‘I thought that if I held you, you might stop moving around so much and keeping me awake!’ Rafiq grated. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to sharing a bed with anyone.’
‘You were married for ten years,’ Izzy threw back at him. ‘How is that possible?’
‘We didn’t share a room,’ Rafiq ground out.
Disconcerted by that admission, Izzy swivelled back to the sofa by the wall that she had been considering for what remained of the night hours. With a sigh, she curled up on it and closed her eyes. ‘What sort of a marriage was it in which you didn’t even share a room?’ she prompted with helpless curiosity.
‘I will not discuss that.’
Rafiq swore in his own language and sprang out of bed. Izzy opened her eyes again on over six feet of angry naked masculinity stooping over her and snatching her up off the sofa to settle her firmly back down on the bed. ‘You are not sleeping any place else but this bed!’ he thundered down at her.
‘Rafiq…the domestic tyrant,’ Izzy murmured softly. ‘It’s kind of sexy.’
Seriously perturbed by that unexpected comeback, Rafiq froze, for that was one word he would never have applied to himself. He shook off the label again. It was a superficial, silly comment, not intended to mean anything, certainly not any kind of invitation when she was so angry with him. ‘We’ll talk over breakfast,’ he breathed in a driven undertone.
He would lay the facts out for her then. After all, the woman he remembered had been reasonable and rational. Presumably she retained those traits, even if she wasn’t displaying them at the moment. Of course, he reminded himself ruefully, just like him she was struggling to deal with a situation she had not foreseen and the sudden destruction of her immediate plans for the future. If he made it clear that she could still walk away and have that future, he would be offering her a practical solution.
* * *
Izzy wakened and, finding herself alone in the bed, wasted no time in taking advantage of the privacy. Showering and washing her hair, she chose capri pants and a tee to wear, her small case and even smaller wardrobe for a hot climate not offering much of a choice. Her brain felt clear again and her anxiety level soothed, leaving her feeling equipped to deal with whatever Rafiq had to throw at her over breakfast.
The quiet little maid was waiting in the bedroom to escort her out into a long stone corridor and through a doorway into very bright light. The heat engulfed her like a blanket, disconcerting her after the air-conditioned cool of the interior of the building. She was ushered down a flight of steps and into the merciful shade of palm trees to find herself standing in a very pretty courtyard, crammed with lush tropical plants.
‘I didn’t realise how hot it would be,’ she muttered, suddenly plunged back into awkwardness as Rafiq, immaculate in yet another designer-cut suit, sprang up from the table set beneath the trees. ‘I haven’t been abroad very often. Well, we only ever had one foreign holiday,’ she told him reluctantly, not wanting to sound like a deprived child because she loved her parents very much and did not want to sound in any way critical of them.
No way was she about to tell Rafiq, with the kind of wealth she assumed he had, that money had always been a problem in her family and that the single holiday to more exotic climes she had enjoyed only a couple of years earlier had occurred when one of her father’s business ventures unexpectedly did well. Of course, the doing well hadn’t lasted—it never did—and the business had eventually gone down in a torrent of debt, plunging them back into the normality of being a family for whom a holiday was a dream luxury.
‘Where did the holiday take you?’ Rafiq murmured easily, accustomed to setting people at ease in his presence, watching her settle nervously into the chair tugged out by one of the servants hovering.
‘Spain. Matt was able to get down in the sand and act like a little boy for a change,’ she recalled fondly of her little brother, whose need for a wheelchair prevented him from enjoying many of the pursuits available to an able-bodied child.
‘You are close to your family,’ Rafiq gathered, having watched her expressive face light up. ‘I am very fond of my brother. I will introduce you to him soon. He is at school right now.’
‘School’s not something I miss,’ Izzy muttered in what she knew had to sound like a gabbling rush but, really, continuing to look across the table at a guy who took your every single breath away at one glance was challenging. ‘Maya was horribly bullied because she was so beautiful and clever. I was average.’
‘I don’t see you as average,’ Rafiq cut in.
Izzy shrugged a tiny thin shoulder and ignored that pointed remark. ‘You said we were going to talk. You don’t need to work through this getting-to-know-you stuff to be polite with me.’
Rafiq breathed in deep and slow. ‘Our children can only be recognised here if their parents are married. Obviously I want the children to have that option, to be able to take their place in Zenara as royals if they wish.’
Izzy had tensed and she sipped at her tea. ‘But when you were talking yesterday, you didn’t make it sound like being royal in Zenara was really that enjoyable,’ she reminded him drily.
‘I was raised in a totally different way from the way I will raise my own children. It was a different time in my country’s history and a different set of circumstances. But neither of us can know what our children will want when they are grown up,’ Rafiq reasoned. ‘Don’t you want them to have a free choice?’
Grudgingly, Izzy nodded because she hadn’t thought through
