her voice as level as she could.
“Princess, that’s crazy. You—”
Julia got to her feet, catching the other two off guard. They scrambled to follow.
“All right, Bertrand, you can call the palace in Tamir,” she said. “And tell Prince Rashid from me that if he says any more about this supposed marriage to the media or anyone else, I’ll…he’ll…”
The threat, if it was one, was interrupted. There was a hurried knock, and then the office door burst open. One of the junior secretaries came in, wide-eyed and almost babbling with poorly suppressed excitement.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I thought I should—um…they’ve just notified me that he’s here! He’s actually in the palace. Prince Rashid! And he—he wants to see you!”
“Bertrand, go down to him, please,” Julia commanded, in a low, trembling voice he had to strain to hear. “Will you explain that we are going to issue an unqualified denial of this story, and ask that he support that with a statement of his own.”
“Princess, wouldn’t it be better—” Bertrand began.
“No, it wouldn’t!” she cried, feeling goaded beyond her endurance. “Allow me to be the judge, please! Tell him whatever you like about why. Just make it very clear that I am not going to see him.”
“Predicting the future is a risky business,” chided a deep masculine voice from the open doorway. Julia, Bertrand, Valerie and the junior secretary all whirled.
In the doorway, beside an embarrassed and apologetic member of King Marcus’s staff, stood Rashid Kamal, smiling like an angel of vengeance.
“See? Wrong already,” he said.
Chapter 2
They both stood silent, half the width of the room between them, gazing at each other. Those watching the pair felt a curious sensation, as if they themselves, and the room, had somehow ceased to exist in the same reality.
Rashid’s mocking smile died as he took in the sight of her. He wondered when her face had become his icon of survival. There had been times in the past few months when he’d come up against the real possibility that he wouldn’t succeed in his mission, wouldn’t even survive it. He realized only now how often in those moments his thoughts had been of Julia. Julia and his child.
Julia licked her lips and swallowed. A huge relief flooded her, taking her completely by surprise. He was alive. Until this moment she hadn’t realized how much of a tragedy it would have been if he were not.
As if embarrassed to be intruding, the others began to shuffle uncomfortably. Reality suddenly returned. Their gaze unlocked.
“We have things to discuss,” Rashid said, entering the room and acknowledging the staff in one friendly but imperious nod. With wonderful noblesse oblige, he held the door for them to leave. And to Julia’s annoyance, her staff all instinctively obeyed, leaving her alone with the enemy.
A dangerously attractive enemy, for whom she was already proven to have a fatal weakness. With whom she had made a total, complete, and utter fool of herself. She shifted uncomfortably, then reminded herself where she was. This was her own private office.
“Are the Kamals now laying claim to this palace, as well as Delia’s Land?” she demanded with icy sarcasm.
Rashid looked at her in level scrutiny, ignoring her outburst. He took a step closer. “How are you, Julia?” She seemed well, with softer curves than when he had last seen her. But the shadow in her eyes as she looked at him was the same.
The scent of her perfume was a sudden, sharp reminder of that wild night when passion had nearly wrecked all his careful plans. In the months since, he had found ways to explain what had happened. His reaction had been a simple side effect of the dangerous enterprise he had been about to embark upon, he had told himself. Men going to war had always been prey to such reactions—the universal unconscious compulsion to leave some trace of his genes in the world before he left it had seized him, that was all.
But that did not explain his reaction to her now—the need to hold her, to wrap her in safety. He reached for her with impatient arms.
She stepped back, evading his embrace.
“All the worse for seeing you!” she retorted.
Rashid’s head snapped back as if a cat had scratched his cheek without warning.
“The worse for seeing me? Why?”
“Why did you tell that Messenger journalist we were engaged?” she demanded.
“The real reason?”
“Of course, the real reason!”
“I thought there was a chance it would go over better with your people if I gave the exclusive to a Montebello paper. I’ve heard it’s going down very well.”
Julia gritted her teeth. “You know perfectly well what I mean! What did you say it for? What’s your agenda?”
He frowned. “What’s yours?”
She wasn’t sure why she was so furious suddenly. “My agenda? That’s simple—to have a baby. With the least possible media intrusion on the event, if you wouldn’t mind!”
“There’ll be a lot less room for speculation and innuendo once we’re married.”
Julia jerked backwards as if he had burned her. She opened her mouth twice, like a fish. “Married?” she whispered faintly. “What—you—we can’t get married!”
The sparkle abruptly left his dark eyes. He had hoped—he had felt almost certain of her support in his plans, if no one else’s.
“Can’t we?”
Julia bit her lip and gazed at him, trying to figure him out. She had been convinced what he had done was merely another move in some elaborate game plan. A game plan in which she was a pawn who would be sacrificed when necessary.
“You seriously imagine that we might get married?”
He watched her, his dark eyes unreadable. She still didn’t believe it. She wished he would tell her what he really wanted. This was making her very uncomfortable.
“Why not?”
“Your name is Kamal. Mine is Sebastiani.”
“We managed to make a baby, nevertheless.”
Julia’s cheeks burned at this calculated reminder of what she had let happen. “Everybody’s allowed to go out of their tiny mind once.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“What do you call it?” she challenged.
He looked at her. Looked at the rich dark hair, the delicate skin moulding fine bones, the wide mouth that seemed to tremble with the passage of every feeling. Her long neck holding her head like a flower on a stem, and the soft,
