Nearly three years ago, you and I were wed. Two years ago, you walked into the desert and were never seen again.”
He couldn’t bring himself to mention Rafiq to her, not when she was so obviously trying to play him for a fool.
She blinked, her expression going carefully blank. And then she shook her head. “No, I …”
“What?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.
She swallowed. “I had an accident, it’s true. But I’ve recovered.” Her fingers lifted to press against her lips. He noticed they were trembling. “There are things that are fuzzy, but—” She shook her head. “No, someone would have told me.”
Everything inside him went still. “Someone? Who would have told you, Isabella? Who knows you are here?”
She met his gaze again. “My parents, of course. My father sent me to my mother’s to recover. The doctor said I needed to get away from Jahfar, that it was too hot, too … stressful.”
Fury whipped through him. And disbelief. Her parents knew she was alive? Impossible.
And yet, he’d hardly seen Hassan Maro since Isabella had disappeared. The man spent more time out of the country these days than he did in it. Adan had chalked it up to his business interests and to grief over the loss of his only daughter, but what if it were more? What if Maro were hiding something?
Was the man truly capable of helping his daughter to escape her marriage when he’d been so thrilled with the arrangement in the first place?
Adan shook his head. She was lying, playing him, denying what she knew to be true simply because she’d been caught. She’d survived the desert, there was no doubt, and she could not have done so without help.
But whose help?
“I have never heard of selective amnesia, Isabella,” he growled. “How could you remember your parents, remember Jahfar—yet not remember me?”
“I didn’t say I had amnesia!” she cried. “You did.”
“What do you call it, then, if you say you know who you are and where you come from, but you can’t remember the husband you left behind?”
“We’re not married,” she insisted—and yet her lower lip trembled. It was the first sign of a small chink in her armor, as if she knew she’d been caught and was desperate to escape.
Adan hardened his resolve. She would not do so, not until he was finished with her. She had much to answer for. And much still to pay for.
She clasped her hands in front of her body. The motion pressed her breasts together, emphasized the smooth, plump curves. A tingle started at the base of his spine and drifted outward.
No.
Adan ruthlessly clamped down on his libido. Was he so shallow as to allow the sight of a woman’s half-naked body to arouse him, when the woman was as treacherous as this one? When he had every reason to despise her?
“Let’s turn this around, then,” she said, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “Assuming for a moment that you’re correct, that we are married—where have you been and why didn’t you come for me sooner?”
“I have been in Jahfar,” he ground out. “And, as you very well know, I believed you to be dead.”
Her face grew pale beneath her tan. “Dead?”
He was tired of this, tired of the caginess and obfuscation. He’d flown through several time zones and had had no sleep in his quest to learn if the picture were true, if the woman holding a microphone and peering up at the camera as if to a secret lover was indeed his wife. He’d told himself it wasn’t possible. She could not have survived.
But then he’d walked into this bar and seen her standing there, her face so familiar and so strange all at once, and he’d known the truth.
And he was done being civil. “You walked into the desert, Isabella. What you did after that is anyone’s guess, but you did not come back out. We searched for weeks.”
She shook her head. “It’s insane, absolutely insane.”
“Is it?” Adan tucked his hand under her elbow and pulled her out of the chair. She rose surprisingly easily, as if she were distracted. He pointedly ignored the current of electricity that zapped through him when he touched her bare skin.
She looked up at him, her dark, smoky eyes full of emotion. “I don’t remember.”
He would not be moved. “Gather your things. We’re leaving.”
Married.
Isabella shook her head. It was impossible. But a knot of fear lodged in her stomach like a lump of ice. She had a few fuzzy spots in her memory, it was true, and yet, how could this man be a part of it? How could she possibly forget something as monumental as a husband?
She could not. It was out of the question. Besides, her parents would not have kept this from her. Why would they do so? What terrible thing would make them do so?
There was one way to clear this up. Isabella turned and grabbed her purse, digging through it for her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Adan asked.
She whipped the phone out and held it up triumphantly.
Her hair was in her eyes, stuck to the lipstick on her mouth, but she didn’t care. She knew she looked wild. She felt wild.
Crazy.
He’d said she was dead—that everyone in Jahfar believed she was dead.
But her father knew she wasn’t, so how could that be?
When she’d asked questions about her accident, he’d told her it was better if she did not know the specifics. She’d been in a wreck, and she’d fallen into a coma. There were drugs, pain meds, and they were making her memory fuzzy. It was nothing, he’d insisted.
Nothing.
Her mother, typically, hadn’t known anything about what Isabella’s life in Jahfar had been like. Beth Tyler had been gone from the country for ten years, and though she’d seemed pleased when Isabella came to stay with her, they’d both been a little relieved when Isabella had moved on.
But if she’d been married, wouldn’t her mother have known about it? Wouldn’t she have attended the wedding?
Now, Isabella looked up, into the hard, handsome face of the man standing so near. He didn’t look like nothing to her. Isabella gave her head a little shake. No, her parents would not have lied about this. There was no reason for it!
“I’m calling my father,” she said as she began to scroll through the phone’s contacts. “He’ll know the truth.”
Adan stiffened as if she’d slapped him. “Do you mean to tell me that your father really does know you’re here?”
Isabella
