‘Nor I you,’ Xander answered him steadily as they embraced one another.
‘Hello there, beautiful! How about coming out with me tonight? I hear that His Highness is holding a very grand reception to celebrate the start of the racing season, and then afterwards we could go on to a club.’
The light-hearted invitation she was being given by the group’s bachelor photographer made Katrina smile. Tom Hudson was an unashamed and incorrigible flirt, but one could not help but like him.
She started to shake her head, sunlight bouncing off the soft waves of her shoulder-length hair, but before she could say anything Richard broke in sharply.
‘We are all here to work, and not to socialise, and you would do well to remember that, Hudson. Besides, we’ve got an early start in the morning,’ he reminded them.
In the uncomfortable silence that followed the expedition leader’s outburst, Tom pulled a wry face at Richard behind his back.
For all that he was very highly qualified, Richard was not popular with any of them, although it was Katrina who suffered most from his presence.
‘He’s gruesome,’ Beverley Thomas, the only other female member of the group, commented later, giving a small shudder as she sat on the edge of Katrina’s bed.
The luxurious private villa that had been put at the team’s disposal was built on traditional lines, with the women’s quarters apart from those of the men, and additional staff accommodation.
At first it had bemused Katrina to discover that she and Bev were to be locked into their quarters at night, but now in view of unwanted advances from Richard she was heartily glad of the fact that they were expected to adopt the country’s customs.
‘I can’t help feeling sorry for his wife,’ Katrina admitted.
‘Mmm, me too! Not that he likes us mentioning her. You do realise that he’s well on the way to developing an obsession with you, don’t you?’
When she saw the apprehensive look Katrina was giving her she relented a little and added, ‘Well, perhaps calling it an obsession is going a bit too far, but he’s certainly determined to get you into his bed.’
‘He might want to but he’s not going to,’ Katrina assured her determinedly. ‘I could cope with his unwanted advances, Bev, but it’s when he starts using his position as expedition leader to punish me for rejecting him that I start to worry. This is my first job and I’m only on probation.’
‘Try not to let him get to you,’ Beverley advised her, stifling a yawn. ‘I’m off to bed. It’s been a long day and, as dear old Richard reminded us, we’ve got a pre-dawn start in the morning.’
Katrina smiled. Personally she was looking forward to their expedition into the desert to examine one of the area’s desert ridges known as wadis.
She should be sleeping. It was over an hour since she had come to bed but every time she closed her eyes she was confronted with a disturbing mental image of the man with the golden eyes, as she had privately nicknamed him.
And it wasn’t just the colour of his eyes that was imprinted on her memory. Her body quivered as fiercely and delicately as though strong fingers had plucked a single chord on a lyre.
This was ridiculous, she told herself stoutly. A woman of twenty-four with a doctorate in biochemistry could not submit herself to some foolish, primitive sexual response to a complete stranger. And not just a stranger, but very probably a criminal as well! But her fingertips were already investigating the smooth curve of her mouth, restlessly seeking the imprint of his on hers. Her memory was faultlessly replaying to her everything that she had felt beneath the hard domination of his kiss.
Angrily she tried to deny what she was feeling. Her parents had been a pair of highly qualified scientists totally devoted to one another; they had lived for one another and died with one another when they’d been killed after the site they had been excavating had collapsed on them.
She had been seventeen at the time. Not a child any more, but not an adult either. Her parents, both only children, had had no other family, and their deaths had not only orphaned her but left her both with an aching need for someone to love her, someone to complete her, and with a deep-rooted fear of those feelings and the vulnerability they created within her.
Because of that she had buried them very deep inside herself, too immature and too frightened to cope with them. Instead she had concentrated on her studies, cautiously allowing herself to make friends, but not allowing anyone to get too close.
At twenty-four she had considered herself to be reasonably well adjusted and emotionally mature, but now…It was most definitely neither well adjusted nor emotionally mature to feel the way she did about a stranger.
Let’s analyse this, she told herself determinedly.
You are in a different country with different customs; a country, moreover, that has always fascinated you, which is why you were so keen to come here, why you learned Zuranese in the first place. Additionally you were on an adrenalin high brought on by an automatic fight or flight response to an unfamiliar situation. Of course such a highly charged situation was bound to affect you.
To the extent that she responded physically to a man she didn’t know? A man she obviously should have been on her guard against?
Everyone was entitled to one little mistake, she tried to comfort herself. And, after all, it was extremely unlikely that she would ever see him again. She didn’t want to accept how much that knowledge depressed her.
CHAPTER TWO
THE sun was just starting to rise over the horizon as they drove out of the villa in a convoy of sturdy, well-equipped four-wheel-drive vehicles heading for the desert. To Katrina’s dismay, Richard had insisted that she was to travel on her own with him in the vehicle that he was driving.
‘You’ll be much more comfortable here with me in the lead vehicle,’ he told her, laughing as he added unkindly, ‘The others will all be choking on our dust.’
It was true that the speed at which he was driving was throwing up a heavy cloud of fine sand, but Katrina would still far rather have been with someone else.
‘Why don’t you relax and close your eyes?’ Richard suggested oilily. ‘Catch up on your sleep. It’s going to be a long drive. But drink some water first. You know the rules about making sure we don’t get dehydrated.’
Obediently she took the open bottle of water he was handing her and drank from it.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to try to sleep, Katrina acknowledged fifteen minutes or so later as she stifled a yawn and then gave in to a sudden overwhelming temptation to close her eyes. If only so that she could avoid having to make conversation with Richard. And she did feel extraordinarily sleepy. Probably because she had spent far too much of the night thinking about the man with the golden eyes. As she drifted off to sleep she felt the vehicle start to pick up speed.
It was the late afternoon sun that finally woke her as it shone in through the windscreen. The realisation of how long she had been asleep made her sit bolt upright in her seat and turn to Richard in consternation.
‘You should have woken me,’ she told him. ‘How much longer will it be before we reach the wadi?’
It was several seconds before Richard answered her, the look in his eyes as he turned his head towards her making her feel sharply