Lexie said rapidly, warned by a note in the older woman’s voice that something was amiss.
The maid looked sadly at the photograph. ‘Her name was Hani. She is dead since two years,’ she said. ‘I will show you to the courtyard.’
‘I know the way to it.’
‘I think not. You sat with the Emir in the garden. This is different.’
Lexie followed her into an arcaded square, where a fountain played musically in a grassy lawn sectioned into quarters by gravel paths. Flowering shrubs were set out in patterns, the formal style tempered by luxuriant growth and the penetrating, languorous perfumes of the tropics. Along the wall that looked out over the sea was another arcade, deeply shadowed.
After telling the maid that she needed nothing, Lexie was left alone to watch the darkness come, surprised that it brought no coolness. Within minutes the sea was cloaked and the stars sprang out, forming their ancient patterns in the velvet sky.
An ache chilled her heart. How had that vital, laughing girl died? Straightening up, she turned to go back inside. Her skin tightened when she saw Rafiq walk out, and wildfire anticipation flared to life in her guarded heart.
This was what she’d been waiting for.
A faint tremor tempered her first undisciplined emotion when Rafiq came towards her—tall, powerfully built and compelling as a panther. He looked austere, as harshly forbidding as that long-ago desert sheikh who’d lost his favourite daughter to a French exile.
No words formed in her brain; silent, except for the thudding of her heartbeat in her ears, she watched him approach and wished she’d worn something more sophisticated than trousers and a shirt.
Because she felt stupid just standing there and staring, she tried for a smile, holding it pinned to her lips for a few seconds too long to be natural.
He stopped a few feet away and treated her to another trademark survey, swift and unwavering, his gaze ranging across her face.
One foolish hand started to move in an instinctive attempt to shield herself. Hastily she controlled the betraying gesture, straightening her arm.
‘Have you a headache?’ he demanded sharply, crossing the intervening space in three long strides.
‘No.’
But he’d already taken her chin in his hand and was examining her face carefully, running his fingers through the hair at her temple where her own hand had strayed. Something sparked in the dark green eyes, and Lexie felt herself melting, her bones turning heavy and lax, a tide of honeyed sensation stirring inside her.
In a quick, panicked voice, she said, ‘I’m perfectly all right. My head didn’t get hurt.’ Her neck still spasmed when she turned it incautiously, but apart from that she felt remarkably fit.
He let her go and stepped back, his mouth held in an uncompromising line. ‘So I see. Cari tells me you have slept again. You look better.’
‘I do, thank you.’ Self-consciously she cleared her throat because something had caught in it, turning her normally clear tones husky.
‘Good. Come and sit down. Would you like something to drink?’ When she hesitated, he smiled and added, ‘Without alcohol, if you prefer that.’
‘It sounds perfect.’ She tried to hide a treacherous surge of dizziness at that killer smile.
Something had changed, she thought as he took her elbow in an automatic gesture. She didn’t exactly know what, but some instinct sensed a softening—well, no, an awareness—in him that hadn’t been there before in spite of his consideration for her.
Rafiq sat her down, silently appreciating her smooth, lithe grace as she sank into the comfortable chair he held.
‘This courtyard was built by one of my ancestors for his bride,’ he told her when Lexie looked around with a soft sigh of pleasure. She was very tactile, responding immediately to beauty. Would she be as open and ardent when she made love?
Ruthlessly he disciplined his unruly mind. ‘She was from the south of Spain, and he wanted to give her something that would remind her of home, so he built her a serenity garden, something like the one in the Alhambra. She loved it, as did later wives.’
‘So this place has been a home for a long time?’
He nodded. ‘After the corsairs were defeated, yes, it became the residence of the oldest son. Until a hundred years or so ago, the actual ruler still lived in the citadel above the capital.’
He handed her a glass of juice, cool and refreshing. ‘I hope you enjoy this. It’s mostly lime juice, but there is some papaya there, and a local herb that’s supposed to heal bruises.’
‘It’s delicious,’ she said after a tentative sip. ‘That citadel looks pretty grim. I doubt if the wives of the heirs ever wanted to leave this lovely place for it.’
Stepping back, Rafiq tore his gaze from her lips and fought back a surge of desire. He’d watched hundreds of women drink a variety of liquids, and none of them had ever affected him like this woman.
Masking his intense physical reaction with cool detachment, he answered, ‘It was largely rebuilt in the nineteenth century, and is now used as offices for my household.’
He looked down, noting her interested expression, and wondered angrily what it was about her that bypassed the strictures of his brain and homed straight onto his groin. Taken feature by feature, she wasn’t even beautiful. Superb skin enlivened by smoky-blue eyes and a mouth that more than lived up to its sensual promise did make her alluring. But he’d made love to some of the world’s most beautiful women without feeling anything like this primitive desire to possess that gripped him whenever he saw Lexie Sinclair.
RAFIQ enquired, ‘You are interested in history?’
Lexie gave a rueful little smile, wondering what was going on behind the angular mask of his features. ‘Because we’re such a young country, most New Zealanders are impressed by anything that’s more than a couple of hundred years old.’
‘Moraze has a history stretching back a couple of thousand years, possibly even longer,’ he told her. ‘Certainly, the Arabs knew of its existence well before the end of the first millennium—its name is from the Arabic, meaning East Island, because it lies east of Zanzibar.’
East of Zanzibar—oh, the phrase had magic, she thought dreamily. Anything could happen east of Zanzibar. You could meet an excitingly dangerous man and discover things about yourself that shocked you.
You could even find your ultimate soul mate…
Hastily she dragged herself back to reality. ‘I’m surprised they didn’t exploit the fire-diamonds. Surely any trader worth his salt would have realised