Wincing at the words that had haunted him with shame, he shook his head. “I didn’t tell Najeeb anything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Her instantaneous rejection was what he deserved. Not only had he threatened to do just that, Najeeb had cut off all relations with her, proving to her that Mohab had carried out his threat.
But he hadn’t. He’d lived dreading news of her impending marriage to Najeeb. When that had never come to pass, he’d found out why. His uncle had told Najeeb that Mohab had fulfilled his mission in proving that Jala was dissolute, but if Najeeb desired her, he could enjoy her, as Mohab once had.
Even though he’d been hurt and jealous, believed she’d chosen Najeeb over him, he’d also come to admit that she’d had every right to change her mind about marrying him. And he’d been furious that Najeeb had ended what he’d professed to be a strong friendship based on hearsay, or even the truth of their relationship. If that made her dissolute in Najeeb’s eyes, when the man hadn’t staked a prior claim, it made him despicable.
He’d been unable to abide his uncle’s defamation and his cousin’s desertion of her. In a gesture of ultimate contempt, he’d resigned his job and left their and Saraya’s service.
He exhaled. “Ask Najeeb. He’ll tell you I haven’t talked to him since that night. You had every right to leave me, and I’ll be forever ashamed I threatened to slander you for it.”
Her glare wavered only to harden again. “Even if I believe that, you have other transgressions waiting in line. How dare you have me followed?”
Savoring the bewitching sight she made in her fury, he said, “As long as I’m already damned, and I have no hope of having the extenuating circumstances sanctioned, I might as well tell you that I’ve been keeping tabs on you far longer than you think. I started right after I first saw you attending a conference with your oldest brother Farooq in Washington.”
Her eyes rounded. “That was ten years ago!”
“Aih. You were only eighteen and the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. I felt the chemistry that sizzles between us singe me even then, even when you didn’t see me.”
Her disbelief was almost palpable. “It’s not possible I didn’t see you.”
“You do remember what I do for a living, don’t you? If I want to stay out of sight, that’s where I remain.”
But he’d been unable to stop following her after that first sighting. He’d known he’d never approach her, but she’d become his fantasy when he’d never had one before.
Then that hostage crisis had happened. Her name had been the only thing he’d seen on that hostage list before he’d stormed in, and he’d made the decision to save her first right then. Facing that had made him more enraged at himself, his anger mounting the more he found himself struggling not to go after her, and to hell with all the reasons to stay away.
“And you expect me to believe you were enthralled at first sight? A sight I didn’t even reciprocate?”
“Seems you never looked in the mirror.”
“C’mon...you have tons of gorgeous women littering your path, and I’m not even that. I’m too...androgynous.”
An incredulous laugh burst out of him. “Then I don’t know what that says about me, since you define femininity to me.” Before she ricocheted with another rebuttal, he cut her off. “Aren’t you going to hear my version of what happened?”
“Will you tell me Najeeb or I jumped to conclusions, or some other lameness like that? Don’t bother. I already told you I don’t care. It was just a welcome bit of news that made breaking up with you much easier.”
He had to accept that. It seemed he hadn’t realized how controlling his kind of life had made him, how severely allergic she had been, and still was, to any infringement on her free will. Her distress had been acute every time he’d pushed to announce their engagement. She’d kept saying she wanted more private time before their families and their feud infringed on their relationship. It seemed the more he tried to push for moving forward, the more she’d resented his attempts to herd her toward his objective. She would probably have ended it on that account alone. Her discoveries about his subterfuge had just rushed everything to its conclusion.
He patted the space beside him again. “You still need to know my side, just so you know ‘everything’ for real.”
She only flung a dismissing hand at him. “Suit yourself.”
“Thank you, Your Ungraciousness.” He bowed his head mockingly. “So...when my uncle assigned me the mission of sabotaging you and Najeeb, I pounced on it, but only as a pretext to finally approaching you. That alone made me wonder if you might be as dangerous as my uncle believed. After all, how could you be the sweet innocent I thought you to be if you affected me this way, when the world’s most lethal seductresses didn’t turn a hair in me? If I was so enthralled from afar, what chance did Najeeb have?”
He had approached her, hoping she’d turn out to be nothing like his fantasies and he could end her hold over him. Saving Najeeb would have been incidental.
But from that first night, he’d lost sight of the whole world in her company, then of his own reality in her arms. He’d forgotten who he was and what kind of life he led to the point he’d asked her to marry him.
“But you changed your mind once you were with me, right?”
“When I was with you I had no mind. But if anyone gets your reservations back then, it’s me. You had your reasons for shunning marriage, and I had mine.”
Not that his dread had stopped him from wanting to go through with it, from becoming progressively more impatient with her postponements, even when he hadn’t realized they’d been signs of trouble. This obliviousness had been why he’d been so shocked when she’d ended it. Then, after he’d found out why she hadn’t hooked up with Najeeb, she’d disappeared.
He’d turned the world upside down searching for her, to no avail. He’d only found her when she’d resurfaced on her own, following a yearlong humanitarian trek in uncharted areas in South America. He hadn’t let her out of his sight since.
And all the while, he’d been seeking a pretext to go after her again. Now that he’d finally found it, he would get her. She just didn’t know it yet.
He swept her in an aching glance. “But my proposal, as ill-advised as it was, was real.” At her disbelieving huff, his lips twisted. “Whatever you think I thought or felt, not even I can feign that much hunger, for that long or at all.”