Her eyes widened; her lips opened on a soundless exclamation. She’d evidently never thought to question what he’d done.
When she finally talked, her whisper was impeded. “But you blasted away the one who was threatening him as you ran to me. You gave no one a chance to use him as shield or to harm him.”
“I should have run to him, should have shielded him. As my crown prince, he should have been my only priority. Instead, I made that you.”
“But you managed to save him and everyone else.”
“Only because I managed to compensate, as I said. Najeeb could have gotten shot before I ended the threat to him. And knowing full well the widespread damage his injury or death would have caused, retaliations that would have reaped far more than five hundred lives, I still risked that.”
Time seemed to stretch as bewilderment glimmered in her gemlike eyes.
She let out a shaky breath. “So what are you saying? That you took one look at me and were so bowled over you decided to risk everyone’s lives—including your own—for me?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I was...bowled over a bit before that.”
He watched her mouth drop open. This was news to her. He’d never intimated that he’d seen her before that day. But he’d seen her over two years earlier, had searched her out many times afterward.
“But it was the first time I’d seen you!”
“I saw no upside in letting you see me, or in acting on my interest. You were, as you pointed out so many times when we were together, an Aal Masood...and I was an Aal Ghaanem. The Montagues and Capulets didn’t have a thing on our moronically feuding houses. I also didn’t think it would be wise or fair to ever involve a woman in my crazy existence.” He exhaled. “Then I saw you in danger and every rational thought flew out the window.”
Her eyes filled with so much; he struggled not to drag her to him and kiss them closed.
Then they emptied of everything, leaving only hardness. “Why are you telling me this now?”
He shrugged. “I am testing your claim that you know everything. I just proved that you don’t.”
“You proved only that you spin a good yarn. As I already knew you did. Is this one supposed to appeal to my ego?”
A mirthless huff escaped him. “You think I’m making this up? Why? To butter you up for my current purposes? I wish. As someone who knows what a bullet feels like ripping through my flesh, I would have preferred one to admitting how fallible I am, how unprofessional I was, how I risked everyone’s lives to protect a woman who didn’t know me...whom I believed could never be mine.”
Steel mixed with gold in her gaze, clearly not buying his admissions. Funny. If he’d ever thought he’d confess this to her, he wouldn’t have dreamed this would be her reaction.
Might as well confess the rest, let her make whatever she wished of it. “When I burst in and I met your eyes, saw that mixture of terror and courage and fury...I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t be able to look in those eyes again, to get the chance to know you. My instincts took over...and I let them.”
She averted those eyes, depriving him of their touch. “Yet after you went to such lengths to save me, you didn’t follow up on your wish to ‘know’ me. Not for over a year.”
He exhaled heavily. “I might have saved the day, for you and for everyone else, but I knew how badly I messed up. I guess I was punishing myself for failing to fulfill my duty and couldn’t reward my failure by giving myself the gift of knowing you, the one behind my lapse.”
She raised her eyes, that derision back in full force. “So was it guilt that stopped you from giving yourself the ‘gift’ of knowing me, or was it that you didn’t think it ‘wise or fair’ to involve a woman in your crazy existence?”
“Both. And the family feud. Everything.”
“Then, a year later, you just decided to disregard all those overpowering reasons you had not to approach me. Once you made that first contact, you relentlessly courted me all the way to your bed. Then, before I could catch my breath, you pushed for marriage. And when I tried to slow things down, you pushed harder. And when I decided to put a stop to it, you threatened you’d slander me and destroy any man who came near me.”
He gritted his teeth on the memory of his despair, when he’d felt her slipping through his fingers. “These were my most indefensible moments. Trying to hang on to you, then going almost berserk when I couldn’t.”
“Yeah, sure,” she scoffed. “You lost control out of sheer emotion. That coming from the ice-cold man they sent after the Mata Haris of the world, to seduce, entrap and destroy them.”
It was his turn to blink in surprise. She knew that? How?
She elaborated on just how much she knew. “I’ve been told how you are the man to rely on when a woman is involved, the incomparable undercover agent no female can resist. You’re not only known as Al Moddammer, but Qatel an-Nesaa—the lady-killer. And you’re claiming you took one look at the twenty-year-old nobody I was, an obscure member of your family’s hereditary enemies, and couldn’t think straight on account of my irresistibility?”
He exhaled. “That does about sum it up.”
“Tut.”
That click of her tongue shot straight to his loins. Any second now he was going to ravish her again, come what may.
Unaware of his state, she went on, “I expected better from the ultimate secret-service weapon that you are. Some airtight premise, at least something more plausible. Seems I have to revise many things I believed about you. You do remember I prefaced this unfortunate encounter, before you took that detour into badly scripted drama, by mentioning that I know everything, don’t you?”
“Again I say I wish it was anything but the pathetic truth. So, against all my intentions, I find myself forced to ask, according to you, what is everything?”
Her eyes became icy embers. “Everything from the moment I went to meet Najeeb and found you waiting for me instead.”
* * *
Jala watched those eyes of his blaze at her declaration.
She’d never been able to decide when they were most hypnotic: when they glowed with a constant flame or when they fluctuated—as they’d been doing throughout this confrontation—their pupils expanding and constricting, giving the intense tawny irises the illusion of burning coals.
She’d dreamed of those fiery eyes, his voice, his touch, for over a year after the hostage crisis. And it had had nothing to do with his saving her life. He’d just...overwhelmed her. He’d melted her just by looking at her, just by being near. When feeling that way had been totally out of character for her. She’d been too mature for her age, as her brothers had always told her. Cerebral, almost jaded.