She said nothing. Then she shifted, came closer and patted her lap. “You should lie down again. It’s clear you did hit your head and everything you’ve said and done so far has originated from a swollen brain.”
His eyes laughed into her in-doctor-mode ones. “You mean you don’t think I have one by default?”
“Sure, as is no doubt expected of your princeliness. But when you start suggesting we take a two-hundred-mile stroll in ‘the most hostile nowhere on the planet,’ it’s time for medical intervention.”
“Actually, it’s only a fifty-mile stroll. That’s the distance to the oasis I was taking us to when we had this little diversion.”
He winced inwardly at the hope that swept her ultra-expressive features, rearranging them into the image of relief, then reprimand. “Why didn’t you say so? That’s not too far.”
“That’s two marathons’ worth. In the desert. With temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit at midday and 20 at night. And that’s if we’re talking a linear path to our destination, which we’re not. Not with the seas of dry quicksand in the way.”
She raised her chin defiantly at him. “If you’re trying to scare me, save it. I didn’t come to Zohayd from an air-conditioned exam room in a five-star hospital, but from an understaffed and hectic emergency room in a teaching hospital and a couple of aid stints in Africa. I’ve been steeped in discomfort all my working years and I’ve rubbed shoulders with danger and despair quite a few times, by choice.”
He had to pause to admire her for a moment before he said, “I’m only trying to prepare you. I’ll see that we get through this, in the most efficient way possible, but I need you to be aware of the facts. So far, we’ve gone through the easy part. Now we face the desert.”
He could see her defiance and determination wavering, uncertainty and fear skirting their protective shell, scraping against it for chinks, for a way in.
But the good thing about challenge was that it kept one focused. Maybe he should escalate it, keep all her faculties locked on it, and on him.
He crooked his lips, knowing by now that would stoke her ready flames. “Anyway, great to know I won’t have a swooning damsel on my hands.”
“As long as I don’t have a swooning dude on mine!”
There she was. Ricocheting right back at him. And he laughed again, shook his head at his helpless reaction.
They were in a demolished multimillion-dollar helicopter in what might as well be another planet for all the area’s desolation. He was going to brave the desert’s mercilessness in his weakened condition to ensure her safety. She seemed to wish him and his whole family erased from the face of the earth.
And yet, he had never enjoyed anything as much, never looked forward to anything more.
But though he did, and had said they’d focus on their current predicament, he couldn’t forget the beef she had with his family. An unjustly imprisoned sibling was the stuff of undying grudges. This was worse than anything he’d imagined. He’d thought he’d be bargaining with a news bounty hunter or an intel black marketer. But he couldn’t have imagined this. Imagined her. What she was, how she affected him, what she had against his family.
Even the response he wrenched from her was one more strike against him.
Not that he’d let this, or anything, stand in his way.
He wanted her to give him everything. The info. And herself.
He always got what he wanted.
And he’d never known he could want like this.
Everything she knew, felt, was, had to be his. Would be his.
He cocked his head and her gaze slid unwilling admiration and sensuality over the hair that fell to his shoulder.
Pleasure revved inside his chest. “Now we’re squared on that, how about shelving your enmity until we survive this?”
“You’re only playing nice because you need me. Primary closure of a wound of that caliber is in four to ten days.”
He knew that. He also knew she needed to provoke him to keep her spirits up. He let her. “And you need me. You won’t find any passersby here to hitch a ride with to the nearest oasis. So how about you be nice to me?”
Her eyes stormed through vexation, futility and resignation before she harrumphed. “Okay, okay. I concede the need is mutual.”
“It is. In every way. Even if you’re too mad right now to concede that.”
She blasted him with a glare of frustration. He only grinned and dueted her exasperated, “Oh, shut up.”
Six
No one could know how absolutely majestic and humbling night could be until they’d been in the desert at night.
Problem was, it was also downright petrifying and alien.
Talia had known they were in the middle of nowhere. But before she got out of the helicopter, that had only been a concept, a figure of speech. Now it was reality. One that impacted her every sense and inundated her every perception. As she at last had the chance to appreciate.
And what a vantage she had to appreciate it from.
Harres had crash-landed them about five dozen feet from the top of one of those thousand-foot dunes he’d spoken of. From this spot she had an almost unlimited view of the tempestuous oceans of sand that seemed to simmer with their own arcane energy, emit their own indefinable color and eerie illumination. At the edge of her vision, they pushed in a scalpel-sharp demarcation against a dome of deepest eternity scattered with stars, the unblinking shrapnel of the big boom. Under their omnidirectional light, each steep undulation created occult shadows that seemed to metamorphose into shapes, entities. Some seemed to look back at her, some seemed to beckon, some to crawl closer. It made her realize how Middle Eastern fables had come to such vivid and sometimes macabre life. She certainly felt as if a genie or worse would materialize at any time.
Then again, she’d already met her genie.
Right now, he was taking apart the mangled rear of the helicopter to get to the gear and supplies they’d need before they set off on their oasis-bound trek.
She shuddered again, this time complete with chattering teeth, as much from expanding awe and descending dread as from marrow-chilling cold aided by a formidable windchill factor.
Though he was making a racket cutting the twisted metal with shears he’d retrieved from the cockpit, and the wind had risen again, eddying laments around them, it seemed he’d heard her.
He straightened with a groan that reminded her of his injury, made her wonder again how he ignored it, functioned—and so efficiently—with only the help of a painkiller shot.