‘I don’t know.’

The honest response drew a forbidding frown.

‘Look, I won’t be a second…’ she called back as she ran to catch Luke. While she was answerable to nobody about whom she shared her bed with—up to this point no one—she felt an urgent need to put the record straight, and she really didn’t want Luke to leave with the wrong idea.

KARIM walked into the minuscule sitting room, his eyes moving immediately to the face of the clock sitting on the mantle. He grimaced and felt a fresh surge of guilt when he thought of Amira waking up and him not being there.

And why wouldn’t he be there? Even with hazy recall the answer did not require hours of deep analysis—it was right there in the waking impressions that lingered in his head.

Lithe pale limbs, warm soft curves, skin like satin and a supple body curved into his.

His mouth curved into a grimace of self-contempt even as his body hardened in response to the memory. During the barren years of marriage he had turned control of his passions into an art form, but inexplicably that control had deserted him at the worst possible moment.

A muscle worked in his lean jaw emphasising the hollows beneath his strongly etched cheekbones as Karim considered what the moment of inexplicable weakness combined with the scheming of a woman was going to cost him.

The irony was he couldn’t even remember the pleasure he was about to pay so dearly for—that part of the night remained a total blank.

The same could not be said for all of the night. A brooding frown on his face, he walked to the window and glanced down at the street below. Any faint hopes he nurtured that this specific section of intact memory was not real died an instant death.

The stationary car opposite was depressingly real. He turned away and wondered how long it would take for the information his granddaughter had spent the night with Karim Al-Nasr to reach King Hassan.

Of the King’s reaction there was no similar question. While the ruler of Azharim was not a man who was averse to change, tradition and honour were two things he placed highly. Karim had offered him an insult and only one response would make that insult forgivable.

Karim closed his eyes and, his expression harsh with selfrecrimination, wondered if there was a fatal flaw in his makeup.

Was he preordained to make the same mistake over and over again? Recognising the self-pity insidiously creeping into his thinking, he pushed away the thought, firm in his belief such a mindset was for men who could not accept responsibility for their own actions.

No excuses, no extenuating circumstances and no amount of extraordinary red hair changed the fact he had messed up and he would pay.

The depth of his own stupidity was still hard for him to fully grasp. He inhaled through flared nostrils and, exerting the control that had let him down the previous night, he pushed away a subject he had no time to explore right now and estimated how long it would take him to get to the hospital.

He found his jacket and retrieved the phone from the pocket, punched in a number while shrugging on his shirt. The dampness brought back the memory of rain…and walking.

Tariq picked up immediately.

Karim, his shoulder hunched to hold the phone while he buttoned his shirt, was thrown by the deep sigh of relief that reverberated down the line. His calm and ultra-composed right hand then threw him some more when Tariq proceeded to launch into a breathless emotional monologue that inexplicably involved a central theme of choked, almost tearful self-recrimination.

When he began to repeat himself Karim, bemused by the uncharacteristic overreaction, felt it time to interrupt.

‘I’m sorry I gave Security the slip, but you are hardly responsible for that, and I am no longer a child, Tariq.’ Tariq, who had known him since he was assigned bodyguard duty when Karim was ten, sometimes had to be gently reminded of this. ‘I can look after myself.’ Though after last night this was open to debate.

Far from being soothed, Tariq appeared even more agitated when he replied, ‘When the room was discovered empty we did not know where you had gone and I thought…This is my fault. I am so sorry. I did what I thought was best.’

Karim’s bemused frown deepened. ‘Best?’

‘You recall that sedation…the sleeping draft the hospital doctor prescribed…’

‘I recall throwing it away.’ Karim was not a fan of quick fixes and even less of numbed emotions. He would face what he must with all his wits about him and sleep, when it came, would be natural, not drug-induced.

‘I retrieved it.’

‘You retrieved it,’ Karim echoed, his tone neutral as the last piece of the puzzle he hadn’t known existed clicked into place in his head.

It was a very loud click! And things made more sense. Not that being drugged counted as a ‘get out of jail’ card when applied to sleeping with a royal princess of a close political ally.

‘Yes, and I put it in the tea.’

Karim exhaled. The tea…at least now he knew why he had been wandering the streets. It had not been temporary insanity brought on by stress; it had been drugs!

‘I was most afraid that you had come to some harm…’

You have no idea, old friend, Karim thought, pressing the phone to his chest. He knew it would be a mistake to speak at that moment and say something he might regret…even though it would make him feel a lot better in the short term!

The idea that anyone thought they knew what was best for him did not sit well at any time with Karim, but the knowledge that this particular piece of monumental interference was going to have dire consequences only increased his level of outrage.

If it had been anyone else but Tariq who had been watching his back since he was a child, anyone else but Tariq who clearly already was consumed with guilt…

He closed his eyes and, lifting the phone, reminded himself that it was weakness to yell at someone who was not in a position to yell back.

‘That was very resourceful of you.’

‘Of course I will formally submit my resignation and in the meantime—’

Karim, his tone brisk and impatient, cut across the stilted speech. ‘In the meantime, Tariq, you will send a car to flat 11 A Church Mansions, and if you drug me again we will definitely fall out…’

There was a pause before he heard a fervent, ‘Yes, Prince Karim.’

How could he punish a man who always had his best interest at heart, a man who offered him unswerving loyalty? ‘Is Amira awake yet…?’

‘No…no…she is still asleep. Church Mansions…is that not the address of King Hassan’s gran—?’

‘Yes, it is. You, Tariq, can be the first to congratulate me, and if King Hassan tries to contact me before I return send him my compliments and tell him I will speak to him personally at the first opportunity.’

He was sliding his phone back into his pocket when the sound of voices in the hallway that had been a constant background noise stopped. Into the ensuing silence he heard a distinctive click as the door closed.

Karim sensed rather than heard her enter the room. He could feel her eyes on him but did not immediately turn his head. When he did she froze in the act of taking a step towards him, uncertainty reflected in her emerald-green eyes. For a moment her eyes held his, then her eyes and her half-outstretched hand fell in unison.

Karim turned his gaze from her burnished head, conscious as he did so of the rage and hunger so deeply entwined when he looked at her that attempting to separate the emotions was pointless.

‘Luke’s gone.’ And to her annoyance he hadn’t believed a word she’d said.

Oh, well, there was a silver lining at least. Now Luke was not going to be spreading stories about her alleged virginity—any sniggers were going to be about one-night stands, which was, as it happened, marginally less embarrassing.