Page 79 of Hired Husband

We joined the line waiting to board and found seats on the bus. Once everyone was loaded up, we started toward Karnak. Finally, I cleared my throat and glanced at Joseph again. “Have you ever been here before?”

“Luxor?” he asked, his brow furrowing behind his sunglasses. “Yeah, once. When I was little. My cousin got married not far from here, so my parents brought me for a couple days.”

“Great, then I’ll just stick with you.”

He chuckled and seemed to relax when he realized I had no intention of questioning him about his night with Zara. I would’ve, but I didn’t particularly want to answer any questions of my own, so this seemed safer.

“Yeah, man,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust my memory to get us around. This place is part of why I fell in love with architecture, but I won’t pretend to remember many of the details. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Okay, so we’ll stick with the tour?”

He looked out at the sea of gray and silver hair around us and sighed. “Yeah, I guess we will, but the upside is that we’ll probably be able to look around a little while we’re waiting for them to catch up.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Some of them are pretty sprightly.”

He chuckled. “Not as sprightly as an engineer and an architect trying to absorb as much as we can while we’re in a place entire civilizations have built their identities around.”

“That’s a pretty good point,” I agreed, then turned to face the window and looked out just in time to see columns the size of apartment buildings stretching toward the sky. “I think we’ve reached Karnak.”

He leaned across me, nodding as he let out a contented sigh. “One thing I do remember is that every inch of this place is covered in carvings that have survived thousands of years of floods, wars, rulers, and empires. It tells an amazing story.”

“I can’t wait to see it,” I said.

As it turned out, by the time we reached the Great Hypostyle Hall, I’d realize this place didn’t only tell a story. It was a story. And an unbelievable one at that. The largest temple complex in Egypt, it was vast, a former spiritual powerhouse of a site that had served as the center for worshiping the god Amun-Ra.

It was blatantly obvious that the people who had built this had been devout as hell, every yard a testament to their hard work, dedication, and intention to create structures that would stand the test of time.

“We don’t build like this anymore,” I murmured, my jaw slack as I tried to take it all in. “Seriously. This stone has been here for thousands of years and it might just last a couple thousand more.”

“Well, there’s some debate around that topic, but in essence, I agree with you,” Joseph said, his voice hushed with awe. “We really don’t build like this anymore. Everything is about cost and efficiency these days.”

“Yeah. Sometimes, it feels like humanity collectively decided joy was too expensive,” I joked. “Instead, we’re always after instant gratification.”

“And brutalism,” he said.

I groaned. “Who can forget about the brutalism?”

We wandered farther into the complex, stopping every few minutes when one of us pointed out another hidden detail, like how the joints fit together despite the builders not having had modern machinery. Jasmine had been right when she’d said this place was worth getting out of bed for. I absolutely loved it, and when we got to Luxor Temple after traveling down the Avenue of Sphinxes, I loved that too.

“Can you imagine if someone built a residential development in this style?” Joseph asked with a dreamy little smile on his face. “I would love to live in something like that.”

I chuckled. “So would I, but it’s a fantasy, man.”

“For now,” he said, finally snapping himself out of his thoughts to glance at me. “If you stay and we start our own firm, it’s something we could look into.”

Immediately, my brain flung itself down that rabbit hole. The ideas we came up with as we explored became more and more outlandish, but I’d be lying if I tried to deny that they weren’t pulling me closer to the idea Joseph had pitched the other day.

Theoretically, I could stay here and start a company with him. Hell, I could start a whole new life here in Egypt, building stuff like this. With style. Together, he and I had a hope of making the world a little less gray and a little less brutalist.

It would be amazing.

When lunchtime eventually rolled around, my brain was in overdrive and I had approximately one thousand new photographs on my phone. Joseph and I were practically giddy when we met up with the girls, who appeared to have conquered every market in Luxor.

Joseph finally stopped talking about our imaginary new, mixed-use development as he stared at the mountain of shopping bags around the table they were sitting at. “Is this all yours?”

Jasmine pushed her sunglasses onto her head and picked up a glass of water. “We only bought things we would have regretted leaving behind.”

He glanced at me, obviously wondering if she was joking, but I clapped him on the shoulder before pulling out the chair next to hers. “She’s serious, bro. If she bought it, it means she got a good deal and couldn’t find this stuff on any app on her phone.”