by Sophia Lynn
"Explain."
"Those are the investigators I brought to Ikkar to see about turning it into a heritage site," he said. "They came looking for the musicians, and I guess they found them."
"They would have found them more easily if you had paid them like I did," Bailey said with some asperity, and Adnan gave her a crooked smile.
"Don't be too angry at the restaurant owner," he said. "You might have rented the space and paid for the musicians, but this kind of party really is meant to be something that you come for when you hear the music."
A glance back into the room told Bailey that Adnan was right. There were more people coming into the restaurant now, the doors thrown open to the night. More people had appeared with drums and ouds, and there were children and elderly people joining in the dancing as well.
Despite everything that had come before, she found that the greatest desire in her heart at that moment was to simply take Adnan's hand and pull him into the fray. She remembered too well how it had felt to dance with him, their bodies swirling together and apart again, how they had moved to the same music and how easy it had been to…
To simply be with him.
That was all she wanted, and if she was being honest with herself, it was all she had wanted since he had saved her the night they had met.
Adnan, for his part, was only looking into the crowd with a chagrined expression on his face, shaking his head.
“Honestly, we're never going to pull them apart now,” he said wryly, and Bailey used his calm tone to reorient herself and to keep herself grounded. They had had shared something that was hard to describe behind the curtain, something that she still craved, but for the moment could not afford to pay any attention to.
“Well, Sheikh Adnan,” she said, “do we call this a victory for me or for you?”
She had intended the question lightly, but there was something dark in his eyes as turned to her.
“I think I want to forbid you from calling me Sheikh Adnan.”
The request seemed oddly serious, and Bailey couldn't help taking a closer look at him.
“And what should I call you instead?”
“Just Adnan. My title sits poorly in your mouth.”
Before she could stop herself, Bailey's hand flew up to her mouth, and that was a mistake, because now she could tell they were both thinking about what her mouth had been doing recently.
To her surprise, Adnan rubbed his hand over his eyes, shaking his head.
“I'm sorry. But please. Do not call me Sheikh Adnan again.”
“What if we're in public or at a ceremony of some sort?” she asked, a slight smile on her face. “What if I'm being presented to you in public?”
“Then you should follow your best instincts. You obviously have good ones in most circumstances.”
“All right,” she said. “Adnan.”
He smiled as if the sun had come out, and something in the back of her head told her that if they hadn't been surrounded by people, he might have reached over to kiss her. More distressingly, she would have let him.
“So we're going to call this a draw, huh?” she asked, and he sighed, spreading his hands out.
“For the moment. Though I should let you know, this is a fight that I intend to win.”
Bailey lifted her chin at his declaration. There was a teasing note in his voice, but she had read up on Adnan and his views, and of course she was growing to know the man himself. He might have had a smile on his face, but she could tell that he was deadly serious.
“I don't know if you know much about Andress Ventures, Adnan, but we're not used to losing either.”
There was a charged moment between them.
Adnan was the first to break the silence, and his words startled her.
“Where are you staying tonight? Not at the hostel, I hope?”
“No. There's a charming place right down the road, the Favashi residence. They took us in.”
There were no real hotels this far from the city, and she certainly couldn't board people used to five-star accommodations at the hostel. The Favashis were a local family with an enormous house that had enough bedrooms for the investors she had brought along. The Favashis had been incredibly welcoming, providing them with meals and guides and some of the whole-hearted hospitality that Bailey had been hoping the investors would see.
Adnan considered for a moment.
“I know the Favashis,” he said at last, “and I saw how many people were in your little congregation. Where in the world are you sleeping?”
“With the kids,” she sighed. “Jamila has a trundle bed, and she's kind enough to let me sleep on it if I tell her stories to get her to sleep.”
“Very fair,” Adnan said, and then he hesitated. “Bailey?”
“Yes?”
“If you wish, you could stay at my place for a few nights.”
She gave him a quick look that made him scowl reflexively.
“Nothing like that. Not unless you wanted it. But if you … if you need a place to stay. If you would like to…”
For a moment, there was nothing Bailey wanted more. What a pleasure it would have been to go home with Adnan, to leave the noise behind and to simply be with him. She could imagine what it would be like, slipping through the darkness to the comfort of his bedroom, of his enormous bed, of his body warm and lithe against hers…
And then would come all the confusion and conflicting agendas in the morning.
Somehow, she forced herself to smile, shaking her head and taking a step back for good measure. There was just a second where something that looked alarmingly like hurt flickered over Adnan's face, and then he wiped it away to stand impassive again.
“I don't think that would be a good idea,” she said. “I probably ought to get back even if my investors aren't planning to come along any time soon. Maybe if I start the stories early tonight, I'll get to sleep at a decent time.”
Adnan nodded, his expression cool.
“Of course.”
She thought he might say something else, something about how they could try again another time or that perhaps when this was all over things would be different, but he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he turned and made his way into the thickening crowd, and before she had quite registered what was going on, she had lost sight of him. There was something about it that made her stomach lurch, and briefly, Bailey was afraid that she was actually going to be ill. The walls of the restaurant were far too close, the noise was unbearable, and she was swaying on her feet as if she might topple at any moment.
Don't you dare faint, she told herself. If you fall, no one in the world is going to pick you up, so don't you dare!
Another moment, and she got her feet under her, and a moment after that, she was out in the clear night, taking deep, deep gulps of the clean air. She felt better the moment she was a little cooler, and as she gained her composure, Bailey wondered what in the world that was all about.
I've always been as healthy and sturdy as an ox… I really have let him get under my skin.
Bailey took a few more minutes to make sure she wasn't going to fall over, and then she started the walk back to the Favashis' household. She needed rest, she needed sleep, and she needed to spend some time not thinking about Adnan Haddid at all.
Chapter 9
Five days after he had seen the investigators off from Ikkar, Adnan received a letter. It thanked him for the welcome they had received; they had learned a great deal from everything they had encountered, and he was to be congratulated on the beauty of his country and the kindness of his people.
He skimmed the polite pleasantries of the letter, and finally three-fourths of the way through, he found what he had been looking for.
As to the social and classical importance of Ikkar, further investigation needs to be undertaken. The process can be a slow one, and we request your patience in this matter. If we have any need of more information, we will contact you.
It was couched in very p
olite, even respectful language, but Adnan knew very well that that meant don't call us, we'll call you.
He leaned back in his desk chair, spinning around to face the broad bay windows that let him look out over the capital of Koli-an. His country was rich, full of the best and brightest minds in the world. Why was it so hard to protect this one small place, to keep it from turning into an adult theme park for rich foreigners who only wanted another stamp on their passports?
Abruptly, his office in the tallest tower in the city felt more like a prison than anything else, and he rose, descending the glass elevator and walking out into the street. In times past, whenever he had felt unsettled or restless, the streets of his beloved city would calm him. Today, however, the noise and the chatter of a dozen foreign languages only served to frustrate him, and he walked faster.
The staticky haze that had clouded his mind pulled back, and he found himself confronting what was underneath, or rather, more appropriately, who had been underneath the entire time.
The entire matter of Ikkar had gotten tangled up with Bailey in his head, and things would have been so much simpler if she wasn't involved. Then they could simply have stayed who they were when they’d first met, stayed as wild and as innocent as they had felt, possibly stayed in bed the entire time...
Adnan paused at a street crossing and he blinked, because surely he hadn't gone so far head over heels that he had started seeing her out of the corner of his eye. Surely he was not so gone that he would imagine a flash of red hair where there was none, but then he looked closer and realized that it was her, and she was likely in the process of getting swindled.
Swiftly, he crossed the street and came up just in time to see her hefting a blue silk parasol from one of the street vendors.
“It's very beautiful,” the man was saying encouragingly. “It makes you look like a princess.”
“Well, I don't know about a princess,” Bailey said with a smile, and Adnan fought down the bolt of pure and irrational jealousy that she would smile for anyone who wasn't him. “How much did you say it was again?”
“Ah, well, usually it would be three hundred riyal, but since you are my last customer of the day, since you are so beautiful with it, and because you have been so very kind to me, what do you say to two-sixty?”
“I think you ought to let her have it for a hundred,” Adnan drawled, coming up to stand next to Bailey. “And I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for trying to swindle such an innocent young woman.”
Bailey's head snapped around, and Adnan's heart pounded in his chest for the moment of pure and undiluted pleasure that sparked in her blue eyes when she saw it was him.
“Adnan?”
He winked at her, not caring if the street vendor saw, and the man cried out, clapping his hands in mock offense.
“Ah, you are too cruel, sir,” he said. “I am honest, and I sell only fine wares here. I have told the lady only the truth...”
Adnan and the vendor bickered back and forth as Bailey tried to stop them and then simply rocked back on her heels to watch them haggle, a slightly bemused look on her face.
In the end, at a price above what Adnan had originally proposed and well below what the vendor had asked for, the man handed Adnan the blue silk parasol and Adnan in turn, handed it to Bailey. She took it with a slight smile.
She opened it and tilted it back on her shoulder, and Adnan privately had to agree with the vendor. She really was beautiful with that shade of blue that was such a close match for her eyes. They fell into step naturally, walking away from the vendor who was waving them on cheerfully.
“You didn't have to do that,” Bailey said, her tone gently chiding. “I could have afforded to pay what he was asking.”
Adnan snorted. They had come to one of the small almost private plazas in the older part of the city. They were little pockets of the past preserved willy-nilly through the modern areas. There was a fountain at the center of the plaza, but it had been obviously dry for years, the figure of the jumping fish at the center crumbling. It was startlingly quiet there, a refuge from the noise, and Adnan turned to Bailey with a slight smile on his face.
“And here I thought you were doing all kinds of research on what went on in Amil and about our ways and traditions. He's a street vendor. Everything he sells is going to be priced high on the understanding that you will be bargaining with him.”
“I don't see anyone doing that in the department stores.”
“Well no. Why would we do it in a department store where the prices are set and the people doing the selling do not have any influence on it? That man, though, does the buying himself and the selling as well. He knows to the riyal what he can afford to let it go for. Believe me when I say we have not cheated him out of anything.”
Bailey nodded slowly, and under the blue edge of the parasol, he saw her taking in this information and adding it to her store of knowledge about his country. He wondered if he should have been worried about revealing any part of it to her, but then she turned to him with a brilliant smile that could have stopped a charging bull in its tracks.
“Well, thank you. And thank you for the parasol as well. I went from being willing to pay more than two hundred riyals for it to paying … well, nothing at all, I guess.”
“I hope you don't expect it to keep off the rain,” said Adnan, who realized that he was far more pleased at her thanks than he should have been. “That kind is meant for the sun.”
“Oh believe me, I know,” she said, making a face. “I just realized today that I was out of my favorite kind of sunscreen, and I don't know if I can easily find it here. I've seen a lot of the local girls using these parasols so I thought I would try one.”
“I hope you haven't gotten burned at all,” Adnan said, looking her over, and Bailey laughed.
“No, I lucked out. After a few really, really nasty burns I got as a kid, I learned better. But if you look close, I bet you'll see that I've already got some freckles just from running around the city for a few hours.”
“Freckles? I don't believe you.”
“No, really. Look.”
She turned to him, tilting the parasol back so he could lean in. True to her word, there was a smattering of freckles over her nose, faint but noticeable, and suddenly he found that he was wondering where else she might have them, if they had been on her skin while they were making love and he had simply missed them.
“Adnan,” she said softly, and he blinked.
Adnan started to draw back, apologizing for getting so close, but then he saw that the look on her face was not one of accusation. Instead, her blue eyes were wide, and they were fixed on his lip. Abruptly, he realized that she was thinking of kissing him just as fiercely as he was thinking about kissing her.
“We are being foolish,” Adnan said, straightening, and after a moment that seemed to last far too long, Bailey nodded, biting her lip.
“We should probably stay away from each other,” she said, her eyes fixed on the ground between them. “You're … you're bad for business.”
Adnan ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up in all directions.
“And you think you are so good for my peace of mind?” he retorted, and she offered him a smile that was somehow somewhere between shy and smug.
“This can't be good for either of us. We should … we both have our own goals.”
“You could quit working for Roland Andress,” he offered. “That would take the conflict away immediately.
“And do what?” she snorted. “I could get a job doing the exact same thing for someone else, maybe, or perhaps you think I should go and wait tables.”
“You could stay in Amil. Stay with me. We could have a good time. We always seem to have a good time, whenever we're together, no matter what the circumstances are.”
She started to say something, and then she cut herself off, looking at him with a dawning comprehension.
“You— you're not joking, are you?” she asked, her
eyes wide. “You really are offering—”
“I'm offering a good time,” Adnan said bluntly. “I'm offering to take better care of you than you have ever had in your life, I'm asking for you to enjoy me and my country, and I am asking to be allowed to enjoy you as well. It is not such a terrible offer, is it?”
There was something fragile and tremulous on her lips, and Adnan's self-control, never very good around Bailey, cracked.
He took her by the hand and pulled her to him, and he claimed her mouth with the raw possession that seemed a part of who he was when he was with her. When he kissed her, none of the rest mattered; not who she was, not what she wanted to do or who her father was. The only thing that mattered was how good she felt in his arms, and how very much he wanted more, always more…
Adnan could feel the moment when she leaned into him, where another slight push, simply another moment might have helped him win his way.
Instead, her slender hands came up flat against his chest, and then she pushed him away, her blue eyes stormy even as her mouth was still red from their kiss.
“Unbelievable,” she hissed, and the rage in her eyes was so stunning that Adnan was momentarily rendered speechless.
“Bailey!”
“No! No, we're not doing this. Christ.”
She shook her head, and for a moment, she only trembled, pressing one hand to her eyes. When Adnan reached for her, she pulled back so violently that he thought she might fall.
“Please,” he said. “I'm not going to touch you if you don't want—”
“Damn straight you're not, not if you think that I'm some kind of … of whore.”
Adnan felt as if he had been slapped. He stared at her, scowling and feeling the first heat of a fury rising up in him.
“I never called you such a thing, what are you—”
“Oh?” she asked heatedly. “What else do you call it when a man tells a woman to quit her job, to run away with him, he'll take care of everything, and in return, all she needs to do is let him enjoy her?”