his skin down to the towel he had draped round his hips.
‘How could you?’ she demanded chokily. ‘How dare you? Why did you do it? Why…? Let go of me,’ she spat as he suddenly took hold of her arm, her face white with shock and fury. ‘Let go of me,’ she repeated, as Blaize—Rashid, she corrected herself bitterly—virtually dragged her into the elegant sitting room.
If she had either shocked or shamed him, he certainly wasn’t showing it.
‘Not until you’ve calmed down and you’re ready to listen to reason,’ Rashid told her calmly. ‘Come and sit down and I’ll get you a cool drink. You look as though you need one.’
A cool drink! Petra tried to pull free of him and found that she could not.
‘What I need,’ she told him through gritted teeth, ‘is an explanation of… of what is going on… of why you pretended to be someone you quite obviously are not…’
‘I was going to tell you,’ Rashid interrupted her curtly. ‘But—’
‘Liar!’ Petra cut across him. ‘You’re lying to me. Just like you’ve lied to me all along! Let go of me,’ she demanded fiercely. ‘I can’t bear having you touch me. I—’
‘That wasn’t what you said last night,’ Rashid reminded her grimly.
Petra shuddered, unable to stop herself from reacting—not just to his words, but also to her own feelings, her memories…
‘In fact, last night, as I recall, you seemed to find my touch a good deal more than merely bearable! Remember?’
When Petra refused to answer Rashid goaded her.
‘Shall I help you to do so?’
As Petra gave a sharp gasp of shock he drew her closer to him. Petra tensed as she felt the dampness of his skin through her thin top. Her mind knew how gravely, how devastatingly, how unforgivably he had behaved towards her, but her body seemed only to know that he was its lover, its love.
‘If I were to kiss you now,’ he began softly, the words whispering tormentingly against her tightly closed lips, ‘then…’
He stopped speaking and lifted his head as the suite door suddenly opened and a tall grey-bearded man strode in, his bearing immediately marking him out as a person of eminence and rank.
‘Rashid, our new American project—how long do you think—’ he began, and then stopped as he took in the scene in front of him, its apparent intimacy.
Eyes as sharp and dark as a falcon’s made Petra feel as though she was as pinioned beneath their gaze as she was by Rashid’s grip.
‘Highness, please allow me to present to you Miss Petra Cabbot.’
Highness!
Petra gulped, sensing the cool air of regal disapproval emanating from the newcomer as he looked from Rashid to Petra and then back to Rashid again before saying quietly, ‘I see!’
He left a brief but telling pause before asking Petra politely, ‘Your godfather is well, I trust, Miss Cabbot? He and I were at Eton together.’
‘He’s—he’s in the Far East,’ Petra managed to croak, wondering if she dared add that he was there with her passport—which right now she needed very much.
‘Indeed.’ The princely head was inclined towards her. ‘He is a very shrewd statesman, as was your father. Statesmen of world-class stature with far-seeing eyes are very much needed in these turbulent times.’
Her face burning, Petra moved out of earshot of the two men whilst the Prince spoke with Rashid.
Despite the Prince’s politeness, Petra was uncomfortably aware of his evident, if unexpressed disapproval of her presence unchaperoned in Rashid’s suite.
The moment the Prince had left, Petra made to leave herself. But immediately Rashid shook his head, closing the door firmly and standing in front of it as he said grimly, ‘You do realise what this means, don’t you? What will have to happen now that the Prince has seen you here alone with me?’
‘You were the one who introduced me to him,’ Petra reminded him defensively, ignoring his question.
‘Because I had no other option,’ Rashid told her savagely. ‘If I had chosen not to introduce you it would have been a tacit admission that it was because honourably I could not do so… because you were my whore! There is nothing else for it now. You will have to marry me! Nothing less can save your reputation or that of your family!’
Petra stared at him in shocked disbelief.
‘What?’ she croaked. ‘We can’t!’
‘We can and we are,’ Rashid assured her grimly. ‘In fact, we don’t have any other option—thanks to you!’
‘Thanks to me?’ Petra glared at him. ‘Thanks to me? What does that mean? I wasn’t the one…’
‘It means that since His Highness found you here in my apartment unchaperoned, I now have no other option than to marry you. It was obvious what he thought.’
‘What…? That’s… that’s ridiculous,’ Petra protested. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?’
‘Which truth?’ Rashid demanded scornfully. ‘The truth that says last night you gave yourself to me? Last night…’
‘Stop it… stop it.’ Petra demanded in anguish, before accusing him recklessly, ‘You’ve done all this deliberately, haven’t you? Just so that you can get your own way and force me to marry you—for the financial benefit you’ll get out of it! Just as a matter of interest, what is marriage to me worth to you, Rashid?’ Her temper was burning white-hot. ‘A good deal more than the traditional camels, I am sure! One hotel… two… an office block and perhaps a dozen or more villas thrown in? And why stop there? I know that the Royal Family’s hotel interests extend all over the world, and—’
‘You’re overreacting.’ Rashid cut across her increasingly emotional words curtly. ‘If you would just allow me to explain—’
‘Explain what?’ Petra demanded bitterly. ‘Explain that you deliberately lied to me and… and plotted and planned to… to use me for… for your own ends?’
‘Me—use you. I wasn’t the one who came into your room,’ Rashid reminded her icily. ‘Into your bed! If anything, if anyone is to blame for the situation we now find ourselves in, Petra, it is you and your wretched virginal curiosity! And, contrary to what your juvenile imagination has decided, it is for that reason that I have no option other than to do the honourable thing and marry you.’
‘Because I was a virgin! That’s crazy!’
‘No. You are crazy if you honestly believe there can be any other outcome to what happened. We have to marry now. Apart from any other consideration there is the fact that you could have a child.’
Petra stared at him.
‘But… but that isn’t possible,’ she started to stammer.
