Page 103 of Hired Husband

The silence that followed was heavy and terrifying, almost suffocating as I waited for her to reject me. David’s family might’ve lost a lot, but it seemed to me he could still give her a better life than I’d ever be able to.

As I looked at her, I tried to prepare myself to have my heart broken all over again. She stepped out from behind her parents, and surprisingly, nobody stopped her. Deja smiled and inclined her chin toward me, her eyes fixed on her sister. “Go.”

As soon as the word was out there, Jasmine didn’t hesitate, running to me so fast that I barely had time to open my arms to catch her before she smacked into me. The room erupted with gasps and shouts, protests loudly filling the air, but my mind filtered it out.

She isn’t rejecting me.

Without thinking twice, I laced my fingers through hers and tucked her against my side. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“I have no idea, but I think we need to get away from here.”

Those dark eyes of hers swept around the room and then we were running. Jasmine’s grip was tight on my hand as I led her away from a fate she never should’ve faced.

CHAPTER 42

JASMINE

“Oh, my god,” I muttered, gripping the handle on the inside of Isaac’s car and bracing my feet against the front of the foot well. “We’re going to die. I knew you should never have been allowed to drive in Cairo.”

He shot me an offended look. “We’re not going to die. I just don’t have a firm grip on the aggressive driving style around here anymore, but it’ll come back.”

A taxi missed my side of the car by what couldn’t have been more than a few inches. I pointed at the intersection ahead. “Turn left up there.”

“There’s no gap.”

“So make one,” I said through gritted teeth, my head spinning as I tried to absorb the events of the last few minutes. “Just put the front of your car where you want it to be and trust that everyone else values their paintwork enough to let you in.”

“That should be page one of the Egyptian driving manual,” he joked and did what I’d told him to do, grinning when the car beside us braked to create enough space. “Hey, it worked.”

“Of course, it worked. What is this, your first time driving a getaway car?”

He laughed, making the turn I’d told him and easing back against his seat now that we were leaving my parents’ neighborhood, but he still kept glancing up into the rearview mirror. I twisted in my seat too, just to make sure for myself that there was no one following us.

Both Isaac and I were tense as I guided him through the city, but eventually, the traffic began to thin, the roads becoming quieter. I pointed at a hotel coming up on our left, landscaped gardens leading up to a wide, flat building with the Pyramids visible in the distance beyond.

“This is it,” I said quietly, the adrenaline that had gotten me this far fading fast now that we’d almost reached safety. “We can lie low here. Just go around the back.”

“Why?”

“Because very soon, every gossip columnist in Cairo is going to be looking for me. If I’m seen by too many people, you can bet on it that someone will tip them off as soon as the news breaks that I took off on David with an American.”

“Right.” He exhaled a slow, measured breath but drove past the front entrance to a much smaller, much less glamorous door around the back. “Do I even want to know how you knew there was another way to get in here?”

I smiled, but it was tight. “I’m a model. I know a thing or two about avoiding the press, but also, Zara stayed here for a month once after she had a fight with her parents. They were looking everywhere for her, so we had to get creative.”

“That sounds like a story I want to hear, but let’s get you inside first.” He pulled into an empty parking spot right across from the back entrance, then headed inside, keeping the door propped open with his foot before he came back to get me. “The coast is clear. There’s no one around. I’ll go get us a room and be back in a minute.”

I nodded, climbing out of the car with my heart still racing. Isaac took my hand, pressing a soft kiss to it when we reached the deserted hallway and let the door swing shut behind us. Those blue eyes met mine, tension still shimmering in them even as he gave me a calm smile.

“Alright. Stay put. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Eventually, sure, but probably not today,” I murmured and watched him hurry toward reception.

Within minutes, he had us checked in and a porter led us through a staff corridor to a secluded suite without so much as raising an eyebrow. Once the door clicked shut behind us, the silence suddenly rang in my ears, the magnitude of what we’d just done finally dawning.

“I’m so dead.” I glanced down at myself, the gorgeous, ivory gown I’d cried my way through the fitting for suddenly the only item of clothing I had. “I need to get out of this dress. I need a shower. I…”