Читать книгу Falling For Her Reluctant Sheikh - Amalie Berlin - Страница 11

COLLEAGUES LIKED TO JOKE that Adalyn had chosen sleep medicine as her specialty in a direct reaction to how badly she’d longed for sleep during medical school and residency.

‘Sleep is for the weak’ was practically a motto of the twenty-first century. A crutch to help people get by in this competitive world and all its requirements for productivity, to prove they weren’t beholden to the hours of vulnerability almost every living creature had to succumb to daily. The concept of sleep as a luxury.

Sacrificing sleep meant compromising health. Physical. Mental. Emotional. And she was doing it again in order to keep up with Khalil’s schedule and not let her brother down. Her brother, who would want her to be healthy! Ah, more contradictions of modern living.

Sleep-deprived, but clean, mostly upright and dressed—unlike the last time she’d seen Khalil—Adalyn knocked on the door to his suite while looking at her watch. Ten to six—she was tired and only passably functioning, but she’d made his hour of departure. She’d even managed to pack a small bag with the bare minimum she’d need for three days in the desert.

No answer.

He’d said he never slept in the palace, though she doubted that was true unless he had been out in the desert as recently as a couple of days ago. Being tired could explain his forgetting to knock before he’d entered her bedroom the previous night, but if he’d gone more than forty-eight hours without any sleep he wouldn’t be nearly as coherent as he had been in their short conversation. But if he was sleeping in after she’d managed to get up and get ready …

He’d been so adamant he wouldn’t sleep.

Truly, insomnia wasn’t what she’d expected she was coming to treat. One of the ways that Jamison had talked her into coming, his strongest method, had been guilt. What did you do when a hero was wounded? You treated them. And by the story he’d told, with bold strokes, Jamison had painted Khalil as a wounded hero. Not two months ago the country had been in revolt, the royals murdered, except for the heir—who was underage and too young to take the throne. Khalil and his brother had undertaken a mission to rescue the boy and the brother hadn’t made it back. But Khalil had, with the boy—the heir who was too young to rule and now away at some school somewhere.

After all that? Well, if she’d had to guess, she’d have said his problem would’ve been nightmares. But then again, that was her specialty.

If he’d heard her knock, plenty of time had passed for him to throw pants on and answer the door. Adalyn knocked again. Still no answer.

Well, two knocks were warning enough. She grabbed her bag—the smallest she’d brought—and marched into Khalil’s bedroom suite.

Coming from a bright room to a dark one, all she could see was the outline of heavy drapes over the bedroom windows. She couldn’t even begin to guess where light switches would be in the chamber, so she marched to one of the windows and pulled open the heavy brocade curtain. And then she could see. Empty. Khalil wasn’t sleeping in. Khalil wasn’t there.

But at least now she could see the door leading out.

He’d all but screamed last night that he didn’t want her there. She’d just expected that once they made a plan he would stick with it. Propelled by the sick feeling she’d been left, she hurried out of the room, just shy of a run.

For once her travel paranoia had done something good for her—despite her exhaustion, when the men had marched her to the suite, she’d still been able to memorize the route out of the palace in case of another sudden civil war—who knew how often those things happened in this place? Or fire. Fire was something she’d want to be able to escape without a map or a guide. One turn, another long hallway, more gilded opulence and crystal light fixtures … doors, doors, doors … another turn. She finally made it to a courtyard, having passed not a single person along the way, and stepped out just in time to see two large trucks pulling away.

Not knowing what else to do, she shouted, “Khalil!”

He sat in the driver-side window of the first truck, and when she’d shouted the name she probably shouldn’t even be using at the palace he did nothing but make eye contact with her through the side-view mirror. He’d heard her but didn’t take his foot off the gas.

A surge of frustration rode a wave of irritation, and before she even knew it she’d broken into a dead run after the truck.

Leaving without her? Make her travel all the way to this place, make her lose sleep and get on dangerous vehicles on land and air and then abandon her where she could be of no help to him, for no danged reason? If they made travel guide recommendations for the perfect time to shout at or make rude gestures at a royal, this would be at the top.

The trucks moved slowly enough in the courtyard to give the illusion that she might catch up with them, but the closer the gate came, the more that hopeful thought evaporated.

Muttering expletives under her breath wasn’t enough, either.

The trucks slowed, making a sharp turn for the gate—too far to reach, and what was she going to do if she got there? Climb on a moving vehicle? Yeah, right.

She’d never been moved to violence by anyone before, but she dropped her bag and grabbed the nearest rock—small enough to throw but big enough to express her frustration—and channeling her anger she let the rock fly with as much force as a really tired nerdy chick could muster.

She didn’t aim for him. She didn’t really aim. She probably couldn’t aim if she tried, at least not beyond the general intention to hit the truck somewhere, but the rock sailed strong and true, impacting the side window of the rear seat of the truck, right behind where Kahlil sat. It immediately spiderwebbed.

That stopped the truck.

That stopped both trucks.

Khalil got out, looked at the window and slammed his door. A couple tiny fragments of glass in the center of the impact rattled and fell out from the force of his gesture. He shook his head minutely at the men in the truck behind and stormed toward Adalyn, red crawling up his neck and over his face. “What the hell was that?”

Right then Adalyn remembered that she was pretty much afraid of everything. Including confrontation. Having big angry men yell at her was also on her Do Not Do list.

But if she backed down now, he’d probably just send her back inside and go on his merry way to wherever he was going.

“Emergency call button.” Adalyn’s short words came out with a grunt, the sound of exertion … mental if not physical. Before he reached her she jogged for the other side of the trucks to the passenger-side door. As she wrenched it open and climbed the running board to step in, strong hands locked on her hips and set her back on the ground.

There, in the relative seclusion of the side door area, he gave her a spin and forced her to face him. He was close. Too close, all but plastering her to the side of the truck, his arms forming a cage around her that kept her in place so he could effectively loom over her. “I know how you Quinns are fond of bucking authority figures, but in this country—and while still at this palace—you can’t behave like that toward me.”

It hit her how he was dressed. No robes today. No suit, either. He wore khakis and a light linen shirt with the collar unbuttoned, something that made him look almost like a normal person, not the autocrat he sounded like.

Their cozy little passenger-door alcove blocked the early-morning breeze and cocooned her in a heady scent of cedar, hints of citrus and something utterly masculine. Looking up into his golden-brown eyes, she felt entirely too vulnerable suddenly, as if he’d see the white flag waving in her pupils and know how close she was to backing down. She squinted at him, relying on the decreased area to make her intentions harder to read. And if it worked, she’d have to remember to use it the next time she got the harebrained idea to yell and throw rocks at a royal.

And she still couldn’t hold his gaze.

Looking at his mouth? That was just as bad, but for more confusing reasons.

Her gaze tracked farther down. His neck was safe, though a vein stood out there, pulsing, and seeing how fast his heart beat caused a little flutter in her belly. Even in her worst imaginings related to this trip, they had all been about accidents, explosions and possibly drowning at sea after a water crash … Never once had she thought she’d have to fight her patient to be able to treat him. The small amount of backbone she’d found quickly faded. All she wanted to do was get her bag and go back inside, but she muttered, “You were leaving me behind on purpose.”

Khalil dropped his arms and stepped back, needing to put some distance between himself and the woman who was supposed to be sleeping through his departure. Distance would help him keep from shaking some sense into her or just putting his hands back on her.

Even after he’d grabbed places on the truck and forced himself to focus on her, his palms still tingled with the memory of firm, curvy hips.

With a slow breath in through his nose, he took a few seconds to look over the courtyard. At least no one but the small private crew who traveled into the desert with him had witnessed the rock showdown.

“I assumed you wouldn’t want to go.” That was true, at least until he’d seen her outside with the overnight bag. After that, he really had no clue why he hadn’t stopped. Maybe the idea that one more hurdle would make her give up … Only, it hadn’t.

She looked him in the eye again, but he could tell from the color in her cheeks and the way her hands now gripped the door frame that her bravery was faltering. “I told you I would come last night.”

“Yes, and then you had a little time to sleep on it and think more clearly. At least, I’d hoped that would be the case.” He managed to calm his voice when he said it, a small victory considering he wanted to shout, Go back inside. Go home. Go anywhere else.

“So you really don’t want me here. You let me come all this way and …” As she spoke, her words came more and more slowly, and those soft green eyes he’d so admired hardened to bare slits. She might be tired, she might not enjoy confrontation and she might be a little intimidated by him, but she was still angry. “I’m not at my best today, but I do still have a little bit of functioning gray matter working for me. You’re sabotaging this on purpose.”

“Adalyn—”

“No. I’m the one talking now!” She released the frame of the door and reached up to jab him once in the chest. “You didn’t just let me come all this way, you assured that I would have the roughest trip possible, right? You have loads of planes—you and Jamison have gone to practically as many countries as the Peace Corps on them—but I had to arrange transport and ship the equipment … and all that. You sent your black-suited henchmen to retrieve me at the last possible minute, but that’s it. You made my journey as hard as you could possibly make it in order to make me be the one who broke a promise to my brother. Didn’t you?”

And he wouldn’t defend it or deny it.

But if she poked him in the chest again, he was going to …

No, there would be no feeling up his best friend’s irritating little sister. He crossed his arms to keep his hands under control and said instead, “You really want to go into the desert? It’s nothing like you read in books. No rest stops between here and where we’re going. Poisonous creatures that sting and bite. Dust, sun, heat—this isn’t some glorified field trip.”

She stepped up on the running board and turned to face him, now somewhat closer to eye level, and used that added height to glare at him, her chin tilting to match the challenge in her posture. “Say it,” she demanded, the tiniest wobble in her voice breaking through his resistance more than the bravado she put on. “Tell me I can’t go. I’ll tell Jamison that I did all I could, but, whatever you promised him, you broke your word. Go ahead, Khalil. Tell me I can’t go. I’m happy to go pack my bags and find a way out of your gilded palace in the sand and go home. But you have to say it, because I came all this way for Jamison, and I’m not going to be the one who lets him down.”

Son of a …

“Just sit down and shut up already,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Adalyn drew a deep, satisfied breath, and at the second her lungs felt filled to capacity the true meaning of her victory pushed the air back out again in a rush. She’d just had a fight in order to be allowed to ride out into the scorching desert in a big dangerous truck with a man who really didn’t want her with him.

So not a victory.

She edged onto the seat and closed the door. He rounded the truck and climbed back in at the driver’s side, slamming his own door and bringing down another shard of glass from the window she’d broken and that now had a tiny hole in the center. The window that now looked … really dangerous.

“Aren’t we going to change to a truck without a broken window?”

“No. Want to change your mind and go back inside?” He pulled on his seat belt and started the truck.

Yes!

“No, I’m going with you unless you order me not to.” And now that she thought about it, that was a really stupid idea.

The trucks started rolling forward, continuing on … Without her bag! “Are we going to turn around and fetch my bag?”

If she’d eaten anything in the past several hours, she’d have been sick. No bag meant no protein bars, no water purification tablets … She was going out into the desert where they probably only had water sources of questionable cleanliness …

“No. Want to change your mind?”

Yes. Yes.

“Is that all you can say?” She grit her teeth and fixed her gaze in front of her. “I’m coming with you. But if I start to stink in the next couple of days I’m going to roll around in your fresh clean clothes so you can bask in my stench just as much as I’ll have to.”

“Good. Someone as irritating as you are shouldn’t smell so good.”

The urge to take off one shoe so she could better beat him with it nearly overwhelmed her limping self-control. Yet more evidence that being sleep-deprived in a foreign land brought out the worst in her.

Could someone get motion sickness if they were only going a few miles per hour? Her stomach thought so. “You’re the one who’s all sultan-like, but I wouldn’t think it kingly to tuck tail and run when confronted with a problem. You should put off your trip and stay home to get treatment.”

“Amazingly enough, this isn’t just something I can put off. I’m not going into the desert because you don’t want me to. I’m also not going just because I’m tired and want to sleep, though honestly I am really looking forward to that part. In the other truck is a cool box with vaccinations to be given. The tribes don’t have the best access to clean water, and though we’ve put measures into motion to change this they still struggle with disease because of it.”

Okay, that deflated her anger balloon a little. Except that bit about the unclean water, and her not having the tablets … “Maybe not, but you’re not going to get my bag because you want to put me out. So don’t get too smug and superior just because you have a valid reason for going on this trip.”

She pretended he hadn’t said she smelled good, because she really didn’t know what to do with that information. Thank him? Give him the name of her favorite perfume?

“Fine.” He grabbed the radio handset and said something she didn’t understand as the truck rolled on.

The other truck hadn’t yet passed through the gate, and she turned to look over her shoulder, trying to work out what he’d just done. “Why did you agree to my coming in the first place if you’re so all fired against it?”

“I was tired, Jay was persistent,” Khalil answered, hanging the radio handset back in its place.

With how stringently he wanted her to not go with him, Adalyn had no illusion he would wait if she climbed out of the truck and ran to pick up her bag. Resigned, she dragged on her seat belt.

Looking at him made her angrier. Looking out the side window made her feel sick. Looking out the front terrified her. She went with angry and twisted slightly under the confines of her overly tightened seat belt to look at Khalil.

Even scowling, as he was, he was handsome. That probably played into his privileged air. Royalty, doctor, handsome … It all added up to spoiled and used to getting what he wanted. He probably had insomnia because his bed was too lumpy, like the princess and the pea.

“I don’t buy it,” she said, trying to ignore the way her stomach squeezed and rolled with every creak and crackle from the window she’d broken. The wind tore at the shards, barely holding together. What if the bits flew up and got in his eyes and blinded him and he crashed them into something deadly? She chanced another glance back at the hole, mentally calculating what was safest—for the windows up front to be up or down. If she rolled down her window, would the air flow drag the shards into the cab or push them out of the truck rather than in? Maybe they wouldn’t fly around at all. Maybe this was just another paranoid scenario playing out in her mind, like the thousands of fiery deaths she’d imagined on the way there.

Stay on topic.

Khalil was the topic. And narrating all her bloody imaginings to him wouldn’t inspire any sort of confidence that she could help him. “I can’t believe that with this level of aversion you left the situation to chance. You’re too domineering and controlling to leave this up to fate. You fit the alpha-male mold even without the royalty stuff added on, but without even knowing me you counted on me chickening out. That’s dumb. Maybe you should try to sleep more.”

Antagonizing him probably wouldn’t inspire confidence in her, either.

He looked sideways at her, his eyes off the road long enough to increase her worry. She took a deep breath and tried to relax her arms and shoulders. With the road rushing at her, she couldn’t even release a fraction of that tension. She closed her eyes and tried again, channeling the physical manifestation of her fear to her right hand, where she could at least grip and abuse the armrest on the door and he might not see.

“You should try to sleep now,” he said, his voice remarkably level.

“Yeah, that won’t happen. I tried to sleep all the way here. It didn’t work at all.”

“Try again.” Whatever anger she’d roused in him earlier was now gone. He could’ve been telling her the time of day for all the emotion reflected in his tone. Maybe she hadn’t antagonized him so much after all. “We have a few hours’ drive ahead of us.”

“That may be, but …” But. But how much should she reveal? Would it make him act like less of a jerk if he knew what she was putting herself through for him? Or, more accurately, for Jamison? Or would he just use it as ammunition to get her back out of the truck and his presence? “I can’t sleep in a moving car. Or plane. You should be able to understand someone not being able to sleep when they want to. I would love to go to sleep and block all this out, but I can’t.”

“The truck scares you?”

“All vehicles scare me,” she muttered, and laid her head back, eyes still closed and arms now folded. “They’re dangerous. People die all the time in car accidents.”

Her voice became small and thready with the last statement, reminding him of her history in a way that left him feeling unaccountably exposed and irritated. When their parents had died, Jamison had been away at school with him, and Khalil had witnessed firsthand how destructive it could be to lose both your parents in your formative years. He’d pulled Jamison back from his more destructive actions, distracting him in whatever way he’d been able to … including a couple of fistfights just because picking a fight and making Jay mad at him had been the better alternative to the things he’d been about to do.

Had anyone helped her with her grief? If she really was scared of all vehicles, she must have felt put through the wringer to get here.

And that thought didn’t help, either. He wanted her to go, but using a fear born of the death of her parents to make her do what he wanted seemed like the worst kind of evil.