by Olivia Gates
She fought to the surface, tried one last time. “I assure you a professionally gathered and written report will be far more entertaining.”
He shook his head, dislodging a thick, glossy lock from his slicked-back mane. She thought she’d tell him anything for the privilege of smoothing it back. “Tell me, Janaan. Please.”
It was the “please” that undid her.
“Oh, all right,” she muttered. “But I’m shutting up at the first yawn.”
He chuckled, did to her what she was dying to do to him and tucked back a lock of hair behind her ear, electrifying her. “If I yawn, it will be because in forty-eight hours I’ve only shut my eyes for the minutes it took for the accident to occur. You are the only thing keeping me awake.”
“Oh…OK.” With her last escape blocked she tried to think where to start, her heart bobbing in her throat.
He twined another lock of hair around two fingers, gave an almost imperceptible tug and whispered, “Start at the beginning.”
He’d read her mind! Or maybe she was just too predictable.
But anyway, he’d given the only logical place to start.
She exhaled. “I was born twenty-eight years ago next month in Chicago to a twenty-year-old single mother. She never married, so I was an only child. With no family herself, it was all she could do to take care of an infant as she studied and worked as a nurse. When I was ten, she stopped working and we subsisted on unemployment pay. I guess even then she’d started the plunge into depression, that it was why she couldn’t hold a job anymore. But she was only diagnosed with a major depressive disorder when I was fifteen. By then I was working in two part-time jobs to boost our meager income, had already jumped grades and had a scholarship to pre-med school. Once I entered med school, the scholarship lasted only one more year as I no longer qualified for it with my scores plummeting. By that time my mother was almost totally dependent as she started abusing alcohol and anything else she could lay her hands on. Soon we were in debt, and I had to work in any job I found just to keep us off the street…”
She stopped, groaned. God—she didn’t have to tell him all that, not this explicitly, this intimately.
But she wanted to. For the first time in her life, she wanted…needed to share with another. With him…
What about him? He couldn’t possibly want this level of personal detail imposed on him.
She ventured a look at him, whispered, “Sorry that you asked already? I told you it was boring. I neglected to mention it was pathetic too.”
His hand wrapped around both of hers, squeezed, silencing her. “Don’t. Depression is devastating to any family when any member is afflicted by it, but for it to be the mother, and for you to have had no family members to help you carry the ever-increasing burden! That you became in effect parent to a mother who was incapacitated by psychological illness, and at such a young age, is nothing short of heroic.”
“Yeah, sure,” she scoffed. “So heroic my mother kept plunging deeper, and I did less and less to pull her back as I kept getting busier. So heroic she ended up killing herself.”
Silence crashed, splintering all around them, shredding her worse than the burst of relived anguish had.
She endured it for an overflowing moment, almost flinched when his fingers came beneath her chin, coaxing her face up to his. He insisted, moving closer, his body a protective barrier blockading her, warding off her torment, sympathy—empathy—blazing on his face. He’d known loss, helplessness to stop it, to reverse it. She knew it. And he was reaching out with the understanding that had been scarred into his own psyche, defusing her own guilt and agony.
“When?” His whisper was compassion itself.
She gulped, forced an answer. “T-two months ago.”
“You’re still in mourning.” It was a statement.
She exhaled a tear-laden breath. “I’ve been mourning my mother’s loss for over a decade. And the worst part was I never really got it—what was wrong with her. A friend once told me we take our psychological health for granted, that we never grasp how someone with a disorder feels. It’s true. I lived with her suffering but, no matter what I go through in life, I’ll never understand the prison of torment and despair she lived in. I can only hope she found peace. I still can’t find any, can’t stop thinking if I’d just listened to everyone’s advice and put her in an institution, instead of insisting on taking care of her myself, they may have succeeded where I failed and pulled her back from that final act of desperation.”
Her words petered out at the ferocity that appeared in his eyes. Or was it a rogue beam from the setting sun igniting the gold?
Then he spoke and there was no doubt what she’d seen.
“Never think that,” he ground out. “You did everything beyond right and into outright self-sacrifice.”
She shook her head, mortification sizzling in her cheeks. “There’s no self-sacrifice in taking care of your family. She would have done the same for me if she’d been the healthy one and I had been the one with the affliction.”
“It was self-sacrifice,” he gritted, his eyes adamant, brooking no argument. “You didn’t abandon her, someone who I’m sure people, starting with her doctors, labeled a lost cause to the care of strangers. You knew she wouldn’t have been better off in an institution. As canny as addicts are, you knew they wouldn’t have stopped her from abusing chemical substances. And she would have had the added torment of feeling abandoned by you. She would have suffered far more, before ending her life just the same. But most people would have gone that route, convincing themselves they were doing the best for their loved one while buying themselves a shot at an unburdened life. While I can’t presume to condemn them for such a choice, I can’t commend you enough for making the toughest one of all, and sticking with it. Your mother could have lived forty more years and you would have sacrificed your chance of a normal life, of building a family, for her.”
She lowered eyes that felt about to burst. Not with remembering the ever-increasing burdens or the suffocating helplessness but with Malek’s total understanding, with his assurance that she hadn’t harmed her mother, who people had called a lost cause, by refusing to institutionalize her.
When she spoke, her tear-soaked voice was almost unintelligible with anguish. “You make it sound so noble, like I gave up my chance of building a family, when in reality I never thought of having one. It must have been my mother’s disastrous experience tingeing my views of romantic involvements and domestic bliss.”
“I find it impossible to believe hordes of men didn’t try to change your mind,” he drawled, his gaze burning down her body and back to her face.
Heat rose to her face, held for a second before flooding her body. She gave him a tremulous smile, desperate to lighten the mood. “Not sure about hordes, but some tried, the so-called serious ones, while letting it drop that a man didn’t want a woman who came with such a burden.”
“So only men in pursuit of flings didn’t care about your situation,” he bit off. “While men interested in a future and a family let you know they want you only as long as you came with no burdens.”
She stared at him, stunned yet again at his laser-accurate insight. Then she shrugged. “I think any man has a right not to sacrifice the normality of his life for a stranger, to want an emotionally available—an available, period—wife.”
His lips thinned. “I think any man who wants a woman to share his life must take her with her own better and worse, not demand or expect that she gets rid of her responsibilities to provide him with peace of mind.”
To that ferocious declaration she had no answer.
She stared at him helplessly for a moment then exhaled. “Actually, none of that really mattered after all. When my mother died, I figured out the most important reason why I’d never thought of having a family. One is supposed to live first before thinking of that. I realized I never have.”
Silence thickened, along with the magma smoldering in his eyes. She
felt it filling her lungs, slithering down her nerves, burning, besieging.
Then he finally drawled, “And to live, you came here. And instead of securing a lucrative job and enjoying the luxurious lifestyle Damhoor can offer someone of your assets and skills, you joined GAO. You have a singular definition of living, Janaan Latimer.”
Her lips twitched in relief at his lighter tone. “Oh, there is method to my madness. I thought that to live I had to find out who I am. I thought I had to start with exploring the other half of my heritage. So I came here to find my father.”
“Your father is Damhoorian?” She nodded and he shook his head in amazement. Then he drawled, his voice dropping to fathomless reaches, “Janaan of the ceaseless surprises.” He looked at her for a long moment, as if he were studying a multi-faceted gem. Then he cocked his head, making her heart tilt to the same angle inside her chest. “When did you find out about him?”
“All my life,” she said. “It was him who named me, though he couldn’t give me his name. He was the only man in my mother’s life, and though her psyche must have been fragile to start with, I think his loss and my birth were the catalysts that initiated her descent. She fell in love with him when she was here as an exchange student, but it turned out he was married, had children already and his family forbade him to take her as a second wife. Or to acknowledge me. He visited us a few times when I was growing up, phoned frequently, always telling me how much he loved me, how sorry was he couldn’t be with us. He helped financially by paying into a trust fund. Towards the end he called more, saying he was hoping to finally have us with him. Then he suddenly stopped calling. A few months later my mother killed herself. I think it was giving up on him that made her give up on life.”
She paused for breath, the breath the intensity of his gaze was knocking out of her lungs. She needed it, to get it all out, to lay her innermost self bare before him. “So after all the investigations into my mother’s death had been concluded, I felt like the foundation of my life had been yanked from underneath me and I was dangling in a vacuum. I guess I needed a new foundation, and just five days ago I made a decision to use the money he’d saved for me to come here, find my roots so to speak, in the country I lived my life dreaming I’d one day live in, with a miraculously healed mother, a father and siblings. Problem was, I found out the reason for my father’s silence. He was dead. And my half-siblings understandably don’t want to know about me…”
He took her hand when she faltered, enveloped it, infusing her with his power, giving her the strength to finish her story.
She went on, “But I fell in love with this land the moment I set foot here, really began to understand the hold it had on my father. I was torn about leaving, wanted to stay, to try to get to know him by getting to know the culture that had ruled his life and choices. But stay to do what? I wasn’t up to applying for a job, didn’t even want one. Then practically on my way to the airport just two days ago, I stumbled on GAO’s ad, asking for volunteers. And it was like a prayer answered and a dream come true in one. I always wanted to join GAO, but my responsibility to my mother tied me to one place with a regular job. Now I no longer have to provide for her, I’m doing what I always wanted while also getting my chance to stay here. And with the money my father left me I can afford to stay here as a volunteer for at least a couple of months, quite comfortably.” She gave him another wavering smile. “So that’s my whole life story, till the moment you drove me off the road.”
Malek stared at her, his heart staggering in his chest.
He’d never known such honesty, such unadorned recounting of such heart-wrenching events. He’d never known that such compassion towards those who’d ruined one’s life could exist. She’d given them all forbearance and forgiveness, when she didn’t extend half the mercy to herself. The mother who’d deprived her of her childhood and youth, of normality and peace, the father who’d abandoned her to the custody of a damaged mother while he’d lavished his all on his legitimate children, those who had taken it all and refused to even recognize her as their blood kin.
How he felt the need to avenge her, to erase her suffering.
Not that she acknowledged she’d suffered or sacrificed. She’d cited her ordeals matter-of-factly, and now they were over she was moving on to the next chore. Joining GAO so she’d spend heaven knew how much more of her life giving to others, with no expectation of pay or thanks or even acknowledgement.
She’d already made him feel what he’d never felt before, but this insight into the depths of her suffering and strength increased her appeal a thousandfold.
And it went beyond passion. Beyond compassion. She moved him, shook him. On every level.
Nothing was left in him but the need to comfort her, connect with her, erase all damage, imbue her with all he had of healing and succor. It was no use resisting any more.
He reached for her, watched her eyes widening, her flushed lips parting on a tiny cry of surprise and, he knew, surrender, as he swept her over his body, folded her in his lap and contained her in a hug. It felt as if she had been made to fit within him, as if he had been made to wrap around her.
“Malek…”
He had no idea if she’d gasped his name, or if he’d felt it reverberating in her mind. He’d never realized his name was so beautiful. It was, on her lips, in her mind. Where he wanted it to be, always.
He drove a hand into the depth of that mink-soft mane, his fingers combing through it soothingly, his other one pressing her face into his neck as he murmured to her in Arabic, what she made him feel, how he wanted to comfort her.
Feeling her in his arms, her hot resilience unraveling him one nerve at a time, he knew he could stop himself from taking the comforting deeper into communion, flesh to flesh, lips to lips, as easily as he could stop breathing.
He leaned back against the wall, taking her un-resisting body with him, raising her with an arm around her waist, bringing her face level with his, saw in her eyes a reflection of his fever, in her trembling lips his admission of defeat. A gentle hand behind her head urged her to close the gap, end the aching, brought the sweetness of her breath scorching him, the first touch with her lips half a gasp away…And his cellphone rang.
The single-note ring went through him like a skewer.
It had an even more spectacular effect on her. She lurched, twisted off him, gasping, scrambling away from him, ending up in a heap on the opposite collection of cushions.
They stared at each other for a suspended moment. All he wanted to do was to storm up to his feet, crush his phone beneath them, then swoop down to scoop her in his arms, claim that kiss, claim her, then sweep her back to his place…
“Will you please answer that?” Her voice wobbled as her hands shook over her hair and clothes, smoothing away the signs of their surrender to insanity. “That ringtone is drilling a hole in my head. And it seems whoever it is won’t give up.”
“They will have to. Janaan…” he started, needing to fix this, continue it more slowly, or to end it at once. He didn’t know which. Or anything.
She cut through his words. “Please—just answer it. I doubt you give your number to just anyone. This may be an emergency.”
He acknowledged her logic. And that he had lost his. Probably irrevocably.
With a last glance at her he muttered a curse, retrieved his phone from his discarded jacket. He almost punched his finger through the answer button. “W’Ullahi ya Saeed…”
And the sworn promise of retribution only froze on his lips with Saeed’s first urgent words.
CHAPTER FIVE
“WHAT IS IT?”
Jay heard the shaken question spilling from her lips. She wondered if he’d heard it, understood it. She barely could.
Even ten minutes after the phone call had interrupted her headlong plunge into his arms and insanity, she still felt Malek’s body beneath hers, every sinew and bone and muscle driving into hers, liquefying her, still felt his breath scorching her face, his warm, t
ough fingers in her hair, until she was certain there’d be marks singed into her skin, carved into her flesh everywhere he’d touched.
She bit her lips. The almost kiss was what burned her most. Her lips were swollen, chafing, and only abusing them seemed to lessen the throbbing, curb the mad desire to obey their screaming, go bury them into the power and hard, virile beauty of his exposed neck and chest.
It didn’t help that every now and then through his call, his eyes had fallen on her, drenching her in his simmering hunger and frustration. All her nerves jangled an all-out response that had only subsided to endurable levels when he’d torn his eyes away and progressed to the next phone call.
She’d waited for him to end the last one to ask her question. But he only gave her an absent glance and started another one. Either he hadn’t heard her, or she’d been as incoherent as she’d thought. Or he didn’t think it a priority to answer her. She didn’t understand any of his barked colloquial Damhoorian, but it was enough to see the urgency in his face and body to know that something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.
The certainty overrode her agitation, focusing her away from her own turmoil. There was an emergency. Now, if he’d only deign to tell her what it was!
He finally snapped his phone shut, looked down at her, his face a grim mask. Then he turned on his heel and strode away.
After a stunned moment she grabbed her bag and heaved herself to her feet, found him coming back with an older man in tow.
She froze at the urgency in his eyes, melted at the solicitousness in his hand on her bare arm.
“Janaan, this is Adnan El-Haddad, the proprietor, and he will be honored to serve you every meal from now on, whether from his establishment or any other you desire, in-house or delivered to your doorstep. And wherever you want to go and whatever you want to do in the kingdom, I’ll leave my personal driver and my top aide at your disposal, day and night, to fulfill your every demand.” He nodded to the man, waited for him to bow to her and turn away before he added, his voice plunging to bass reaches, “I would have given anything to have more time with you, but I am forced to leave you in my men’s care to attend to urgent business.”