The woman stared for a moment, obviously taken aback by the informal address. Then she nodded and rushed off a torrent of words, but the guttural inflections were impossible for Cat to understand.
She had to wait patiently for Kasia to finish listening to the woman’s words. Eventually her friend turned to Cat, her eyes round with shock. ‘She says, yes, the new Sheikh. The one from America. When the boy came to the palace, she says he tried many times to escape and he was punished harshly for this disobedience.’
‘Punished? How?’ Cat whispered, shocked. Why had Zane tried to escape? Had he been brought to Narabia against his will?
Cat had wondered about the circumstances of his mother’s decision to give up custody of her son. Zelda Mayhew Khan had fled Narabia not long after Zane’s birth and taken him with her—the fairy-tale romance with the Sheikh obviously not living up to the media hype. The actress had never spoken publicly about her marriage and it seemed once she had faded from the public eye, she’d struggled to find work and had a string of arrests for DUIs and disorderly conduct when Zane was in his teens. So it had made sense Zane’s father had assumed custody, but Cat had never been able to find a formal custody agreement—or a court order declaring Zelda an unfit mother—during her initial research. And she had wondered what it must have been like for a teenage boy, who had probably had minimal supervision while living with his mother, to suddenly find himself in a place like Narabia, where the customs and culture were a lot more constrained... But she hadn’t suspected anything like this.
She was trying to formulate a question, keen to discover more about Zane’s relationship with his father, when one of Nazarin’s teenage granddaughters rushed into the tiny room at the back of her shop where they were talking.
‘You must leave—the Sheikh, he comes on horseback with his men,’ she beseeched Kasia and Cat in the native language.
‘We should go,’ Kasia said. ‘He has come to find you.’
Cat’s heart pummelled her chest.
Why had he come looking for her? And why did she have the feeling the answer to that question could not be good?
She didn’t want to leave. There were so many questions she still had for Nazarin. But she could feel her granddaughter’s fear and see Kasia’s concerned expression. The last thing she wanted to do was cause any trouble for Nazarin, her family or Kasia. This could only be a misunderstanding. Yes, Zane had told her not to go anywhere unaccompanied, but she had Kasia with her. And anyway, she would have told him of this trip if he hadn’t been so reluctant to talk to her.
Thanking Nazarin, she and Kasia left the room and hurried through the stall to the courtyard.
She pulled on her headscarf and shielded her eyes against the midday sun, which was blisteringly hot now. The spice market had closed an hour ago, the heat becoming unbearable, and the stalls had been packed away. Only a few people still milled around. But some of the citizens came out of their dwellings at the thunderous sound of hooves approaching.
Cat’s breath clogged her lungs as six horsemen appeared on the ridge above the marketplace. Their shapes became distinct through the heat haze as they galloped into the courtyard. Out in front was a monstrous black stallion, the rider handling the powerful horse with consummate ease, his robes flying out behind him. He led the riders to a skidding stop in front of Cat and Kasia.
The stallion reared before his hooves crashed down only a few yards from Cat’s toes. She scrambled back. Even with the traditional face and head covering she would have recognised Zane Khan anywhere.
It seemed the locals did too, because they were already falling to their knees in his presence, Kasia included. Cat stayed upright, her whole body rigid with stunned disbelief, and something that felt
suspiciously like awe.
Ripping off his face covering, Zane Khan leaned down towards her. His blue eyes glittered with temper, shocking Cat to her core.
Why did he look so furious?
The stallion pawed the ground as if mimicking its master’s agitation as he held out a gloved hand. ‘Up. Now.’
She probably should have taken his hand and done as he asked. She hadn’t come to the market intending to anger him. She certainly hadn’t thought he would come to fetch her back—after all, he had been too busy to even speak to her for over a fortnight.
But something inside her snapped at the autocratic command. She was here to do a job; what exactly was his problem with that?
‘I’m not finished. I still have work to do here,’ she said, clasping her hands behind her back.
Zane’s curse was like a missile shot in the afternoon quiet and Cat cringed.
What was she doing? Perhaps she should do as she was told, and discuss this later, in a less public place? But before she’d had a chance to reconsider her position, he swung his leg over the saddle’s pommel and jumped down.
He stepped closer, invading her personal space, towering over her, his big body positively vibrating with fury now. ‘You’re going to get on that damn horse without an argument,’ he said in a voice low enough for only her to hear. ‘Or there will be consequences.’
Mortification burned her cheeks and neck. But the desire to appease him and his temper vanished. She’d made her position clear, patiently and politely for two whole weeks—and she refused to be treated like a disobedient child for attempting to do her job.
‘Stop bullying me,’ she said, stiffening her spine. And refusing to show how intimidated she felt. ‘I won’t have it, just because I’m smaller and weaker and a lot less powerful than you are,’ she added, keeping her voice calm and even—or as calm and even as she could while her heart was pounding against her ribs with more force than his horse’s hooves. ‘I came here to do a job—if that’s not what you want you should never have hired me.’
His face hardened, a muscle in his cheek clenching so violently she was surprised he didn’t dislocate his jaw. His eyes darkened to black, and his gaze swept over her, the heat in those deep blue eyes enough to incinerate every one of her nerve endings and make her pulse points pound.
Unbearable awareness rippled over her skin. His rich, enticing scent—soap and horse and musty male sweat—filled her senses, and desire shot through her, making her thighs loosen beneath the gossamer fabric of the robe.
Shock came first, followed by horrified confusion at her body’s reaction.