he denied. And at last turned suspiciously moist eyes in her direction. ‘They are welcoming us,’ he informed her gruffly. ‘They…’ One long-fingered hand lifted to make an expressive gesture towards the car window. ‘My people,’ he extended, ‘are welcoming us…’
Evie’s heart flipped over, the breath seized in her breast as full understanding finally hit her. His people were welcoming them and Raschid was so moved by the gesture that he could barely contain his feelings.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked softly.
‘Yes,’ he replied, but it was very obvious that he wasn’t. This had come as a real shock to him. He had not expected it and that was why it was having such a powerful effect on him.
An effect that had Evie’s own eyes glazing over as she wisely said nothing more while she gave him the chance to get himself together.
My people, he had called them. My people, in the truly possessive sense of the words. My people, whom he so obviously loved and whose love and respect he had been prepared to sacrifice for her sake.
As Evie sat there beside him while they drove between the cavalcade of lights and sounding horns that lined their route as far as the eyes could see, she finally began to understand what Raschid’s Kismet was doing for them here.
And she was humbled. Humbled by its force and by the man beside her who’d had the courage to reach out and grasp his own personal Kismet no matter what the cost might be.
For she hadn’t been the brave one here, not really. All she’d done was follow where her heart led her, but Raschid possessed two hearts, one of which had been in conflict with the other since the day he’d set eyes upon her. He must have always known that one day he was going to have to risk breaking one of those hearts. The heart that belonged here with his people, or the heart that belonged to Evie.
What he had done was place his trust in Kismet.
And this was his reward—not hers.
She was so very, very humbled by that.
‘I love you,’ she told him softly, although why she did she didn’t really know now; those words seemed so inadequate when set against all of this.
Yet he turned and smiled at her, and that smile was so warm and dark and soul-stirringly tender that she knew the words were not inadequate to him.
‘Look,’ he said then, drawing her attention back to her own window. ‘My father’s palace,’ he said.
Out there, beyond the glaring headlights, Evie found herself staring at a gold-lit stone building standing on its own raised piece of desert with a star-studded black velvet sky as its backcloth.
Surrounded on all sides by what looked like a twenty-foot-high boundary wall, complete with domed lookout towers on each of its four corners, it was as if the whole scene had leapt straight out of an Arabian nights picture book she remembered having as a child.
Awesome, mysterious, breathtakingly dramatic.
Two huge wooden gates cut into the wall swung inwards as they approached them. As tall as the wall itself, they were a commanding sight on their own, but when Evie realised that they guarded an entrance that was as deep as it was tall she began to understand what true awe was.
Inside was a vast courtyard, softly lit by concealed lighting that sparkled against fine sprinkles of water spouting from ornamental statues set within the exotic shrubs that grew in abundance on either side of the driveway.
The entrance to the house was a flower-hung archway of pure white marble. Clear blue light was seeping out from beyond it, and as the car stopped by a pebbled area that covered the last ten feet or so to the entrance Evie saw a woman step out from beneath the archway.
She was beautiful, dark-haired and slender but exquisitely rounded, and was wearing a long dark red silk dress that shimmered as she moved.
‘Ranya,’ Raschid murmured softly, and climbed out of the car to stride quickly towards her, too eager to greet his sister to remember his usually impeccable manners.
It was therefore left to Asim, who had travelled in the front of the car with them, to open Evie’s door and help her to alight.
Despite the fact that the hour was so late, the air was hot and very humid, and redolent with the fragrance of gardenia, oleander and heavily scented jasmine—all overlaid by a seductive aroma of some exotic spice Evie couldn’t quite capture. Music was playing somewhere—that distinctly Arabian sound that was so evocative of her surroundings.
Strange, alien, yet so disturbingly seductive it made her toes tingle and her heart thump heavily in her chest. Or maybe those feelings had more to do with the way Raschid and Ranya were embracing each other with an affection that reminded her of herself and Julian.
And why should they not? she asked herself. They were brother and sister—true brother and sister, born to the same mother and the only children of a man who, on the distinction alone of being a rich Arab Prince, should have produced a hundred children to a hundred different wives.
Yet he had not. Crown Prince Hashim Al Kadah had only ever taken one wife. When she’d passed away while his children were still young, he hadn’t bothered to replace her.
But then, she mused as she stood there by the car waiting to be remembered, if his wife had looked anything like his daughter Ranya, then it was perhaps understandable why the Crown Prince had never found another woman who could take his wife’s place.
It was Ranya who noticed Evie standing there, but as she went to move around her brother with the intention of coming forward Raschid stopped her with a question. Pausing, Ranya answered him, and there followed a hurried discussion in soft-voiced Arabic that to Evie, witnessing their body language, verged on the heated.
Then Ranya sighed, touched her brother’s arm with what Evie read as a gesture of sympathy, before firmly stepping around him to walk towards Evie.
After witnessing the heat in their altercation, Evie wasn’t quite sure how she should greet this new sisterinlaw of hers—with open warmth or defensive coolness? she pondered.
But the lovely creature made the decision easy. ‘At last we meet.’ Her embrace was both warm and welcoming, touching her lips to each of Evie’s cheeks. ‘I am Ranya, Raschid’s beloved sister, in case he has never bothered to mention me,’ she said with a teasing smile that literally stopped Evie’s breath because it was so like the smile her brother could use on occasion. ‘May I call you Evie, as Raschid does?’ she requested while gently urging Evie into movement.
The house waited; Evie wasn’t at all sure, now that she had come this far, that she wanted to enter it. As she drew level with Raschid, she noticed his tension was back again. ‘What now?’ she whispered tautly.
He didn’t answer; instead he reached for her hand then turned grimly to the archway. In silence they walked into his father’s home, where the hot desert air instantly tempered to a delicious coolness.
Evie found herself standing in a vast reception hallway the likes of which she had only ever seen in history books. It was as big as a moderate theatre hall, with a high domed roof elaborately decorated with pale blue and gold mosaic tilework. The floor beneath her feet was white marble, the eggshell-blue painted walls broken by a dozen archways that led off into what she suspected was a maze of corridors. Above each arch, diamond-shaped grilles covered what Evie presumed were the Arabian equivalent of interior windows where people could look down unseen on the hallway beneath.
‘This is lovely,’ Evie breathed softly.
Other than giving a brief smile of acknowledgement, Raschid seemed barely to hear her; his hand touched her arm to indicate which corridor he wanted to take. And the further they went down that corridor, the tenser he became.
‘Raschid—what is it?’ she asked anxiously, very conscious of his sister walking with them.
This time he didn’t even attempt to