Desert Prince, Blackmailed Bride
Rafiq slid his arms into his linen shirt and sat straddling the chair. The pale fabric gaped to reveal the perfectly delineated muscles of his deep gold upper torso—a lot more delineated since he'd dropped almost fifteen pounds.
None of the turbulent seething in his chest was reflected in his expression as, his hands clenched into fists, he fought to control his totally irrational compulsion to drag the grey-haired Frenchman from his seat and throttle a retraction from him.
He was lying—he had to be lying!
He didn't, and not just because the doctor was a good twenty years his senior, but because he recognised denial even when he was the one doing the denying. Rafiq knew the man wasn't lying. It was the truth. Not a truth anyone wanted to hear, but the truth.
He wasn't going to see his fiftieth birthday—or, for that matter, his thirty-third!
Once the drumming in his ears had softened to a dull roar a phrase separated itself from the disconnected jumble of thoughts swirling in his head: roll with the punches.
It sounded so easy.
Years of practice at rigidly disciplining himself helped, and slowly an icy calm settled ... read full excerpt from: Desert Prince, Blackmailed Bride ebook