Since he hadn’t known when he could slot this interview into his hectic schedule, he’d decided to do it the second he had a couple of hours of freedom. This would have left him around three hours to sleep before his next chore, but after weeks of fractions of an hour of exhausting oblivion, three hours still felt like a luxury.
On his way to this interview, he’d drifted into another fitful episode of unconsciousness the moment he’d hit his seat and had jolted awake to this—this vision.
There was no other word to describe her. And that’s when his tastes had always gravitated towards dark beauty. Or so he’d thought until he’d seen this incandescent creature.
There was no doubt what his preference was now, or would remain. It had formed the moment he’d seen her. It was now hair with every gradation of the colors of the dunes of his kingdom, eyes that reflected the azure of its skies and the translucence of its seas, complexion of its richest cream and rarest honey and features and a body caressed into being by God. It was her.
He’d never known such attraction, so much so he’d at first wondered if his exhausted mind had been playing tricks on him. But not any more. Not after that incredible experience of tending her injured driver with her, and everything that had come before and after it. Every word lashing him, every glance penetrating him, every breath singeing him. It was real. More than real. It was overwhelming him into breaking a code he’d lived by since he’d turned seventeen. A code he’d thought unbreakable.
He never made the first move towards a woman. Or the second, or the last. It had been he who had received advances, and had shunned them mostly. That had still left many, maybe even too many he’d decided to accept. But he had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, always making sure these women were totally free to make such advances, were looking for similar transient entertainment and understood in advance the details of what to expect from him. Utmost courtesy, thorough gratification—and whatever he saw fit to bestow on them besides that—and an amicable, swift and final parting of the ways.
But none of that applied here. His code, his rules were nowhere to be found. And that when she’d certainly made no advances, in any form, just the opposite. While he was certainly making them. And though indignant, and resistant, she, too, was at the mercy of this incredible affinity. He was certain of it.
He now held those eyes that had so far reflected such an entrancing mixture of steel and softness, resourcefulness and guile-lessness. They were now twin displays of total shock.
Then he spoke into his phone. “And here I thought the Jay Latimer I was on my way to meet was a man. This has to be the misunderstanding of a lifetime.”
And he was now certain why Shaaker had tried his best to dissuade him from taking over this meeting. The sly desert jackal hadn’t wanted to give the opportunity up.
Malek chuckled at how things had turned out, at the way she kept the phone glued to her ear, her stare widening.
“I guess I don’t need to tell you what kept me from our appointment,” he murmured again, still into the phone. “Or beg your forgiveness for having to be even later.”
She snatched her phone from her ear as if it had burned her, looked from it and back to him in what he could only describe as horror. And he couldn’t believe how her distress disturbed him.
He snapped his phone shut and turned fully to her, anxious to dispel it, and the change in his position brought his thigh against hers, only managing to deepen her—and his—agitation.
He readjusted his pose, severed the contact. Even when it was the last thing he wanted to do. He just had to soothe her.
“If not for the accident,” he began, keeping his voice tranquil, as if gentling a skittish mare, “and for my and my men’s role in it, I’d say this is a very happy occasion. For us to meet before the arranged time, over a matter of life and death. There’s no introduction to beat coming together to fight for another’s life. You must agree this just has to be fate.”
And Jay agreed. A cruel one.
He was the one who’d evaluate her eligibility? That big shot from Damhoor’s Ministry of Interior or rather, with him being a doctor, from the Ministry of Health?
And she’d insulted him in every way she could think of!
That was, she had between the episodes when she’d stared at him open-mouthed and glassy-eyed betraying her helpless reaction to him. Still, she was sure he was used to such a reaction. He no doubt waded in women who threw themselves at his feet and pursued him to any lengths. And while she’d never do either, just that he must have read her reactions made this situation untenable.
Even if he hadn’t noticed her almost swooning, just sitting near him, he’d noticed her heaping disdain on him without pausing to ask who he was. Not the level-headed professional image she’d hoped to project …
“So is Jay your real name, or is it an initial?” His question severed her hectic contemplations, the intimacy permeating his awesome voice fizzing in her blood.
It took seconds to process his question, to force herself out of her trance to choke an answer. “It’s—it’s an initial.”
“Standing for …?” he pressed moments later when she didn’t elaborate.
“Janaan,” she croaked.
“Janaan?” His hushed tone attested to his astonishment far more than a shout would have. A long moment passed when only the smooth whir of the engine permeated the silence, then he inclined his head at her, his eyes probing, tinged with wonder. “That’s an Arabic name.”
Oh, yes, she knew that. All too well.
“And not any Arabic name. But Janaan” He said her name as if he were tasting it, made it sound lush and unique, almost magical, a name she’d always been uncomfortable with, had never used in full. “Will your surprises never cease?”
He waited, as if he expected her to answer. When she just stared back at him mutely, he exhaled, sat forward, extended his hand to her. And this time, when she once more gave him hers without volition, his grip was neither feathery nor ephemeral.
“Well, Janaan Latimer of the ceaseless surprises, we’ve met under difficult circumstances. Let’s start again, shall we?” He gave her hand a tiny squeeze. “It was a great honor to work with you, and as great a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Dr. Malek Aal Hamdaan, at your service.”
Every word he uttered was like an electric current jolting through her heart. She felt she was suffocating on it as she groped for something to say, something to stop his advance through her barriers. “I prefer Jay—or—or Dr. Latimer …”