The Mistress Bride

'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 behind 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 is it?' she questioned worriedly. 'Why are they doing this?'

Turning to look at him, Evie was utterly dismayed to see his face had gone strangely grey. And he seemed to be having difficulty swallowing.

'Raschid?' Concern for him had her hand reaching out to grasp one of his.

'Be at peace,' he soothed her. 'It is nothing to worry about.'

His voice was unsteady as he said the words, and if he wasn't worried then something extreme was certainly disturbing him.

'You look hurt,' she whispered, feeling her own throat thicken in aching response to his distress.

'No,' he denied. And at last turned suspiciously moist eyes in her direction. 'They are welcoming us,' he informed her gruffly. 'They ... ' One long-fingered hand lifted to make an expressive gesture towards the car window. 'My people,' he extended, 'are welcoming us .. .'

Evie's heart flipped over, the breath seized in her breast as full understanding finally hit her. His people were welcoming them and Raschid was so moved by the gesture that he could barely contain his feelings. 'Are you okay?' she asked softly.

'Yes,' he replied, but it was very obvious that he wasn't.

This had come as a real shock to him. He had not expected it and that was why it was having such a powerful effect on him. An effect that had Evie's own eyes glazing over as she wisely said nothing more while she gave him the chance to get himself together.

My people, he had called them. My people, in the truly possessive sense of the words. My people, whom he so obviously loved and whose love and respect he had been prepared to sacrifice for her' sake.

As Evie sat there beside him while they drove between the cavalcade of lights and sounding horns that lined their route as far as the eyes could see, she finally began to understand what Raschid's Kismet was doing for them here.

And she was humbled. Humbled by its force and by the man beside her who'd had the courage to reach out and grasp his own personal Kismet no matter what the cost might be.

For she hadn't been the brave one here, not really. All she'd done was follow where her heart led her, but Raschid possessed two hearts, one of which had been in conflict with the other since the day he'd set eyes upon her. He must have always known that one day he was going to have to risk breaking one of those hearts. The heart that belonged here with his people or the heart that belonged to Evie.

What he had done was place his trust in Kismet. And this was his reward, not hers. She was so very, very humbled by that.

'I love you,' she told him softly, although why she did she didn't really know now; those words seemed so inadequate when set against all of this.

Yet he turned and smiled at her, and that smile was so warm and dark and soul-stirringly tender that she knew the words were not inadequate to him.

'Look,' he said then, drawing her attention back to her own window. 'My father's palace,' he said.

Out there, beyond the glaring headlights, Evie found herself staring at a gold-lit stone building standing on its own raised piece of desert with a star-studded black velvet sky as its backcloth.

Surrounded on all sides by what looked like a twenty foot high boundary wall, complete with domed lookout towers on each of its four corners, it was as if the whole scene had leapt straight out of an Arabian nights picture book she remembered having as a child.