Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

his child. Rafiq would have to man up and handle the situation and that was his problem, not hers!
It cost a small fortune to book a flight to Zenara and, by the time she had booked and paid for a hotel for three nights as well, she didn’t have enough money left to book a return flight. But she was quite sure that bathroom guy with his private jet and his reputed billions would ensure that she swiftly got home again, she thought bitterly. He would want her smuggled out of the country again where she couldn’t cause His Royal Highness any further embarrassment!
Rafiq had lied to her, she reminded herself, because it wasn’t like her to be bitter and angry but that was what the whole experience of Rafiq, his lies and evasions and an unexpected pregnancy had done to her. Instead of feeling able to rejoice in the baby she carried, she felt ashamed because love hadn’t featured in that conception, not as it had in her parents’ case. And Rafiq had hurt her pride and her heart, of course he had. She had been well on the way to tumbling into an infatuation with him. She hadn’t realised that she wasn’t on a level playing field. She hadn’t even suspected that she could be dealing with a real VIP, a foreign royal, no doubt accustomed to taking his sexual pleasure where he found it even if it meant wining and dining a humble student cleaner to seduce her into bed!
* * *
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 the royal palace.
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