Harlequin Romance September 2021 Box Set

by Andrea Bolter

  By her decision to go with him.

  Now he had to make certain that that light wasn’t dimmed and she didn’t regret her choice.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ALMOST AS SOON as they were in agreement that Amal would be joining him, Mansur looked at his vibrating phone. He sent a reply to the message-sender. When he met her eyes again, his phone tucked away, he offered news that would turn everything around and make her rethink her hasty decision to travel with him to Addis Ababa.

  “It seems we’ll be leaving sooner than I intended,” he said, grim-faced.

  The sudden change in him ruffled Amal.

  “Sooner?” she squeaked, feeling more and more like a broken record.

  She’d been parroting him since they’d left her office—but that was because he kept shocking her. First with his offer for her to go to the capital of Ethiopia with him, and now this. This about-face in their timeline.

  When Amal had agreed, she’d assumed they would stay longer in Hargeisa. Long enough for her to get her work-related affairs in order and sort everything else out. She still had to tell his mother, too. And pack for the trip.

  The to-do list was staggering, and her anxiety shot up at the realization of it. She was almost afraid to ask, but she had to. “How soon?”

  “As soon as possible, ideally,” he said, confirming her unease. If she still planned to tag along they’d be leaving sooner rather than her much-preferred later.

  “I’ll be heading back to my mother’s to gather my luggage. I suggest you join me and pack, as well,” he informed her, all business as usual.

  She was beginning to sculpt a clearer picture of him, and it wasn’t favorable. And yet he’d given her this opportunity to seek a second opinion. A second fighting chance at besting her amnesia. These opposing sides to Mansur were throwing off her impression of him. Did he mean her well, or was there more to his offer than he’d revealed, along the lines of doing her a favor on his mother’s behalf?

  Amal knew mother and son were close from how happy Mama Halima became whenever she mentioned Mansur. It wasn’t happiness Amal felt when she was around him, though. Far from it. More like a giddiness. A fever in her blood she couldn’t rid herself of. She’d say she was sick, but this illness required no doctor and no diagnosis. Just a simple acceptance of the fact that Mansur was a very good-looking man, and if she hadn’t been attracted to him before her amnesia, she was very much developing a crush on him now.

  “What about breakfast?” she wondered softly, letting her mind linger on her attraction for him and at the same time hoping they could discuss some wiggle room in their looming departure.

  He flashed her the faintest of smiles. “We’ll get to enjoy breakfast. Only not in Hargeisa.”

  * * *

  “As promised—breakfast,” he announced, two hours later.

  Manny believed himself a man of his word. And, although he knew that his expert and well-paid flight staff wouldn’t fall short of his expectations, he puffed up with pride at their display of an in-flight meal. They hadn’t disappointed him. And he hadn’t disappointed Amal.

  “It’s too much!” was her first exclamation, followed closely by, “But it looks delicious! I couldn’t let it go to waste.”

  “We couldn’t let it go to waste,” he amended, lifting his fork to tackle a fluffy omelet.

  Mirroring him, Amal grabbed for her utensils and surprised him with the vigor of her hunger, considering that only a few minutes ago, after their plane had leveled off and they’d reached cruising altitude, she had still appeared wan with airsickness. Now she dived into the American-style meal and even drizzled more amber maple syrup over her perfectly golden waffles. Apparently his fears for her had been for naught.

  When the last piece of halal turkey bacon was plucked off the middle plate by Amal, and Manny’s fingertips brushed hers, he felt his body ignite from the simple touch while she crowed at having been quicker.

  “I think that piece was the yummiest,” she gloated, laughing at the face he pulled.

  “It’s my plane. I could fetch more for myself and myself only,” he said, fighting his own grin.

  Amal shook her head at his light threat, an easy smile on her soft-looking mouth. “Go ahead.” She sat back in her seat, her hands folded over her stomach. “I’m full! I couldn’t eat another bite.”

  “I take it you’re satisfied, then?”

  Amal nodded and yawned. “But now I’m sleepy. I shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing how else to respond.

  The awkward misplaced apology made her open her eyes wide. “Why do you have to be sorry? I’m the one who lost self-control. Also, I don’t regret it. It was a meal fit for royalty. A once-in-a-lifetime feast. Overeating was to be expected.” She tilted her head, her shy smile making his heart race. “I wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy it if you hadn’t talked me into this trip. So, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Her contentment pleased him more than he would have anticipated. More than he liked to admit, even to himself. Only she had ever been able to do that to him. Lower his guard. Give him these indescribable, intangible...feels.

  Nostalgia brushed the periphery of his mind and crept over him, and it carried a sparking storm of nebulous feelings. He tripped a mental alarm, warning himself away from naming any specific emotion.

  This is how it starts, he thought bleakly.

  This was how he opened his heart again and risked his sanity.

  I can’t do it.

  He wouldn’t do it.

  “Where’s the restroom?” Amal clasped her hands over her seatbelt, popping it off.

  “This way.” Manny stood, and then froze at Amal’s protest.

  “I can go alone,” she said quickly—too quickly.

  She avoided his eyes, her embarrassment all too plain. What did she think he was going to do? He felt a similar flush of mortification flutter through him. This was exactly what he’d feared. Encounters like these. Misunderstandings that would get him in trouble again.

  He clenched his jaw, then unclenched it to say, “It’s straight down, toward the back of the plane. The left bedroom and bathroom are roomier.”

  “You have two bedrooms?” she asked, standing when he sat down and looking shaky on her legs.

  Fighting the urge to offer his arm for support, he shifted in his seat and forced himself to get comfortable. Because he wasn’t budging. She didn’t want his help, and that was more than fine by him.

  “Yes,” he said, realizing he hadn’t answered her. “There are two bedrooms. So if you’d like to lie down, feel free.”

  She blinked.

  He stared, his brows slamming down and then hiking up. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she murmured.

  Her large, soulful eyes and drawn features told another story, though. A flare of annoyance fluttered through him. “Is something bothering you?”

  She lowered her eyes, and for a moment he thought she wouldn’t respond, but then she said, “It’s just all of this... It’s your success, isn’t it? It’s a lot...but it says a lot, too. I can see why your mother is proud of you.” Amal lifted her chin and met his eyes. “And she has every right to be.”

  Like a trigger, her words fired his ego. His head could have burst from the sudden and sharply rising pressure. His heart swelled from the rush of it.

  He heard his own voice through the filter of rushing blood roaring in his ears. “It’s not much.”

  She smiled wider. “Let me be the judge of that.”

  She left him with a short nod, her careful steps guiding her away from him. Manny sat there, his fingers clawing into the armrests and his body buzzing from the tidal emotions crashing in him.

  Amal was dangerous to him—he knew that. She posed a threat to his rene
wed sense of calm. For a year he’d believed he had worked her out of his system. How wrong he’d been. In less than a day she’d unwound his security and his self-control. Worse, she had no clue what she was doing to him.

  Unlike that night, he thought bitterly.

  Like a stone skating over the surface of standing water, a memory from twelve months ago rippled to the fore. Before he could fight it, it dragged him under...

  * * *

  “Amal—wait!”

  Whipping her skirt around, her abaya snapping as sharply as her flashing dark eyes, she pegged him with a full-blown scowl.

  “What more could you say, Mansur? What could possibly explain how...how rude you were in there? You know it hurt your mother, and yet you didn’t do anything to change it.”

  Her mouth curled with disappointment and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

  His heart had to be in his throat, expanding it, and the burning sensation was making it hard to explain himself. Explain his absence from the wake. He’d missed the funeral, too, choosing instead to catch a later flight to Hargeisa and check on his mom.

  Manny had seriously thought no one would notice. But she had.

  Of course she had.

  Amal could see his heart.

  See his living, breathing anger and his undying grudge against his father.

  “I’m...” He couldn’t bring himself to say sorry. He just couldn’t. Instead, he blurted, “I love you.”

  She gawked at him, eyes round now, her anger temporarily subdued.

  Fearful of losing this tenuous reprieve, he lowered to one knee and retrieved the ring box nestled close to his heart in an inner jacket pocket.

  “I love you,” he repeated, snapping the ring box open and revealing the shining solitaire inside. It gleamed in the twilight like a fallen star in his palm. “I love you, Amal, and I never want to lose you.”

  She stared from the ring to him, her shock morphing into nothingness as she herded her emotions behind a steely expression.

  “Will you stay?” she asked quietly.

  When he didn’t respond, she reached for the ring box and closed it, leaving it in his hand. Unaccepting of his token of love.

  “Your mother needs you,” she said then, “and you won’t stay for her.”

  Finally, Manny gritted, “I have a business to oversee, Amal.”

  He couldn’t throw away his life in America. He’d built too much there. Hargeisa, beautiful as it was, held too much pain for him. And now his father was buried here, too.

  “I can’t,” he said again, imploring her to understand, to be reasonable with him.

  “I know.”

  She nodded, smiling with a sadness that sank his heart to his stomach. No. It obliterated it, that sorrowful smile of hers.

  “It seems we’re too different. I can’t change you, and I don’t want to hold you here. Trap you into being with me when I know you’ll only resent me for it.”

  Manny launched to his feet when she turned to walk away from him again. “Wait!” he panted, breathless from his heartbreak.

  Pathetically, he held the ring box out to her. He had to ask. He nearly bit his tongue off in dreaded anticipation. But he had to know for his peace of mind and his heart.

  “Is that a no, then?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  “It is,” Amal said softly. “Goodbye, Mansur.”

  She left him standing there, his arm thrust out, his fist squeezing over the small box that seemed to hold his whole world inside.

  * * *

  Manny surfaced from the memory breathless and perspiring. His chest was tight. His eyes wide and stinging. In that moment, he embodied sheer panic.

  The only positive was the fact that he had no audience. Amal hadn’t returned yet. That she hadn’t witnessed his uncharacteristic meltdown soothed him greatly.

  They were nearly upon Addis. It wouldn’t be long before the pilot announced their landing...before Manny’s real trial started.

  Staring at Amal’s vacant seat, he accepted that it wouldn’t be easy. There was incontestable chemistry between them. And he had residual feelings for her that he hadn’t laid to rest.

  Now he had the opportunity to do that. To define their relationship in a way he could live with. Once and for all. Even if that meant losing her forever—again.

  * * *

  Amal returned, still astounded by the glamour of the aircraft’s amenities, and discovered Mansur had cleared all evidence of their breakfast.

  He held a tablet in his hands, his finger flipping pages of the document he was reading. She hovered nearby, slowing to a stop, curious to watch him while he didn’t yet suspect her presence.

  It bothered her that she couldn’t recall him. She burned with frustration and the longing to demystify the enigma that he was. She might have asked him straight up, but a strange niggling sensation cautioned her against it. Strange because she didn’t know what kind of man he was.

  He’s generous.

  Or she supposed he was. He’d allowed her to join him in Addis Ababa, and he was correct about her chances at receiving better medical care there.

  He wouldn’t have helped if his mother hadn’t intervened.

  True, Mama Halima must have gotten through to him. Perhaps that was what was bugging her? Causing this restlessness to uncoil in her roiling stomach? It was either that or her breakfast wasn’t sitting well with her. She didn’t think all that good food was the problem so, grudgingly, she conceded that it was her lingering distrust in his motivation to invite her.

  She didn’t know him. Didn’t remember him.

  But she could start changing that now. They were alone. She had his attention until they landed, so long as he wasn’t too busy working, and it couldn’t hurt to re-establish a relationship with him even if he wouldn’t be with her for too long.

  She approached him, feeling like she’d played voyeur and spied on him long enough.

  He looked up at her passing. “Find everything all right?”

  Mansur lowered the tablet to his lap and gave her his full attention. The intensity that had been focused on whatever work he was doing was now bearing down on her.

  She resisted fanning her heated cheeks.

  “I did. Not that I almost didn’t get lost. The plane’s much bigger than I imagined.”

  She fidgeted in her seat, convincing herself she was getting comfortable. The truth was she couldn’t squelch her attraction to him. It took everything in her to meet his eyes and wipe clear any evidence of the turmoil inside her. She fought against the instinct to look away. Prey had to feel much like she was, when facing down its predators. And Mansur was big game. Apex. At the top of the social and economic food chain.

  “Am I interrupting you?”

  She glanced at his tablet, the screen darkened after lack of activity. There wouldn’t be any point in talking to him if he had work on his mind. She knew what that could be like. Being consumed with the passion of your career. She hated disruptions when she felt most inspired. And Mansur had appeared absorbed in whatever he’d been doing before she’d returned.

  “It’s work, but nothing I can’t do later.” He drew out the retractable table and placed his tablet atop it, facedown. “You have something on your mind?”

  His perception surprised her. Was she that obvious?

  “What business do you have in Addis?” she blurted, curiosity running away with her. She’d held it in for long enough.

  He rubbed his beard, his hand molding to his jaw as he stroked thoughtfully. “My father left me an inheritance and I’ve been placed in a position to claim it.”

  What he said captured her interest, because it wasn’t the kind of business she’d anticipated. And then there was his flat delivery of the information to consider...

  His late father had to be a
sore topic.

  A year after his father’s death had to feel like nothing.

  Amal knew and understood. Any thoughts of her beloved grandmother, even with her memory loss, never failed to stir up melancholy in her. Death and grief and loss in some form or another were all difficult subject matters. Especially when her twenty-nine years had been steeped in it.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, her eyes stinging a little already.

  “Thanks,” he said coolly.

  Mansur thinned his lips and hardened his jaw. A muscle leaped in his left cheek from the tension that dripped off him. There was a question in his dark, probing eyes.

  She had no doubt that the tables would be turned, and they were. Promptly.

  “Do you remember him?” he asked, one brow raised sharply.

  “Your father? No. But I’m aware that he passed away. And even though it’s been a year, I’m sorry for it.” She watched for signs of sadness. They didn’t exist. Manny either held his cards so close to his chest that he’d perfected detachment or—and much more worrying—he truly wasn’t concerned in the slightest.

  The latter provoked a chill in her. Even the notion that he could be so cold-blooded perturbed her immensely.

  Changing tack, she asked, “How long are you planning to stay in Addis Ababa?”

  “If I’m lucky, it won’t be long,” he replied.

  Amal’s heart sank at his response. What had she expected, though? He was there to do business. In fact, he might not even have invited her if he hadn’t had to stop by Addis in the first place. It was a stark reminder that she wasn’t his priority.

  More like a chore, she thought glumly, recalling how Mama Halima had pleaded on her behalf with Mansur.

  “What’s it like living in America?” she asked. She wanted to forget that she was his obligation, and that he was being a dutiful son to his mother and nothing more.

  “It’s nothing special,” he said.

  Amal tipped her head to the side. “It’s different than life in Hargeisa, isn’t it?”