by Olivia Gates
But she’d asked him something. About the future, his plans for it.
Ya Ullah, she wanted projections of his life in the luxurious prison of duties he’d been sentenced to? Of his life with the faceless woman he’d take for a wife, force himself to touch, to copulate with…?
He stomach churned. He barely suppressed a shudder of revulsion and said abruptly, “What exactly do you want to know?”
She winced. “Whoa! You mentioned you have ongoing relief plans for the communities we visit, and I’m only curious to know what they are.”
That was what she’d meant?
Of course. She hadn’t intruded by question or comment into anything remotely personal.
No. No, that wasn’t accurate. She did delve into his innermost recesses, his views, reactions, instincts, preferences, seemed to know them any way down to the last detail. She was avid to know everything that made him himself. But nothing about what made him a sheikh, or Damhoor’s future king.
“OK, your chance to answer my most relevant question is over,” she quipped. “Here comes the next wave of patients.”
He blinked, turned his head to see children coming in.
Janaan rose from his side to organize them for examination by a quick triage. He’d barely shaken himself from his daze when she turned to him.
“These eight kids.” She pointed to the ones she was leading to the examination stations as the others walked the rest out. “I suspect congenital heart conditions. Serious ones.”
A quick look told him she was right. The children, between four and eight, looked nothing like their healthier counterparts. Emaciated, underdeveloped, subdued. Their labored breathing at rest and their blue-tinged lips and nails told the rest of the story. And to think those were the ones who’d survived. Others with more serious conditions had long since died when they could have been saved if only the necessary medical services had reached them.
But those children’s families weren’t living in the hostile mountains of Ashgoon out of choice. They were escapees from the civil wars, subsisting in inhuman conditions. What he and GAO were doing here was a drop in the ocean. He hoped enough drops would become a healing shower, prayed he’d have the wisdom to deal with this country’s rulers, to one day solve these people’s ongoing problems.
Jay joined their two internists in their exam. He joined her in examining the youngest two children.
He prepared the ECG machine while she did her exams. She lowered her stethoscope and beckoned to him as she cooed to the two little girls with a smile. He wheeled the machine forward, started joking with the little ones, who Jay informed him were Zahrah and Azzah, making a game of applying the gel to their emaciated chests. Jay joined in, turned placing the ECG electrodes and leads into more fun.
When they had the tracings they dressed the girls and he rushed to his bag, came back with huge chocolate bars to the delightful sound of the little girls’ giggling. Jay was performing magic tricks for them!
With his heart booming at yet another of her surprises, being the Arabic speaker, it fell to him to be the one to disappoint the little girls by telling them they’d have to eat the chocolate after they got better, but that it would be soon, and there’d be way more then. They agreed to stay in bed until their friends were examined, then they’d take care of them all.
As they waited for the others to finish, he took Janaan aside. “How did you do that trick with the tongue depressor?”
Jay gave him a look of exaggerated self-importance and mystery. “You expect a magician to reveal her secrets? Tsk.”
“I know you’re a sorceress.” He believed it. Look how she’d enchanted him, enslaved him. “But that was a trick—for a change. I’ll trade you its secret for a rundown of my plans.”
“No deal. I can find out your plans on my own.”
He sighed. “Tormentor. Zain, I concede I’m no position to bargain.” He soaked up her triumphant smile, smiled back. “So—my plans. I have definite ones for the communities under Damhoorian sovereignty. I’ll provide them with comprehensive medical insurance and set up centers close enough to be within reach but far enough away so as not to encroach on their way of life, to serve as permanent medical and community services facilities. GAO will handle the logistics. I’ll provide what they recommend.”
She gave him one of those glances that made him feel he could spread his arms and fly.
“What about the communities outside Damhoor?” she asked.
That brought him crashing back to earth. “Those are another matter,” he growled. “For instance, the Ashgoonian government welcomes my efforts as long as they’re in a crisis or when they think it’s those of a pampered royal playing at philanthropy. Once I put forward plans for the widespread reforms I have in mind, I doubt they’ll be as grateful. Beyond medical services, these people need aggressive development programs to make their neighborhoods habitable, livestock, farming and small projects to help them become self-supporting, vocational training to provide them with desperately needed job skills and educational projects to break the cycle of ignorance and poverty.”
Her eyes now made him feel as if he could single-handedly do all that. If he had her at his side, he knew he would…
“Skeikh Malek, we’re ready to review our findings.”
Malek shook himself from another attack of searing longing, turned to Mel Kawolski, their sole GAO cardiologist. “Go ahead.”
“All six children are suffering from serious congenital heart defects and congestive heart failure,” Mel said.
Malek nodded. “So are Zahrah and Azzah over there. Both are suffering from severe Fallot’s tetralogy.”
The other internist, Hal Zuckerman said, “We diagnosed two cases of severe coarctation of the aorta, three quite large ventricular septal defects, and one total mitral valve prolapse. They’re all conditions necessitating surgical treatment.”
Malek took one more look at the children who lay on their beds, fragile, helpless, looking at him as if they understood he was the one who had their fates in his hands.
He gritted his teeth. “Get me films, prepare the children and transfer them in order of severity to surgery.” Mel nodded, got busy at once. Malek looked down at Jay. “Coming?”
She tore her gaze from the children, turned glittering eyes up at him. “Try to stop me.”
She fell into brisk step with him as they exited the tent, traversed the clearance they’d made for their camp in the crowded, squalid mountain community. It was a fifteen-minute hike down to the valley where they’d left their convoy. Only the Jeeps had made it up the narrow, unpaved mountain roads.
As they reached the surgery trailer she paused at its steps. “I’ve been thinking, Malek. Maybe the Ashgoonian government will resist you now, but once you’re king you will have far more power, and even if you can’t influence them to put an end to these people’s ordeals, you will be able to pressure them to let you intervene yourself. God—what a blessing that kind of power will be in your hands.”
The permanent spasm behind his ribs sank talons into his heart, almost drove him to his knees.
“Janaan, this was a horrible idea…”
He bit his lip, barely stopped himself from ramming his head against the trailer’s steel side.
Of all the stupid, insensitive things to say.
“Not letting me go when I asked to?” she completed for him. “Probably. But I stand by my words weeks ago. Coming here, getting to know you, is my life’s most incredible experience, and I wouldn’t wish it away for the world. I only hope you don’t regret it too much.” She suddenly poked him in the arm, grinned. “Now, lighten up, and power up on that healing magic of yours.”
He swallowed the burning coal that had replaced his larynx as he followed her inside the trailer.
She hadn’t fooled him with her levity. Every second she was beside him kept breaking her heart into smaller pieces. By the time she left it would be pulverized. As would his be.
It was f
ive days later when their last batch of postoperative patients was airlifted to Halwan. Malek believed all the kids would make full recoveries. Now, with the rest of their medical and community services targets reached, it was time to move on to their next destination.
As they waited for the Jeeps to come down from the mountain, Jay watched everyone gearing up for the move.
She’d loved every heart-wrenching, fascinating, exhausting second of the past three weeks, had come to know so much about the region and the people, had made friends and gained invaluable experience and knowledge. Then had come being with Malek. It had made everything that had happened between them before pale by comparison. She hadn’t lied when she’d said the whole experience was and would remain her life’s high point.
The bottom line was she’d been crazy to prolong her torment.
She’d long acknowledged she’d fallen in love with Malek during those first few hours, but extending her knowledge of him, prolonging the exposure, the glorious interaction, deepening the soul-deep bond had been an act of sheer lunacy.
She’d had a chance of surviving without him before those weeks. She’d thrown it away.
She stood staring sightlessly as the Jeeps made their way down the mountain, numb, burning despair seeping into her as she made the decision to walk away, today.
Suddenly she was distracted as if from the depths of a nightmare as one of their Jeeps lurched as the ground beneath it gave way. The driver tried to veer off the collapsing slice of mountain, failed and tilted sideways, over and over and over down the ravine leading to where they were.
The moment it crashed a dozen hundred feet away, chaos erupted. Screams, dozens of people running towards the crash, Malek ahead of everyone, his shouts drowning everyone else’s with orders and directions, his speed outstripping them all.
She was running, too, her mind streaking ahead.
Get emergency bag. Prepare for the worst. Take charge. This is your turf.
She came back from fetching her bag to see Malek on top of the Jeep, sending everyone running back to fetch all they’d need to extract their people from the crumpled mess. She got nearer, her eyes riveted on him as he knocked in the remainder of the wind-shield to get to the injured inside. And then she saw it.
A boulder rolling down the mountain, right at him.
White noise exploded inside her skull, flooded her limbs with the power of desperation. She dimly felt she’d fly, as she needed to, to reach him, to shield him.
Then she did reach him, shielded him.
That knowledge and the detonation of all-encompassing pain were the last things she registered…
Malek heard the uproar rising again over the strident panting filling his ears. The sheer panic congealing his blood told him it was about Jay.
He wrenched around, saw it all at once.
Jay streaking towards him, her face a panicked, manic mask. The boulder he wouldn’t be able to outrun. Janaan stopping in its path up the slope. The boulder hitting her with the speed of a racing car, knocking her down and rolling right on top of her before it hit the Jeep, its momentum almost spent. Spent against Janaan’s body. Her body.
And suddenly he was flying, swooping down on her, her name an endless roar erupting from his chest, pouring from his eyes. Janaan.
Lying there broken. Because of him. And he wouldn’t be able to reach her. Like he hadn’t been able to reach Majd…
“Sheikh Malek.”
He heard the shouted admonition. Felt the strong hands trying to snatch him back from the precipice of madness.
“Sheikh Malek, she needs you now. She needs you.”
Saeed. His right hand. Right now, his right mind. He’d just said the only thing that could wrench him out of the vortex of despair, the incapacitation of horror and guilt.
Janaan needed him. He couldn’t afford to lose his mind, or have a stroke. He’d succumb to either, or both, only when he’d taken care of her, when he’d saved her.
“Sheikh Malek, we can take care of her from here…”
His roared “No!” silenced whomever had dared suggest anyone but he would care for her. Only he would fight for her. No one else. Ever.
He reached a quaking hand to her carotid. She was alive.
He knelt over her, kissed her all over her swelling face, mixed his tears with her blood, murmured his pledge, “I’m here, ya habibati. I will never leave you. Never.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JANAAN WOKE UP in heaven.
She’d woken up many times before. Hazy, distorted times, in the mobile surgery unit’s IC, in a different and far larger IC, in a hospital bed somewhere huge, ultra-modern and soothingly lit. The only constant she was sure she saw was Malek. In her delirium, in her episodes of distressing semi-wakefulness. Pouring caring, healing and love over her. He looked so haggard, so stricken, she wept. She couldn’t see him this way.
She thought there was a stretch of time, the last she remembered, when she had been awake and talking. To him, to Hessuh, Saeed and Rafeeq. She remembered it as if she were remembering a half-forgotten movie. As if it hadn’t been her sitting in that hospital bed. She remembered she’d wondered why she was there.
Now, as she opened her eyes to find herself draped in an ethereal cocoon of gossamer curtains cascading from a golden frame, and felt herself drowning in the luxurious depths of sheerest white and softest cotton, drenched in nerve-tingling spicy scents, warmth and mellow sunlight, she remembered why.
She’d hurtled into the path of a thundering boulder.
Judging by the persistent IC themes, it must have shattered her. Judging by Malek’s constant presence, it must have been him who’d put her back together.
“I will have to lock you up.”
Malek. His voice as dark and haggard as she remembered he’d looked in her delirium.
She twisted around, homing in on it. She found him two feet away on the other side of the gigantic bed, sprawled in a huge, high-backed armchair, his legs wide apart.
Through the gauzy curtain she saw he was wearing an abaya, white and embroidered with gold all along its opposing openings.
It was the first time she’d seen him in traditional garb. He looked regal, overwhelming in anything, but in this, he was…Whoa. He was just…just…Whoa.
This was what he was born to wear. Her incomparable prince of the desert.
He stood up in one of those flowing moves that never ceased to stun her, with him being so big and tall, and the abaya fell open. And she had her first unhindered view of his body.
She should have known that all the fantasies that had tormented her in endless nights of deprivation would be nothing to his reality. It had been merciful she hadn’t had enough imagination to do him justice.
She didn’t need imagination now. Would never need it again. From now on she’d have memory. Of the chest she’d longed to lose herself against, a painstaking sculpture of perfection and potency, dusted in just the exact thickness of ebony silk to accentuate each slope and bulge of sheer maleness, to offset polished flesh, before the tantalizing layer arrowed down over an abdomen hewn from living granite by virility gods and endless stamina and discipline. Below that, string-tied white pants straight out of a thousand and one Arabian nights hung low, way low, on those narrow, muscled hips and those formidable thighs, the loose cut doing nothing to hide the shape and size of his briefs-bridled manhood.
She couldn’t breathe. Her insides cramped with a blow of longing so hard she moaned.
At hearing the explicit sound his eyes flared like a sun going supernova. “But it won’t be enough. Only chaining you to my wrist and throwing away the key will be.”
And he considered that—what? Punishment?
She tried to talk, found that sandpaper had replaced her vocal cords.
“Feeling the after-effects of intubation still?” He placed one knee on the bed, making the hard mattress dip, putting his hands to the curtains as if he was feeling walls he was about to smash, his pose im
posing, intimidating. And even more arousing. At least she knew her body was functioning if it was rioting this way, when he was clearly furious, too. “That’s what you get for playing Superwoman. Surprise. The boulder didn’t bounce off you.”
She found her voice for this, or something that passed for it. “As long as it didn’t hit you.”
He tore the curtains away, loomed over her, panting, his skin turning copper in his extreme. Oh, God, what had she said?
“And why would you care, when you almost killed me anyway? Seeing you lying there, broken and bloody! The one reason I didn’t keel over was because I had to take care of you first. Because you were alive. If you weren’t—if…” He clenched and unclenched his fists, as if he was struggling not to grab her and shake her. “You could have just shouted for me to get out of the way. You could…you could…Be’hag Ellahi…you could have died.”
“That’s why you’re so angry?” Tension seeped out of her. “I thought it was something serious.”
“Almost killing yourself isn’t serious?” he exploded.
She winced at his thundering volume. “Endangering myself is one of your hot buttons, isn’t it?”
“One of?” She’d bet that snarl could perforate steel. “Endangering yourself? You risked your life for mine!”
She ran her hands over her head, her arms. “Uh, I feel very much alive here. Not withstanding that my first thought as I woke up here was that I must be in heaven.”
“You risked your life for mine. That you’re still alive is because God chose not to accept your sacrifice.”
“I think you had a say in canceling that sacrifice.” She sat up and he seemed to lose all explosive retorts in his alarm over her sudden move. “Oh, I’m all right. As good as new, really, just sore from lying in bed too…” Her words petered out. She was in a sleeveless, low-cut, satin nightdress the same dazzling white as everything around her.
