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
