“Everything has been taken care of,” he said.
Really? Just like that, huh?
And she let him have it. “So your reckless driving causes someone’s near-death and you just make a few phone calls and you wipe the record clean, huh? How wonderful it must be to possess enough power to walk all over people, rewrite history and come up smelling like roses!”
His bone-liquefying smile teetered. But just for seconds. Then it was widening, his incredible eyes narrowing, heating up. It enraged her more, made her even more fluent in her abuse.
“So how have you reconstructed the accident?” she plowed on. “That you stopped of your own accord and rushed to help the poor driver? What have you decided made him crash? Speeding under the influence of alcohol or …?”
He placed one finger over her lips. And she went mute.
The feel of the smooth, tough skin on hers, the masculinity and power and that scent that was all him inundating her, almost making her pass out with the pressure of sensations … Too much!
Just get out of here. Get away from him.
“Look, as long as you take care of my driver, I guess you can do whatever you please—as I’m sure you will anyway. So I’ll just go now.” She cursed herself for the wobble in her voice. “You’ve already made me an hour late for my appointment.”
All lightness seeped from his gaze, something single-minded flaring there. “You don’t need to worry about that. About anything.” Then he lowered the barrier between them and his driver and ordered, “Seeda.”
The powerful car shot forward instantly, soundlessly, eating up the asphalt, taking her who knew where.
A minute later she finally found her voice. “Can you, please, order your driver to stop? I’ll take another taxi.”
“Do you see an abundance of taxis around here?”
“That’s my problem.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Listen, I have the number of the company that sent me the first taxi. I’ll call them. So thanks for the thought, but if you just let me get down here, I’ll get out of your hair and—”
“Now, that’s a lovely image—you in my hair.” He looked sideways at her as he sprawled beside her like a lion settling down to a nap. “Why would I want you out of it?”
“You’re not letting me go?”
He just smiled. And she cried, “Are you kidnapping me?”
He laughed. A sound of such beauty and impact it was cruel. “Now there’s an idea. And who would blame me? When a dream pursues a man, he lets himself get caught, captures her back.”
A dream? So he’d progressed from toying with her to mocking her!
“I—I didn’t pursue you,” she muttered. “I just had to make you stop and take responsibility for your callous behavior.”
“What callous behavior? I wasn’t driving. And my drivers swear they didn’t notice the accident they had caused.” Before she flayed him with more sarcasm, he talked across her intended rebuke. “But I do assume responsibility for their haste. I was rushing to an appointment, told them of my wish to conclude it in record time so I’d finally get to bed. It seems they were blind to anything but fulfilling my wishes.”
Though he had shown such care to the injured driver, his explanations left a lot to be desired. She opened her mouth to flay him again and he went on talking, obliterating the last of her irritation, vaporizing any retorts and thoughts.
“I don’t consider this an apology,” he murmured. “Or that one is enough to make up for the accident I indirectly caused and which I can only thank God wasn’t any worse and that you weren’t injured. Your driver is being airlifted to the best hospital in Halwan, he will get comprehensive treatment, follow-up and compensation, and his car will be replaced. As for my failure to intervene, you must excuse me. I was sleeping until my head guard woke me up, saying that a foreign woman had intercepted us and they believed she was mad, if not armed.” He huffed a laugh, all dismissal and irony. “Which shows how clueless they are.” His gaze swept her in one hot, total body caress that singed her down to the bone. “You are more than armed. You are lethal.”
Her nerves fired an all-out alarm. Her heart was racing itself to a standstill.
What was happening to her? She’d never reacted to a man, to anything, like that. That runaway reaction, suffocating in intensity, transporting in headiness.
Feeling so out of her depth made her angrier.
“And you are … forward,” she choked. “But what do I expect from a man who’s rushing to bed—now? In the aftermath of a night of excess, no doubt.”
He took her jeering with another enervating smile, the smile of a man who was certain he’d never be less than the ultimate in any woman’s eyes.
Then he finally spoke, deep and devastating. “I hope by the time I take you to your appointment you’ll think more kindly of me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He flipped open his cellphone. “I’ll just arrange a postponement of mine.”
He took his eyes off her only long enough to punch in a number. And at that exact moment her phone rang.
She fumbled it out, groaning inwardly. That Ministry of Interior hotshot must be fuming by now. She wondered if he’d believe she’d had an accident or if he’d think she was just incapable of being punctual. It was all she needed, starting off on the wrong foot with the man who could send her packing!
She punched the answer button, croaked a wavering “Hello?”
An endless moment of silence met her tentative greeting.
Then she finally heard an answering, “Hello.”
The problem was, she heard that same hello in stereo.
Out of her cellphone, and out of her companion’s lips.
CHAPTER TWO
MALEK HEARD THE melodic “hello” pouring into his ear from his phone and simultaneously washing over him from his companion’s full, flushed lips.
He stared at her, shared a suspended moment of incomprehension.
Then he burst out in guffaws.
She was the doctor he’d been rushing to meet.
This was unbelievable. He couldn’t have dreamed anything like this would happen when he’d taken over the chore of approving the latest addition to GAO’s personnel in Damhoor.
He only had because he didn’t trust Shaaker from Interior to perform the interview with the necessary finesse. He also had to meet this doctor, make sure he—or, as it turned out, she—understood what working in the region entailed. Most people came there thinking that working in Damhoor, one of the richest kingdoms in the world, would be a luxury, and those false expectations had caused many setbacks. He wanted to stem potential trouble in advance.