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of relief.
Gently detaching her hair from the woman’s light hold, she sat up and the woman stood up and helpfully showed her straight to the bathroom. Even by that stage, Zoe was recognising that she had not been disorientated the night before when she had thought the walls surrounding her looked rather odd. Evidently, she was no longer at the villa in the palace complex, she was in a tent, a very large and very luxurious tent decorated with rich hangings and opulent seating but, when all was said and done, it was still a tent! And the connecting bathroom was also under canvas. Zoe felt hot and sweaty and looked longingly at the shower, but she didn’t want to risk the vulnerability of getting naked. She freshened up with cold water, dried her face and frowned down at the unfamiliar long white fine cotton shift she now wore in place of the skirt and top she had travelled in. That creepy nervous doctor and his sidekick, she thought in disgust. She would never trust a doctor again!
Why had she been taken from Prince Hakem’s villa? Although no one had ever told her that it was his villa, she had simply assumed it was. Presumably somebody didn’t want this marriage of his to take place, she reasoned reflectively. No problem, she thought ruefully, there had been no need to assault her with a syringe, send her to sleep and ship her out to a tent because she would quite happily go home again without any argument. Furthermore, she rather thought that would be her grandfather’s reaction as well because he had demanded very strong assurances from her bridegroom-to-be that she would be safe and secure in Maraban and he would be appalled at what had happened to her. Surely her becoming a princess to follow in the footsteps of her formerly royal grandmother, Princess Azra, would not still be so important to Stam Fotakis that he would expect his granddaughter to risk life and limb in the process?
Two women were setting out a meal when she returned to the main tent and she roamed as casually as she could in the direction of the doorway that had been left uncovered. What she glimpsed froze her in her tracks in instant denial. She saw a circle of tents and beyond them sand dunes that ran off into the horizon. She was in the desert, so escaping would be more of a challenge than she felt equal to because she would need transport and a map at the very least for such a venture. The discovery that she had been plunged into such an alien environment sent her nervous tension climbing higher and she swallowed hard. Where else had she expected a tent to be pitched but in the desert? she asked herself irritably.
Above one of the tents she espied the rotor blades of a helicopter. Was that how she had arrived? Had she been flown in? She shuddered as another far more frightening thought suddenly occurred to her.
Why was she assuming that she had been kidnapped to prevent the wedding taking place in forty-eight hours? Her grandfather was an extremely rich man. It was equally possible that she had been taken so that a ransom demand could be made for her release. That scenario meant that someone laying violent hands on her was a much more likely development, she decided sickly, her tummy hollowing out. As one of the women carefully threaded her stiff arms into a concealing wrap and even tied it for her, Zoe could feel all the hallmarks of an impending panic attack assailing her and she was already zoning out as her thoughts raged out of her control.
She saw a mental image of herself beaten up in a photo for her grandfather’s benefit. Her heart raced and she turned rapidly away from the view of the encampment, incapable of even noticing that the two women with her were hastily bowing and backing out of the tent again or that a male figure now stood silhouetted in the doorway. Her throat was tight, making it hard for her to catch her breath. She was shivering in spite of the heat, cold, then hot, dizziness making her sway as panic threatened.
I’m fine, I’m strong, I can cope, she chanted inwardly. But the mantra that usually worked to steady her failed because for several unbearable seconds she was simply overpowered by fear.
A male voice sounded directly behind her and a hand brushed her shoulder. Startled, terrified, Zoe reacted automatically with the self-defence tactics she had spent months learning so that she had the skills she needed to ensure her personal safety.
She spun at speed, her elbow travelling up for a chest blow and her clenched fist heading for a throat strike while her knee lifted to aim at the groin. Raj was so disconcerted by a woman the size of a child attacking him that he almost fell over in sheer shock and then his own training kicked in and, light as dancer on his feet, he twisted and blocked her before bringing her down on the rug beneath their feet with careful hands.
‘Let go of me, you bastard!’ she railed at him, clawing, biting and scratching and in the act contriving to dislodge the white keffiyeh that covered his head.
Still reeling with disconcertion, Raj backed off several steps because he couldn’t subdue her without hurting her and he refused to take that risk. She squirmed frantically away and the sheer terror in her face savaged his view of himself. Her eyes were glassy, her face white as snow.
‘You are quite safe here. Nobody is going to hurt you.’ Raj crouched down to her level while she wriggled back against a carved wooden chest like a trapped animal and hugged her knees, rocking back and forth. She was tiny and his every instinct was to protect her. ‘On my honour, I swear that you are safe...’ he intoned with as much conviction as he could get into the assurance, because she wasn’t listening to him and she wasn’t looking at him.
He was annoyed that his cousin had not sent his English-speaking wife, Farida, in to Zoe immediately to explain that there was no threat of any kind against her. But most of all, he cursed his father and the omnipotence he wielded in Maraban, for Raj was convinced that his wily father had ordered the kidnapping of Hakem’s youthful bride-to-be. Would his father have counted the cost to the woman involved? Would he even have foreseen that he was unleashing the kind of explosively damaging scandal that no self-respecting country could withstand? No, his father, Tahir, would not have looked at that bigger picture of cause and effect. He would simply have set out to ensure that his ambitious brother’s plot to raise his status was foiled while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the likelihood of unexpected consequences.
In a fierce temper at that frustrating knowledge, Raj sank down beside Zoe Mardas on his knees and began to coax her into attempting a breathing exercise, aimed at calming her down. Extraordinary green eyes, clear as emeralds, skimmed over him and she blinked, long feathery lashes dipping. For a split second he was frozen in place by her ice-cool Scandinavian beauty. He coached her in breathing in, holding her breath and then very slowly breathing out again. She did so and then shot him an exasperated look, not the kind of look Raj was accustomed to receiving from young women.
‘Yes, I do know how to do that for myself!’ Zoe told him sharply as soon as she was breathing normally again. ‘Why do you know how?’
‘For a while in my teens, I suffered similar episodes,’ Raj admitted, startling himself with that candour as much as he startled her; for the severe bullying he had endured at military school had for years afterwards left him damaged. He could only think his candour had been unwisely drawn from him by his glimpse of her at her most vulnerable and a natural need to put her at her ease.
In receipt of that surprising admission, Zoe stared back at him in wonderment because in her experience men were much less willing to admit to suffering such a condition. But before she could question him further to satisfy her curiosity, he vaulted gracefully upright again. She watched him smooth down his rumpled white buttoned tunic and snatch up the white head cloth she had dislodged in their tussle. And then, strikingly, for the first time in her life Zoe looked at a man with interest because there was no denying it: whoever he was, he was without question the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Dense silky blue-black curls covered his well-shaped skull while high cheekbones and hollows fed into a truly spectacular bone structure sheathed in olive skin. Dark-as-the-devil eyes glittered below straight ebony brows. A faint shadow of stubble surrounded his wide sensual mouth, his full soft lower lip tensing as he noticed her lingering scrutiny.
Turning pink, Zoe hurriedly glanced away while scolding herself for staring but, really, with looks of that quality, he had to be accustomed to being stared at by women, she reasoned defensively, uneasy with her speeded-up heartbeat and the sudden tightening of her nipples.
She wasn’t that sort of woman, she