He would take this with her, say and do what felt natural. It would be over soon. Too soon. He wouldn’t let the upcoming separation pollute the time he’d allowed himself with her.
He relaxed his knotted brow, smiled down at her. “In delayed answer to your question, the construction was finished four months ago, the rest two weeks or so ago. We’re staffing now.”
Jay was barely conscious of the people in the background or those who were lining up like a welcoming committee ahead. She only had eyes for Malek as she hurried to keep up with his far longer strides. What she couldn’t keep up with was the dizzying succession of expressions on his face. One second he’d looked elated, the next pensive, then harsh, then upset and now, though he was back to being plain overwhelming, she could feel his … conflict. There was no other way to describe what was coming off him in waves. What was going on inside that mind of his?
As if she’d ever find out. Or should want to. He was probably only regretting his behavior, which he’d explained the reason for. Lack of sleep made people do and say things they didn’t mean. Now he’d rush her on a tour because he’d committed himself to it then he’d drop her in GAO’s lap and head to his bed at last.
This explanation somehow put her at ease. Confusion agitated her. But knowing the whys and wherefores of all this, that it would be over soon, made her equilibrium, and another form of spontaneity, resurface. She felt she could allow herself the luxury of basking in his presence for as long as it lasted.
She looked up at him, fighting the urge to reach up and brush back the lock of hair that had slipped down his forehead, to run her palm over the darkness roughening the satin of his chiseled cheeks and jaw, and smiled her pleasure at just being near him. “And how are the staffing efforts going?”
Tension and weariness drained from his eyes as his smile widened to match hers. “With you here? Spectacularly.”
She giggled. Why not let herself feel good about the incredible things that kept spilling from his spectacular lips?
He chuckled, too, gave her a conspiratorial glance. “Don’t look now, but it seems all existing staff have come out in force to welcome you.”
Her lips twisted. “Yeah, right. They’re standing on attention for their commander-in-chief’s surprise inspection. Quaking in their shoes, no doubt.”
His mock-hurt look was simply delicious. “You don’t think it possible they’re just thrilled to see me?”
“You know what? From their smiles, I bet they are.” And who wouldn’t be? she added inwardly.
“Tell you what …” A gentle tug turned her to face their reception party. “Let’s get the introductions out of the way so they get back to their work and we get on with our tour.”
For the next fifteen minutes they did just that. Jay counted fourteen different nationalities among the GAO volunteers, in addition to the Damhoorians, in every medical and administrative position, about a hundred in all. But a place that size would need thirty times more personnel to run it. Not that she was sure just what this place was supposed to be.
After a gracious command from Malek made everybody rush to leave them alone, Jay fell into step with him as he took her on a thorough tour of the premises and facilities.
And if she’d been impressed by its sheer size from the outside, she was flabbergasted now. She’dnever seen anything this comprehensive. It was far more than a medical complex. The diagnostic and treatment sectors, once staffed, could easily deal with mass casualty situations. Supplies, warehousing, food services andhouse-keeping could keep up with an army’s logistics and supply chain in a year-long war. The teaching and training facilities in all fields could spawn legions of highest caliber medical and administrative professionals. The research sector had all the promise of being at the cutting edge in science and healthcare. The administrative and managerial sectors could probably run a country, and so could the seamless mechanical, electronic and telecommunications systems. This place was a mind-boggling triumph of ambition and efficiency.
It was only confusing that GAO had built it in Damhoor, where the average citizen had an income to rival that of the richest countries in the world and a comprehensive medical insurance.
They were now in the last section, diagnostics, and he gave her another comprehensive summation of its capabilities. Then he spread his formidable arms, stretching his black shirt across his expansive chest, like a magician inviting applause.
Stunned hunger at his power-laden grace was probably what stopped her from clapping. She couldn’t believe how entertaining he’d made the technical data he’d inundated her with.
His grin, this amalgam of teasing and enjoyment wrapped up around a core of unadulterated maleness, flashed at her. “I hope I haven’t overloaded and crashed your system.”
“So this was your plan, huh? To make me sorry for insisting on getting down to business by immersing me in a vat of it.”
He pouted. “I’d never want to make you sorry. But you’re such an informed listener that I got carried away. The desire to brag was also something I couldn’t apply brakes to.” He stopped before they reached the exit doors. “But seriously, have I bored you?”
Jay didn’t think it wise to inform him he was probably genetically incapable of being boring. That she’d be an avid listener to him reciting the Yellow Pages.
Instead she smirked. “As if I’d tell you if you had.”
“Oh, you would. I believe that you of all people would whack me over the head with your candid opinion, no matter what.”
“Gee—I was that rude earlier, huh?”
“You only said what you thought. And then you were rattled from the accident, you were fighting for your driver’s life, and you were maybe a little frightened you’d fallen into some depraved man’s clutches.”
“Two out of three there, pal.” One of his eyebrows went up and her heat shot in the same direction. She was really forgetting who he was. Who she was. Somebody gag and sedate her.
“Care to elaborate?” he prompted.
“Uh—just that I wasn’t scared of you for a second.” His eyes flared at that, with something akin to—pride? Satisfaction? Giving up on trying to interpret his expression, she went on, “Maybe stupid, but there you go. And listen—about that last crack. I have this social deficiency syndrome and it’s complicated by a severe case of verbal communication atrophy.”
“Don’t apologize,” he admonished. “I loved it. Even if I didn’t, you still shouldn’t apologize. Never apologize, Janaan.”
Oh, God—the way he said her name!
“Uh, I’m not apologizing, actually,” she mumbled, feeling a strange elasticity in her knees. “Just confessing my condition.”
His eyes crinkled. “I hope it’s incurable.”
“You don’t need to hope too hard. It probably is.”
His look as he led her out of the building was mystery itself. But it was the lines of tiredness that stamped his heart-stopping beauty that made her heart, and hands, itch, wanting to soothe them away.
She barely noticed they were approaching his convoy. She only felt his gentleness as he once again seated her in his car, in the blessed welcome of cool darkness and his proximity.
He didn’t order his driver to drive, only adjusted his position to face her. “So, what do you think of GAO Central?”
“Besides ‘holy cow’, you mean …?” She stopped, groaned. “That probably isn’t the right exclamation to make around here …”
A powerful finger stemmed her mumbling. “What have I told you about never apologizing?” She couldn’t hold back the shudder the feel of his finger on her lips, his words, his voice wrenched from her. “Before you tell me you’re not, I want you to promise me never to watch what you say around me.” Yeah, sure. For the whole of the next hour. She could do that. “I have no cultural or religious sensitivities to step on. Even if I did, I think political correctness is becoming reverse persecution and I for one am never contributing to it. ‘Holy cow’ summed up
your opinion beautifully.”
Not only a god, but deeply sane with it too. Whoa.
She cleared her throat, groped for something half-coherent to say. “Not that my opinion counts for much, but this place is awesome—as you know. But what, and why, is it? I didn’t know GAO had anywhere near these resources or, if they did, that they’d use them to establish a single mammoth of a center like this.”
He smile was all indulgence. “You’re right. GAO wouldn’t splurge on one place like that. This is all built by Damhoorian funds, providing GAO with a site to pool resources, human and otherwise, to engineer emergency and long-term operations, to equip, man and deploy them, as well as a destination for those in need of help, medical or otherwise, who GAO can’t help with any reliability or continuity under the conditions in their countries.”
She chewed her lip. “Put that way, this place is the answer to the prayers of all the people I know who work with GAO. They always moan about how prosperous nations can do far more to help them in their humanitarian endeavors and aren’t. But this place says that one of those nations is. And doing it right.”
He gave a dismissive gesture. “We haven’t done much yet.”
“You’ve done plenty and laid the foundations for doing a lot more. And in such economy. That’s one of the things that most impressed me here—the total lack of opulence.”
He huffed in what looked like genuine surprise. “Excuse me, but you’re the first to comment favorably on that. Everyone took me to task about what was described as the barrenness of the place.”
“It’s not barren!” she protested. “It has great ambiance and it’s streamlined. Guess everyone’s been brainwashed by the five-star medical complexes sprouting up all over the world. It makes my blood boil to think of all the people who could have been helped with all the money that went to their zillion-dollar internal decoration. But this place is simple and efficient and its size is purely functional. It’s clear every cent was well spent.”
His smile widened. “You have issues with misspent money, don’t you?”
She frowned. “Any sane human being has those.”
“You’d be surprised how many insane human beings litter the planet, then. But GAO’s positive influence goes beyond cost-effectiveness. This establishment is as near perfection as it gets in terms of therapeutic environment, sanitation, circulation, expandability, safety, security and sustainability and I’ve already commissioned them to design a major health center in Al Areesha, our major coastal city.”
She nodded slowly. “Um—I’m still not clear why GAO is basing itself here, in one of a handful of countries in the world where its presence isn’t needed. Why not take your donations and build many mini-centers in their target regions?”
“Because being here.” He spread those expressive hands of his. “ … on Damhoorian soil, gives GAO a stable base of operations and the vast resources to reach out to the chaotic and impoverished countries in the region. Damhoor also has fringe communities that need their awareness raised in order to provide them with effective healthcare, to stop them from abusing their health in the name of tradition. We’ve learned that wealth and resources have no impact on such deep-rooted problems. So, yes, even Damhoor needs GAO for their unsurpassed experience in dealing with every cultural and mass health dilemma known to man.”
Just what she’d been thinking before the accident. Before she’d met him, a lifetime ago. And he was admitting it, so freely, so eloquently. Not at all the attitude she’d expected. But, then, what preconception of hers hadn’t he pulverized?
And she was spending the last minutes in his company. Now he’d take her back to her hotel. She doubted she’d ever see him again.
A fist convulsed around her heart. Which was just silly.
But, silly or not, after the soaring of the last hours she felt like she was on a roller-coaster. Meeting him had been one hell of a ride. Now she was on the last drop before she got off.
Just get it over with.
“So, uh, I get the picture now,” she croaked. “And it looks great. You were, too—helping me with my driver, taking me around the base, going above and beyond in debriefing me.” She rummaged in her bag for her hotel address and handed it to him.
He scowled down at it.
“Is this an attempt at subtlety?” he drawled, slow and nerve-racking. “Demanding I take you to your hotel without actually saying so?”
She gave an awkward shrug. “I must get points for not blurting out the demand like before. And you notice I’m no longer asking to get out to take a taxi.”
“Only because you’re too intelligent to try the same thing again and expect a different result.”
“That doesn’t take intelligence, just common sense.” She stopped, her heart slamming against her ribs until she felt he must see them throbbing through her top. “I—I hope you’ll let one of your men update me about my driver’s condition.”
“He’s our patient. My patient.” That had an edge of harshness, of arrogance, betraying another side of him. The side no one would want to cross. It seemed he couldn’t abide her allusion that he’d relegate the responsibility. “I’ll follow him up and update you.”
Something thorny expanded in her throat. She could only nod, before turning blind eyes to the darkened vista outside her window. Let him ask the driver to get going. Let them get to her hotel quickly. Please.
She felt him move beside her, felt as if every muscle expanding and contracting under his polished bronze skin was pulling at her own. Then his voice drenched her skin in goose-bumps.
“About our interview,” he drawled huskily, commanding her eyes back to his, his gaze on her mesmerizing, “and conducting it over the now very late lunch—what cuisine takes your fancy? French, Italian, Chinese—or local?”
CHAPTER FOUR
HE WAS INSANE.
Instead of sticking to his plan of taking Janaan on a short guided tour then rushing her back to one of his cars and jumping in another to zoom in the opposite direction, he’d gone over the base almost down to the wiring and piping, clung to her all the way to his car and jumped in beside her telling himself he couldn’t hand her over to his driver and must escort her himself to her hotel. Then she’d let him know exactly where to drop her and he’d panicked. He’d known then that his plans had been empty bravado, that he’d do anything to prolong his time with her.
And he had. He’d taken her to one of his two “personal” places. His first and overwhelming desire had been to take her to his private one. A last wisp of sanity had made him opt for the public one, even if it was where he’d never brought another woman.
He was still vibrating with the jumble of relief and anxiety that had assailed him when she’d succumbed this time, with such an obvious muddle of eagerness and agitation. She felt the same about him, knew it was foolish to prolong the exposure, yet couldn’t stop herself either.
But if there’d be no more brakes applied from her side, how high would this conflagration soar?
She now snatched her eyes away, sent a tremulous smile up at the Bedouin waiter who’d placed the last in over a dozen plates of hors d’oeuvres on the four-foot-round copper tray. Then she busied herself with smoothing the keleem covering the floor where she sat, studying the vivid patterns of the hand-woven wool before she tucked her blue denim-covered legs beneath her, adjusting her pose against the reclining cushion into a guarded, formal one. She could have been spreading herself in the most erotic display with the way his hormones seethed.
His avid gaze followed her nervous, awed one as it darted around. She was attempting to distract herself with the details of the restaurant, which was a vision of the time of one thousand and one nights with a futuristic twist.
It was minutes, crowded with the unspoken and the out of bounds, before she finally gave up trying to avoid his eyes and a conversation, and sighed. “So you own this place, or what?”
He huffed in surprise at this new self-deprecation she made him exp
erience. “It’s just the only place, besides one of my retreats, where I feel … at peace.”
“Provided you’re the only customer, right?” She gave him an assessing glance. “Since a place like this—one that combines tradition and progress in such a magical blend—must have people fighting to secure a tab-a tub … er …” She waved at the handcrafted copper trays gleaming in the last rays of the sun and placed on foot-high, carved, solid mahogany bases.
“Tubleyyah,” he provided, picking up an incense stick, lighting it from the flame of an intricately worked brass lamp and placing it in the matching incense burner.
She gasped when the sweet-spicy scent of ood, his land’s most valued incense, hit her. “Yeah, that.” A hot, short sound of pleasure escaped her, vibrating behind his ribs, shooting to his loins. The sensations spiked when her eyes narrowed on him with disapproval. “I bet the absence of customers is to accommodate you. And I bet I can’t even imagine what that cost.”
“Is your blood boiling at the misspent money?” His lips spread, warmth and something he’d never felt towards a grown woman other than his mother—tenderness—humming in his.
She waved her hand. “Nah. This is not a hospital and it’s your personal money—though you could do better with it … Oh, OK. My blood, while not boiling, is a few degrees above normal.”
He shook his head in amazement. Everything she did and said was affecting him like an intravenous euphoric drug. “You’ll be glad to know I exchange favors with the owner, not money.”
“I won’t ask what kind of favors.”
He chuckled. “Very wise of you.”
He knew she would have volleyed something if not for the arrival of more food. She sat watching a procession of waiters bearing one serving plate after another in arrested attention and vocal appreciation, all but licking her lips as their meal was served by a dozen waiters clearly thrilled to lavish their expertise on such guests as them.
Ultimate Heroes Collection Page 81