“So now you recognize me.”
“Now I wish I don’t.” Najeeb turned to Jen in dismay. “How on earth did you get mixed up with a man like him?”
Something scary rolled from Numair’s gut. “You have questions, you have anything to say, you talk to me.”
Jen raised her hands. “Boys, please, hold your testosterone missiles. I’m standing right in the middle, and your aggression is literally turning my stomach.”
Both men apologized simultaneously, stopped, glared at each other, started again, overlapped each other’s words again, then fell silent. They stood there seething with frustration as they summed each other up. And she saw something she hadn’t realized before.
They looked so much alike.
If she’d been meeting them for the first time, she would have thought they were blood relatives, even brothers.
Apart from Najeeb having hazel eyes and close-cropped hair, what really distinguished them wasn’t genetic, but the result of their radically different characters and paths in life. Najeeb lacked the harshness that etched Numair’s features, the ruthless shrewdness that emanated from him. And while both men were almost the same breadth and height, their bodies displayed the difference between the supremely fit and powerful man that Najeeb was and the lethal juggernaut that Numair was.
But those differences only made them feel more kindred. She couldn’t explain why she felt that, but she did. And suddenly this whole situation became untenable.
As the men started arguing again, she clamped each by his arm. “Will you stop alarming everyone in a mile’s radius?” She looked from one to the other as they brooded down at her. “Can we now go have this out somewhere private, or do we need some internationally sanctioned neutral ground and peacekeeping forces to keep you two in line?”
* * *
They ended up in Numair’s place.
The “hideaway” he’d prepared for them. With no roads leading to it, the only transportation was by helicopter.
Though she’d lived in a royal palace, this place still stunned her. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t even known it existed in her own homeland.
Contributing to the uniqueness of this resort-size property was its seclusion. For a hundred square miles she saw nothing but desert conservation land all around.
Once they’d entered through the semifinished palm wood and bronze gates into this desert paradise, she felt they hadn’t only left city life behind, but modern life altogether, too. The understated luxury was so at one with the environment, the villa lacked any trace of the artificial elements that had always put her off in the opulent places she’d been in in Zafrana, from the palace to the houses of the nobility and big businessmen. While all those places strived to belong to an era in architecture and decoration, this place had a timelessness about it.
It was made of the desert, its materials, its color palette, of its majesty and tranquility. Of the many things that took her breath away were the free-roaming oryx and gazelles just outside the gates, and the incredible infinity pool at the back of the sprawling villa. It looked like a swimming pool at its near end, with mosaic walls, steps and ledges in blues and greens, but on its far end it looked like a spring, like those found in major oases, its edge seeming to abruptly disappear into another realm. A mile-long barricade of palm trees separated the back of the property from the rest of the desert that stretched in gently undulating dunes all the way to the Anshar mountains on the horizon.
Inside the villa, spaces flowed onto each other; balcony doors opened to all directions. Every surface was made of stone, colored glass and bronze, and all the furniture and upholstery handmade, everything in warm earth tones, with russets and reds adding splashes of vividness. The whole place felt like an escape into a mystical retreat of solitude.
Numair had somehow read her every preference, even those she’d never fully formulated. He’d known what would most delight her. And in those short days while he’d been always with her, he’d searched for it, found it and acquired it. She didn’t think this property was a lease. He moved around here with the assurance of someone who owned the place, even though it was his first time here. The one who’d flown here to close the deal, who now showed them around, was his right-hand man, Ameen. But then, Numair entered any place and owned it, and the people in it.
She couldn’t wait to be alone here with him. But for now she had to resolve this issue with Najeeb. Most important, she had to give it her best shot to fix that inexplicably catastrophic first impression between him and Numair.
Now Ameen left their trio in the great space that had many sitting areas, a dining room and four stone fireplaces. Numair handed her down on one of the divans strewn in pillows covered in hand-woven wool in colorful, geometric Zafranian designs. She tried to catch his eyes, exchange the intimacy they’d been reveling in since their first night together. But his focus was trained on Najeeb.