to spark little pops of awareness along her every nerve ending belonged to a man she had truly believed she would never see again.
She stopped her descent and stared. Asad looked back at her, his dark chocolate gaze so intense, she felt the breath leave her lungs in a gasp.
He’d changed. Oh, he was still gorgeous. His hair still a dark brown, almost black and with no hint of gray, but instead of cropped close to his head like it had been back in school he wore it shoulder length. The different style should have made him seem more casual, more approachable. It didn’t.
Despite his European designer suit and their civilized surroundings, he looked like a desert warrior. Capable. Confident. Dangerous.
His brown eyes stayed fixed firmly on her. Serious and probing. The humor that used to lurk there nowhere in evidence.
He had close-cropped facial hair that only added to his appeal, as if he needed any help in that department. He’d filled out since university days, too, his body more muscled, his presence every bit that of a man of definite power. At six feet three inches, he had always been a presence hard to ignore, but now? He was a true Middle Eastern sheikh.
Wishing, not for the first time, that she could ignore this man, she forced herself to incline her head in greeting. “Sheikh Asad.”
“This is our liaison?” Russell croaked, reminding her that he was still there.
It didn’t help. The young intern was no competition for her attention to Asad and the feelings roiling up from the depths where she’d buried them when he left her.
Putting his arm out to Iris, Asad showed no sign of noticing Russell at all. “I will escort you to the others.”
Her frozen limbs unstuck and Iris managed to descend the remaining stairs. Giving in to her urge to ignore at least his suggestion, she stepped around his extended arm and headed to where she’d met earlier with Sheikh Hakim, his wife and their adorable children. If she was lucky, the dining room would be in the same part of the palace.
“Do you know where you are going?” Russell asked from behind her, sounding confused.
Asad made a sound that almost sounded like amusement. “I do not believe Iris has ever let a lack of certainty stop her from going forward.”
She spun around and faced him, long-banked fury unexpectedly spiking and with it not a little pain. “Even the best scientist can misinterpret the evidence.” Taking a deep breath, she regained the slip in her composure and asked with frigid politeness, “Perhaps you would like to the lead the way?”
Once again, he offered his arm. Again she pushed the bounds of polite behavior and ignored it, simply waiting in silence for him to get on with showing them where they were going.
“Just as stubborn as you ever were.”
And she wanted to smack him, which shocked her to her core. She was not a violent person. Ever. Even in the past, when he’d hurt her almost beyond bearing, she’d never had a violent thought toward him. Just pain.
“That’s our Iris, as immovable as a monolith.”
Asad didn’t ignore Russell this time. He gave the younger man a look meant to quell.
Seemingly oblivious, the college intern grinned and put his hand out to shake. “Russell Green, intrepid geological assistant, one day to be a full-fledged senior geologist with my own lab.”
Asad shook the younger man’s hand and inclined his head slightly. “Sheikh Asad bin Hanif Al’najid. I will be your team’s guide and protector while you are in Kadar.”
“Personally?” Iris asked, unable to keep her disquiet out of her voice. “Surely not. You are a sheikh.”
“It is a favor to my cousin. I would not consider relegating the duty to someone else.”
“But that’s unnecessary.” She wasn’t going to survive the next few weeks if she had to spend them in his company.
It had been six years since the last time she’d seen this man, but the pain and sense of betrayal he’d caused felt as fresh as if it had happened only the day before. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but hers were still bleeding hurt into her heart.
She still dreamed about him, though she called the images she woke to in the dark nightmares rather than dreams.
She’d loved and trusted him with everything inside her, believing she finally had a shot at a family and a break from the loneliness of her upbringing. He’d betrayed both her emotions and her hopes completely and irrevocably.
“It is not up for discussion.”
Iris shook her head. “I … no …”
“Iris, are you okay?” Russell asked.
But she had to be okay. This was her job. Her career, the only thing she had left in her life that mattered, or that she could trust.
The only thing Asad’s betrayal had left her with. “I’m fine. We need to join Sheikh Hakim.”
Something glimmered in Asad’s dark chocolate gaze, something that looked like concern. She wasn’t buying it, not even if someone else gave her the money to do it.
He hadn’t been concerned about her six years ago when they had been lovers; it was too far a stretch to think he was worried about her now, when they were little more than strangers with a briefly shared past.
Asad did not offer his arm again, but turned and began walking in the direction she’d been going to begin with.
So she had guessed right in this instance.
Go her. Sometimes her intuitive thoughts were on target, at least when it didn’t come to people.
“So Asad tells us you went to the same university.” Catherine smiled without malice, genuine interest shining in her gentian-blue eyes.
Nevertheless, the memories her words evoked were not happy ones for Iris. Iris forced something that resembled a smile and a nod. “Yes.”
“It’s funny you should have met.”
At the time Iris had believed it destiny. She’d been studying Arabic as her second language, a common practice for those in her field, but it had felt like more. Studying the language of his birth had felt like a common bond between them, as if they were meant to be together.
She had believed him to be an incredible blessing after nineteen years of feeling like she never really belonged to, or with, anyone. She’d thought she’d belonged to Asad; she’d been convinced he belonged to her.
She’d been spectacularly wrong. He didn’t want her, not for a lifetime, or even beyond their few months together. And he was not hers, not in any sense.
“It was one of those things….” Asad had come on to her in the Student Union. He’d flirted, charmed and when he asked her out, she hadn’t even considered saying no.
“The Student Union building knew no class distinctions,” Asad added when it was clear Iris wasn’t
