‘Don’t we always?’ Maya sighed. ‘Look, I’m heading home for a couple of nights. Mum has a chest infection and she’ll need help with Matt for a couple of days. It’s not serious but you know how out of breath and tired she gets.’
Izzy nodded while piling vegetables into the trolley for a side salad. ‘Give them my love,’ she urged, cruising by the milk and then the coffee, adding sugar and then condiments, reminding herself that she was returning to a totally empty kitchen while wondering if she should be shopping for dinner ingredients as well. No, for that she would require the official stamp of approval, she decided, because he might be a really picky eater, in fact probably was…for goodness’ sake, who didn’t eat takeout food? Nobody she had ever met.
On the other hand, she had never met anyone who used bodyguards either. What was the security all about? Maybe he was a diamond dealer? A dangerous criminal with a lot of enemies? An assassin on a top-secret government mission? Izzy entertained herself with such colourful ideas while she finished the shopping, anxiously checking her watch because the time limit Rafiq had given her was approaching fast.
It was a relief when the guard pulled out a card to pay at the checkout and, suddenly, she realised why he had been sent with her. Izzy flushed, embarrassed that she had contrived to overlook the reality that she wouldn’t have been able to cover the costs that week because she had had to cut back on shifts while swotting for her finals. Once again Maya was picking up the slack because her earning power was so much greater and Maya had already almost completed her doctorate. Still, Izzy only had one more year of living on a student budget to face, she reminded herself, but, of course, that plan was reliant on her passing her degree at an acceptable level…
There was no sign of Rafiq when she returned to the apartment and whirled around the kitchen like a maniac, quickly discovering the deficiencies of a kitchen space that nobody really expected to see much actual use. And when, rising above those deficiencies, she slid a bowl of side salad and a plate containing a perfect crisp golden omelette down on the table in front of him, she was justifiably proud of her achievement, but it still wasn’t what she would have considered to be an appropriate meal for a powerfully built man who stood at well over six feet tall.
‘You should’ve asked for something more filling,’ she scolded him helplessly. ‘I could have bought sourdough or added potatoes or rice. Of course, maybe you watch your weight or count carbs or something…’
As her flood of speculation dragged to a halt, their eyes collided and for Izzy it was like being speared by a trident. Suddenly her chest was constricted, and she couldn’t breathe and the saliva in her mouth had dried up and her heart was hammering fit to burst.
‘Are there men who count carbs?’ Rafiq asked with sudden interest, utterly ignoring the hovering guard who was supposed to first taste every dish set in front of his Prince and hoping he took the hint that that rule was finally being broken.
‘The bodybuilding ones do. For goodness’ sake, I know men who wear more make-up than I do!’
Deeply entertained by the conversation, because the people he met were usually very careful to steer the dialogue through safe, very conservative and often boring channels calculated not to offend him in any way, Rafiq sent her a flashing smile of appreciation. ‘Sit down and talk to me while I eat,’ he urged.
Taken aback by the suggestion and spellbound by that smile that lit up his lean, darkly handsome face like the sun, Izzy hovered, feeling overheated and oddly boneless as if her knees had somehow lost all necessary contact with her lower legs and feet. ‘Well…er… I was about to make you coffee and you haven’t much time.’
‘Skip the coffee. The water is fine and the omelette is superb,’ Rafiq asserted, leaning back to yank out the dining chair to his right. ‘Sit,’ he said again. ‘Do you realise that I don’t even know your name yet?’
‘Izzy Campbell. Izzy is short for Isabel but I’ve been called Izzy since I was a baby.’ Stiff with indecision, Izzy settled down into the seat. She was so close to him that she could smell him, and he emanated an inexplicably attractive aroma of sandalwood and soap and clean fresh male. For a split second she was tempted to bury her nose in him as if he were a pile of fresh laundry and colour ran up her throat to tinge her cheeks. He affected her in the weirdest ways, she acknowledged ruefully.
‘So, tell me about the men who wear make-up,’ Rafiq encouraged in the humming silence, recognising her discomfiture but spellbound by the strong zing of sexual attraction dancing in the air between them. On her part, it seemed so natural, so real, so utterly unforced and practised.
His lashes were as long and lush as black velvet fringes, Izzy noticed abstractedly as she told him about an acquaintance who, to impress a girl, had had a spray tan done in such a way as to fake the muscle definition he lacked, and Rafiq laughed in seeming astonishment. As well he might, Izzy conceded, when his own body was a masculine work of art, roped with lines of lean, strong muscle and hard abdominal definition. And then she mentioned a good friend who regularly used eyeliner to accentuate his pretty blue eyes.
With a sigh of annoyance, Rafiq checked the time on his phone and thrust away his empty plate. ‘I must leave for my appointment.’
‘You never said where you were going,’ Izzy dared to remark.
‘A business appointment,’ Rafiq lied, because the instant he mentioned the Zenara research
