Desert Rogues Part 2 (19 page)

The surprises weren't over. Minutes later Alex escorted her to another large limo. Inside she found a bottle of champagne sitting on ice and a small bouquet of flowers.

“For me?” she asked as Alex sat next to her.

“I doubt the king meant them for me,” he told her.

Good point. Emma sniffed the roses. When Alex pointed to the bottle of champagne, she shook her head.

“I didn't sleep,” she admitted. “Between being exhausted, the strange circumstances and the time change, the last thing I need is liquor.”

She already felt woozy enough.

As they pulled out of the airport, Alex began to talk to her about the city. He pointed out the financial district, the old shopping bazaar, the entrance to the famous Bahanian beaches. Emma did her best to pay attention, but the longer they were on the road, the more she regretted her decision to come. Sure, Bahania was beautiful and all, but she'd just traveled halfway around the world with a man she didn't know to meet a king she'd barely heard of, and aside from her traveling companion and the king, no one on the planet knew where she was.

It was not a situation designed to make one relax.

Forty minutes later, the limo drove through an open gate, past several guards and what felt like miles of manicured grounds. She stared out the window until she saw the first hints of the fabled pink palace.

“This is so not happening,” she murmured, still unable to believe this was real.

The limo pulled up in front of the entrance. At least she assumed that's what the arched doorway and alcove big enough for a marching band was for.

“We're here,” Alex said, confirming her suspicions.

She glanced at him. “What happens now?”

“You meet the king.”

Great. If there was a survey at the end of this, she was going to mention Alex's lack of information as one of her complaints.

The limo door opened. Alex climbed out, then stepped aside so she could exit. Emma smoothed down the skirt she'd changed into on the plane and sucked in a breath for courage. It wasn't close to enough, so she wasn't surprised to find herself shaking as she stepped out in the warm afternoon.

Several people stood by the palace: Alex, the limo driver, a few uniformed men who could have been servants, but no one who looked like a king. So did royalty wait indoors for their visitors? Shouldn't Alex have briefed her on that sort of thing?

Before she could ask him, there was a movement to her left. Emma turned and saw a man step out of the shadows. He was tall, darkly handsome and almost familiar. Then the sun hit him full in the face and she gasped in stunned amazement. It couldn't be. Not after all this time. She'd thought…He would never…

The combination of shock, lack of sleep and food, and jet lag, conspired to increase her heart rate from nervous to hummingbird speed. The blood rushed from her head to her feet in two seconds flat. The world spun, blurred, then faded completely as she collapsed to the ground.

Prince Reyhan glanced at his father, the king of Bahania, and shook his head.

“That went well.”

S
everal servants rushed toward the fallen woman. Reyhan brushed them aside and crouched beside Emma. He took her wrist in his hand and felt her pulse.

Rapid, but steady.

“Call a doctor,” he said firmly.

Someone went scuttling to do his bidding.

“She didn't hit her head,” a young woman told him as she gently touched Emma's forehead. “I was watching as she fainted, Your Highness.”

“Thank you. Are her rooms prepared?”

The woman nodded.

Reyhan gathered Emma into his arms. She lay limp, one hand pressing against his chest, the other dangling by her side. Her skin had paled and her breathing slowed.

He took a moment to study her long lashes and the fullness of her mouth. The thick, red hair he remembered hung in loose waves around her face. So much was the same, he thought. No doubt if he counted, he would find that there were still eleven freckles on her nose and cheeks.

How much had changed? Even as he silently asked the question, he found he didn't want to know. He rose and walked into the palace.

The king fell into step with him.

“At least she remembered you,” his father said.

“Obviously with great joy.”

“Perhaps she fainted with relief that you were to be together.”

Reyhan didn't bother answering. Emma hadn't seen him in six years, and from what he'd been able to find out, she'd never made any attempt to get in touch with him. He had no idea what she recalled of their brief…relationship, but he doubted her fainting had anything to do with relief.

The guest quarters were on the second floor. Reyhan went directly there, wondering if his father would mention that other arrangements could have been made. Fortunately, the king remained silent.

Reyhan swept inside the suite of rooms he'd had prepared for Emma and set her on the sofa. A maid hovered in the corner.

“Find out when the doctor will arrive,” he said.

The woman nodded and picked up a phone from the small table in the corner.

Reyhan returned his attention to Emma. She lay perfectly still. She hadn't moved at all while he'd carried her.

He sat next to her on the sofa and took her hand in his. Her fingers were cold. He brought them to his mouth and breathed on them.

“Emma,” he murmured. “You must awaken.”

She moved her head slightly and moaned.

“The doctor will be here in fifteen minutes,” the maid told him.

“Thank you. A glass of water, please.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Someone else could have carried her,” the king said from the seat he'd taken across from the sofa. “Someone else can care for her now.”

Reyhan narrowed his gaze. “No one touches my wife.”

His father rose and crossed to the door. “It has been six years, Reyhan. Are you sure you still wish to claim the title of husband?”

Wish it or not, it was his. As was she.

 

Emma felt as if she were swimming against a very strong tide. But instead of water, she was trapped by air she had to push through to reach the surface. Thoughts formed and separated, her body felt heavy. Something had happened. She remembered that much. But what?

A cool, smooth surface pressed against her mouth as a strong, male voice demanded, “Drink this.”

She parted her lips without considering refusing the request.

Water slipped into her mouth. She drank gratefully, then sighed when the glass was removed. Better, she thought, and opened her eyes.

Oh, my—it was him! Her eyes hadn't been playing tricks on her. She could feel the heat and strength of him as he sat next to her on the sofa. His hip pressed against her thigh. One of his hands held her own, while his dark gaze trapped her as neatly as a cage held a small bird.

Reyhan.

She wasn't sure if she said the name or merely thought it. Was it possible? After all these years?

She blinked and wondered if this was nothing more than a vivid dream. Only, her luck wasn't that good. No, the truth was he was real and she was in his presence, which didn't seem possible. It had been six years, she reminded herself again. Six years since he'd used her and tossed her aside. Six years since she'd hidden at her parents' house, crying for what could have been, secretly waiting for him to come and claim her, only to find out she'd waited in vain. He'd never come, and eventually she'd returned to her life—older, wiser and emotionally battered.

“So you return to us,” he said, his low voice rumbling like distant thunder. “I don't remember you fainting before.”

She bristled at the assumption that he
knew
things about her.

“I don't faint,” she told him.

“Recent events suggest that you do. It was a long trip. Were you able to sleep at all?”

He spoke so casually, she thought in amazement. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As if it had been a few days rather than years since they were last together.

Outrage blossomed into fury. She wanted to yell at him, to scream or maybe even throw something. But years of being told that a lady didn't show her anger made it difficult for her to do more than glare.

Reyhan lightly touched her cheek. “I see by the shadows under your eyes you did not sleep on the plane. At least not for long. Hardly a surprise, I suppose. You were not told why you were brought here. As I recall, you were always impatient and eager to find out things.”

Her attention split neatly between his words, which annoyed her, and the light stroking of his fingers against her skin. When his thumb grazed her lower lip, she was stunned by a jolt of awareness. The sensation cut through her like lightning, heating and melting everywhere it touched.

No! She would not react, she told herself. She wouldn't feel anything. She refused to. If this man really was Reyhan, then he filled her with nothing but contempt. He was beneath her notice.

One corner of his firm mouth turned up slightly. “I see you want to spit at me like an ill-tempered kitten,” he murmured. “There is anger in your eyes.” He glanced at her fingers. “No claws. I doubt you can do much damage.”

Then he stunned her by kissing her knuckles.

She felt the warm brush of his mouth clear down to her toes. The hot, melting sensation grew until she wanted to purr like the kitten he'd mentioned. She thought about—

“Stop that right now,” she said, snatching her hand back and folding her arms across her chest. The instruction was meant for both of them. In the past twenty-four hours, her world had taken a turn for the confusing, but she was determined to figure out what was going on. Which meant staying focused on the task at hand and not getting caught up in being in the same room as Reyhan.

She shifted away from him and pushed herself up into a sitting position. When he took hold of her arm to help her, she shook off his hand.

“I'm fine,” she told him, her tone as icy as she could make it. “What I need from you is information. What is going on? What am I doing here? And while we're on the subject, what are
you
doing here?”

Before he could speak, there was a blur of movement, then a long-haired cream-colored cat with nearly violet eyes jumped up on her lap. She stared at it in amazement. Cats in the palace?

Reyhan grabbed the animal and set it back on the floor. The cat glared at him, gave a sniff of disgust and stalked off.

“Are you allergic to cats?” he asked.

“What? No.”

“Good. The palace is filled with them. They are my father's.”

His father? She rubbed her temple and tried to decide if she wanted to ask who his father was. While she would like the information, she was also afraid of it. Because crazy as it sounded, she had a feeling there was a better-than-even chance that Reyhan was somehow related to the king of Bahania.

Don't go there, she told herself as Reyhan held out the glass of water again. As she took it from him she found herself caught in his gaze.

She remembered his eyes most of all, she thought. How dark they were. How well they kept secrets. She'd once thought that if she could learn to read his eyes, she would know the man. But their few weeks together had not given them the time to learn very much about each other.

Sadness threatened. She tried to banish it by recalling what Reyhan had done to her—how he'd left and how she'd been alone and so afraid. Better to be angry. There was energy in anger and she had the feeling she was going to need it.

“I don't know what this game is,” she told him, “but I'm not going to play. I wish to return home immediately. Please call Alex and have him take me back to the plane.”

“Your escort from the State Department has already left the palace. He will spend the night at one of our most beautiful oceanside hotels, then fly back to your country in the morning.” Reyhan dismissed the man with a flick of his wrist. “You will not see him again.”

Anger faded as fear took its place. Alex was gone? So she was truly alone in the palace? Alone in this country?

Emma didn't know if she should try to bolt for freedom or bluff her way through. Her head was still spinning and she didn't look forward to trying to stand up, so that left bluffing. Something she'd never been very good at.

“What am I doing here?” she demanded. “Why did the king of Bahania ask me to come here for two weeks? And what are
you
doing here? You can't have anything to do with what's going on with me.”

That last bit was more plea than forceful statement.

Reyhan stared at her. His strong, handsome features could have been set in stone—or steel—for all they gave away.

“Haven't you guessed?” he asked with quiet amusement, as if she were a child who had just performed the alphabet song flawlessly for the first time. “The king is my father, and the invitation is as much mine as his.”

Her mind went blank. Completely and totally. It was like losing the lights during a thunderstorm.

The man next to her rose and squared his shoulders. Then he stared down at her with a haughty expression possibly honed through a lifetime of royal arrogance.

“I am Prince Reyhan, third oldest son of King Hassan of Bahania.”

She blinked. Not possible, she told herself as some semicoherent thought process began in her brain. Not possible, not likely and she refused to believe it.

“A p-prince?” she asked, stumbling over the word.

No. No. No. Emma stared at the man standing in front of her. He couldn't be. A prince? Him? But they'd met at college. They'd dated. He'd taken her away with him and…hurt her dreadfully.

“The king decided it was time for me to marry,” Reyhan told her. “There was no way I could agree to any match as I was already married. To you.”

He kept on talking, but she wasn't listening. She couldn't. A prince? Married?

“But I…” She swallowed and tried again. “That wasn't real. Not any of it.”

She remembered the quiet of the Caribbean island, the soft breezes, the lap of the ocean outside their hotel room. Reyhan had asked her to go away with him, and she'd agreed because she could refuse him nothing. At eighteen, she'd been more innocent than he'd realized. She'd been too ashamed to tell him she'd never dated before. He'd been her first, in every sense of the word.

Years later, when she'd looked back on the blur of hot days and long, endless nights, she'd comforted herself with the fact that she'd been too swept up in thinking she was in love to refuse Reyhan anything. She would never have considered asking him to go more slowly, to give her time to adjust. As for their marriage—her parents' lawyer had told her that had been a fake.

For a long time the realization had nearly destroyed her. She'd hated her weakness where he was concerned. Hated that she could still want him, even as he'd used and abandoned her. Time had healed her enough to give her perspective.

Reyhan's dark eyebrows drew together. “What wasn't real?”

“Our marriage. You just did that to get me into bed. Or get a green card.”

As soon as she spoke the words, she realized she might have made a mistake. Reyhan seemed to get bigger and taller as his temper grew. His anger was as tangible as the sofa she sat on, but a lot more frightening. His gaze narrowed and his mouth twisted into a disapproving and scornful line.

“A green card?” he asked, his voice thick with tension. “Why would I need that? I am Prince Reyhan. I am heir to the king of Bahania. I have no need to seek asylum elsewhere. This is my country.”

He spoke proudly and with the confidence of who knew how many generations of royalty behind him.

“Yes, well.” She cleared her throat. At the time, him wanting a green card had made sense. But now…“So that's not why you married me.”