Izzy couldn’t understand what the problem was at the airport in Zenara. She had disembarked from the plane, shown her documentation and then somehow everything had gone wrong and, instead of being left free to go about her business, she had been ushered into a small office for an interview.
The heat was killing her, the small fan on the desk in front of her making little impression on her condition. Her cotton top and linen trousers were sticking to her perspiring flesh and her brow was damp.
An older man entered and gave her a small tight smile. ‘Miss Campbell. I am sorry for this inconvenience,’ he told her.
Izzy went limp with relief at finally meeting someone who could speak her language. ‘I don’t understand why I’m not being allowed to leave the airport.’
‘We have certain entrance requirements for unaccompanied single women and I’m afraid you don’t meet the regulations,’ he told her.
Izzy tilted her chin, not in the mood for some silly form of bureaucracy after sitting trapped in that claustrophobic room for more than an hour. ‘In what way?’
‘You have not stated your business in Zenara.’
‘I said I was a tourist,’ Izzy protested.
‘You have booked a hotel for only three nights and have not booked a return flight. Unfortunately, this sends up certain flags in our system. If you have any friends or connections in Zenara who could vouch for your character, please give me their details now and I will contact them.’
Izzy blinked. ‘The only person I know in Zenara is Prince Rafiq...’
The silence of shock that fell then pleased her because she was so tired, so hungry and so darned hot that she was utterly miserable and all she wanted was out of the blasted airport into the air-conditioned cool of a hotel.
‘And this...er...acquaintance?’ the older man began very awkwardly, clearly not sure how best to proceed when it came to questioning someone with a possible link to the royal family.
Something in Izzy snapped then, something like the last link to her sanity, because she had just had enough and she breathed wearily, ‘He is the father of my child.’
At that point the world around Izzy went crazy as cries of disbelief, shock and rapped-out exchanges in a foreign language broke out over her head. Overpowered by it all, she stood up because her back was aching and she was feeling queasy. An ocean of darkness instantly enfolded her, and she dropped without a sound into a dead faint. Pandemonium broke out while she was unconscious and rushed into an ambulance with a police escort.
Izzy surfaced back to consciousness in a bedroom so splendid that she was disorientated. Not a hospital, not a hotel either. Still fully clothed, only her shoes removed, she was lying on a grand four-poster bed with a trio of doctors standing at the foot of it, giving names that she instantly forgot while assuring her that she was in the safest of places because she was in theroyalpalace.
Frozen back against the pillows by that startling information, she blinked rapidly, wishing that she could think clearly and less like a zombie. Without warning, the bedroom door opened and heads started dipping in a show of respect and Rafiq strode in, the proud lineaments of his bronzed and flawless features inhumanly calm and collected for a single man who’d had a woman announce at the airport that he was the father of her child. The airport, for goodness’ sake! Izzy could feel hot colour sweeping from her head to toes, her fury with Rafiq eclipsed entirely at that moment by the situation she was in. He had to think she was a madwoman but nothing that he might be thinking or feeling was showing on the surface.
Involuntarily, her attention lingered on him. The high cheekbones and strong hollows, the blade-straight black brows, the stunning deep-set eyes fringed by those outrageous thick lashes. Get over it, he’s gorgeous, it’s not relevant right now, she scolded herself anxiously as he sank down with fluid grace for so large a man in the chair by the bed and reached for her hand in a startlingly supportive gesture.
‘How are you feeling?’ Rafiq asked graciously, for all the world as though they had only parted as close friends in recent days, instead of the weeks that had passed since their last explosive meeting. Her fingers trembled in the light grasp of his.
‘Groggy,’ she muttered truthfully, gently removing her fingers from his hold while striving not to make a production out of the withdrawal. She was painfully aware that they were not alone, and she was keen to follow his example and behave as though everything between them were normal. ‘Think I’m just tired...’
‘You must rest, of course,’ Rafiq murmured quietly. ‘Beforehand, however, the doctors are asking if they could have your consent to carry out an ultrasound procedure...?’
In awe of his self-assurance, his ability to act as though there were nothing crazy about the situation, she nodded jerkily. ‘Yes, that would be fine, I suppose. Though it might be too early to see much...’
He was sheathed like a rapier blade in a pale grey suit teamed with a white shirt and a red silk tie. Her eyes continually tracked a path back to him, connecting with scorching gold semi-screened by his black lashes, and in the depths of his steady gaze she caught the merest glimpse of all the strong emotion and reaction he was suppressing for the sake of appearances, she assumed. He was so strong, so self-disciplined, she recognised, uncomfortable with that moment of truth and deliberately turning her head away. What on earth had got into her at the airport to say such a thing? Inside herself, she cringed at her reckless impulsive revelation, recalling the astounded response she had drawn from her audience before she fainted.
An ultrasound machine was wheeled in for the scan. A nurse rolled up Izzy’s cotton tunic top a few inches and Izzy lifted her hips to enable the stretchy waistband of her casual trousers to be rolled down a little, baring her still-flat stomach. The transponder ball rubbed over her exposed skin and goosebumps broke out on her skin as a galloping heartbeat began to thunder through the room and she gasped, peering in wonder at the screen the operator was indicating to her, breaking into a flood of words in her own language with a huge smile.
‘T-twins...’ Rafiq stammered in a hoarse undertone. ‘You are carrying twins. It is too early as yet to know the gender, but the doctor believes that they are fraternal, not identical.’
His hand had found hers again, she didn’t know when or how, was, indeed, in too much shock to notice anything beyond the screen where the operator was beaming and chattering away, outlining the two tiny vague bean shapes while their heartbeats went on thundering. Twins, she thought in wonderment, with an undernote of panic because her mother had shared what a challenge it had often been to raise two babies. And yet there they were, already part of her, she acknowledged, struggling to concentrate as Rafiq translated the information she was being given as well as the round after round of hearty congratulations delivered to them both as though they were a proper couple.
In the aftermath of all that excitement, Izzy felt drained and her head flopped back heavily on the pillow. Although their audience had melted away with the promise of pictures of the scan to be brought back later, Izzy was too exhausted to deal with Rafiq and all the many complications that their situation would unleash. Mercifully he seemed to understand that because he released her hand and stood up.
‘You should rest now. We will talk later,’ he murmured unevenly, something ragged in his voice that tugged at her, but her eyelids were too heavy to open and she drifted off to sleep on that last abstracted thought.
Rafiq had been plunged into a state of earth-shattering shock. In fact, he had to walk out of the palace into the ornamental garden that fronted it to deal with that shock because he didn’t have the slightest doubt that, when Izzy had conceived within such a time frame,hewas responsible. That far, he had innate trust in her. He was going to be a father. His bodyguards waited at the edge of the garden, watching Rafiq wander around the lavender-edged paths that traversed the tranquil stretch of green grass, maintained at such huge expense of water in the Zenarian heat. Throughout that aimless wandering he was battling to adapt to the idea that he could trulyhaveachildof his own.
And it was anenormousshock because Rafiq had long accepted that he was infertile, and that fatherhood would never be an option for him. Yet, one little contraceptive accident and Izzy had conceived. How likely was that? What had happened to that birth control she had been taking?
But he genuinely didn’t care. He wassograteful, so ecstatic that itwaspossible for him to father a child that he could barely catch a breath. Such a development lifted all the weighty responsibility from his little brother’s shoulders because Zayn would no longer be expected to marry to provide an heir to the Zenarian throne. Zayn would be left free as Rafiq had once dreamt of being and, in being free, he would set Rafiq free of guilt and concern.