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Such speculation was beneath him and he suppressed it from his mind with the kind of mental discipline he was renowned for. “No.”
“No?” She stared at him, momentarily lost. What did he mean, no?
He seemed suddenly impatient. “No, I do not particularly care if you approve or disapprove.” He reached down to the coffee table between them and picked up a yellow legal note pad. “You may go.”
As dismissals went, it was pretty summary. Much as her sister’s had been.
The next time Rafiq saw Emma, she was polishing silverware and laughing with another member of staff. A young male with blonde hair and Hollywood heart throb good looks. Rafiq was simply walking past the galley and turned his head at just the right moment, to catch her as she let out the kind of laugh that spoke of true pleasure. For some reason, it made him restless, and he found himself hearing her laugh over and over again in his head, almost as if it were taunting him. That night at dinner, he found he was watching her, instead of paying attention to the conversation at hand. She was simply standing in the corner of the room, as a back up to the main servers of the meal. He was surrounded by officials and advisors, and yet he felt oddly overcome by a desire to clear the room with the exception of her.
The next morning, he woke early. The dawn light was just breaking over the horizon, and he stretched restlessly. He really shouldn’t linger much longer. Mansour wasn’t coming. He’d have to be an idiot not to realize that his brother wasn’t missing by accident. Mansour had run away. Even for the confirmed party animal of the family, it was a strange departure from his usual modus operandi. His disappointment as Sheikh was eclipsed only by his worry as a brother. Mansour and he rarely saw eye to eye, but he was kin, and Rafiq valued little else above blood ties.
He threw back the waffle print blanket and crossed the cabin, naked and virile. His tanned skin glowed like sun-warmed caramel. He pulled on a pair of jeans and strode out of his private chamber up on deck. It was deserted at this hour, as he’d expected.
In the distance, he could just make out the buildings of Athens, glowing in the pre-dawn light and looking as stately and imposing as ever. It made him homesick for his own beautiful city. For surely there was nowhere with a richer history than the capital of Amar’a, the ancient city of Agbesh? He had to give up this fool’s errand, and soon.
A noise caught his attention and slowly, he angled his head.
It was as if his dreams had conjured her from thin air. Emma Anderson. Dressed in the ill-fitting uniform, her hair in that silly plait she always wore, spectacles low on her nose. A breeze whispered past, brushing her plait against her cheek. He watched as she fingered it away, without looking up from her notebook. She was writing, he saw with interest. A pen poised in her hand, her face frowning with concentration. A trickle of suspicion iced down his back, and before he could think through the logic of what he was doing, he strode over to her.
“May I see what you are writing?” He demanded, in a voice suffused with cold power.
She physically jumped at the interruption. “Oh! Your highness!” She stood up quickly, holding the book behind her back. He wasn’t imagining the way guilt was etched in every line of her face.
“Your notebook,” he commanded, holding out his hand expectantly.
Her eyes were wide with panic, confirming his worst suspicions. She was a journalist of some sort. The Amar’an media were famously respectful of their royals’ privacy. But foreign media did not have the same ethical approach to news reporting, in his experience. And Mansour, with his endless parade of parties and scandals, did not help the situation.
“Why do you need to see my notebook?”
Unused to being questioned, he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“You do not ask me why. You simply do what I ask.”
Her heart rate doubled as she stood, staring at him. With hands that weren’t quite steady, she passed the notebook to him. But as his fingers wrapped around the worn cover of her Moleskine, she found she didn’t let go. “Please,” she looked at him beseechingly. “It’s private.”
Something in the way she looked at him so earnestly made him pause. “Are you a journalist?”
“A journalist? Lord, no!” She exhaled slowly, trying to calm her buzzing insides. “I am a writer, though. Strictly fiction. I was just putting down some thoughts…” She didn’t want to elaborate. She tried to keep as much distance between herself and her best selling nom de plume. Emma Anderson had always run as far as possible from the lime light.
His eyes bore into hers, brooding and assessing, and she felt that same slick of desire in her abdomen. Heat coursed through her as she stared up at him, noting the way the breeze ruffled his jet black hair. He really was spectacularly attractive, in that very macho kind of way.
Finally, he released his hold on the notebook. “Fine.”
He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Emma standing there, a puddle of sensation with a frantically churning heart. She wanted to scream at him, but there was something so naturally authoritative about him that, frankly, she was scared into silence whenever he was nearby. Oh, she felt like a traitor to her sister. She couldn’t have imagined that, when the opportunity presented itself, she still hadn’t spoken her mind to this big, muscled jerk. Every moment she didn’t confront him, and tell him what she thought of him, was one moment too late.
“Emma!” Becky came bounding into their bedroom later that morning, her pretty face crinkled into a smile. Becky was the sort of person who should be working on a yacht like this. She was pure beach-girl beauty, with a deep tan, sun-bleached hair, eyes like a cat, and an athletic body that, when the Sheikh was not in residence, she displayed in just a bikini, day in, day out. Becky had hired Emma (after about a thousand security and background checks), and from that first day, she’d tried to get the other girl to lighten up, but Emma just couldn’t shake her bookish nature.
“Emma, guess what?”
Emma scanned the rest of the paragraph and then placed her finger in the page, lifting her eyes to Becky. “Mmmm?”
Becky’s whisper was thick with excitement. “Em, His Royal Hotness wants to see you!”
Immediately, that sense of dangerous attraction thudded through her, and she had to remind herself that this man was a total ass. The worst kind of bastard. She’d seen for herself just what he was capable of, and somehow, she was going to make him pay.
“Do you know what for?” She asked, dog-earing her book and laying it aside.
“I haven’t the foggiest, but I’d run right there, if I were you. Oh, he’s so yummy! I wish I could go in your place…”
