‘My brother is a fool, and I am sorry for what he has done to you. His actions are those of a—’ He used a word in his native tongue that she didn’t understand, but his expression was translation enough.
‘Done to me?’ she echoed, confused.
Rafiq swallowed, the muscles in his throat visibly rippling under his brown skin and his eyes glowing as he contemplated the pleasure of throttling his own brother.
‘You have suffered at the hands of the Al Kamil family.’ He gave a grimace of self-recrimination. ‘I have used you,’ he admitted stiffly, his rage visibly growing as he spoke, ‘but at least I haven’t slept with you, knowing all along I had no intention—’ He closed his eyes and cursed slowly and fluently in several languages.
Gabby, her eyes widening suddenly in angry comprehension, exclaimed, ‘Slept with me! You think I slept with a man I’d only known five seconds?’
Why not just call me a slut and have done with it? she thought, ignoring the sly voice in her head which suggested that two seconds would have done it if the man in question had been Rafiq.
A muscle clenched in his lean cheek as he shook his head in a stiff negative motion. ‘You will not speak of it.’
He could not allow himself to think of it, to torture himself with images and allow the jealousy to bite like acid into him.
‘But I—’
He cut off her protest with a look. ‘I saw him climb into your room.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘You saw …?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You were watching?’
‘I had something I wished to discuss with you.’
Rafiq had been struggling throughout the day to keep his feelings of guilt at bay, but following their dinner he had come to a decision. He would release her from their bargain. The irony was that, having studied her brother’s case in further detail, he doubted that the case against Paul Barton would have ever made it to court after the scheduled review.
Of course this irony had paled into insignificance beside his finding his own brother scaling her balcony—minus the rose between his teeth, but in all other ways the perfect romantic lover.
‘I had planned to use the door.’
Gabby bit her lip. ‘What did you want to discuss with me?’
‘It is no longer relevant.’ She was puzzling over his sharp retort when he added, ‘To think that I pushed you into his arms!’
His snarled recrimination made Gabby flinch. ‘I’m not some puppet. You’ve never made me do anything I didn’t want to, Rafiq.’
Her clumsy attempt to soothe him had the opposite effect.
‘So you have fallen in love with him?’ he said heavily. It was nothing he had not already suspected. He had seen women fall for his brother’s brand of charm before.
The absurd assumption made Gabby stare at this normally smart man. ‘Of course not. It was just—’
‘Sex?’ he finished for her heavily, before closing his eyes and slipping seamlessly into a flood of Arabic she could not follow apart from some spectacular epithets. She watched him slam his fist into the carved arm of his chair.
A cry of alarm was wrenched from the watching Gabby’s throat as she witnessed this loss of control.
‘For goodness’ sake, Rafiq,’ she cried, tugging at his arm.
She saw with horror blood well along the line of his knuckles as he ground his flesh into the hard surface. It had to be hurting, but he didn’t appear to notice—not the pain, nor her breathless panting efforts to pull his arm down. She could barely get a purchase. The muscles under her fingers were tense and bulging and they had about as much give as a steel bar. Her efforts were futile. He appeared not to even notice her.
He relaxed his arm suddenly, and, breathing a sigh of relief, Gabby knelt there, panting, her fingers still curled around his forearm.
‘Your poor hand.’ She winced, raising his hand to examine the broken skin across his knuckles. ‘You need—’
Rafiq sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and fixed her with a blazing stare so intense it stripped bare her defences, leaving her feeling emotionally exposed and trembling. ‘Need …?’ he echoed, giving a laugh that made her heart twist in her chest in empathy.
Anger rose inside her as she lifted his hand to her chest and nursed it there. Tears filled her eyes. He needed life, and it was being denied him. Misery lodged in her chest like a lump of lead—there was simply nothing she could say that wasn’t utterly clichéd.
‘Sorry.’
Her whispered comment brought his eyes to her face. He felt tenderness twist his heart. No woman had ever touched him this deeply.
‘I am sorry too. Sorry that I did not imagine for a heartbeat … not for a heartbeat—’ He broke off, lifting the hand that she held to his own chest and pressing it against the area where his heart rested.
Gabby, her hand trapped beneath his, could feel the heat of his body and the steady thud of his heart.
Oh, God, but I love him! The anguished admission was drawn from her very soul.
‘I did not imagine that a brother of mine could be so totally without honour. He actually left me a note,’ he raged, lifting his other hand to frame her face with long brown fingers.
It struck Gabby that to the casual observer they would look like lovers. A shiver slid down her spine.
‘What did Hakim say in the letter?’ she asked, wondering if she ought to tell Rafiq why his brother had gone. It weighed heavily on her conscience that she had inadvertently broken her promise.
But, while unburdening herself might ease her guilt, it was not going to make Rafiq feel any better to know why his brother had run away.
Gabby felt livid every time she thought about the young Prince and his feeble behaviour. She was definitely not inclined to make excuses for him, especially as it seemed to her people had been making excuses for Hakim for too long.
She believed that everyone faced tests in their lives. This was the most important test Hakim had ever faced and he had flunked it! If she had Hakim here now she’d tell him exactly what she thought of him. Of course it hurt like hell to know someone you loved was in pain and that there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to help, but you had to put your own feelings to one side.
That was simply what you did when you loved someone. Time enough later to indulge your own pain—too much time, she thought bleakly.
In that moment she was conscious of nothing but Rafiq. Every other thought was obliterated from her head as she soaked in sensations: the warmth radiating from his lean, hard body, his masculine strength, the fresh male scent of his skin.
‘People use love as an excuse—as if that justifies everything.’
Gabby felt a moment of guilty panic—had he guessed?
Then he added with a sardonic sneer, ‘My brother is apparently in love.’ Rafiq’s fingers fell away from her face, and his upper lip curled with contempt as he contended, ‘He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.’
Rafiq’s eyes swept her face before he turned his head away from her, expelling a hissing breath through flared nostrils. ‘He writes to say he is getting married to some woman—a divorcee. Apparently I have said something which has made him realise he has to do this. He never has been able to take responsibility for his own actions.’ He flung up his hands in a gesture of disgust before giving a shrug and pronouncing, ‘Their children will be idiots.’
‘He’s getting married?’ Gabby cried, sinking back onto her heels. ‘I