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“No.”
He returned his attention to putting away the documents in front of him.
Yana studied his profile, drawn as ever to it. His hair had grown long enough to curl thickly over his brow and reach past the nape of his neck. Dark circles hugged his eyes and there was a gauntness to his features that made his cheekbones stand out.
As she watched, he shrugged off his jacket, undid the platinum links at his cuffs and rolled back the sleeves of the white shirt, revealing strong forearms covered in dark hair. Her gaze leaped to his fingers undoing the buttons at his throat, eager anticipation fizzing through her.
The plain, platinum face of his watch—Jacqueline’s gift on their second anniversary—was a much-required reminder to stop mooning over him.
Pulling off the glasses that gave him a serious, sexy professor vibe, he let that perceptive gaze rest on her. He didn’t do an inventory of her. But she knew that he had noted every little detail about her, from her dyed strawberry blond hair to the deep V of her top.
A shiver ran down her spine. Suddenly, she wished she’d tried to nap, or at least pretended to have fallen asleep for the duration of the flight. “You didn’t have to wait for me to join you.”
“I promised Zara I’d bring you back with me, no matter when I returned this time. I couldn’t take any more chances of disappointing her.”
His tone was, for once, affable. And yet, whether it was habit or some other defensive instinct, she felt the prick of his distrust. Took long, deep breaths through her nose, reminding herself that one of her own ground rules for this trip was that she’d be polite. No losing her temper, no riling him up and definitely no staring at him like a lost puppy, salivating with her tongue out and begging for a cuddle.
“I promised you I’d be there. I don’t break my commitments.”
“As that is something I’m not aware of, it made sense to stay and make sure.”
“Do you have to turn everything into a character assassination?” she said, instantly regretting the combative words.
Why couldn’t she just let it be? He was trying to be polite, trying to put that whole clean-slate nonsense into play. Acting as if they were nothing more than two strangers who’d shared and lost a common friend.
His long, rattling sigh told her she’d completely missed the mark. “The stakes are very high for me. Can we agree on that?”
She nodded, heat streaking her cheeks at his gentle tone.
“Good. Let’s say it has nothing to do with you and your character and everything to do with my own shortcomings.”
Picking at a loose thread on her cuff, she gave him another nod.
He was worried about how to reconnect with Zara after all the damage his marriage, and Jacqueline’s lies and his own aversion to engage in a fight, had caused the little girl. It was etched into his features.
“I have some conditions,” she said, deciding to steer the conversation to a necessary topic. Maybe that was even the best way to act, moving forward. Ignore the little blips of her temper, the squeaks her heart made whenever he was near.
He raised a brow at the sudden shift away from their argument. “Conditions? Isn’t that something you should’ve discussed with me before you got on the plane?”
“You might have no faith in me, but I decided to show some in you. Even though...” She shook her head, cutting off that line of thought. “I just believed that you would be amenable to whatever I asked for so that these three months with Zara,for Zara, can pass with the least amount of aggression between us.”
A long finger rubbed over his temple, even as one side of his mouth curled up. “You have given this a lot of thought.”
“I’ve decided to treat this like any other contract. Professionally. I mean, Ihavehad a lot of experience dealing with arrogant, egotistical, petulant men, who think they are a gift to the world. So why not draw from my almost fourteen years of experience?”
His reluctant smile turned into a full-fledged one. The sudden flash of his even white teeth and the deep groove it dug on one side of his face... She barely buried the sigh that wanted to leave her lips. God, the man’s gorgeousness was lethal when he smiled like that.
“So what are they?”
“What are what?” she said, stuck in that sticky place.
His smile deepened. “The conditions you have for me?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, making a big show of pulling out her notepad from her giant clutch and opening to the right page. She had no doubt that a full-blown blush was painting her cheeks and lowered her head to hide the evidence. “You already took care of my debts. That was my first condition.”
“Ahmed dealt with all that mess. He decided it wouldn’t do for me to know all the gory details.”
She looked up, surprise and relief rushing through her. Though she had a feeling it hadn’t been Ahmed’s decision so much as Nasir’s. Which meant his belief thatshehad accrued that immense debt was being propagated further. And she needed that barrier between them, needed him to think she was reckless with every area of her life. “Remind me to thank Ahmed.”
