for a peg.
“I can manage. I’ll ask one of the other men if I can’t. I don’t want to inconvenience you.” There. She had an assertive side. It was very polite and obliging, but it got the job done when she needed it.
He flicked his sharp gaze around the camp as though looking for one of these men she might enlist when really, she’d probably ask Amineh’s maid for help before she’d find the courage to approach a stranger and beg a favor.
When his gaze came back to hers, he seemed disapproving and vaguely challenging. “I’ll do it,” he stated.
She locked her teeth, having learned long ago to pick her battles.
At least she was able to hurry the process. She willed her fingers to be nimble as she followed him down the side and across the back of the tent, struggling all the loops onto the pegs as he hammered them into the sand. The feeling of having her every action scrutinized was her own baggage, she reminded herself as she moved toward the front. He wasn’t watching her. He was having some kind of manly back-to-nature moment, indulging his instinct to prove his superiority over nature.
Nevertheless, as she straightened from making the last attachment, the tension was killing her. She glanced at him and his green eyes were waiting, snagging her like a hook, with a pierce and a tug.
She caught her breath, limbs paralyzed with shock.
He calmly continued what he was doing. and lengthened a pole in increments with a smooth stroke of his hand and a light twist of his wrist, eyes staying on her like they’d been there a while.
He lifted the opening of the tent and slid the pole inside.
It was...
She blushed. God help her, she blushed hard.
A noise escaped him. Might have been a snort of amusement or a tsk of impatience. She wasn’t sure because he bent to take up another shortened pole and began to extend it. When his gaze came back to hers, his was fierce and almost scolding.
His rebuke burned. She knew her reaction was obvious. Her ability to demure was nil. Worse, she knew she didn’t inspire male desire. She wasn’t particularly curvy on her chest or bottom. She wouldn’t know how to apply eye shadow if she’d ever had the spare notes to buy it. Between the braces to fix terribly crooked teeth, the secondhand clothes, the extra studies to win a scholarship and then maintaining her position at the library while she earned her degree, she’d been the most easily overlooked nerd her entire life.
Maybe he was one of those jocks who occasionally noticed she was an easy mark and was having his fun teasing her. Maybe he was silently taunting her, sending a pithy “as if.”
She usually walked away when feeling picked on, but despite the seventeen square kilometers around her, she didn’t have anywhere to go. The only place she could hide from Zafir was her own quarters, so she ducked into them. She bendt under the light weight of the silky red fabric to pick up the pole from the ground and worked her way to the center, where a grommet awaited on the roof and the floor.
Of course it wasn’t as easy as it looked. She got the top one hooked in, but even though the tent wasn’t heavy, the tension in the fabric was resistant to her attempts to align the bottom of the pole into the floor.
“You spaced the pegs too far away,” she told him, hearing her mother’s voice and cringing.
“I’ve pitched more tents than you have, Fern,” he drawled and she narrowed her eyes at him even though they couldn’t see each other.
Another pole made a zipping noise as he slid it into the pocket that would form one of the corners. “Let me finish this part then I’ll help you.”
Oh, great. I’ll just stand here looking stupid then.
The tent shifted on her hair, making it crackle with static. She debated crawling out, but couldn’t make herself go out there and face him.
Another zip, zip, zip and he had the back and walls stabilized.
Leave when he comes in, she thought, but he lifted the front of the tent and took up all the space, bringing the middle of the tent pole so it slid through her light grip and the roof climbed as he neared her. Then he was standing before her, the narrow pole between them, his tanned face tinged by the translucent red of the fabric, his gaze fixed on hers.
He slid his hands over her limp ones and guided the bottom end of the pole into place.
She tried to look away, but he was tall and very close. He smelled good. Earthy and sweaty, but not overpowering. Masculine and intriguing. Aside from her mother’s specialist, she’d never met a man with such an air of command and that physician had been white-haired and potbellied. Zafir was in his prime, not just healthy, but radiating supremacy.
In the back of her mind, she knew she was behaving like some kind of rock-band superfan, speechless in the presence of a man with star quality, unable to move, but he was so incredible. She found herself staring into his eyes for too long. She knew it was too long, but she couldn’t look away from those crystal blue-green depths. They quested, delving into hers, demanding something she didn’t even understand.
Say something, she thought, and let her tongue wet her lips.
His gaze lowered to her mouth.
Her breath evaporated.
She found her own gaze dropping to his mouth, wondering how it would feel to have those smooth lips rubbing against hers. Her heart was fluttering like a trapped bird, her pulse pounding in her ears.
He lifted his hand to hover hotly next to her cheek, scorching her. His brows jerked in some type of struggle. Was he going to kiss her?
It was remarkable yet terrifying. Did she really want to do this? It was so wrong, but he was right there.
“Miss Davenport, are you in there?” Bashira called from outside.
Fern’s heart went into free fall. Her conscience gave her a hard shake and she jerked back, shocked.
“I am,” she stammered, discovering her hand was still trapped under Zafir’s on the pole.
His grip tightened briefly before he released her with a flare of his fingers. He lifted away his touch as though she’d burned him. A muscle ticked in his cheek. He looked very displeased. Accusatory, but also confused.
She surreptitiously touched her mouth, and avoided looking at him as she edged around him to open the flap of the tent.
The rush of fresh air, dry and hot as it was, made her realize how stifling it had been inside, where things had been sultry and musky. Her heart was still pounding hard and loud. It took everything she had to muster a smile for the children as they approached.
“Mama said these are for you.” Bashira struggled with Jumanah to drag a basket across the sand toward her. Tariq followed, staggering under the weight of a bedroll on his shoulder.
“Have you met my son?” Zafir asked as he emerged beside her. He didn’t stand so close as to be improper, but the air crackled with energy that bounced back and forth between them.
Fern stepped forward to escape the field of it. “Not yet.”
What had just happened in there? Was he messing with her? She hadn’t known what to expect from Amineh’s brother, but cruelty wasn’t on the list. The thought that he would toy with her for his own amusement was not only painful, but also opened the gap of deep vulnerability in her even wider. She wouldn’t be able to avoid him here.
He moved forward to take the bedroll off his son, introduced the boy then disappeared inside the tent to lay it out.
Far too intimate a thing to do. How was she supposed to sleep on something he had touched?
“Your cousins speak very highly of you, Tariq,” she said shakily. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
The