strode off towards the flight deck himself.
‘Be calm,’ Asim told Evie soothingly when he saw her expression. ‘It is nothing to worry about.’
Then why are both you and Raschid looking distinctly worried? she wanted to ask, but managed to keep the challenge to herself while her eyes remained fixed on the doorway Raschid had disappeared through.
The tension began to heighten the longer he was away. By the time he did finally reappear, the plane had come to a standstill some way off from the main building itself.
‘Don’t be too alarmed,’ he warned, which thoroughly alarmed her. ‘But my father has been interfering with my plans again.’
‘Wh-why?’ she said nervously. ‘What has he done?’
‘He has arranged a reception committee to meet us here at the plane. I’m sorry,’ he sighed, coming to sit himself down beside her. ‘This was not what I wanted. But—if you will just try to see it as a positive manoeuvre—in his own way he is trying to offer you a welcome.’
But you’re not feeling very positive about this, Evie thought as she felt all that bravery he had attributed her earlier drain right away.
‘What do I have to do?’ she asked, glancing warily sideways to see what looked like a dozen people in flowing robes making determinedly for the plane.
Her stomach flipped, her legs turned to jelly. Maybe she even trembled a little, because Raschid reached across her and slammed the shutter down over the window.
‘You will be yourself,’ he firmly replied. ‘I ask no more of you.’
‘Be myself in a cloak and veil?’ she drawled suggestively, expecting him to instantly deny the challenge.
But he didn’t. Instead his expression darkened perceptibly. ‘I would request that you wear the gown you married me in today,’ he said. ‘As a sign of respect,’ he quickly explained. ‘For those people who have come here so late in the evening to officially greet you.’
‘One being your father,’ Evie murmured grimacingly.
‘No,’ he denied. ‘My father is not quite strong enough to leave his palace. So we,’ he added slowly, ‘are to go to him.’
‘What, now?’ Evie jerked out, twisting her head to stare at him. ‘Tonight?’
‘It is perhaps a sensible alternative, when my father’s palace is only a few minutes’ drive away from here,’ he said. ‘Whereas my palace is still another hour’s flying by helicopter away.’
But, sensible or not, Raschid was still angry at the way his plans had been outmanoeuvred; Evie could see that in the grim set of his jaw. He was also uneasy about what all of this really meant; she could see that in the frown that still pulled at his brows, and in the perturbed glitter he was trying hard to hide beneath the heavy droop of his lashes.
‘What do you really think this all means?’ she questioned huskily. ‘And be honest with me, Raschid,’ she added. ‘I would rather be prepared for the worst than have it suddenly dumped on me so late that I have no time to react.’
‘As I dumped this trip on you too late for you to react?’ He grimaced.
‘No.’ Evie smiled, and to her own surprise the smile relaxed some of the tension out of her. ‘Because your in stincts were right and if you’d warned me that you were going to bring me here before we left England, I would probably have refused to come,’ she admitted.
Seeing the smile seemed to relax him too, and he reached out to touch a gentle finger to the corner of her upturned mouth. ‘I am going to take my own advice and be very positive about this,’ he murmured softly to her. ‘So I am going to put to you that I think my father’s intentions are entirely honourable, and he is attempting here to heal the breach at the first opportunity we are handing him.’
‘And you want me to do the same,’ Evie concluded from that.
‘Can you?’
‘I can try,’ she agreed. ‘But I can’t say I’m looking forward to any of this.’
It took only a few minutes to change back into her antique gold wedding gown. Asim found her a long white silk scarf from somewhere, which he advised her to drape loosely around her face.
Stepping back into the main cabin, she found that Raschid, too, had changed the dark blue outer robe he had been wearing for a much more dramatic black silk one trimmed with gold. And as he turned to face her she saw that a wide gold sash was now wrapped around his lean waist.
The black and gold made him look different somehow, taller, darker—disturbingly alien as he ran golden eyes still sharpened by anger over her covered head to her satin-shod feet.
‘Well?’ she said, smiling tightly across a tension that was beginning to make her face muscles feel very brittle. ‘Do I look presentable enough for your welcoming party now, do you think?’
Those lushly fringed, heavy-lidded eyes lifted up to clash with mocking blue. They saw the anxiety hiding be hind clear-cut crystal, and the strained pallor behind the creamy smoothness of her skin framed by the silk scarf.
Without saying a word he came to her, placed the tips of his long brown fingers beneath her chin to raise it—then kissed her, hard and hot, arrogantly uncaring that Asim stood by the closed exit door witnessing the embrace.
By the time he let her back up for air again, the pallor had altered to a soft flush of pink pleasure, and those cut-crystal eyes had darkened. ‘Now you look delicious,’ he murmured huskily, a teasing amusement suddenly dancing in his eyes. ‘Quite the shyly blushing bride in fact.’
Shyly blushing bride indeed! Evie thought caustically. ‘Well, whatever you say, this blushing bride is not walking two paces behind you,’ she warned, taking a firm grip on one of his hands while valiantly hiding her fears behind a mask of black humour.
The sound of his deep warm burst of appreciative laughter was the last thing Evie’s consciousness absorbed as she floated through the ordeal of meeting several prominent dignitaries and their wives, all smoothly introduced to her by the man whose hand her own remained glued to.
A long black limousine awaited them. It was a relief to disappear inside it. But it seemed that the ordeal was not yet over.
Sitting there beside Raschid, Evie gazed out of the car window as the car sped off towards the wire fencing that surrounded the airport complex. Big mesh gates swung open as they reached them, and without a pause the car drove smoothly out on to a tarmacadam road then turned right towards the city she could see lighting up the dark skyline in the distance.
But they hadn’t gone many yards before the inky darkness on either side of them was suddenly ablaze with light. Evie sat forward, felt as she did so Raschid’s increased tension as he too did the same, staring out of his own side window.
At the very same moment a loud noise erupted, startling her enough to make her gasp. The road was alight with car headlights, the noise deafening with horns being pressed as their car swept by.
Beside her, Raschid muttered something, sank back into the soft leather seat and was then oddly silent.
‘What
