What she should be fixating on was the fact that he didn’t sleep here in the palace. If she were to continue to treat him, she’d have to go, too. “I can’t explain it, but I should’ve thought about that before you came all this way. I know you have no desire to come out into the desert with me, and the equipment would be useless there anyway. Apologies, Adalyn.”
She sat back down on the edge of the bed, thoughtful frown firmly in place. “How long are the missions?”
“Many days.” Not that many, but more than two. He would disappear for weeks on end if he could get away with it.
“And people don’t know you’re doing this?”
She should sound less interested, not more.
“I keep a small staff here, and I’m always available via satellite phone. Since this is not my home country—it’s my mother’s kingdom—the people here, especially those out in the desert camps, don’t know what I look like. I go by a different name. We have a fake logo sprayed onto the trucks. It’s …”
“Tricky.” She grinned as she said the word and then yawned wider than she had before. “Well, I have a theory about the sleeping in the tent thing. But if you only take a short trip when you go, I’m assuming it’s fairly frequent short trips?” She stopped, shifted on the bed some more and tried again. “I can go … on one trip. And that would be a few days of monitoring when you’re actually sleeping. And then we can tell Jamison that we worked on a treatment plan for you to implement.”
“The sun is brutal, Adalyn. You will burn to a crisp. And the heat, if you’re unused to it …”
“Where I live it gets very hot. And humid. Super-humid. So humid that mold is a massive problem. I can handle heat. And wear sunblock. We’ll be going in a vehicle anyway, right? Something with a roof?” She frowned momentarily, eyes sliding to the side beneath pinched brows. That was the kind of look he wanted from her. Uncertainty.
Uncertainty her words did not share. “I can go from the vehicle to the tent and not have to be in direct sunlight too much.” She stood and wandered toward him but passed by to reach for the doorknob. “I hate to kick you out of a room in your home, but I’m really very tired. I think I have jet lag. Jamison never adequately described it to me before. It’s awful.”
He took the hint and rose to move that way. “The way my schedule is arranged, I really should head out in the morning.” Before she had time to rest up.
She opened the door and held it patiently for him. “What time?”
“It’s best to travel in the morning, before the heat of the day.”
“What does that translate to in numbers?”
“Six to ten, give or take.”
She looked at the clock, no doubt calculating just how few hours of rest she’d be getting if she actually went through with the plan. “Okay. I’ll be ready at six.” Another yawn and then she wandered back to the bed, leaving him at the door. “Try to rest if you can. We’ll start tomorrow.”
Pulling down the blankets, she crawled in—robe and all—and reached for the clock to set it.
She’d never go. In the morning, after she’d had a few hours to reset her brain and remember how much she hated to travel, she’d come to her senses and he could trundle her back off to the helicopter pad and send her home. “Good night, Adalyn. Thank you for being willing to try.”
“No offense, Khalil, but I did it for Jamison. I’m sure you’re a nice man and that you deserve help—it’s torture to be kept awake, like real torture, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone—but if anyone else had asked me to come, you’d be on your own.”
She clicked off the light and he allowed himself a tiny smile. He’d probably do anything for Jamison, too; he was closer than Khalil’s real brothers had ever been. “Duly noted. And you have tried to do that by coming all the way here to meet with me.”
“I’ll see you at six,” she said again, then sat up so he could see her only by the light spilling through the door to his chamber. “And, Khalil? Knock first next time. I wouldn’t want to cause you years of therapy.”
What did that mean? She’d already lain back down and burrowed into the pillow, effectively shutting him out. “Sleep well, little sister,” he murmured, shutting the door behind him. Calling her “Doctor” hadn’t done anything for his libido. Maybe calling her “little sister” would be able to keep him from thinking about the lush flesh he’d seen on display.
Jay needed a talk about sending his innocent, pretty little sister off to foreign countries and men who might take advantage of her.
Men of weaker constitution than Khalil.
COLLEAGUES LIKED TO JOKE that Adalyn had chosen sleep medicine as her specialty in a direct reaction to how badly she’d longed for sleep during medical school and residency.
‘Sleep is for the weak’ was practically a motto of the twenty-first century. A crutch to help people get by in this competitive world and all its requirements for productivity, to prove they weren’t beholden to the hours of vulnerability almost every living creature had to succumb to daily. The concept of sleep as a luxury.
Sacrificing sleep meant compromising health. Physical. Mental. Emotional. And she was doing it again in order to keep up with Khalil’s schedule and not let her brother down. Her brother, who would want her to be healthy! Ah, more contradictions of modern living.
Sleep-deprived, but clean, mostly upright and dressed—unlike the last time she’d seen Khalil—Adalyn knocked on the door to his suite while looking at her watch. Ten to six—she was tired and only passably functioning, but she’d made his hour of departure. She’d even managed to pack a small bag with the bare minimum she’d need for three days in the desert.
No answer.
He’d said he never slept in the palace, though she doubted that was true unless he had been out in the desert as recently as a couple of days ago. Being tired could explain his forgetting to knock before he’d entered her bedroom the previous night, but if he’d gone more than forty-eight hours without any sleep he wouldn’t be nearly as coherent as he had been in their short conversation. But if he was sleeping in after she’d managed to get up and get ready …
He’d been so adamant he wouldn’t sleep.
Truly, insomnia wasn’t what she’d expected she was coming to treat. One of the ways that Jamison had talked her into coming, his strongest method, had been guilt. What did you do when a hero was wounded? You treated them. And by the story he’d told, with bold strokes, Jamison had painted Khalil as a wounded hero. Not two months ago the country had been in revolt, the royals murdered, except for the heir—who was underage and too young to take the throne. Khalil and his brother had undertaken a mission to rescue the boy and the brother hadn’t made it back. But Khalil had, with the boy—the heir who was too young to rule and now away at some school somewhere.
After all that? Well, if she’d had to guess, she’d have said his problem would’ve been nightmares. But then again, that was her specialty.
If he’d heard her knock, plenty of time had passed for him to throw pants on and answer the door. Adalyn knocked again. Still no answer.
Well, two knocks were warning enough. She grabbed her bag—the smallest she’d brought—and marched into Khalil’s bedroom suite.
Coming from a bright room to a dark one, all she could see was the outline of heavy drapes over the bedroom windows. She couldn’t even begin to guess where light switches would be in the chamber, so she marched to one of the windows and pulled open the heavy