of his arrival. “I apologize, I should’ve knocked.”
She squawked and then there was a thump, along with some other commotion he couldn’t identify. If it had taken effort to look away, it took even more not to look back.
“Should I come back?” he asked, because he had to do something …
“Yes!” The word erupted from her and set him in motion. As he reached for the door, a more tentative babble came from behind him, “No, wait. You can stay, just don’t turn around for a minute.”
She muttered something beneath her breath, disgruntled words he couldn’t make out. If she was anything like her brother, those words wouldn’t be fit for company anyway.
Khalil stayed in place and stared hard at the carved wooden door.
Count the lines in the wood grain.
Don’t think of the mostly nude woman behind him.
And for God’s sake, don’t look.
He lost track of the lines and had to start again. Keeping control of his mind and actions was easier when he wasn’t tired, but he’d been in the palace for nearly a week this time around … Tired wasn’t a strong enough word for what he was—he was exhausted in a way that even heart-accelerating doses of caffeine couldn’t help.
“You can turn around. I guess I’m decent.” She didn’t sound at all certain.
When he turned back, it was to overly bright eyes and pink cheeks. He locked his gaze to hers in another effort to exert control over his baser impulses. “You don’t look like your picture …” Which was not the way he’d intended to start this conversation.
“Sorry.”
Why was she apologizing? He was the one who’d barged in.
She tugged at the bottom hem of her short dressing robe, the fidgeting making clear her response: sorry was a verbal fidget.
In the picture he’d seen, she’d been at least thirty pounds heavier and the victim of an unfortunate complexion issue. She’d worn glasses and had kept her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail. She’d looked like someone studious and intelligent. And now … she looked like a dark-haired pixie with large green eyes. And breasts he could clearly see the shape of through the slinky blue material of her robe.
Eyes! Look at her eyes!
He’d had a reason to come into the room …
“Your equipment …” He grasped for his train of thought.
She clutched the robe tighter, eyes widening further as her voice hitched. “My equipment?”
“Not that equipment …” It was all he could do not to groan at yet another verbal misstep. It didn’t help that he’d put her one door away from him, like a shiny-new mistress. And, sweet mercy, did she ever look the part of timid virgin, blushing and stammering the first time her body was exposed to a man’s eyes.
For the first time in Khalil’s life he wished he could take advantage. Tear that robe off her, coerce and tease until she lay back on the thick bed behind her … and welcomed him with open arms. And legs. His eyes wandered down, past the hem of the silky material to the smooth, pale, shapely legs …
For God’s sake, look her in the eye.
“My men have brought your medical equipment to the palace.” He cleared his throat, which had gone dry again. “Where would you like it delivered?”
“Oh.” She shifted around again, fidgeting with the belt and the hem again, anywhere the material folded or covered her. “I assumed that I was placed in this room so that I would have access to your room to monitor you as you sleep.”
With a quick hop—which sent too many interesting places jiggling—she rounded the suitcase and perched on the corner of the bed. Her knees clamped together and she resumed smoothing the fabric down her thighs, willing it to cover more of her body than it had when she’d been standing. “Monitors here, but the camera equipment in your room. I know that sounds really creepy, but it is recorded so I can review it the next day to make sure that I didn’t miss anything, but after that it gets erased. Otherwise I’d just have to hover at your bedside and watch you sleep.”
A short nervous laugh escaped her before she clamped her lips shut, the very picture of distress despite the laugh. “I doubt anyone would be able to get any rest if they felt like someone was standing there, leering at them. My aunt’s cat used to do that in the morning when she wanted me up. Just sit there and stare … And it always worked. Woke me right up.”
Babbling, a sign of nerves. Definitely nervous. Maybe shy, too, if the way she worked to keep him from even seeing her knees was anything to go by. And all that wasn’t what he should be focusing on.
He’d known she would need to monitor him, he was familiar with the method in which sleep studies were conducted, but the way she described watching him sleep only made him think of that long dark hair spread across cool white cotton pillows … and the slinky robe slipping over pale, soft flesh.
She added, “It’ll take several hours to set up all the equipment so I thought maybe we would do it tomorrow. I really won’t be of any use to anyone until I’ve had at least eight hours.”
Right, she was tired. He should say something, stop her babbling.
“Of course.”
Had he ever dated a woman so shy and modest? If he had, he should probably remember her if that appealed to him so much. He’d think less of any man who confessed this sort of reaction to innocence. To think himself capable of it. That emotion could be named by the taste of bile at the back of his throat.
But the sudden, intense aversion to the thought of accepting her help disgusted him even more.
Help was the whole reason for her to be there. He should just tell her everything right now. That would replace the sweet, nervous innocent with something uglier, a reflection of the blackness devouring him from the inside out. She’d give him her pity, at best, and she sure as hell wouldn’t sit there, barely clothed, trusting him to fake his way through the actions of a good man.
“I doubt the equipment is going to be very helpful. My problem is I don’t sleep. I’ve got insomnia. And when I fail to fall asleep, I don’t tend to stay in bed for hours, trying. Not a lot to monitor when that happens. Which happens a great deal of the time.” He’d opened his mouth, said words, but not the right ones. His throat refused to let those words pass.
“Well, you have to sleep sometime. I mean, you’re not a drooling idiot right now, and after you miss enough sleep—well, I’m sure you’ve noticed the effects. But there are also other effects that are actually quite dangerous. We all have a maximum amount of time we can go without sleep and then our brains start taking micro-sleeps when we’re trying to work. Or trying to drive. Insomnia sounds like a pain in the butt, but really it can be very dangerous.”
Dangerous, like his reaction to her. “So your solution to it is?”
Solution? The only one he needed right this second was the one that would keep him from ogling his oldest friend’s little sister.
