She stood in his grip, her heart quivering with unfurling hope. "I never lied. In fact, like you once said, I can't lie. Just ask those guys." Grunts of corroboration issued from everyone around who'd been singed by her inability to hide the truth of her feelings. Suddenly, the pain she'd experienced yesterday welled up inside her. And she pinched him, in the sensitive underside of both arms. Hard. "But you lie like a bird can fly."
His frown cracked on a twitch of surprise at her unexpected action, at its sting, on a jerk of humor at her rhyme, before resuming full force. "I never, ever lied to you. And if you never did to me, as I would have staked my life on till yesterday, why did you say what you said? Or did you really think you needed to seduce me to get me to help Todd? If you did, didn't you know I would have helped the very devil to make you happy? That you didn't need to say you felt anything for me, because it's enough for me that I feel everything for you?"
His words washed over her in healing waves, wiping away all the pain and doubt in swell after swell.
Then she remembered Todd's staggering confession, and her heart compressed. Harres had probably done a host of illegal things to get him off the hook. All for her.
She soothed the flesh she'd abused, her heart brimming with sorrow and remorse. "I was just lashing out in shock and misery."
"Why?" He had the look of a man who was watching his sanity ebbing before his eyes.
She pinched him again, harder this time, dragging a growl from his depths, a mixture of pain and aggravation and arousal. "Because I heard you. Saying you don't care if I live or die. So you were lying, to someone. That's why I called you. To ask you who you were lying to, and why." She pushed out of his arms, stuck her fists in her waist. "So?"
Harres felt the mountain that had been crushing him since yesterday lifting. This explained everything.
She'd heard him.
"Ya Ullah. It's a wonder you didn't kill me and ask questions later." He laughed, with all the discharge of his confusion and agony. "So, the reason I said those things-which, by the way, made me so sick that I haven't been able to put a thing in my mouth since-is I got a phone call, someone telling me they know who you are, what you mean to me, and if I don't back off, they'll harm you. I had to say you meant nothing to me, to make you invalid as a target.
"After I said what I did to my extortionist, I had to keep playing it cool with you since I knew we had traitors in the palace, and your room was probably bugged. I would have explained things to you the moment we were outside monitoring range, but you hit me with that delightful surprise about never feeling anything for me. I couldn't believe it, but you seemed so distant, so different, until I began to lose my mind thinking it might be true. I wouldn't have let you go if Amjad hadn't called at that moment. As it was I sent a dozen men as your security detail just in case."
"So that explains all those GQ specimens suddenly hanging around outside my house. Way to go picking guys only I in my condition couldn't see for the elite secret-service agents they are." A smile, sheepish and adoring, trembled on her lips, still echoing pain. He wanted to devour them, soothe away the remainder of her agitation. She bit them, making him feel her teeth had sunk into his own flesh. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for … Todd. I should have suspected something, but I guess I am too stupid when it comes to him."
"I'm not sorry. In fact, I owe your misbehaving brother a debt I can never repay. Your misplaced belief in his innocence drove you to Zohayd and into my life. Amjad and Shaheen pulled some major strings, but I personally paid back with interest everyone he defrauded, and it feels like such a tiny price for having you."
Then she was in his arms, burrowing deep into his chest and deeper into his being and bawling her eyes out.
He filled his aching arms with his every reason for life, every source of happiness. When he'd thought he'd lost her, had never had her … He shuddered. He couldn't even think of those soul-gnawing hours. And he had to tell her something else.
"I'm not here because you called, ya talyeti. I was on my way here. That's why you amassed those missed calls. But I am ecstatic that you didn't give up on me, even after hearing the horrors I was forced to utter about you, that you still called, still gave me the benefit of the doubt."
She looked up from the depths of his embrace, her heavenly eyes brimming with love. "How could I not, when I sobered up and remembered what we shared?" She told him about her own phone call, and they both realized at the same moment. She articulated the realization. "My informant masterminded everything. Threatening my safety to you, forcing you to say what you did and forcing me to hear it."
"But that's where he went wrong." He gathered her to him more securely, feeling his heart stagger with the blessing of having her belief, so deep it had withstood that brutal test. And he had no doubt, would stand a lifetime of tests, come what may. As would his. "He didn't count on you being too ethical to lash out by doing his dirty work for him, and loving me so much that you'd give me a chance to exonerate myself."
The adoration in her eyes enveloped him, made him feel invincible. "And he didn't count on you being unable to believe I could use you that way, that you'd come after me, and that we'd talk, get past the doubts and hurt and find each other again."
He suddenly swung her in the air around and around. Her unfettered laughter echoed his overwhelming relief and elation, fell all over him like pearls tinkling off crystal.
He finally put her down, cupped her beloved face in his hands. "And now we have. And with your brother free and no doubt planning to atone, and with us being on the final leg of aborting the conspiracy now that all the pieces are in place, and now that I'm certain the threat against you was just a ploy to get you to hear me and lash out, all our obstacles have been removed." He kneeled in front of her. "I have nothing to give you while I make this offer but everything I am. So will you now take me, ya talyeti, ya ghalyeti, ya noor donyeti, all of me? Will you marry me and make me whole?"
Talia would have fallen if Harres hadn't caught her by the hips.
She stared down at him as he kneeled before her, shock and overwhelming joy twisting her tongue as she choked out, "Y-you're not-not promised to some m-marriage of state?
He smiled up at her, that annihilating smile that vaporized her mental functions at a hundred paces. "I'm not. I am free to marry the wife my heart chooses. And my heart, and everything in me, chooses you."
And she threw herself all over him, sobbing her love and relief. "Considering I'm yours forever, too, it's wise of you to make use of the fact."
From somewhere far away, she heard clapping and hooting.
Her infernal colleagues. They were still here?
Well, doctors in the E.R. didn't have much of a private life. She'd seen most of their revealing and embarrassing moments. They'd witnessed many of hers, too. Let them now share her most incredible one.
As she lost herself in Harres's fate-sealing kiss, one of her male colleagues said, "There's a very nice-size supply cabinet just around the corner, dude."
They both turned on him with a simultaneous, "Oh, shut up."
Then, exchanging a conspiratorial look with Harres, she grabbed his hand and they rushed out of the room.
On their way out, a female colleague asked, "What if the Chief sees you signed in but nowhere around?"
"Tell him I have a gunshot victim to tend to," she said.
"Yes," Harres added. "Someone who's so impressed by her uncanny medical skills, he's going to donate any number of millions she sees fit to your department in gratitude."
They left the room to an explosion of excitement.
Once they reached that supply cabinet, he dragged her inside, pushed her against the wall. "And to this golden virago who owns my heart by awakening it, my life by saving it, my faith by inspiring it, what would you see fit I donate?"
She dragged him down to her, begged in his mouth. "Just your love. Just you."
And he pledged to her as he made her whole, "You have it, and me, always. Forever."