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middle of the courtyard was filled with fountains and pools, the jets of water from them making intricate patterns suddenly broken by an unexpected powerful surge that sent one of the jets soaring into the air, much to the delight of a group of watching children who screamed and clapped their hands in excitement.
Smiling indulgently, Petra made her own way towards the restaurant.
Given her previous evening’s experience, with the ‘Parisian’ Michelin-starred restaurant, she supposed she should have expected that the Italian trattoria would be equally authentic, and it certainly was—right down to the strolling musician and the appreciative genuinely Italian waiters, who ushered her to a table and handed her a menu.
Half an hour later, when Petra had just started to relax and feel comfortable as she sipped her wine and enjoyed the seafood starter she had ordered, the restaurant door opened and a group of brashly noisy young men burst in.
Petra could tell from the reactions of the restaurant staff that they were not entirely at ease with the loud-voiced demands of the new arrivals. To Petra, familiar with the behaviour of a certain type of European male, it was obvious that the men had been drinking. Their attitude towards the staff was bordering on the aggressive, and although none of them looked particularly intimidating they were in a pack, and like all pack animals they possessed a certain aura of volatility and danger.
They were speaking in English, demanding that they were given a table large enough to accommodate them all and refusing to listen when the mâitre d’ tried to tell them that the restaurant was fully booked.
‘Don’t give us that, mate,’ one of them objected. ‘We can see for ourselves that you’ve got plenty of empty tables.’
Discreetly Petra affected not to notice what was going on when the waiter removed her empty plate and returned with her main course. But as she thanked him for her meal, she suddenly heard one of the men saying, ‘Hey, look at that over there—the brunette sitting on her own. We’ll have that table there, mate,’ he continued, pointing to the empty one next to where Petra was seated.
She tensed warily. She could tell that the mâitre d was trying to persuade them to leave, but it was obvious that they had no intention of doing so. She tried not to betray her discomfort as they surged round her, sitting at three of the tables close to her own so that she was almost surrounded by them.
They were ordering more drinks whilst making crudely off-colour comments about their sexual proclivities and deliberately staring at her, trying to force her to return their eye contact.
Petra wasn’t exactly frightened. She lived in London, after all, and considered herself to be relatively streetwise. But in London she would never have been eating on her own, or been in a situation which would have made her so vulnerable.
She was uncomfortably aware of the diners at the two other tables, young couples with children, getting up and leaving, whilst the raucous behaviour of the men around her became even more unpleasant.
Although she hadn’t finished her meal, Petra recognised that it was impossible for her to stay. The newcomers were making no attempt to order a meal and instead were becoming even more disorderly. A bread roll flew past her head, quickly followed by another as two men on tables either side of her began to hurl them at one another.
‘First to get one down her dress gets a free round!’ one of the men sang out.
Petra had had enough.
As calmly as she could she stood up, but to her horror, instead of allowing her to walk past them, the men immediately surrounded her, making openly sexually suggestive comments both to her and about her to one another that made Petra’s throat and face burn with disgust and anger.
She could see that the restaurant manager was on the telephone, and the mâitre d’ was doing his best to assist her, begging the men to step back otherwise he would have to ask them to leave.
‘Going to pick one of us, are you, sweetheart?’ the most obnoxious of the gang smirked at Petra. ‘Or shall we choose for you? Which one is going to be first, lads?’ he demanded, turning to his friends.
The mâitre d’ intervened, protesting, ‘Please, gentlemen, I must ask you to leave—’
‘We aren’t going anywhere, mate,’ Petra’s tormentor told him drunkenly.
‘Oh, but I think you are…’
The coolly incisive sound of Blaize’s voice cut through the loud-mouthed vulgarities like tempered steel slicing into flaccid flesh, his appearance shocking Petra even more than it obviously did the gang.
Instinctively she turned towards him, her expression betraying both her disbelief and her fear.
‘In fact, I think I can safely say that not only are you going to leave the restaurant, you are going to leave the country as well.’
One of the gang started to laugh.
‘Come off it, mate. You can’t make us do anything! There’s only one of you and a dozen or us, and besides… we’re here for the races, see.’
‘The restaurant manager has already summoned the police,’ Blaize informed them coolly. ‘There is a law in this country against men harassing women, and in Zuran laws are reinforced.’
Petra could hear sounds of new arrivals outside the restaurant, and it was obvious so could the gang.
Suddenly they began to look a lot less sure of themselves. Blaize was holding out his hand to her. Shakily Petra pushed her way past the men and went to his side, just as the restaurant door opened and several stern-looking uniformed police officers came in.
‘Come on,’ Blaize instructed Petra, taking hold of her arm. ‘Let’s get out of here…’
Petra was only too glad to do so. And only too glad of the protection of his firm grasp on her arm as he ushered her back to her hotel.
She could see the grim look on his face, and the way that his mouth had compressed, somehow making him look very austere and stern.
Once they were inside the hotel, Petra thought she saw him give a small curt nod in the direction of the guest relations desk and the clerk seated there, but as he bustled her towards the lift she decided that she must have imagined it.
As the lift moved upward, Petra expelled a small shaky sigh of relief.
‘You don’t know how pleased I was to see you—’ she began, but Blaize stopped her, his expression forbiddingly grim.
‘What the hell where you doing?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Why didn’t you leave? Surely you must have realised…’
The unexpected harshness of his attack coupled with its unfairness shocked her into silence.
The lift stopped and they both got out. Her legs, Petra discovered, were trembling and she felt slightly sick.
Outside her suite, she tried to open her bag to find her key card, but her fingers were shaking so much she dropped it. As she bent down to retrieve it Blaize beat her to it, picking up her bag and opening it. Absently Petra noticed how tiny it looked in his hands. He had well-groomed nails, immaculately clean, and his fingers were long and lean. The fleshy pad just below his thumb mesmerised her, and she couldn’t stop staring at it.
Distantly a part of her recognised that she was probably in shock, but that knowledge was too far away and vague for her to really comprehend it. Instead she simply accepted it gratefully as a rational explanation for the tremors that were now beginning to visibly shake her body, and the tight, aching pain that was locking her throat and preventing her from defending herself.
‘Do you realise what could have happened if the manager hadn’t…?’
‘I tried to leave,’ Petra told him, suddenly managing to speak. ‘But they wouldn’t let me.’
They were in the suite and the door was closed. Her shock suddenly