Is that why you want me to see her? Damage control? To stop compounding the ‘scandal I created for myself and my family’?”
Emad’s dark eyes emptied of expression. “I wouldn’t want to resurrect that mess after I managed to contain it. But that’s not why. The people in reception today are new. They only heard the story of her waiting around for the past four weeks in case you had an opening in your schedule from her disjointed accounts. When they couldn’t deal with her, they sent for me, and I … saw her, heard what little she’d been able to say. She … feels different from the rest. Feels truly distraught.”
Fareed snorted. “An even more superlative actress, eh?”
“Or maybe the real thing.”
His heart boomed with hope, once, before it plummeted again into despondence. “You don’t believe that.”
Emad leveled his gaze on him. “The real thing does exist.”
“And she doesn’t want to be found,” Fareed growled. “She must know I’ve turned the world upside down to find her and she didn’t come forward. Why would she decide to show up when nothing has changed?”
“Maybe nothing we know of.”
Fareed closed his eyes. Emad’s calm logic was maddening him. He was in a far worse condition than he’d realized if anything Emad, of all people, said or did had him within a hair’s breadth of going berserk. It seemed he’d distracted himself at the cost of pushing himself to a breakdown.
Emad’s deep tones, so carefully neutral, felt like discordant nails against his restraint. “But what we do know is that Hesham’s Lyn is still out there.”
And what if that woman down there was her?
He closed his eyes against hope’s insidious prodding. But it was too late. It had already eaten through his resistance.
This woman most probably wasn’t; but really, what was one more performance to suffer? He’d better get this over with.
He opened his eyes as Emad opened his mouth to deliver another argument. He raised his hand, aborting it. “Send her up. I’m giving her ten minutes, not a second more. Tell her that. Then I’m walking out and I’m never coming back to this country.”
Emad gave a curt nod, turned on his heels.
He watched him exit the ultramodern space the hospital had given him as his consultation room, before he sagged in the luxury of the leather swiveling chair. It felt as if he’d sunk into thorns.
If more fake, stomach-turning stories about his brother were flung in his face, he would not be responsible for his actions.
He glowered at the door. He’d seen all kinds. From the sniveling to the simpering to the seductive. He had an idea which type this one would be. The hysterical. Maybe even the delusional.
He steeled himself for another ugly confrontation as the door was pushed open. Emad preceded the woman into the room.
But he barely saw him. He didn’t hear what Emad said before he left, or notice when he did.
All he saw was the golden vision approaching until only the wide desk stood between them.
He found himself on his feet without realizing he’d moved, only one thought reverberating in his mind.
Please, don’t be Hesham’s Lyn!
The thought stuttered to a standstill.
B’Ellahi, what was he thinking? He should be wishing that she was, that his search was over.
It shouldn’t make a difference that her drowned sky-at-dawn eyes dissolved his coherence and the sunlight silk that cascaded over her bosom made his hands ache to twist in it. It didn’t matter that the trembling of her lush lips shook his resolve and her graceful litheness gripped his guts in a snare of instant hunger. If she turned out to be Hesham’s Lyn.
His thoughts convulsed to a halt again.
He wanted her to be anything but that. Even another imposter.
B’Ellahi, why?
The answer churned inside him with that desire that had surged out of nowhere at her sight.
Because Hesham’s Lyn would be off-limits to him. And he wanted this woman for himself. He wanted her …
As he’d wanted her the first and only time he’d seen her.
He remembered her now!
It was the total unexpectedness of seeing her again, let alone here, that had thrown him at first. That, and the changes in her.
That time he’d seen her, her luminous hair had been scraped back in a severe bun. She’d been wearing makeup that he now realized had obscured her true coloring and downplayed her features. A dark suit of masculine severity had attempted to mask her screaming femininity. She’d been younger, far more curvaceous, yet somehow less ripe. Her vibe had been cool, professional … until she’d seen him.
One thing remained the same. Her impact on him. It was as all-consuming as it had been when he’d walked into that conference room.
He vaguely remembered people scurrying to empty a place for him at the front row. She’d been at the podium. It wasn’t until the stunning effect she’d had on him ebbed slightly that he realized what she’d been doing there.
She’d been delivering the very presentation he’d gone to that conference to attend, about a drug that helped regenerate nerves after pathological degeneration or trauma. He’d heard so much about the outstanding young researcher, the head of the R & D team. He’d had a mental image to go with her prodigious achievements, one that had collapsed under its own inaccuracy at the sight of her.
He’d held her gaze captive as he’d sat grappling with impatience for the presentation to be over so he could approach her, claim her. Only his knowledge that the sight of him had been as disruptive to her had mitigated his tension. His pleasure had mounted at seeing her poise shaken. She’d managed to continue, but her crisp efficiency had become colored by the self-consciousness he’d evoked. Every move of her elegant body and eloquent hands, every inflection of her cultured delivery, everything about her had made focusing on the data she’d been conveying a challenge. But her work had been even more impressive than he’d anticipated, only deepening his delight with her….
“Is it all a lie? Are you a lie?”
He almost flinched. That red wine-and-velvet voice.
It had taken hearing it to know it had never stopped echoing in his mind. Now it was made even more potent by the raggedness of emotion entwined in it.
But had she said …?
The next second her agitation cascaded over him, silencing questions and bringing every thought to a shocked halt.
“Is your reputation all propaganda? Just hype to pave the way to more reverence in the medical field and adulation in the media? Are you what
