did that mean? She’d already lain back down and burrowed into the pillow, effectively shutting him out. “Sleep well, little sister,” he murmured, shutting the door behind him. Calling her “Doctor” hadn’t done anything for his libido. Maybe calling her “little sister” would be able to keep him from thinking about the lush flesh he’d seen on display.
Jay needed a talk about sending his innocent, pretty little sister off to foreign countries and men who might take advantage of her.
Men of weaker constitution than Khalil.
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
