He stared at her through narrowed eyes, resisting the possibility that a woman with feelings, that a woman who could be hurt, lurked behind the icy disdain.
‘Well, what did you want to say?’
Relief rippled through her. This was not the response she had anticipated to her outburst.
‘Would this marriage be a...paper one?’
‘Will...get the tense right,’ he chided. ‘There will be official duties, occasions when we would be expected to be seen together.’ He studied her face. ‘But that isn’t what you’re talking about, is it?’
She gnawed on her lower lip and shook her head.
‘It will be expected that we produce an heir.’
Shaken by the image that popped into her head, she looked away but not before her mind had stripped him naked. The image refused to budge, as did the uncomfortable feeling low in her belly.
‘You might find it educational.’
The drawled comment made her expression freeze over; it hid her panic. ‘The offer of lessons in sex is not a big selling point!’ My God, he was really in for a disappointment.
His laugh cut over her words. ‘I wasn’t referring to your carnal education, though if you want to teach me a thing or two I have no problem.’
The riposte he had anticipated didn’t come. Instead, astonishingly, she blushed. Kamel was not often disconcerted, but he was by her response.
Hannah, who had conquered many things but not her infuriating habit of blushing, hated feeling gauche and immature. From somewhere she dredged up some cool. ‘So what were you referring to?’
‘I’m assuming that your average lover is besotted. I’m not.’
‘What, besotted or average?’ Stupid question, she thought as her eyes slid down his long, lean, powerful frame—average was not a word anyone would use when referring to this man. ‘I can’t just jump into bed with you. I don’t know you!’
‘We have time.’ He produced a thin-lipped smile. ‘A lot of it. But relax, I don’t expect our union to be consummated any time soon, if you can cope with that?’
‘With what?’
‘No sex.’
Her lashes came down in a concealing curtain. ‘I’ll manage.’
‘Because your little adventures will be over. There can be no questioning the legitimacy of the heir to the throne,’ he warned.
‘And does the same rule apply to you?’ Without waiting for him to reply she gave a snort of disgust. ‘Don’t answer that. But perhaps you could answer me this...’
He turned and she dropped the hand she self-consciously had extended to him. ‘Do you know...’ he seemed to know everything else with a few exceptions ‘...did they get the vaccinations to the village in time?’
The anxiety in her blue eyes was too genuine to be feigned. Perhaps the woman did have a conscience, but not one that stopped her doing exactly what she wanted, Kamel reminded himself.
‘It is a pity you didn’t think about the village when you decided to cross a border without papers or—’
‘My Jeep broke down. I got lost.’ Hating the whining note of self-justification, she bit her lip. ‘Do you know? Could you find out?’ The report that had reached the storage facility where she had been organising local distribution had said the infection was spreading rapidly; the death toll would be horrific if it wasn’t contained.
‘I have no idea.’
She watched as he moved away, not just in the physical sense to the other end of the cabin, but in every way. He tuned her out totally, appearing to be immersed in whatever was on the laptop he scrolled through.
Studying the back of his neck, she had to crane her own to see more than the top of his dark head. Hannah envied him and wished she could forget he existed. Was this a foretaste of the rest of her life? Occupying the same space when forced to, but not interacting? She had given up on romance but the thought of such a clinical union lay like an icy fist in her stomach.
He didn’t even glance at her when the plane landed; he just left his seat, leaving her sitting there. It was the massive bodyguard who indicated she should follow Kamel down the aisle to the exit with one of his trademark tilts of the head.
She was between the two men as they disembarked. Hannah blinked in the bright sun—the blinds had been down in the cabin and for some reason she had expected it to be dark. She had lost all sense of time. She glanced down at her wrist and felt a pang when she remembered they had taken her watch. It was one of the few things she had that had been her mother’s. When she was arrested they’d taken everything she had, including her sunglasses, and she would have given a lot for dark lenses to hide behind.