at the time it was taking her brain to assimilate the most basic information. Then abruptly the time-lag between her seeing something and interpreting it narrowed, and her eyes widened to their fullest extent. He was carrying her!
‘What are you doing?’ She looked down and saw her naked body. She froze. ‘And why—’ her voice quivered ‘—am I naked?’
Gabby’s eyes slowly lifted. Wild panic was triggered as they connected with his, and she was swallowed up by a tide of mind-numbing horror. She began to struggle wildly, hitting out and screaming at the top of her lungs. She landed several blows before he responded to her shrill commands to put her down!
‘Be still!’
Panting from her exertion, Gabby looked at the towel held out to her with deep suspicion, before grabbing it and wrapping it around herself. Swathed from head to toe, she felt slightly more secure, but she was still shaking as she angled him a look of withering contempt, struggling to stop her teeth chattering.
She directed a narrow stare at his dark face. ‘T … take another step closer … touch me and I’ll …’ What? Gabby asked herself.
Scream? Because that’s done so much good so far, hasn’t it?
CHAPTER SIX
‘LET me ease your mind. There is no incentive you could offer that would make me come within five feet of you.’
He had always been drawn to cool goddesses, so in theory Rafiq knew that holding a wet, screaming, squirming, volatile virago should not have aroused him.
He dug his hands deep in his pockets in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that he was in fact deeply aroused. It was a case of theory losing out yet again when it collided with reality—especially wet, slippery reality.
Her smooth brow pleated in a deep frown as she tried to follow the sequence of events that had landed her naked in his arms. ‘How did I …?’
The last thing she remembered was soaking in the tub.
‘I was taking a bath …’ She shook her head and threw him an accusing glare. ‘Do you make a habit of sneaking up on women when they’re taking a bath?’
His nostrils flared. ‘I did not sneak.’
‘Well, you sure as hell didn’t knock!’
‘I did.’
This was getting childish—though there was nothing adolescent about his body in that suit, or presumably out of it—not that it was a subject that interested Gabby. She rolled her eyes, radiating a scorn she was far from feeling. She had lost time … how long?
Her thoughts were in a spiralling loop of bemusement. Had someone drugged her tea …? No, she hadn’t had any tea. Her dry throat reminded her of that. Or was it the result of the terror she had experienced when she’d found herself naked in a desert sheikh’s arms?
So he was now wearing a very western suit, and the tailor who had cut it to fit his frame must have been kissing the ground he walked on—but the desert sheikh thing still applied. It didn’t matter about the wrappings or the sophisticated, urbane demeanor. Deep down this man was a total barbarian—she had every right to feel terror.
Just terror …?
Gabby evaded his dark eyes and closed down that line of thought before it got going.
‘You were asleep.’
Gabby’s eyes lifted. She opened her mouth to refute the crazy claim, then closed it again. A few hazy memories came slipping back, but she ignored them and produced a disdainful sniff.
Asleep! Couldn’t the lecherous rat come up with a better story? Or was it possible that in some moment of insanity brought on by stress and emotion she had been responsible for ending up naked in his arms?
It seemed about as likely as him being overcome by lust and going Neanderthal. This man had control—iron control that it would take a lot to snap.
‘I might have dozed off for a moment,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to—’
‘Save your life?’
This drew a laugh from Gabby. ‘My hero! Save my life? Pooh!’ she muttered, even as the realisation that he had seen her naked hit her again. The thought kept going around in her head, and every time it did she had to fight the urge to curl up into a mortified foetal ball and pretend this was all a dream—correction, nightmare!
‘You could have drowned.’ As he thought of how close she had been, he felt anger crowding in on him again.
About to pour scorn on this, Gabby closed her mouth with an audible click. She swallowed. ‘I only closed my eyes for a minute.’
Rafiq could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
His nasty smile was to Gabby’s mind unnecessarily smug.
‘When I got in the tub the water was stone-cold.’ His sweeping gesture drew her gaze downwards, and Gabby saw the bottoms of his beautifully tailored trousers were wet to above the knee. There were dark water stains on his shirt and jacket from where he had held her.
He had held her naked in his arms. She shook her head to dispel the image that was a distraction she did not need just now—though she knew she was going to be thinking about it later.
The colour flooded her face. ‘I fell asleep …? That was … I was …’
‘Stupid,’ he supplied helpfully.
She bit her lip, totally mortified. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’ She covered her face with her hands and groaned. ‘God, this is so embarrassing.’
He looked confused by her choice of words. ‘Why?’
She looked at him through her fingers. Was he dense, or what? ‘Because I was …’
‘Naked?’ he suggested, looking amused. ‘Better to be embarrassed, Gabby,’ he declared, ‘than dead. If it helps, I have seen naked women before.’ None of them were imprinted on his retina, though.
‘It doesn’t,’ she hissed, thinking of women with Hollywood gloss and perfect bodies he no doubt normally swept into his arms. She wanted badly for the floor to open up and swallow her. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed.’ He didn’t move, so she added pointedly, ‘Without an audience.’
‘Of course.’ He inclined his head and turned to leave her.
‘And … thank you,’ she called, as he stood with his hand extended towards the door.
He swung back. ‘It was my pleasure.’
‘That’s what bothers me,’ she muttered as the door closed. He must have heard her because she heard him laugh, which just about made her humiliation complete.
Gabby was tempted to put her own clothes back on, but her shirt had just about disintegrated.
