of uncertainty, and she gave a scornful laugh, which unfortunately emerged as a panicky squeak.
‘Why would I need a team of bodyguards?’ The idea that people had been watching her every move sent a shudder of distaste down her spine.
‘Because you are the granddaughter of a king, because there are security issues, because …’ He arched a brow. ‘Shall I go on?’
‘Nobody knows who I am …’ Eva struggled to hide the flutter of panic his suggestions had caused, then, regaining perspective, added, ‘I’m not really a princess. It was just an accident of birth.’
‘I can’t decide,’ he mused, studying her face, ‘if you’re in denial or just stupid.’
‘And I can’t decide if you work at being a total pain in the neck or it comes naturally.’
The seamless rebuttal stopped Karim in his tracks. So, apparently people didn’t tell him he was a pain on a regular basis. Pity—a bit of humility might make him almost human.
Struggling to slow her laboured breathing, she raised her hands and waved her slender bare fingers at him.
‘Look, no jewels, no crown,’ she added, and pressed her hands to her burnished gold head. ‘I’m not really royal.’ She shook her bright head from side to side, adding, ‘I never even knew my dad.’
‘He was by all accounts a good man.’
Momentarily distracted by the comment, Eva lifted her eyes eagerly to his face. ‘Really?’
The wistfulness in her voice—she clearly had no idea it was there—hit Karim in a vulnerable corner of his heart. Refusing to recognise the feeling that swept through him as empathy, he nodded abruptly.
‘But you never met him?’
‘When I was a child,’ he admitted.
Eva’s chest lifted in a soft sigh that was audible. Karim searched her face, a part of him perversely wanting to see some sign that she was dissembling, that the emotion and the vulnerability were false, but he found none.
Up until this point he had viewed her unconventional upbringing as a soft option. She had spent her life free of the restrictions and responsibilities that came with being born into a royal family, the restrictions he had lived with all his life. Now for the first time he recognised the possibility that she had missed out too.
‘I wish I had met him … I—’ She caught him staring at her and, feeling suddenly self-conscious and exposed—his eyes did have that ‘strip a soul bare’ quality—she lifted her chin and gave a soft gurgle of laughter.
‘It’s not as if anyone is going to write about me in the tabloids or kidnap me!’
She nearly had him until the seductively suggestive laugh that made the hairs on his neck stand on end in primal awareness. Nobody who laughed that way could be that naïve!
‘So you had no idea you’ve had a team of men following you for weeks.’
‘Months,’ she corrected, going pale as her stomach churned in sick rejection of the possibility. ‘I’ve been back home for two months.’ The first week or so she had been a bit nervous that the news would leak and she’d be the victim of intrusive interest, but when nothing had happened or changed she had relaxed.
Until now!
Her resentful glance lifted to the dark sardonic face of her overnight guest.
‘Are you calling me a liar? Are you …?’ She stopped, the colour seeping from her face leaving spots of angry pink on her smooth cheeks.
Her green eyes flashed as she said in a deceptively quiet voice, ‘You think I knew that they were there reporting, you think I let you stay here because I wanted to compromise you …’
‘So such a thing did not cross your mind.’
‘You think I planned … how?’ she demanded, waving a furious finger of triumph at him as she saw the flaw in his accusation. ‘Even if I wanted to marry you, and let me tell you I’d prefer to remove my spleen with a spoon, how was I to know you’d turn up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, looking like a …?’ She paused, losing some of her focus as she recalled the haunted bleakness in his eyes.
He gave an impatient shrug and picked a bleeping mobile phone from his pocket. ‘I am not accusing you of being a mastermind, just an opportunist.’ His eyes scanned the phone. ‘This will have to wait. I’m late.’
Annoyed at the implication that anything he was late for would automatically be more important than anything she had planned brought a glitter of dislike to Eva’s green eyes—the man had an ego the size of a continent!
And if he looked down his nose at her again, prince or no prince, she was going to sock that supercilious, superior smirk off his face.
The good thing about being mad with him was she didn’t have to think about her shameful physical response to him—and being mad with him didn’t even require any effort on her part.
‘Well, I’m so sorry your schedule is thrown,’ she sympathised with saccharin-sweet insincerity, ‘but I didn’t invite you to stay the night.
‘Though of course you wouldn’t remember that,’ she added sarcastically.
It seemed to Eva his selective recall was awfully convenient and she was starting to tire of being made to feel like some sort of scarlet woman.
‘And if I don’t get a move on I’ll be late for work too.’
‘Work …?’
He said it as though it was an alien concept. Maybe it was to him?
Maybe he had someone to tie his shoelaces? Maybe he strode around all day looking enigmatic and masterful?
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you were a student.’
‘I am, but like most students, even ones with scholarships,’ she added, trying to hide her pride in the achievement, ‘I have a job. Two actually. I work in a bar and walk dogs.’
His dark brows twitched into a straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘I’m amazed your grandfather permits it.’
‘I didn’t ask his permission.’
‘And surely you do not need to work.’
Her expression hardened at the suggestion she was a sponger. ‘I can pay my own way … and I value my independence. I’m not looking for anyone,’ she said, emphasising the word, ‘to look after me.’
‘And I, ma belle, also value my independence, and I was not looking for a wife, but sometimes a man must make the best of an imperfect situation.’
Eva gave a gasp of wrathful indignation. ‘Some people would not think marrying me such an awful thing.’
Standing in the doorway, he turned back.
