refused local anesthesia or painkillers afterward. Then there’s that presence, even when he didn’t look at us or say a word.”
Layla was intimate with Rashid’s influence from lifelong experience. But…”All E.R. personnel have come out, including you. So who are those people who keep pouring into the room? What’s going on?”
“That’s what I meant when I said it’s all about who he is. After we were done, he said he’d make a donation to the department. Then he mentioned a number. That’s when we E.R personnel stampeded out, to spread the word and investigate him on the internet And we found out exactly who we have in there.”
That must have been a shock. Rashid was worth a few dozen billions. Men of his caliber had entire hospitals at their beck and call and health insurance that would airlift them anywhere in the world if they sprained their ankle. It was actually odd that he’d consented to go to a regular E.R., even for a “glorified paper cut.”
Nurse McGregor flicked her head toward the room. “So those illustrious figures you saw storming in there? They’re department heads, each trying to sell him on a project that needs funding.”
He was in there talking business? Leaving her out here going out of her mind?
With a smile that must be as brittle as her nerves, she said, “Thanks for the recap and everything else, Nurse McGregor.”
Then she marched into that till-now off-limits room.
Sure enough, Rashid was swarmed.
Not that he appeared concerned. Even surrounded by people like a rock star by groupies, he towered a head over everyone, that vast energy he emitted engulfing the scene. He was wearing only his bloody slate-gray sweater. His coat was hooked carelessly from a finger over his back.
She’d thought that coat had made him more imposing. But stripped of its obscuring folds, the symmetry and strength that infused his every line, the power and perfection that filled and strained against the cashmere, ruined as it was, were…
What had the nurse said? Yeah. Whoa.
No wonder god had been the only word the woman had found to describe him. He did look the part, presiding over his worshippers with all the contained might and forbearance of one.
He saw her the second she entered. In fact, his gaze had been pinned on the door.
Had he been expecting her to disobey hospital rules? But that wasn’t what had kept her out. It had been his unspoken, and this time non-negotiable, demand. So had he been expecting her to disregard his wishes? And had he been watching the door so intently because he’d been worried she would? Or only as his means of escape from those who would devour him whole?
There was no way to read the answer on that heart-wrenchingly gorgeous face he wore like a mask. But she let him read her own thoughts in the gaze that clashed with his.
His response was to raise that eyebrow in a calm, Still here?
She folded her arms over her chest, letting him know he could spend the night holed up in here, wheeling and dealing, and she’d stand right here and wait for him to be done.
A glint in his fathomless eyes acknowledged he was aware of her intention.
Then he turned his gaze to the man standing closest to him. “Mr. Hendrix, please send your proposal to my corporation’s email with E.R. in the subject line. I’ll get back to you within two weeks.” Voices rose, trying to get the same offer. He cut them all short. “Give Mr. Hendrix your proposals. I’ll do what I can.”
Without one further look at anyone, he walked away. She could see they wanted to cling to him, but there was no way anyone could stand in Rashid’s way once he’d made up his mind. They parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses.
He didn’t slow down as he reached her, only inclined his head at her as he exited the room, his earlier silent inquiry now a statement. “You didn’t leave.”
She hurried after him, stumbling on legs that felt mismatched as his scent, even over the overpowering hospital smells, filled her lungs. “You thought I would?”
He spared her a sideways glance from his prodigious height. “You should have.”
“Yeah, right.” Her gaze flitted to the pristine white bandage peeking below what now looked like viscous ink on his sweater. She felt nauseated that his flesh had been torn, again, this time for her.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Her breathlessness had nothing to do with almost running to match his endless strides.
He gave her a look that pointed out that she was the one having trouble keeping up. “I don’t look it?”
You look more than all right. You look divine.
She barely bit back the words. “Looks can be deceiving. Especially yours.”
Both eyebrows rose this time. “I wish I’d known I had chameleonlike powers before. That would have come in handy during my black ops days.”
So after being a war hero he’d veered into ultimate warrior territory. A natural progression, really. Only the most formidable soldiers made it and survived in that utmost-skill, maximum-peril world.
Had that been what had shaped him into this force of darkness? He’d always been complex, but his current depths must have been forged in experiences she couldn’t even imagine. The brutal demands and dangers of a black ops life fit the bill.
She cleared her tightening throat. “I meant your skin. It’s so…” Polished and bronzed and tough, so touchable… so lickable… She clamped down on the overheating thoughts. “Tanned. Anyone less… opaque would be pale as a ghost from blood loss by now.”
His eyes moved dismissively away. “It’s clear you’ve never seen what blood loss looks like.”
She quickened her steps to capture his fixed-ahead gaze. “I do now. I was a volunteer paramedic through college in Zohayd.”
Had she managed to stun him again? That she could decipher a flicker in his eyes meant that she had. And then some.
Did it surprise him that much that she’d volunteered, and in such an occupation? Was he surprised to discover she wasn’t what her mother had tried so hard to make her—a pampered pawn?
“Then you must know all this blood only looks dramatic. I’ve got liters still circulating about, doing its job, and the loss is merely an incentive for my body to produce a replacement, something I’ve always found revitalizing.”
Her jaw dropped. “You find blood loss revitalizing?”
“It does jog my body out of a rut. Before you wonder, I don’t have proclivities for inflicting it on myself for kicks, but when it does happen, I look at the bright side.”
She and Nurse McGregor had been right. There was something more than human about him.
“You’re still not convinced, even when your paramedical experience is telling you I’m right.”
He was. But…”I—I just can’t stop thinking how much worse it could have been…”
“But it wasn’t. You can stop guilt-tripping.”
He was wrong about that. It wasn’t guilt. It was this… fear for him, even when she knew that danger had been averted.
He sighed. “What will convince you that I won’t keel over? I assure you I don’t intend to for roughly the next fifty years.”
The out-of-nowhere flashes of his dry-as-tinder sense of humor amazed her.
Her lips quivered. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Another sideways glance, longer this time, and even more unsettling. But he said nothing more as he navigated out of the hospital and into the freezing