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Raif eyed her burning face. ‘Beautiful?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Men aren’tbeautiful.’
‘Don’t be sexist.’ Claire stiffened her shoulders, wondering why she had mortified herself with that admission, but he was as relentless as a train roaring down a track at speed. When he had a goal in view, he couldn’t be headed off.
‘So, you’re saying it was lust,’ Raif gathered with a sudden flashing wicked grin.
‘No, I wasn’t saying that at all. I just admired you for a few seconds.’
‘While I took my clothes off. If you were a man, you would surely be arrested for such an invasion of privacy,’ Raif quipped, starting to enjoy himself in a way he rarely did in female company. He could not credit that she was a member of the paparazzi tribe or that she had the smallest clue who he was. Her lack of tact and inability to dissemble were phenomenal.
‘It wasn’tlust,’ Claire repeated with dignity. ‘I can admire a painting without needing to own it, but I will agree it was thoughtless of me not to consider your feelings...although most of the men I’ve met aren’t quite so modest and would be quite flattered by admiration. You’re in a class of your own, it seems.’
‘Very much so,’ he confirmed with another slanting grin as he paused by the outside table and chairs. ‘Now, sit down. Have you a first-aid kit? Your knee needs attention.’
‘What’s your name?’ she demanded abruptly, quite dizzy in the radius of that charming smile of amusement.
‘Raif...’ he told her. ‘Although it sounds the same as the English name Rafe, it is spelt differently.’
‘I’m Claire. It was my mother’s favourite name and she’s gone now,’ she told him, pushing open the back door and disappearing inside. ‘Would you like a cold drink? I have a jug of lemonade in the fridge. It’s very refreshing.’
‘Bring out the first-aid kit first.’
‘No, the first thing I’m going to do,’ she said, walking back to the door to look out at him with sparkling blue eyes in which mischief danced as bright as stardust, ‘is warn my friend that she must onnoaccount show that clip to anyone else. I will also ask her to delete it.’
‘At the same time as you delete your own version,’ Raif incised.
‘Oh, must I?’ Claire teased him, helpless to resist that temptation. ‘If you’re my object of lust, won’t I be wanting to keep it and savour it on dark lonely nights?’
Raif laughed out loud. Her ready tongue and her liveliness were extraordinarily appealing. He had never been a womaniser; in fact, he saw himself as being of a sombre, serious disposition and he definitely didn’t know how to flirt. Growing up with a depressed and suicidal mother, while striving to tolerate the promiscuous lifestyle that had eventually become her sole consolation, had matured Raif much faster than his peers. After divorce had destroyed Mahnoor’s life by depriving her of the husband she loved, her two elder sons and the royal role she had cherished, his mother had only had Raif to sustain her. Her chaotic private life had put him off casual sex and everything that went with it.
Yet he was no longer so sure of the rigid decisions he had reached when he was younger because, for literally the first time, Raif was very much tempted by a woman. Claire was small and curvy and full of personality, the complete opposite of the polished, socially repressed young women he usually met, who calculated every expression and every word in his radius. Claire didn’t know he was wealthy and, what was more, he suspected that even if she did she wouldn’t be impressed by the superficial show of his material possessions.
‘First-aid kit,’ he reminded her, having already noticed in some exasperation that she drifted and darted from topic to topic like a colourful hummingbird sipping from flowers, finding each as alluring as the previous one.
‘And lemonade?’
‘Why not?’ Raif said easily, following her indoors to a tiny galley kitchen, suspecting that he would have to find the first-aid kit for himself while she poured lemonade and chattered.
‘I suppose I should have offered you a beer.’
‘I don’t drink.’
‘Neither do I,’ she confided cheerfully. ‘But I keep some beer for a friend who calls in occasionally.’
‘A man?’ For some reason, Raif found himself tensing at that idea.
Claire pulled a face. ‘Good heavens, no. It’s a small island and it wouldn’t do to get the neighbours talking. My friend, Sofia. I work with her sometimes down at the harbour bar.’
Relieved by the explanation, Raif found the first-aid kit shoved in a corner and clicked it open to find it empty, which didn’t surprise him. Claire opened a drawer and rustled madly through the cluttered interior to produce plasters and medicated ointment, passing him kitchen towelling on demand and dampening a piece for him. ‘I’ll do it,’ she told him as she poured the lemonade and lifted the glasses to pass him one. ‘But I warn you, I’ll probably scream if it hurts. I’m not that brave.’
‘Sit down,’ he told her as he set aside the glass.
‘There’s no seats in here.’
‘If you will allow me...’ Raif extended his arms. ‘I will set you on the counter.’
Claire laughed. ‘If you like, but I’m no Skinny Minnie... Mind you, you do have all those muscles I was insensitive enough to admire.’
Laughing, Raif scooped her up and found her even lighter than he had expected. Blonde hair that had a lemony scent brushed his jaw and flared his nostrils, unleashing a vibrant awareness of her femininity. A heaviness settled in his groin. He settled her down gently and turned his attention to her knee, cleaning the cut with tiny careful movements, frowning over the sand he had to remove, impossibly conscious of her every wince but, apart from the occasional flinch, she didn’t make a sound. ‘It’s bruising and it will scar,’ he warned her.
