who’d conspired against his family, then dared to stay home sick.
Yusuf had better not surprise him again. He wouldn’t appreciate finding out that Yusuf didn’t value his daughter enough to ransom her with the jewels that could secure him a throne ten times the size of his current one.
“So where are you keeping the food?”
Maram swirled back to him, her ponytail swishing like that of a spirited mare.
Amjad gritted his teeth at the jolt of hated response that lashed through him, spread his lips in a smile he knew mirrored his vicious thoughts. “Something finally defeated Your Nosiness?”
Her smile was one of elation. She was invulnerable to his put-downs, wasn’t she? She truly did thrive on them. If he wanted to thwart her, he should deprive her of them.
“Since you must be keeping it in airtight containers, I doubt a hound dog could smell it out.” She stopped before him again, deluging his lungs with the uniqueness of her scent, a distillation of desire and delicacy, of freshness, femininity and fragrant flesh. Her. Her eyes gleamed up at him. “I’ll settle for coffee. Just set me on the trail and I’ll fix myself a cup. I’ll fix you one, too, if you’re … not too nasty.”
It was no use. He was incapable of thwarting her. “Guess you’ll never fix me one, then.”
She let out one of those laughs that tinkled through his nerves with harmonies of sensation and vitality. He had to exert extra effort not to groan, not to crowd her and hiss for her to stop trying to ensnare him.
“Nah, I’ll fix you one. Bad boys are just misunderstood and shouldn’t be left out.”
Merriment radiated from her, tugged on his own humor.
This Maram was dangerous in ways no one had ever been.
She evidently thought his considering look meant that he was trying to make up his mind whether to let her drag him through the camaraderie of coffee making. He was actually thinking he should get her something to eat and drink. Before the ordeal.
He took out his phone, called Ameen, murmured for him to bring in refreshments.
He paused mid-order, looked at Maram. “Which side of your heritage do you drink? Arabian or American?”
She twinkled up at him. “Both, of course.”
Aih. That was her M.O.
“Why choose when you can have it all, eh?” He completed his instructions, almost drove his finger through the screen turning off the phone.
In minutes, his men had spread a table with cheeses, breads, chilled fruits and cold and hot drinks. He’d planned for this gathering to look on the up and up so that Yusuf and his men would relax, giving Amjad a chance to kidnap him without any trouble for either side.
Maram rushed to the table and turned to him, pointing to the coffeemaker and then the carafe filled with Arabian cardamom coffee. He flicked a finger at the first.
She busied herself brewing. In minutes, she brought back a mug. She licked her lips as she handed it to him, the look in her eyes saying it was his own lips she was imagining under her glistening tongue. He congratulated himself on his choice of pants today. No space in them to betray any hormone-driven stupidity.
“Black and bitter.” Her voice was velvet fire along each nerve she managed to expose just standing near. “Just like you … like it.”
“You remembered.” He gave her a mock touched look, even as he wondered how she knew. He never accepted food or drink anywhere where his trusted people weren’t in charge. Aih, he was paranoid that way. He had eaten in her presence, but she couldn’t have observed this particular preference.
She answered his unspoken curiosity. “I asked Aliyah. In fact, I gave her an extensive questionnaire about you.”
“And she filled it in.” He shook his head. “I always said having a family is like living your life surrounded by a bunch of busybodies and blabbermouths. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and Laylah are tweeting and updating their Facebook statuses with anecdotes about my paranoid preferences.”
Her eyes told him his every word tickled her that mouthwatering peach color. “I assure you, they aren’t spreading your specs to the world. Aliyah was just delighted with my interest because she despaired of any female being ‘foolhardy’ enough to even admit being curious about you. She also thought if her Kamal could be approached, then approaching you—whom she admits are an even more … advanced case—might not be in the realm of the impossible.”
“Kamal hasn’t been ‘approached,’ he’s been breached, poor sap. I almost feel sorry for him. But he certainly deserves what he got—Aliyah, my questionnaire-completing half sister. But how fanciful of you both to lump me in the same species as him. Even if you placed me far higher on its evolutionary scale.”
She made a cartoonish expression of soothing seriousness. “Don’t worry. To me, you’re a species of one.”
The contrast between her overpowering beauty and that ridiculous look was so funny that he almost laughed.
He pressed down hard on the urge, smirked. “How reassuring. Here’s hoping Aliyah isn’t dispensing more completed forms to ‘interested’ females. I already had one use knowledge of my specs to systematically eliminate me.”
“Yeah, Aliyah told me you came to hate the color green after … after …”
He huffed his disbelief that she seemed so moved, recalling what had been done to him. “After it became associated with arsenic and an excruciating near-death in my mind? Nah, I always did. My mother dressed me in nothing but green till I was six, to go with my damn eyes. The moment she died I swore to never let that hue near me again. Then my loving ex-wannabe murderess started showering me with items in shades of it, looking as if she’d die if I didn’t accept them. Little knowing that my life was the one in danger, I swallowed my aversion, along with the poison.”
Seemingly over her poignancy, she was back in teasing mode. “Great to know aversion is no longer a thing you swallow.”
He gave her a scathing look, what she’d seen freezing heads of state. “Aih, I prefer to swallow my opposition and chew out anyone foolhardy enough to approach me.”
“Oh, chew away.” She sighed as if he’d whispered some over-the-top endearment. “And speaking of chewing …” She twirled around, filled herself a plate of sliced fruits. “In case you’re wondering how I got Aliyah to disclose your classified info, we go way back, from the time when we both lived in the States. It was inevitable that we became best buddies, with both of us being half-Arabian, half-American and belonging to royal families in neighboring kingdoms.”
“Your country isn’t a kingdom. It’s a speck of an emirate with delusions of grandeur.”
She hooted. “My father would have a fit if he heard his beloved Ossaylan described like that. But compared to the kingdoms surrounding it, that is what it is.” She bit into a plum slice, transmitting the mental image into his brain. Of her biting into his lips. Of his teeth sinking into her ripe ones. “I love how you smack out painful truths. So refreshing after the stifling decorum and protocol I have to bate my breath through.”
“So glad I’m acting as your social inhaler and royal oxygen mask.” He was rewarded—or rather, from the twisting ache in his gut, punished—by that melodic laugh of hers. “You don’t consider it your ‘beloved Ossaylan’?”
“With myself and my life divided between the U.S. and Ossaylan, I never attained the unbridled allegiance of a pure native of either. I do love a lot about Ossaylan, but I dislike a lot, too. It’s hard to know what to feel about the place that has seen your best and worst days.”
“The latter being your married days, of course.”
She sighed, still smiling, but as if through—if it could