Innocent in the Desert: The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin / The Sheikh's Convenient Virgin / The Desert Lord's Bride

She angled an assessing glance at her late-night caller, and struggled to be objective. It was hard when the person you were trying to be objective about oozed animal magnetism…. It was frankly distracting even for someone like her, who did not go for the muscular macho type.

As she continued to subject the strong lines of his handsome face to a critical scrutiny the last sparks of annoyance in her green eyes morphed into anxiety. Despite that sinfully sexy mouth he did have the look of the walking wounded.

Had the Prince done the equivalent of walking away from a burning car? She was no paramedic, but the man standing there looking back at her but, she suspected, not actually seeing her seemed to be suffering from a similar trauma. And if the purple shadows under his eyes and the deep lines of strain bracketing his sensual mouth were any indicator, galloping exhaustion.

Concern conquered caution, common sense and instinct—the latter was telling her to close the door. She heaved a sigh and tried to inject a note of enthusiasm into her voice as she said abruptly, ‘You’d better come inside. I’m assuming you are the Prince?’ It didn’t seem a big assumption considering the hauteur he projected even in this clearly tormented condition.

He started slightly at the sound of her voice as if he’d forgotten she was there and his glazed eyes narrowed on her face. Eva was conscious of a strange sensation trickling down her spine.

‘I’m Karim Al-Nasr.’ The furrow between his dark brows deepened as his eyes swept her upturned features. There was too much intelligence lurking in those troubled depths to call his expression vacant, but he continued to look at her with an uncomprehending lack of recognition and the sensation she had noted stopped being a tickle and turned into a flood that spread out across her skin, crackling like an unearthed electrical current just beneath the surface.

‘I’m not sure why I’m here.’ His eyes narrowed to silver slits. ‘Do I know you?’ His voice dropped to little more than a husky murmur as his veiled glance brushed across her bright head, following the fall of the tousled curls as they fell down her shoulders. It made the fine hair on Eva’s arms stand on end. ‘Red hair, like flames …’

Heavens! The man could invite sin with a single syllable.

Eve had read of bedroom voices, but this was the first time she’d ever heard one—deep with an abrasive rasp beneath the rich velvet smoothness that was wickedly seductive.

‘I wouldn’t have forgotten that.’

He sounded as positive as she had yet heard him about this and Eva self-consciously reached a hand to drag a tangled Titian skein from her face.

‘Once seen never forgotten.’ Which for some people might be a good thing, but for someone like Eva, who didn’t enjoy drawing attention to herself, it was not. ‘We had a date, Prince,’ she reminded him bluntly.

And after all the names she had called him it looked as if he had a legitimate excuse not to show. What she wasn’t sure of was why he had shown up now, here of all places.

The frown that dug grooves into his broad smooth forehead tugged his strongly defined ebony brows into a straight line above his patrician nose.

‘Did we …? Yes, you’re King Hassan’s lost princess …’ The comprehension that had flared in his eyes faded as he appeared to lose track of what he was saying once more.

From the look on his face Eva got the strong impression that the place his thoughts had gone was not fun. Lost, he’d called her—it looked to Eva as if he were the lost one!

As she watched he swayed slightly and put out a hand to steady himself, clearly dead on his feet. Struggling against a swell of empathy, Eva let the hand she’d instinctively raised fall back to her side.

Even though her next move was obvious and Eva had never had trouble extending a helping hand to someone in trouble in her life, continuing to encourage this man over her threshold was one of the hardest things she had ever done.

Not only was she utterly sure that under normal circumstances he was the total antithesis of vulnerable, but she knew—every instinct, particularly the ones that did not work on a logical level, was telling her—that the kindly gesture would have unforeseen repercussions.

You’re being dramatic, Eva, she told herself, squaring her shoulders and murmuring, ‘Get a grip.’ Anyway, what choice did she have? She could hardly close the door in his face. Gritting her teeth, she took a sustaining gulp of air and, reaching out, laid a hand tentatively on his arm.

He appeared not to notice the hand, but she noticed the muscular hardness—it was hard to miss.

‘Come inside, erm … Prince,’ she said, pitching her voice to a soothing level as her fingers closed over muscles that did not give. Bad idea, said the voice in her head as her unselective stomach muscles responded to the innocent contact with a less than innocent series of butterfly kicks.

‘Inside …?’ she repeated hoarsely.

After a moment he responded. Eva’s relief was short-lived as the voice in her head very legitimately asked once more, What do you think you’re doing, Eva?

She said, ‘Duck,’ a moment too late and he didn’t. The top of his dark head—the man towered over her; he had to be at least six four—connected in a glancing blow that he appeared not to notice with the doorjamb.

‘Oh, my God, be careful!’ she groaned.

Explaining a royal prince with a fractured skull to the emergency services would really make the day complete.

‘Are you all right?’

‘All right?’ Karim repeated, lifting a hand to his head. His fingers came away damp and stained red. He couldn’t feel a thing, he felt weirdly disconnected from his body. Sleep deprivation, he thought as he made a concerted effort to clear the fog in his brain and in a moment of lucidity thought this was more than lack of sleep. Before he could figure what the more was, the moment passed.

He still retained the recognition that he ought not to be here. He was meant to be at the hospital … Amira was there and his inability to do anything was driving him slowly out of his mind.

How ironic was it he could influence the political stability of an entire region with a few well-considered words, he could transform the day to save the lives of an entire community by delivering power and running water, but when it came to his own child he was powerless … he had to stand and watch as she endured pain … as she slipped away from him?

He should prepare himself. Karim closed his eyes, rejecting the advice.

Preparing implied a resignation that he did not and would not feel.

‘I should go,’ he said, inhaling the scent of this woman’s body and wanting not to stop.

Please, Eva thought, and immediately felt guilty. It was odd, but when she looked at him her usually abundant kindness to strangers went out of the window. Any number of other things happened when she looked, but Eva was grimly determined not to go there.

Where’s your heart, Eva? she asked herself. She wouldn’t show a stray cat the door looking as he did. Of course, he wasn’t a stray cat, and if he had been this would have been a lot simpler.

‘I think you should sit down for a moment, Mr … Prince.’ The title sounded so ludicrous she fought off a smile. Then as she tilted her head back to look into his face, she lost all desire to smile … He really was stupendous to look at. ‘I could call a doctor …?’

‘No doctor!’ The hazy look was gone from the eyes that drilled into her like silvered surgical scalpels.

‘All right,’ she said, not willing to push the point. It was, after all, none of her business. ‘A cup of tea, then.’

‘A cup of tea?’ he repeated with a frown.

‘I don’t have anything stronger,’ she said apologetically, thinking, More’s the pity. She could do with something to steady her nerves.

His glazed gaze strayed from her face, wandered towards her hair, and an expression of edgy fascination that made her heart rate quicken spread across his lean face.

He lifted his hand and reached out. The gesture had all the hallmarks of compulsion as he touched her hair. Eva stiffened and thought, Don’t just stand there, do something, as she felt the light pressure of his long fingers moving across the silky surface.

In her head she had pulled back; in reality she stayed nailed to the spot, her heart racing as he lifted one strand and then another and let them fall through his fingers. As his brown fingers sank deeper, grazing her scalp, a tremor that reached her toes passed through Eva’s body.

‘Like silk … a flame …’

His voice broke the spell and with a gasp she stepped back, breathing hard. She dragged both hands through her hair, tucking it behind her ears as she tightened the knot on her towel and cleared her throat. The entire ‘naked under the layer of towelling’ thing had intensified the illicit thrill of being touched with such casual intimacy by this incredible-looking stranger.

‘Look, I think …’ She stopped. He wasn’t looking, at least not at her, which was a relief. It made it easier for her to think, not to mention breathe. If what this man exuded like a force field could be isolated and marketed no woman would be safe!

And she’d invited him in. Really great idea, Eva!

‘Sit down,’ she suggested hopefully—if he didn’t move of his own accord, she was in trouble. He was a big man and all of it was solid muscle.

Do not go there, Eva, she told herself as her stomach flipped.