He’d come to adopt her view of eternity. It felt as if they’d been there that long.
And that was before she woke up. All tousled and creamy and recharged, the vibes she emanated even in her sleep ratcheting up, deluging him, making him forget the tumult raging outside.
At least now she was fully dressed.
He busied himself around the place, fixing shorted-out light sconces, filling and lighting the oil lamps that Maram said she preferred in the sitting/dining area, making an inventory of the pantry’s contents, tagging each. All through, she was in every cubic inch of air in this insulated, isolated, doorless cabin he’d built with solitude in mind.
He was feeling as if it were she who’d taken him hostage.
He’d just given up trying to work on his computer, gone to stretch out on the settee. He couldn’t concentrate on anything with her singing that medley of sappy songs between asking him about food items and spices she didn’t recognize even with the tags, then about his preferences for dinner.
He would have prepared the meal himself, but he knew she’d “help.” Her radiation was bad enough at this distance.
She’d finally decided to make them black-eyed pea stew, hummus tahini and dried-fruit salad. She went all out with the spices and by the time the food was ready, the aromas had turned his hunger to voracity.
She strolled toward him now, bringing plates and utensils, the flickering lamplight casting her beauty through the prism of its fiery illumination. As always, she hijacked his responses, causing the knot in his gut to travel lower, deeper.
“You know, we’re quite a pair.” She straightened from setting the table, the swish of her hair—which he shouldn’t have heard over the lament of the storm—tightening his lungs. “People call me Shagaret Ad’Durr while you’re known as Shahrayar.”
Amjad knew his namesake. He considered hers as he sat up and she walked back to get the food.
Shagaret Ad’Durr, literally Tree of Pearls, was a historical figure who’d ruled in the region after her husband’s death. After she was pressured to take a husband to rule by her side, she learned his loyalty lay with a first wife and had him killed. She was eventually killed herself, by said first wife and her slave women, beaten to death by their dainty wooden clogs.
Maram served the food, then sat on a pile of cushions on the floor across from him. He eyed the table.
So she could make the best of whatever she had to work with. Not to mention the artful presentation. Not a spoiled princess who needed someone to file her nails for her, like Salmah.
And far more dangerous for it. He’d better never forget it.
He dipped the sun-dried bread in the tahini. “Very apt likenesses. Only I didn’t kill anyone. Not literally anyway.”
She didn’t rise to his dig about her fatal activities, grinned at him as she dipped her own bread. “I don’t think they were going for historical accuracy, just the general slanderous connotation. I certainly didn’t rule alone after Uncle Ziad’s death, didn’t dispatch my next husband either, and there are no first wives looking to off me with their footwear.”
The delicious creamy tahini turned to dust in his mouth. “Do you realize how…creepy it is to hear you call your late-husband uncle?”
She chewed her food for a while, then sat back, leveling her golden gaze at him, serious for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her. “Okay, so you say you know my whole story. Tell me.”
“Maybe I should wait until you digest your food.” She gave him an imperative gesture. He raised his eyebrows with an it’s-your-funeral nonchalance, continued to eat, talking slowly in between bites and spoonfuls of the cordon-bleu-chef-worthy meal. “You and your father managed to make the widowed, depressed and frail ruling prince of your emirate marry you. The marriage bounced your father over the two men who were before him in line to the throne, making him ruling prince after Ziad’s death. End of story.”
“That’s all you have? The rumor mill’s version?” She cocked her head, sending her waterfall of luminous silk swaying over one shoulder. He felt his heart veer in his chest in the same direction. “Gotta say, it has the tinge of fact required for its fabrications to be taken as the truth.”
She continued eating for a while, seemingly deep in unpleasant thought. Then she raised her eyes again, and the shadows there spread tentacles through him of something he’d long forgotten. Shame? Sympathy?
She exhaled. “So what do you know about me? My life before I came to Ossaylan?”
The oppressive feelings made his mockery colder. “You were raised in the States by your single mother till you were twelve and she trapped husband number three, sent you packing to your biological father, Prince Ass-ef. Six years later, he arranged your marriage to his cousin many times removed. Fast forward six more years, ‘Uncle Ziad’ croaked, and your father became ruling prince, per the above machinations. You fled to the States, flaunting mourning laws, found a barely legal loaded stud. After a highly publicized affair of a whole week, you married him, despite his family’s tantrums. Within three months, in their effort to free him from your tentacles, his family disinherited him. It worked, too, because you divorced him almost the next day. After a couple of years during which you set up a booming business peddling sense to senseless politicians and businessmen, you returned to the region to become your father’s missing brain.”
A stream of reactions had flowed across her features as he’d talked. Dejection was replaced by astonishment before amusement chased everything away. When he started eating again, she prodded him to go on. He signaled he was done.
Her face split on a smile that flooded his insides in heat and light. “Phew. You make me sound so…interesting.”
His made his answering smile as demolishing as he could. “You are. As interesting as a fatal disease.”
A laugh burst from her. She really was immune to insult. “And you make me sound so…powerful. So dangerous. I almost wish you were right. But boy, I’m nowhere near that colorful or lethal.”
“Sure. Says the tigress before she devours her next kill.”
Her smile was all forbearance and indulgence. “Would you like to hear the real story?”
She was unstoppable, wasn’t she? “Your version, you mean?”
“Since it’s my story, my version should be sanctioned.”
“If it had anything to do with actual events, maybe.”