CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      KATRINA was standing in the middle of the souk when she saw him. She had been about to start bargaining with the stallholder for a length of embroidered silk she had picked up, when something made her turn her head. He was standing on the other side of the narrow alleyway dressed in a traditional white disha-dasha, the sunlight filtering striking shards of light against the honey-coloured warmth of his skin, and glittering on the cruelly sharp-looking knife that was thrust into his belt.

      Sensing that he had lost her attention, the stallholder looked past her, following the direction of her helplessly enmeshed gaze.

      ‘He is from the Ayghar Tuareg Tribe,’ he said.

      Katrina made no response. She knew from the research she had done before coming out to Zuran that the Ayghar Tuaregs had been a fierce tribe of warriors who, in previous centuries, had been paid to escort the trading caravans across the desert, and the tribe still preferred their traditional nomadic way of life.

      Unlike other robed men she had seen, he was clean-shaven. His eyes, glittering over her with a haughty lack of interest, were heart-stoppingly dark amber, set with flecks of pure gold between the thickness of his black lashes.

      They, like him, reminded her of the magnificence of a dangerous predator; something, someone who could never be tamed or constrained in the cage of modern urban civilisation. This was a man of the desert, a man who made and then lived by a moral code of his own devising. There was an arrogance about his features and his stance that both appalled her and yet at the same time compelled her to keep looking at him.

      And he had a dangerously passionate mouth!

      An unwanted sensual shiver skittered along her spine as she was caught off guard by the unexpected detour of her own thoughts.

      She was not here in the desert kingdom of Zuran to think about men with dangerously passionate mouths. She was here as part of a visiting team of dedicated scientists working to protect the area’s natural flora and fauna, she reminded herself firmly. But still she couldn’t stop watching him.

      Seemingly oblivious of her, he glanced up and down the alleyway of the busy bazaar. It truly was a scene from an Arabian fantasy come to life, at least so far as Katrina was concerned, although she knew that her boss, Richard Walker, would have derided her contemptuously if she were ever to say so in his presence. But she didn’t want to think about Richard. Despite the fact that she had made it plain to him that she wasn’t interested in him, and in addition to the fact that he was a married man, Richard had been subjecting her to a toxic mix of unpleasant sexual interest combined with outright nastiness when she rejected his advances.

      Just thinking about Richard and his unwanted pursuit of her was enough to make her shrink back into the shadows of the stall. Immediately the amber gaze found and trapped her, pillaging the shadows for her, and making her shrink instinctively even further into them without seeking to analyse why she should feel the need to do such a thing.

      But even though the shadows were surely concealing her, she could see that he had focused on exactly where she was. Her heart drummed a warning tattoo, and she could feel an anxious beading of perspiration break out on her skin.

      A group of black-robed and veiled women walking down the alleyway came between them, cutting off her view of him and, she hoped, his view of her. By the time they had gone and she could see him again it was obvious that he had lost interest in her because he was turning away, pulling the loose end of the indigo-dyed cloth wrapped around his head over his face as he did so, so that only his eyes could be seen, in the traditional manner of men of the Tuareg tribe. Then, with his back to her, he turned to enter the doorway behind him, his height forcing him to duck his head.

      Katrina noticed that the hand he had placed on the door frame was lean and brown, long-fingered, his nails well cared for. A small frown pleated her forehead. She knew a great deal about the nomad tribes of the Arabian desert and their history and it struck her sharply how much of an anomaly it was, both that a supposed Tuareg tribesman should go against centuries of tradition and reveal his face for the world to see, and additionally that a member of a tribe so well known for their indigo-dyed clothes that they were often referred to as ‘blue men’ should have such manicured hands that would not disgrace a millionaire businessman.

      Her stomach muscles tensed and her heart lurched against her ribs. She was no foolish, impressionable girl ready to believe that every man in a disha-dasha was a powerful leader of men, and nor was she hiding some secret fantasy desire for sex in the sand with such a man! She was a qualified scientist of twenty-four! And yet…

      As he finally disappeared through the doorway she let out her pent-up breath in a leaky sigh of relief.

      ‘You want this? It’s very fine silk…Very fine. And a very good price.’

      Obediently she gave her attention to the silk. It was gossamer-fine and just the right shade of ice-blue for her own strawberry-blonde colouring. Because she was out in public on her own, she had taken the precaution of scraping her hair back off her face and tucking it up into the deep brimmed hat she was wearing.

      But in such a fabric her body could be tantalisingly semi-revealed by its gauzy layers, and she could let her hair down in a silken cloud as a man with golden