CHAPTER ONE

      HE RECOGNISED HER straight away, though it took him a moment to remember why. Xan Constantinides gazed at the tiny redhead whose thick curls were tumbling over her shoulders and a flicker of something between desire and anger whispered across his skin. But he welcomed the distraction—however temporary—which allowed him to forget the promise he had made so long ago. Was it the wedding of one of his oldest friends which had pushed the unavoidable into prominence, or just the march of time itself? Because it was easy to believe that nothing would change. You acted as if the fast days weren’t spinning into years. And then suddenly there it was—the future—and with it all those expectations...

       A marriage he had agreed to.

      A destiny he had always been determined to honour.

      But there was no point in thinking about it now, not with a packed weekend lying ahead of him. Friendship and a valuable business partnership dictated he must attend the wedding of his friend the Sheikh, even though he usually avoided such events like the plague.

      Xan returned his attention to the redhead. She was sitting on her own in the small terminal of the private airfield, waiting to board the luxury flight, the fiery disarray of her hair marking her out from the other women. Her clothes marked her out too and not simply because they were a far cry from the skimpy little cocktail dress she’d been wearing last time he’d seen her—an outfit which had sent his imagination soaring into overdrive, as it had obviously been intended to do.

      Xan slanted her an assessing glance. Today there was no tight black satin Basque or skyscraper heels, nor fishnet stockings which had encased the most delicious pair of legs he had ever seen. No. She had taken the word casual and elevated it to a whole new level. Along with a pair of tennis shoes, she was wearing cut-off jeans which displayed her pale, freckled ankles and a plain green T-shirt which echoed the cat-like magnificence of her emerald eyes.

      It was the eyes he remembered most. And the slender figure which had failed to fill out the curved dimensions of her skimpy uniform, unlike her over-endowed waitress colleagues who had been bursting out of theirs. And the way she had spilt the Old-Fashioned cocktail all over the table as she bent to serve him. The dripping concoction had caught his trouser leg—icy liquid spreading slowly over his thigh. He remembered flinching and the woman he’d been with snatching up her napkin to blot at it with attentive concern, even though he’d been in the middle of telling her that their relationship was over.

      Xan’s lips flattened. The redheaded waitress had straightened up and mouthed an apology but the defiant glint in her green eyes had suggested the sentiment wasn’t genuine. For a moment he had found himself wondering if it had been a gesture of deliberate clumsiness on her part—but surely nobody would be that stupid?

      Would they?

      And now here she was in the most unexpected of places—waiting to board a luxury flight to the wedding of Sheikh Kulal Al Diya to the unknown Englishwoman, Hannah Wilson. Idly, Xan switched his cellphone to airplane mode as the redhead began to scrabble around inside an oversized bag which looked as if it had seen better days. Was she also a guest at the glittering royal marriage? His lips curved with something like contempt. Hardly. She was much more likely to have been hired to work at what was being described as the most glitzy wedding the desert region had seen for a decade. And in a country which demanded the most modest of dress codes, it was unlikely that she would be showing as much of her body as last time.

      Pity.

      Sliding the phone into his pocket, he allowed himself the faintest smile as she glanced up to notice him staring at her and a spark of something powerful passed between them. A full-blooded spark of sexual desire which fizzled almost tangibly in the air. Her magnificent eyes widened with disbelief. He saw the automatic thrust of her nipples against the thin T-shirt and his groin tightened in response.

      Sometimes, Xan thought, with a frisson of anticipation, sometimes fate handed you something you hadn’t even realised you wanted.

      * * *

      It was him.

      It was definitely him.

      What were the chances?

      Somehow Tamsyn managed to stop her jaw from dropping—but only just. She’d been expecting the great and the good to be gathered together here at this small airport, ready to board the royal flight which would whisk them to Zahristan, but she hadn’t really been paying attention to the other guests as they were all being guided into the small departure lounge. She’d only just got her head around the incredible fact that her sister Hannah was about to marry a desert king and would