He waved that majestic hand of his. “I could have had the hospital waive them by adding Ryan to the cases I was here for.”
“Then why?” That came out a desperate moan.
He gave her such a look, that of someone willing to spend days cajoling and happy to do it. “You want reasons in descending or ascending order of importance?”
“Oh, please!” She tried to rise, failed to inject any coordination in her jellified legs. “Just…just…”
He sat down, put a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Breathe, Gwen. Everything will be fine, I promise. As for why, one main reason is that I can’t stay away from my medical center any longer. And I certainly won’t operate on Ryan, then leave him to someone else’s follow-up. The other major reason is that I can only guarantee my results in a case as delicate when I’m in my medium, among the medical team I put together and the system I constructed.”
Those were major reasons. “But still…”
“No ‘but stills.’ You’re coming with me and…”
She interrupted him this time. “Even if we have to come, we don’t have to right away. We can go back home, prepare ourselves, and when you have a surgery date arranged, we’d fly over.”
He was the epitome of accommodation, yet of determination. “Why go to the trouble and expense when you have a free and convenient ride now? At absolutely no extra cost or effort on my part? And there’s nothing to arrange. Once in Jizaan, I’ll take Ryan for the mandatory pre-op tests, then do the surgery at once.”
Her heart punched her ribs. “Th-that fast?”
“There’s every reason to do it as soon as possible. But don’t worry about a thing, I’ll take care of everything.”
“But I can’t just let you do everything, pay for everything. If we have to go to Jizaan, then I’ll at least pay our way.”
He leaned back, folded his arms across his expansive chest. “So what do you propose to do? Give my pilot and cabin crew your credit card? Or will you want to stop by an ATM to get cash?”
“Please, don’t joke! The most I can consent to not paying is your own fee. If you really waive it on a regular basis.”
His face lost any lightness. “After all the things you implied I was, are you now calling me a liar?”
“Oh, God, no!” she blurted out. “I meant…”
His serious expression dissolved on a smile that could have powered a small city. She must be in even worse condition than she’d thought if she hadn’t realized he had been joking.
“I know what you meant.” His fingers gently probed her pulse. “Your heart is in hyperdrive. It’s physically distressing thinking you’d be in someone’s debt, isn’t it?” It’s more your nearness, your touch, she almost confessed. “But rest easy, Gwen, there’s no debt. I will always owe many surgical successes to your expertise. Let me try to repay it with mine. As for me, on a professional level, adding the success of Ryan’s surgery to my achievements will be more than payment enough for me.” Suddenly the eyes that had become serious for real, crinkled on bedeviling. “But if you have money you can’t bear having, I’ll give you a list of causes in Jizaan and you can donate it in lieu of payment.”
She had no answer now but more tears.
They welled up, filling her whole being. It was beyond incredible. To have his incomparable skills and support. It was also beyond terrible. To have to go with him, be near him, for weeks, be exposed to his influence and subjected to her weakness.
Beyond the tragedies that had sheared through her life and heart, that was the worst thing that could have happened to her. She would have gone to hell and wouldn’t have bothered coming back to see Ryan healthy and happy. Now she would go to the one place she considered worse than hell. And she could never explain her feelings to Fareed.
She finally whispered, “I—I don’t know what to say.”
He sat back, his imposing frame sprawling in the contentment of someone who’d fulfilled his purpose. “You do. A three-letter word. Beginning with a Y and ending with an S.”
A thousand fears screeched in the darkness of her mind. And she closed her eyes and prayed. That when she said it, it would only mean Ryan’s salvation, and not her damnation.
She opened her eyes, stepped off the bleak, yet familiar, cliff of resignation into the abyss of the unknown.
And whispered the dreaded, “Yes.”
The trip to Jizaan passed in a blur of distress.
Fareed, with Emad and the flight crew, orchestrated a symphony of such lavish luxury that it almost snapped her frayed nerves. She was so unused to being waited on, so uncomfortable at being on the receiving end of such indulgence, when she was unable to repay it, too, that it exhausted her.
After the first three hours, she’d escaped by sleeping the remaining eight hours to their refueling layover in London. She’d taken refuge in sleep again in the second leg of the journey, leaving Rose and Ryan to plumb the jet’s inhabitants’ ceaseless desire to spoil them.
She was floating somewhere gray and oppressive when she felt a caress on her hand.
She jerked out of the coma-like sleep knowing it was Fareed. Only his touch had ever felt like a thousand volts of disruption.
“I apologize for disturbing your slumber, but we’re about to land.” His eyes glowed like embers even in the jet’s atrocious lighting, his magnificent voice soaked in gentle teasing. “I hope fourteen hours of sleep managed to provide a measure of rest.”
She would have told him they sure hadn’t if her throat didn’t feel lined with sandpaper. She rose from the comfort of the plane bed, returning it to its upright position, feeling as if she’d been in a knock-down drag-out fight.
Apart from everything that disturbed her past, present and future, she knew why she felt wrecked. She might have been hiding in unawareness, but she’d felt him as she’d slept, and his thoughts, the demand, the promise in them and her struggle against them, had worn her out.
Rose waited until he left to approach her with Ryan, eyeing her in sarcastic censure. “That was sure record-breaking.”
“You mean you and Ryan staying awake for that long?”
Rose huffed. “Oh, we slept, around an hour on each leg. We were savvy enough to take advantage of that once-in-a-lifetime experience. While you are either stupid, or stupid not to grab at all that…God offers.”