glass seems somehow inadequate.”
How would she say it? Could she say it? She couldn’t believe she was even thinking it.
“Well,” she said at last, once they were in the car, “there is something…”
Chapter Three
The last time Alex had nearly run his own car off a road had been when he had just turned sixteen and decided that driving and smoking menthol cigarettes “went together.” He’d taken his first drag, choked, dropped the cigarette between his legs and nearly taken out Mrs. Rafferty’s hand-painted mailbox.
This time it was a U.S. mailbox at the corner of Fifth and Main that nearly bit the dust. But then, he was older now, and the shock had been bigger. Therefore, the mailbox should be bigger, too.
“You…you want me to what?” he said as he recovered, slowed the vehicle to look over at Hannah in the darkness.
She had sunk down in the seat, sitting on her spine, her head on her chest. “You did ask,” she said in a small voice.
“Well, hell, yeah—but what kind of answer was that? I mean, you could give a guy a little warning. You know, something like, ‘Hey, Alex, I’m going to drop a bomb now. Maybe you’ll want to duck and cover.”’
“Never mind, okay?” Hannah said, pushing herself upright once more. “Forget it. Just—forget it.”
“Forget it? How am I suppose to forget it? You just asked me to rid you of your…to…you want me to—oh, hell, Hannah. You can’t still be a virgin. You’re what—twenty-six, twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-eight,” she told him, her high-buttoned blouse choking her, half from sliding down in the seat and partly because she may just have swallowed her tongue. She wasn’t quite sure. But if she choked to death in the next five seconds, she really didn’t think that would be a bad thing. “I’m twenty-eight and never been more than kissed. It’s embarrassing.”
“How? Nobody knows but you. And now me,” Alex added, shaking his head. “And that’s another thing, Hannah. Why me?”
“Good question,” Hannah mumbled, mortified. What had gotten into her? She hadn’t had any wine, so she couldn’t use drunken stupidity as an excuse. “It’s just that…well, you did ask what you could do for me. And you said I could ask anything, anything at all, and I…well, I really would like your help.”
Alex pulled up in the small cement parking lot beside the veterinary office and cut the engine. “My help. Hannah, it isn’t as if you asked me to change a tire or help you move—which I think you ought to consider, not that it’s any of my business. But asking me to…to—”
“Make me a woman is how I think I said it,” Hannah said, helping him and cringing at the same time. The only thing worse than saying the words again would be to hear him say them.
“Yes, that,” Alex said, pushing his fingers through his hair. “Is it really so necessary to you?”
Hannah nodded. “Maybe it’s stupid, but yes, I do think it’s necessary.” She turned toward him, trying to explain. “It’s time I grew up—all the way up. I thought I had, but then I came home, and I’m right back where I started. Unsure of myself, wondering who and what I am. Falling back into old patterns, probably unhealthy patterns. I still feel like a girl. A young, clumsy little girl. I’m twenty-eight, Alex. Twenty-eight! It’s time I grew up.”
“Having sex doesn’t make you a grown-up, Hannah. Just ask all the teenage mothers, if you don’t believe me.”
“You…you’d be careful,” she said, averting her gaze once more, grateful for the relative dark inside the vehicle, even with the streetlight shining at the corner. “You wouldn’t let that happen to me.”
“No, of course I wouldn’t let anything like that happen to—what the hell am I saying? Hannah, no. It’s a crazy idea. I’m sorry, but it just is.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Just forget I asked. And you’re right, it is a crazy idea.”
“So you’re not going to go out hunting for someone else to…to make you a woman?”
Hannah bowed her head, bit her lips. She’d been right. It was worse when he said it.
“Hannah? Answer me. You are going to give up the idea, right?”
She looked over at him in the darkness. He couldn’t know, must never know. She’d rather go to her grave a repressed virgin than give herself to anyone but this man she’d dreamed of all her life. All she’d wanted was this one time, this one memory, before she went back to her unfulfilled and unfulfilling life. Was that too much to ask? Apparently it was.
“Hannah? Would you please answer me?”
“Good night, Alex,” she said, opening the door and quickly hopping out of the vehicle. “I had a wonderful time.”
“Hannah!” he called after her as she ran toward the door. Then he sat back in his seat and slammed his fists against the steering wheel. “Damn it! Now what do I do?”
THE THRONE ROOM in the great palace of Sorajhee, located in the capital city of Jeved, had always been one of the most beautiful chambers, its simple Moorish architecture accented with golf leaf, its tall, ornamental windows looking out over the perfect blue of the Persian Gulf.
From this room, from the jewel-encrusted throne set at the top of a pedestal surrounded by steps on which the guilty, the penitent and the hopeful petitioner had all prostrated themselves, the Jeved family had ruled for generations.
Today the air in the throne room was tense, almost trembling, as Azzam, ruler of Sorajhee, looked down at his counterpart from Balahar, King Zakariyya Al Farid.
“Will you speak, my friend, or only continue to pose, impressing me with your power, which is no less or greater than mine own?” King Zakariyya Al Farid turned away from Azzam and walked to the gilt chair that had been set out for him, his white robes flowing around him as he sat, placing his forearms on each arm of the chair. “Well, Azzam? Do we talk like men or must I remind you that I am here as your invited guest?”
“More of a guest who invited himself, Zak, don’t you think?” Azzam stood, motioning for one of his servants to bring another gilt chair and place it near Zakariyya’s. “Very well. We will talk, old friend,” he said as yet more servants brought a small table to place between them, then loaded it down with golden plates filled with figs and dates, small, rich squares of baklava and a pot of strong tea. “We will talk of what the nightingale has told me.”
“How poetic. And what has the nightingale told you, my friend?”
“Whispers, my friend. Whispers of Farid planning to unite Balahar with the enemy of Sorajhee. I would slit the nightingale’s throat, should I know this to be the truth, that the alliance between Balahar and Sorajhee is no more.”
“What alliance would that be, Azzam? That dream was no more the day your brother died, my friend. I know that, the world knows that, and you most certainly should. Our last treaty was made more than fifty years ago, and never did have teeth,” Zakariyya said, selecting a fig, turning it in his bejeweled fingers as if inspecting
