“You’re concerned for my privacy?”
“It takes one who has none to know how valuable it is. You’ve been very wise to keep your anonymity. Nothing is worth endangering that.”
“You are. Worth that, and far more.”
She winced. “Don’t exaggerate, please. You barely know me. How do you know what I’m worth? And from the way I behaved with you so far, I know any man would be thinking I’m not worth much. But you of all men… So I believe you want me, but I’d hate to peek inside your head and read what you really think of me.”
“I, of all men? What’s so different about me?”
“What’s not different about you? And then, you come from a culture that glorifies feminine modesty and virtue, and is cruel to women who don’t abide by its strict rules, and I—I…”
“Your mind is taking off on tangents again. You’re punishing yourself for a nonexistent misdemeanor. I don’t believe so-called virtue is required of women any more than it is of men. Do you consider me to be a degenerate for letting our first encounter take an erotic turn that fast?”
“You know I don’t. It was you who stopped, you who had control over yourself, while I—I…”
“You were over your head.”
She nodded, her eyes downcast.
“I was, too. The one thing that made me stop was my fear of this exact situation, after your blood cooled and you couldn’t defend your actions to yourself, driving you to push me away in shame and discomfort at what you consider a lapse.”
“I didn’t say it was a lapse. I said it was out of character. So much so, I don’t know how to handle it, don’t know what to think…”
“Well, I do. I think I’ve never known desire like that existed. But it is so pure, so powerful I don’t know how to handle it, either. The one thing I could think to do was to slow down, savor it…savor you. Though you’re making it almost impossible to do that. Everything you say, every breath you draw is making me want to unwrap you and swallow you whole.”
Her color brightened, her gaze wavered. “Are you sure seeing me again won’t jeopardize your privacy? I’m overexposed and quite often maligned, and it would be awful if any of the venom I inspire from the media spilled into your life. I can’t let it.”
He was suddenly incensed. With the people who caused such upheaval in her life. With himself for ever devising the plan that had injured her so much. That could end with him losing her.
He rose from his armchair and joined her on the couch. “The paparazzi can’t touch me,” he bit off. “And I will convince them to collectively forget you ever existed.”
She blinked at his ferocity. Then she did another totally unexpected thing. She giggled. “I assume you’d use methods harsher than what’s fully sanctioned by the law to obtain this miraculous result?”
“I wouldn’t be doing anything they didn’t richly deserve,” he rumbled. “Breeching others’ privacy, shattering their peace.”
“You come from a culture that advocates an eye for an eye, don’t you? Uh…there I go, putting my foot in it again…”
“Never worry about saying anything to me. I have no sensitivities for you to tread on. Even if I did, you shouldn’t censor your words, anyway. I think political correctness is becoming reverse persecution, and I refuse to bow to its unreasonable demands. Anyway, you’re right about my culture, and me, advocating an eye for an eye. But I believe the rest of this decree is the relevant part. The aggressor is to blame.”
Her smile died as she digested his words. He was thankful to note that her agitation hadn’t returned with the dimming.
Then she sighed. “God, that’s tempting. But now that I realize what kind of power your possess, I can’t use it for my own ends. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. I’d feel I was nuking someone for spitting in my face. No, leave them be. They’ll get bored with me sooner or later.”
“You’d be that merciful when they’ve shown you no mercy? When they make their livelihood by preying on your life?”
“I don’t know about merciful. I just can’t be party to the ugliness they propagate, and by retaliating I’d just be poisoning the world more, not to mention muddying my own karma.”
He clamped his jaw on the need to pulverize her reticence, wanting her to give him carte blanche to remove the vultures from her path once and for all.
He wrestled the urge down, if only by coming to a decision that he would do it, if with less-than-harsh methods to honor her choice. He still couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I will keep on hoping that you’ll change your mind, let me use my…discretion in dealing with them. Until then, they’re coming nowhere near you. We won’t go back to your home. And I certainly won’t take you to a hotel. Come be with me, ya jameelati.”
After a stunned moment, she stammered, “I know I gave you the impression—hell, I asked you to—to…but I really am out of my depth here, Shehab.”
“I’m not asking you to come to my place to share my bed. I said we’d go slow, and we will, as slow as we need to. I’m offering my protection and hospitality as long as you need it.”
“Oh, God, Shehab, I don’t think…”
“How about you stop thinking for a while?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “But that’s the problem. I stopped thinking at all since I met you.”
His fingers feathered her eyes open. “And why is that such a bad thing? The past hours have been a roller coaster. Take the next, and all the time you stay at my place, to settle down, relax, enjoy my company, savor me as I intend to savor you.”
“But I have to…to…I don’t know what I have to do, OK? Whatever it is, I can’t do it with you around. Please, Shehab, just take me home. I need to wrap my head around tonight, around what happened between us, the way I—I…”
And she fell silent.
He was losing her. She was coming to her senses. He couldn’t afford to let her. He had to move into a higher gear.
He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket, gave a twofold order. The first part was another improvisation in his plan. He told her the second part. “I ordered the plane to land.”
She nodded, looked anywhere but at him. He put the phone on the couch between them, gritted his teeth and counted down…
A buzz went through her. It took her seconds to realize it wasn’t another jolt of awareness. It was his phone’s vibration.
He answered it unhurriedly, his eyes on her.
After the first seconds his eyes shifted away and his face closed. Her heart contracted. Bad news? Personal?
He bit off a string of Arabic before he snapped the phone shut. She watched him with a thudding heart as he placed it on the table before them, his moves deliberate, as if to delay a reaction to something big. And bad.
Then he finally sought her eyes and her heart lurched. “An unforeseen crisis has blown apart the business deal I mentioned earlier.”
She stared at him, held her breath, hoping he’d elaborate. Next second she wished she hadn’t hoped. She should have known whatever she hoped for would happen in reverse.
He went on. “I can’t predict how long it will take to perform damage control, to reestablish matters. Weeks. Maybe months.”
“Oh.” That was all she could say.
What was there to