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‘I’d appreciate it if you would just leave’

Shethis over and done with Hunk or not, he had invaded her world just at the worst possible moment

She had so little time to spare Correction—she had no time to spare No time at all for herself, no time between her and the future, the fate that had once seeal transfer of the cottage and everything else she was leaving behind And that was always supposing that she could persuade the ive her just two days race

Just forty-eight more hours It would mean so little to him, except as a delay in the mission he’d been sent on, but it would mean the world to her—and to Harry A tiny bubble of tension lurched up into her throat and burst there painfully as she thought about the pro

‘I’ll be there, sweetheart, I pro stand in my way’

And she wouldn’t, she had vowed She had just enough tih this special time, and then make it back ho would never ever come true Back to face the prospect of a future that had been signed away from her with the dictates of a peace treaty, the plans of other people sothat e that Harry would never be trapped as she had been Her father knew nothing about hi rather than let him find out

But that had been before she had received the unwelco would be here ht hours earlier The vital forty-eight hours she needed

And now here was this eous but totally unwelco what little was left of her privacy, and holding her up when she needed to be on her way

‘Leave right now,’ she added, the uneasy feelings in hermore emphasis to her words, a hard-voiced stress that she would never have shown under any other circu a nervous need to sla wasconviction that if she didn’t get rid of hi to ruin her plans completely

‘I think not’

She only just heard his low-toned words under her own sharp gasp of shock as the door hit against soe at its base She suddenly becaly aware of the way that he hadpredator, fir one booted foot between the wood and its fraered hand flashed out to sla it back with an ease that denied the brutal force he was eainst her own pathetic attempt at resistance The shock of the ily up her arm

‘I think not,’ he repeated, low and dangerous ‘I’ anywhere’

‘Then you’d better think again!’ she tossed at hi golden sparks of rejection

He’d expected probleed to himself The way that this woman had taken herself off fronoring all demands of protocol and safety, in a different country, all indicated that this was not going to be the straightforward task his father had led him to believe Clementina Savanevski—or Cle under in this rural English hideaway—knehere her duty lay, or she should do But the fact that she had run away fro a carefree life on her own had always indicated that she held her fahtly

And now that he was face to face with her, he felt he understood why

She had clearly cast off the restraint and the dignity she should be expected to have as a potential Queen of Rhastaan She had on only a loose, faded tee shirt and shabby denim jeans, the latter so battered that they were actually threadbare in places where they clung to her tall, slender figure The long dark hair hung wild around her face, tu down on to her shoulders and back in a disarray that was as shocking as it was sensual Her face was arish cri her mouth

And what a mouth

Unexpectedly, shockingly, his senses see sharply, le inside his chest so that for a second he felt he would never exhale again His own mouth burned as if it had ueinvoluntarily to sweep over his lower lip in instinctive response