her. Which actually shouldn’t have been a sure thing. There’d been far… less of her when he’d last seen her, and she’d been wearing glasses back then, too. He’d always made her feel he’d never seen her, the way he’d look through her, like he had everyone else. Even now, nothing in his demeanor indicated that he knew her. The reticent Rashid she’d known had become impenetrable.
“I saw you many times around the city before tonight.”
Would this man stop surprising her? “Y-you did? Where?”
“I have offices in this building. You also frequent the restaurants I do.”
He had been the presence she’d felt!
Now that made sense. As did the fact that he hadn’t thought of acknowledging her until he’d been forced to, to save her life no less. She’d always known Rashid had been a far-fetched dream, but he’d become an impossible one after he’d turned from her closest cousins’ best friend to their mortal enemy.
“You clearly don’t recognize me,” he added.
“I’d as soon not recognize myself, Sheikh Rashid.”
Everything in him seemed to hit Pause. The wind, the whole world followed suit.
Okay. That had come out too… revealing. Another attack of what her mother called her “crassness affliction.” She’d thought she had it under control, but it seemed she couldn’t control her brash candor any more than her mother’s family could their crooked ways.
So be it. She’d never be able to give him anything of equal value to what he’d given her tonight, so she’d at least give him the truth. He could do with it as he wished.
It appeared he was at a loss what to do with it. Her confession had clearly stunned him.
His response, when it finally came, was to pretend he hadn’t heard it and to pursue his previous point. “Back my statement, that they attacked me and not you, and I will go to the E.R.”
He was trying to spare her the postattack ordeal, from the investigations through to the trial.
Still…”I can’t let you bear the burden of this mess.”
Those daunting shoulders barely moved in dismissal. “In comparison to the messes I deal with daily, this is a breeze.”
She’d bet. Rashid had created his IT development empire from scratch in record time. He must have dealt with endless obstacles and adversaries to remain at the top of such a cutthroat field. And it would be a mess for her, sabotaging the peaceful life and low profile she’d struggled to create since she’d left Zohayd.
“Okay.” The tension gripping the night eased, until she added, “But only if you let me drive you to the E.R.”
“You think I won’t keep my word?”
“I think you’d keep your word even if it meant your life.”
Another long, empty stare greeted her statement, which she now realized signified surprise. “Why this stipulation, then? You think I can’t drive myself?”
It was her turn to shrug. “I’m taking no chances.”
His grimness deepened until she was certain he’d say no.
Suddenly, he handed her the bloody scarf. She fumbled with it as if with a hot coal as he fished inside his coat for a pen and a notebook. He scribbled a few lines, tore the paper out, bent and tucked it onto a thug. A calling card on gifts for the police?
The thug stirred as Rashid whispered in his ear before slamming him into the ground, snuffing his consciousness again.
Calmly rising, he retrieved the scarf from her limp fingers, turned on his heels and crossed the street to his car.
He was leaving?
She watched him go, at a loss for what to do.
Instead of taking the wheel, he walked around to the passenger’s side. Then, leaning over the car’s top, he looked across the distance at her. “Coming?”
Her heart gave a thunderclap of relief as she stumbled into a run, her four-inch stilettos a staccato of eagerness on the asphalt.
In seconds she was inside the posh car, heard faint sirens in the distance as the door closed behind her with a muted thud.
Trembling with the urge to throw herself at him and hug him, she turned to him. “Thank you.”
He ignored that. “Are we waiting for them after all?”
“Oh, no.” She fumbled for the ignition, discovered that the car was running, the motor so smooth it didn’t produce sound or vibration. The car was such a dream to handle that even in her state, she drove to the nearest E.R. without incident.
As she parked, he turned to her. “Now drive home. I’ll have the car and a driver at your disposal from now on.”
He was almost out of the car before she flung herself after him. “I’m coming in with you.”
His stare was even more spectacular in close quarters. “The deal was to drive me here, not escort me inside.”
She clutched his arm tighter. “New deal, then.”
“You have nothing to thank me for.”
Now he answered her earlier thank you.
“I wasn’t thanking you for saving my life, since I figured you’d have an allergic reaction to that. I was thanking you for letting me bargain with my safety for yours. Don’t revert to being an aggravating superhero and insist on walking into the night alone.”
After yet another long stare, he turned and exited the car.
Her heart constricted with disappointment and anxiety. If she persisted now, she’d be imposing on him.
Well, tough. That big, bad warrior would just have to use his endless stamina to put up with her concern.
The moment she was out of the car, her heart gave that boom that only he provoked. He was standing at the E.R. entrance, his pose worthy of the superhero she’d likened him to, one hand braced on his lean hips, the other still gripping her bloody scarf.
He was waiting for her.
She ran toward him, her heartbeat overtaking her feet.
Before she reached him, those cruelly sensuous lips twitched. Was that a smile? She wouldn’t know. She’d never seen him smile.
Before she could make sure, he turned and strode inside.
He had her running to keep up with him, demonstrating that her concern was needless. And that he wouldn’t make it easy for her to see her purpose through.
Once she knew he’d be okay, she’d show him exactly how much she’d put up with to be with him. That, if he let her, she would follow him to the ends of the earth.
Two
All through the admission process, Rashid felt Laylah’s presence a breath away.
He couldn’t take one without it mixing with the scent and heat of her body and her worry.
He found himself barely breathing so both wouldn’t deluge him further. But rationing that involuntary act turned out to be easier than stopping another supposedly voluntary one. In spite of his intention to demonstrate that her presence was unnecessary as well as unimportant, his gaze kept going back to her like iron filings to a magnet. When no one, certainly never a woman, had ever commanded his unwilling response.
But Laylah Aal Shalaan wasn’t anyone. There was no one else in the world that he remembered from the day of their birth.
He’d just turned eight when she was born, the first female offspring in the Aal Shalaan family in forty years. It had