No wonder he’d walked away.
If he believed her, he would have no more reason to fight their desire for each other. And while that was what she most coveted, to Amjad, it was what he most feared.
Her blood ran cold at the thought that he’d come back, announce that he didn’t believe her and hold her to her promise.
She cursed herself for making it. What had she been thinking, asking for his total trust or else? It was too soon. She had to think of some way out of this without looking like some wheedling grandstander whose word endured for as long as it took to exit her mouth. And she had to think fast, before he came back.
But he didn’t.
Every minute he was gone wound her up tighter. She tried to stay busy and stop obsessing as an hour passed. He had been gone longer than that in Dahabeyah’s stable before. Then another hour passed, still in the range of the acceptable, if he was giving the horse a full grooming. Or was sulking. But waiting for him in the safety and comfort of this cabin was far worse than when she’d been out there being buffeted by nature’s punishment. She hadn’t been scared then. She’d been with him. Now fear suffocated her. For him.
Suddenly, nothing sufficed to explain his absence. Images of him, lying out there, injured, being buried by the sand, reached inside her and ripped her heart out.
She flew to the first aid kit, grabbed their goggles, put hers on and tore out of the cabin.
The storm tore back at her, almost knocked her down. Her face and neck felt bombarded by millions of pins. The only thing keeping her from being blown off her feet was their sinking in the deep sand that had accumulated from the storm. The only reason the cabin hadn’t been buried was because it was on top of a cliff dune. Even so, the steps she’d seen Amjad climb on their arrival had been obliterated.
She didn’t know where to go except in the direction she’d previously seen him heading on his way to the stable before he’d disappeared in zero visibility.
She could barely see two feet ahead, had already lost sight of the cabin. Her nostrils and lungs began to blister. She took off her shirt and wrapped it around her face. She could look for him while being flayed, as long as she could breathe.
After what felt like forever in a fast-forwarding stream of pain, she found the stable, stumbled inside. She wrestled with the pummeling winds to close the door behind her. The moment she did, she tore the goggles and shirt off her face, staggered around looking for him. Dahabeyah started kicking and whinnying as she burst into her stall, the last place she could search.
He wasn’t there!
He was out there, probably unconscious and injured. He might already be…be…
Dread and desperation burst out of her as she ran out of the stable. “Amjad!”
The merciless maelstrom dissipated her screams. She screamed more and more, begging for him to hear, to have enough strength to shout back, for her to hear him, to find him…
“B’haggej’ jaheem! What in hell’s name are you doing here?”
Amjad.
His voice. Drowning out the tumult of wind-propelled agony.
He was safe. Safe.
His presence electrified her, enclosed her, vacuumed away all else. Everything fell away as her legs disappeared from beneath her.
It didn’t matter. She was in his arms. And he was in hers. Nothing would ever matter to her but that.
Then he was carrying her over their cabin’s threshold again. She had no idea how he found the way back.
Inside, he put her back on feet that no longer felt like hers and zoomed away. She shakily took off her goggles, blinked after him, eyes watering. He streaked back carrying a water-filled plastic basin and towels, went to the kitchen and collected containers and bottles. He put his burden down on the coffee table, glowered up and down her nearly exposed half, his skin taut and glistening with inflammation over his masterpiece bone structure.
“And again I ask,” he growled, his voice hoarse, “what the hell did you think you were doing?”
“Déjà vu much?” she croaked, lips trembling on reminiscence.
He’d asked her the same thing long ago, a few months after she’d come back to the region. At the now-infamous conference he’d been sponsoring. During the opening reception, a bomb scare had exploded.
As everyone stampeded out, a man had overturned a table on her and almost trampled her.
She’d struggled to push the table off her, panicking, for Amjad as much as herself. Then, as if her worry had summoned him, he’d materialized over her, hauled the table off her as if it were made of cardboard, swept her up in his arms and to the nearest exit, shouted for her to run as far away from the building as possible. Then he’d turned back.
After a flabbergasted moment, she’d catapulted after him, tried to drag him back.
He’d ordered her away, just as he had his guards, assuring them he wouldn’t hold it against them if they ran for their lives. Then, in total disregard for his own safety, he’d gone back to help those who’d been trampled. Needless to say, none of his guards had left. To his fury, neither had she. She’d worked with him until everyone had been evacuated and Zohayd’s elite bomb squad arrived.
The bomb had been a hoax. But the damage the panic had caused had been real. As real as his anger after he’d dragged her to be examined by his physicians before taking her to his offices and blasting her.
He’d made the same delicious sight he did now, majestic in his wrath. She’d believed that while he’d risked his life for others on principle, his concern for her had been personal. His aggression, like it was now, had been relived fright laced with what-if scenarios he found insupportable.
She’d soothed him, asked why he found it strange she’d do what he had for her and for others?
For a magical moment, she’d felt her sincerity tearing down some barrier inside him, about to let her in.
Then the moment had been lost.
She’d never hated the sound of anything more than his phone’s imperative one-note ring, which had called him away to deal with the incident’s repercussions.
To her dismay, she’d found his barricades in place the next time they’d met, and she’d never been able to resurrect that sublime moment of closeness again. Until now.
Not that he looked close to her right now. He looked incensed.
“Very funny, Maram,” he hissed. “Last time you were playing the hero to impress me. What was it this time? You couldn’t wait to have the answer to your ultimatum?”
Suddenly anger injected her bloodstream with a dose of resentment over the echoes of fright and despair.