Wanting this over with, she skimmed the niceties. “Have you checked your in-box? I sent you the demographic analysis.”
“Aih, I saw them.” From the brief pause, Jalal had noticed her haste. As gentlemanly as ever, he glossed over it. “Brilliant work. I don’t know what I would have done without you. You have incredible insight.”
She almost scoffed. Selective insight was more like it. When it came to Haidar, she’d had that in the negative values.
“But this isn’t a business call,” Jalal said. “You weren’t looking as well as usual a couple of days ago.”
And you’re not doing me any favors worrying.
Out loud she said, “Work is too much sometimes.”
“If my side of it is weighing you down…”
She did wish, for so many reasons, she’d never promised to be Jalal’s advisor. But she had given her word. She would abide by it. “No, really. Just don’t worry, okay?”
“If you’re sure.” He sounded very unsure himself.
Quit the big-brother probing, already, she almost screamed.
He made it worse. “I heard you’ve seen a lot of Haidar.”
And I want to see a lot more of him, all of him. But I’m not telling you that, or where I am now, or what I’m trying to do.
“You didn’t mention our arrangement,” he probed.
“No.” Even if she wasn’t bound to secrecy by her word to Jalal, it had never occurred to her when she was with Haidar. Nothing else existed when he was around.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t tell him I’m in Azmahar.”
That was strange. “But he must know you’re here.”
“He doesn’t. My appearance at your door evidently wasn’t as dramatic as his. I’m not as dramatic in general here as he is. Wearing an Aal Shalaan face comes in very handy in avoiding unwanted attention in Azmahar.”
So Jalal was being covert. She could see the merit in that, for the info-gathering stage. But why wouldn’t he want Haidar to know of his presence? Did he fear his brother would try to sabotage him? Would Haidar go that far in his rivalry?
“I didn’t tell you everything about our last confrontation.” When Haidar told Jalal he renounced their very blood tie. “I accused him of being our mother’s accomplice in her conspiracy to take Zohayd apart.”
Shock screeched through her, made her choke, “B-but Haidar was the one who discovered where she hid the jewels, brought the conspiracy to an end.”
“I know. But…there were unexplained activities between him and our mother, extensive amounts of money he’d given her. I asked him about it, and he told me what I could do with my suspicions. I ended up accusing him of only pretending to help us when she was exposed so that he’d appear innocent, that she agreed to play along, since she’d do anything to protect him. I said he manipulated me emotionally until he had me begging with him for her exile instead of imprisonment, and that they were both only biding their time until they came up with another plot to put him on the throne.”
She staggered to the nearest flat surface, the ledge of the pier, plopped down on it.
This was…unthinkable. Could it possibly…
No. She wasn’t doing this again. She wasn’t thinking the worst of Haidar again. Not without giving him every benefit of the doubt first, giving him the chance to explain his side.
But what mattered here was one thing. “You believe this?”
“No.” One single word laden with a world full of regret and pain. “But I’m not the collected man you know when it comes to Haidar, not even exactly sane. I was livid, thinking what our mother could have caused, for him. It was impossible, with him being so reticent, to separate my rage with her from him. He was indirectly responsible for everything she’d done, and I wanted to punch him with my accusations until he lashed back, opened up, told me everything, shared with me fully again, if just this once. He didn’t. He just walked away.”
As he had from her. Seemed he was an expert at that.
But again, what had seemed to be such a callous action had only been an outraged reaction. Haidar had walked away from the twin who, when a real test was forced on him, had behaved as if Haidar had always been his worst enemy. As she had.
It felt weird to change her perspective, see her admired friend as the offender. Seemed Haidar did manage to force out the passionate side in others—their best and worst.
Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her.
Her heart almost fired from her ribs.
“Sorry, gotta go. Talk later,” was all she said to Jalal, barely heard his surprised agreement before she ended the call.
She took a shuddering breath before she rose, swung around.
If it was Haleem, she might shove him into the sea.
It wasn’t. It was Haidar.
He came.
He was walking toward her from the end of the terrace that extended into a stone passage that traversed the sandy beach. It transformed into a wooden pier that forged into the bay, widened at its end into the circular platform where she was standing.
In seconds he was stepping onto the platform she’d ringed with candles blazing in crimson quartz holders. He glowed like the desert god that he was as he passed between the brass torches she’d lit, their incandescent flames undulating in the calm breeze, accentuating his every feature and line. In all black with the only relief a shirt the color of his eyes, he took her breath away, sent her heart into hyperdrive. Her every nerve quivered at beholding his magnificence, at entering his orbit. Her every sense ignited with no-longer-suppressed responses and emotions.
He transferred his expressionless gaze from her to the candles, to the buffet table at the end of the platform, and finally to the table for two she’d arranged in its center.
He looked back at her. “I see you’ve invaded and occupied my home.”
She shivered as his voice, impassive like his expression, flowed down her nervous pathways like warm molasses.
She’d expected him to comment on her setup. Seemed where he was concerned, the only given was to expect the unexpected.
She licked her dry, tingling lips. “Just your pier.”
He came to a stop four steps away, went so still he looked like a statue of a titan, the only animate things about him his satin mane sifting around his leonine head, his clothes rustling around his steel-fleshed frame.
Then he shoved his hands into his pockets, the epitome of tranquillity. “I thought we agreed we were better off staying off each other’s properties and out of each other’s lives.”
She held back from closing the gap between them with all she had. “We did. Just not at the same time. Or for the same reasons.”
“The sequence or cause of coming to this vital decision isn’t important. As long as we both reached it.”
“Problem is, once you did, I unreached it.”
His gaze lengthened, the gentle rumble of the sea lapping the shore deepening his silence. Then without moving, or changing his expression or tone, he said, “I’m not playing this game, Roxanne.”
“It’s not a game. I never played games with you.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I actually could and should have known you better.” She took a step closer. “The problem is, we fell into bed too soon. Once we did, it was impossible for us to have one nonhormonally overwrought thought or reaction where the other was concerned.”
One dense, slanting eyebrow rose. “You’re saying you chose to believe the worst about me because passion made you unable to think straight?”
“Why so skeptical? You admitted to about the same. As a friend pointed out, we suffered from a communication disorder. My verbal-but-not-about-my-issues kind was as bad as your nonverbal one.”
He brooded down at her, clearly unconvinced.
She tried a new angle. “You thought it a possibility I’d think of Jalal while I was with you. I thought you thought of Jalal while you were with me. We’re guilty of the same stupidity, each in our own uniquely stupid way. So how about we call it even?”
That imperious eyebrow rose again. “You really like to say that, don’t you?”
Her heart shook at the first ray of change in his expression. “And when I last said that, you said we’re not, not by an eight-year-long shot. I believe that now.”
He went totally still again. The steel of his eyes seemed to catch the torch fire, singeing her.
“What do you want, Roxanne?”
She shook with the sheer, leashed intensity in that question.
He needed her to spell it out. She was only too happy to.
“I want you. I only ever wanted you.”
And he moved, away, restored the distance she’d managed to obliterate. “So all you needed to change your mind was me deciding to stop pursuing you? And you realizing I meant it?”
“If you’re saying I’m coming after you because you pose a challenge now, et’tummen…rest easy. That doesn’t even figure into this.”
His eyes narrowed to silver lasers. It had once aroused him to near savagery when she’d spoken Arabic to him.
“So what does? My little speech before I walked out?”
Her nod was difficult as her rate of melting quickened, her body readying itself for the onslaught of his passion. “That little speech was sure eye-opening. And heart-wrenching. I spent eight years never once thinking you had a side of the story.”