resignation.
“A flatmate, Roxanne? Seriously?”
“What am I doing still standing here?” Cherie babbled as she ran inside. “Sorry, guys. Please, carry on. I’m not really here!”
By the time they heard Cherie’s bedroom door slam, he was on his feet, buttoning his shirt. For one mad moment, she didn’t see why they couldn’t take Cherie’s advice.
Then sanity lodged back into her brain.
She scrambled up, pulled her bathrobe tight around her.
He shook his head at her far-too-late modesty as he turned away.
At the door, he half turned again, his eyes hooded with stillsimmering desire. “We’ll meet again, ya naari.”
She lurched. His fire.
She’d never thought she’d hear that again. From him. Or ever. She’d long thought her fire had been extinguished.
“But next time, it will be on my turf. And on my terms.”
He touched his tongue to the lip she’d bitten, as if tasting her passion. Then, with one last inflaming look, he whispered, “Until then.”
Three
“I’d give an arm to know your secret, Roxanne.”
Roxanne stared at Kareemah Al Sabahi. Hers was the third and last door she’d knocked on to explain away Haidar’s shenanigans.
She hadn’t been up to facing another day, let alone those who’d witnessed Haidar’s innovative blackmail tactics. But damn him to an as-novel hell, she had to live among them, as he’d said.
Kareemah was the only one who hadn’t needed explanations, having watched developments through her intercom camera. Cherie’s arrival had had her mind going into hyperdrive. But Haidar had left minutes later, aborting her visions of threesomes. She’d opened her door, hoping for an explanation, when he’d suddenly turned. In his real voice, he’d said he hoped she’d enjoyed the show, had her giggling like a fool as he’d bowed to her before he’d walked away.
“I mean, you’re gorgeous and all, but it can’t only be that. You have to have a secret. Women everywhere would kill for a tip.”
Roxanne shook her head. She wasn’t up to deciphering neighbors’ riddles. Now that Haidar had rematerialized in her life with the force of a live warhead and left promising further destruction, her brain was officially fried.
Either that, or Kareemah was talking gibberish. Which was an imminent possibility. The woman had been exposed to Haidar, too.
“So what do you do to get gods knocking down your door?”
“Uh, Kareemah, if you mean Haidar, I already explained—”
“And I might have bought you explaining one god away. But how do you explain another?”
Suddenly, she realized Kareemah wasn’t looking at her. Her eyes were glued to a point in the distance.
Someone was standing behind her.
She whirled around. And her heart hit the base of her throat.
No. Not another Aal Shalaan “hybrid.”
Jalal.
He was standing by the door she’d left open, in a charcoal suit with a shirt the color of his golden eyes, hands languidly in his pockets, looking as if he’d teleported off a GQ magazine cover.
That might not be far-fetched. She hadn’t heard the whir of the elevator or the fall of his footsteps.
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, one of the two men she never wanted to see again had managed to sneak up on her.
Kareemah tugged on her arm, made her stagger around. “Like we say here, ‘the neighbor takes precedence in charity.’ I anxiously await a glimpse at your methods.”
With that, she cast Jalal another starstruck glance and stepped back into her apartment.
Roxanne stared at the door Kareemah had just closed, her mind in a jumble.
“Koll hadi’s’seneen, kammetman’nait ashoofek menejdeed.” All these years, how I wished to see you again.
Her heart squeezed so hard she felt it would implode.
Suddenly fury spurted inside it, incinerating all shock and nostalgia. She wasn’t letting another Aal Shalaan twin mess her up all over again. She’d hit her limit last night.
She turned, hoping she didn’t look as shaky as she felt. “If it isn’t one of the region’s two most eligible bastards.”
The warmth infusing his face didn’t waver as he slipped his hands out of his pockets, spread his arms in a gesture that had always had her running into them. “Ullah yehay’yeeki, ya Roxanne.”
Ullah yehay’yeeki—literally, may God hail you, one of the not-quite-translatable colloquial praises he’d once lavished on her, usually when she’d said something that had resonated with his demanding intellect and wit. Which had been almost every time she’d opened her mouth. They’d been so alike, so in tune, it had been incredible. It had also turned out to be a lie.
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