‘Imogen! What the hell is going on?’ thundered a voice that could only belong to a savagely shocked and furious Adnan Al Makthabi.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘F-FATHER…’
It was all Imogen could manage, even that one word being almost beyond her. What was impossible was actually looking into the corridor, after that one brief, horrified glance that had met with the blazing glare of the man who was supposed to be her bridegroom tomorrow.
Or was that today? The clock out in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs was already beginning to strike midnight, the deep, booming notes reverberating up the stairwell towards them.
‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the actual wedding…?’ Raoul drawled cynically.
Which wasn’t very far from the mark. Her brain was whirling in a lethal combination of shock and disbelief, thought processes shattered. Her eyes wouldn’t focus either so she couldn’t actually see Adnan’s face, only her sister’s white, stunned expression and her father’s features drawn in appalled disbelief.
‘What wedding?’ Adnan tossed at her, hard enough to cut through the air in the room and making it difficult to breathe.
‘Our—’ She swallowed audibly. ‘Obviously our wedding…’
‘Nothing obvious about that from where I’m standing.’
‘But Adnan…’
Everyone else had frozen into silent figures in the room. But then just as she tried to move forward, past Raoul, she found that she was grabbed, her arm gripped in a punishing hold that pulled her back against a warm, powerful, masculine form.
It was the feel of the heat of his skin against her now exposed back, the thud of his heart underneath the hard frame of his ribcage that shocked her into silence. She had forgotten—how could she have forgotten?—that, while she was wearing only the half-on, half-off nightdress with her robe falling down her back, Raoul was half-naked, barely covered by the white towel knotted at his narrow waist. Pressed up against him like this, the scent of his clean skin overlaid with the tang of lemon from his shampoo curled around her from behind, enclosing her in a sensual haze, scrambling her thoughts even further.
‘Adnan…’ she tried again, but the burning image of what he must be seeing dried her throat so that no further words would come out.
She was grateful for the blurring of her vision so she couldn’t see the anger, the betrayal, in his face. The wedding might not have been any sort of love match, but Adnan was her friend. He had also offered to help her out of the hard place in which her father had dropped her and the rest of her family. He deserved better than this.
‘This isn’t what it seems,’ she managed miserably, then, forcing a new strength into her voice, ‘Tell them, Raoul.’
Tell them, Raoul. The man who held her registered that. It had come out like a command. She might as well have accompanied it with a snap of her fingers. Obviously, she expected him to obey.
Equally obviously, that was the last thing he planned right now.
For one thing, he had never jumped to any woman’s command and he didn’t intend to start now. For another, one which was starting to become much more important, the feel of her pressed up against him like this was scrambling his thoughts. He had forgotten how it felt to be this close to her. To feel the soft, warm silk of her skin against his. The black fall of her hair slithered over his shoulders, his chest, delicate strands of it catching against the evening’s growth of beard and tangling in the stubble. And her neat behind was pressed close up against him, his erection against the cleft between her buttocks.
The effect on him would be obvious if she moved. And that would clearly only make things so much worse. Not that he gave a damn if it ruined Imogen’s chances. Wasn’t that what he had come here for in the first place?
‘No need for it to be explained,’ he drawled, pulling Imogen back against him as she tried to move away towards her fiancé.
If Al Makthabi was still her fiancé after this. Surely the other man would thank him for freeing him from marriage to a woman who was only after him for his money?
‘This is exactly what it seems.’