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 only been a week after he’d met her maternal and paternal cousins, Haidar and Jalal, and begun a friendship that had lasted for the next two decades.
She’d grown up under his gaze, always in his orbit, glowing brighter every day with a radiance that had progressively dismayed him. He’d thought it so unfair, for her to be so matchlessly beautiful on the outside, when she could possess no beauty at all on the inside. Not when she was the daughter of a house of serpents.
Now that she’d matured, the injustice had been exacerbated.
His gaze returned to her again and again, documenting her every nuance. Hair and eyes the color of the richest chocolate and brushed with sunlight, skin of honeyed velvet and warm sunsets, a body of lush vitality and femininity and a face of a peculiar brand of splendor and harmony. But it was what those most unusual features radiated that perplexed him.
How could they transmit such… sweetness? Such… genuineness? The woman was descended from ruthless bitches and hardened criminals. There was no way any of that could be real.
Yet he was forced to believe one thing was real. Her concern for him. Its purity and intensity singed him.
But that could be explained away. By gratitude. To her lifeline in this harrowing experience. Once fright and shock drained away, so would her simulation of humanity and good nature.
Then he’d be free to resume thinking the worst of her. And treating her accordingly without the least remorse.
For now, he had to get out of her range. He needed to get his act together. To plan his next step.
“I’m coming with you.”
At her blurted-out declaration, Rashid turned at the door of the treatment room. That eloquent eyebrow of his made her feel like an illogical species in the presence of a Vulcan.
He’d so far let her accompany him through the admission procedure. When the police had arrived, he’d fielded doubts about her being involved in the attack, lying with spectacular smoothness when they’d asked about her bruise.
According to him, it had been a basketball to the face during a one-on-two match with Mira—whom he’d always seen with her in the times she’d only sensed him—who’d back up anything she’d say. Just like the thugs would back up anything he said.
Not that those policemen would investigate any further. She had a feeling they realized the truth but seemed to appreciate his motivation for adjusting it wholeheartedly. They’d behaved as if they realized they were in the presence of a superior force who’d taken the pursuit of justice far beyond their level. The bare bones of his background had left them—and her—awed. They’d left the E.R. shaking his hand for what he’d done to those repeat offenders and slapping his back for how ruthlessly he’d done it.
It was the female E.R. doctor who answered her. “Only family members can accompany patients.” She turned her awed eyes to Rashid. “Or if the patient specifically asks for your presence.”
And you’d rather he didn’t ask, Laylah almost retorted.
She tried cajoling, something she was abysmal at. “You’ve come this far. Might as well let me go all the way.”
His eyes confirmed that she had failed to learn that survival mechanism as an endangered estrogen-based species in her family’s testosterone jungle. Then he presented her with that unyielding back as he preceded the woman into the treatment room.
By the time thirty minutes had passed and more and more doctors had rushed into the room, she was certain they’d discovered his injury was catastrophic, and they’d been trying to contain the situation—and failing…
“I can’t believe your luck, lady.”
Laylah started, her nerves jangling. It was the E.R. nurse who’d first met them. She was exiting the treatment room.
Nurse Norma McGregor smiled widely at her. “Not that you were almost kidnapped, but that this god happened by and swooped in to save you.”
She barely remembered Rashid’s version in time. “Uh… that isn’t what happened…”
“Oh, I know what he said happened, but I’ve seen the men he ripped apart. That had to be to punish what he’d consider a far more serious crime than attacking him. Attacking you. I also don’t buy that story about your bruise. You two don’t feel like you know each other enough for basketball. But don’t worry. The boys in blue will swear on his version, so we can discuss the truth.”
Laylah released the air trapped in her lungs. “You’re uncanny at reading people.”
Nurse McGregor tinkled a laugh. “Comes with the territory.”
“I didn’t want him to give the police a false statement…”
“But he insisted,” Nurse McGregor put in. “And it makes him even more of a god. Shouldering this for you will save you no end of aggravation.”
“Yeah. And he’d already saved me from far worse. If not for him, I would have been somewhere in the underbelly of Chicago by now, wondering if I’d survive. Instead, it was he who… who…” She had to stop as the tears finally began to flow.
Nurse McGregor frowned. “Hey, easy, girl. This is going to hit you hard when you process what happened and what could have happened. So don’t fight it. Seek help.”
Laylah wiped away her tears. “This isn’t about my reaction. It’s his wound…”
“Seeing that much blood disturbed you, huh?”
She shook her head. “I was a volunteer paramedic in my country. I’ve dealt with all kinds of injuries. But to see him hurt because he came to my defense…”
Comprehension dawned in the woman’s blue eyes. “So it’s because he’s your knight in darkest armor that his superficial injury is making you so upset!”
“What superficial injury takes this long to take care of?” Laylah cried.
The woman waved. “Oh, his wound is long taken care of.”
Laylah frowned. “So why are doctors rushing in there and not coming out?”
Nurse McGregor grinned. “That has nothing to do with how he is and everything to do with who he is.”
“Huh?”
“You can’t tell me you didn’t notice the women fighting to take his case?”
She hadn’t. With Rashid around, everything else in the world became inconsequential, almost invisible.
Nurse McGregor chuckled. “Well, they did, when normally they wouldn’t be caught dead with such ‘first-year-intern’ injuries. Then Doctor Vergas threw her weight around as E.R. director and snapped him up.” Laylah had noticed that. “Boy, did he give us a hard time, ordering us to get him sutures, saying he had more experience suturing wounds than all of us combined. But Doc Vergas convinced him to let her do it using the one thing she figured would get through to him.”
“And that was?”
“You, of course.”
“Huh?”
“She said if he didn’t let her suture him, she’d have you come in to talk sense into him. He allowed her to sew him up without further resistance.”
Oh.
He’d