For the first time she looked around the room she stood in. It was curiously shaped—octagonal—but, more importantly from her point of view, it was empty.
As her racing heart slowed Gabby’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and she surveyed her sanctuary. Unlike the other rooms she had glimpsed inside the palace it was informally furnished, with an eclectic mix of antique and modern items. One wall appeared to be lined with books, several of which lay open on a large inlaid table, and another wall had heavy curtains pulled across. The light that filtered though the gaps suggested there was a window behind it.
The adrenaline rush that had got her this far abruptly receded, and her knees folded. Spine pressed to the door, she slid down to the floor until she sat, her knees drawn up to her chin, shaking.
CHAPTER TWO
STANDING on the balcony, Rafiq gazed out over the palace’s luminous gilded towers and beyond to the city, with its graceful avenues lined by waving palms, its white geometric buildings spreading out into the neatly cultivated fields that had once been desert, and further on again to the purple haze that was the mountain range that ran across the eastern border of Zantara.
It was a view he had looked at countless times, but never before had his appreciation of the beauty held this bitter poignancy.
Zantara had grown beyond recognition in the last few years, but there was still so much to be done—and he had assumed he would be there to do it, to guide his country into the twenty-first century, treading the delicate path between tradition and progress … Frustration and a sense of loss so profound he had no words to describe it clenched around his heart like an iron fist. He closed his eyes, his strong-boned features reflecting the emotions he had fought to subdue since receiving the prognosis earlier.
He jaw hardened, and he dragged a hand through his dark hair while squaring his broad shoulders. He could not afford to indulge in emotional reaction. He needed to stay focused. There was much to do and very little time to do it in.
His task and his title would fall on the shoulders of his younger brother, and his affection for his likeable sibling did not blind him to the fact that Hakim was utterly unsuited to the task.
Zantara was a land richly endowed with natural resources. As well as oil, there were vast mineral deposits as yet untouched. Properly managed, they guaranteed the long-term prosperity of Zantara and its people—but there were many in high places who only paid lip service to the long-term aims that he and his father had always worked towards.
They smiled and applauded reform, but given the chance they would not let morality or ideals get in the way of exploiting the country for their personal gain.
As the heir, over the years Rafiq had been the target of influential families on the make, who would have liked nothing better than to see him marry one of their own, thus automatically gaining—or so they imagined—unprecedented access to the throne.
Zantara had a political stability that was the envy of surrounding countries, but Rafiq was only too aware of how easily things could change—how little it would take to unbalance that delicate harmony. Introducing a perceived advantage to one of the country’s powerful families might be all it took.
Rafiq, who had no intention of allowing that situation to occur, was amused rather than threatened by political manoeuvring. But Hakim was so eager to please, so malleable—in fact all the things that made his brother so much more likeable a person than he was—and he would be putty in the hands of those circling sharks. When Hakim became heir he would become their new target … It was a disaster waiting to happen.
What Hakim needed, he mused, was someone to guide him—someone with backbone, someone behind the throne giving his brother the strength to make tough decisions and see through the sycophants and con-men.
It came to Rafiq in a blinding flash. It was simple, but obvious. His brother needed a wife—the right sort of wife, obviously—who could be groomed for the role of power behind the throne.
Rafiq straightened up as he mentally skimmed the list of possible candidates…
A frown of dissatisfaction furrowed his brow as he methodically discarded them all. It would take a very special woman.
He rubbed a hand over the brown skin of his neck, feeling the grit that remained after his solitary ride through the desert earlier.
It had required all his considerable skill to stay in the saddle as his Arab stallion, the pride of the stables, possibly picking up on the mood of his master, had spent all the time he wasn’t thundering across the desert as though pursued by devils trying to unseat his rider.
The only possible candidate who even began to fill his requirements was—
Rafiq did not complete the thought, because at that moment he heard a voice—a very distinct and very feminine voice.
‘So what happens next, Gabby?’
Rafiq knew what was going to happen next, but he could identify with the desperation in that voice.
Either auditory hallucinations were a symptom of the disease the doctor had forgotten to mention, or someone had had the audacity to invade what was his private sanctum. The tower room was the place he retreated to when the weight of the formality involved in fulfilling his duties became too stifling and oppressive—it was his retreat, tucked away in this remote corner of the palace, simply furnished and totally out of bounds.
Utterly astounded that anyone would have such impudence, and curious to see the owner of the very English voice, Rafiq pulled aside the heavy curtain that screened the small balcony from the room beyond.
Chin resting on her knees, Gabby’s eyes lifted as the big heavy curtain was swept back, flooding the room with golden light and revealing a balcony surrounded by an elaborately carved railing.
Gabby’s eyes carried on up. The golden-skinned man who stood framed in the light-filled arch was seriously tall.
He was also quite spectacularly good to look at.
He wore a knee-length robe in a thin white fabric—thin enough, as a gust of wind plastered it close to his lean torso, for her to make out the shadow of a dark drift of body hair across his broad chest. The riding breeches he wore beneath the robe were tucked into dusty boots. His head was bare and the dusky gloss of his hair outlined by a nimbus of sunlight—which seemed appropriate, as there was something of the fallen angel about his achingly perfect features. Gabby was disastrously sidetracked from her personal dilemma by the combined impact of chiselled cheekbones, a clean-shaven square jaw, a broad, intelligent forehead, aquiline nose, a wide and disturbingly sensual mouth, and incredible wide-spaced black eyes shot with flecks of platinum and framed by long curling sooty lashes.
Wow!
No man had a right to be that good-looking.
He arched a dark brow and drawled. ‘Gabby …?’
His voice was deep, and the velvet tones only slightly accented, but for some reason it made the hairs on the nape of Gabby’s neck stand on end. Probably the male arrogance he was oozing had got under her skin. Something had. She rubbed her hands along her forearms, troubled by the prickling sensation under her skin.
‘No … Yes …’ Aware that she was blushing like a schoolgirl, she closed her mouth. Unable to break the mesmeric hold of his bold pewter-flecked stare, she gave up trying to sound like someone with an IQ in single figures.
‘You are perhaps bad with names?’
It was not unusual to see a woman in Zantara wearing Western clothes, even though less commonly they wore jeans. But it was very unusual to find