To Touch a Sheikh by Olivia Gates

mockery. She suddenly realized it could mean she might have never had a chance with him.
    She swallowed the emotion rising in her throat. “I believed you recognized me as I recognized you from the start, knew we’d share these…flowing channels of communication andappreciation—if you let us. I thought it was only a matter of time until you did. I would have kept trying forever if I thought you one day would. But if you never will, I need to know, Amjad. If you think I don’t feel exactly as I say I do, if you have the least suspicion still, I won’t come near you until this situation is over. Afterward, you’ll never see or hear from me again. It’s now all up to you.”
    His eyes went supernova.
    Before her heart could explode in answer, he stalked out of sight toward the door. She gaped as she heard him yank it open. Seconds later, it slammed behind him.
    He—he’d gone out in the sandstorm. Without protection!

Six
    A mjad might be mad and bad, but he was anything but a fool.
    He had to come right back. He would.
    He didn’t.
    Interminable minutes passed as she waited for him to burst back in, before she rushed to the window a few feet from the door. She could see nothing but the now rust-colored limbo that seemed to have replaced the world outside.
    She stood trembling, her mind burning circuits as reason braked the hurtling of fright.
    He had to have made a dash for Dahabeyah’s stable. It had to be near. Even so, without the goggles and face coverings, he must have inhaled and been blasted with enough sand that he’d feel sorry for his rash action for days.
    He’d known that, yet had risked it to get away from her.
    She understood. He must be reeling as much as she was from the revelations. But she had it easy. She’d already come to terms with her father’s manipulations. But Amjad had been secure in thinking her an accomplice in the biddings that had so revolted him and fanned the ready flames of suspicion about people’s motives toward him. She was surprised his contempt hadn’t beenmore lethal, if her father had made him think he—and she—would substitute Haidar for him.
    In retrospect, knowing that the tainting effect of her father’s interference had been in full force all along made what they’d shared mean that much more. For they had connected, had come close. Closer than her wildest dreams. Even with his attempting to keep her—and himself—at bay. He’d slipped so many times into ease with her, into showing the man beneath the cold camouflage. She didn’t just admire and desire him; she could also talk to him, laugh with him, say anything to him and have him understand. He got her. And she got him. But would she really get him?
    She was no longer confident she would.
    And that might be her fault.
    Before he could process her “version of the truth,” deal with how it radically changed his long-held beliefs of her, she’d pushed for him to decide if he would or would never trust her.
    No wonder he’d walked away.
    If he believed her, he would have no more reason to fight their desire for each other. And while that was what she most coveted, to Amjad, it was what he most feared.
    Her blood ran cold at the thought that he’d come back, announce that he didn’t believe her and hold her to her promise.
    She cursed herself for making it. What had she been thinking, asking for his total trust or else? It was too soon. She had to think of some way out of this without looking like some wheedling grandstander whose word endured for as long as it took to exit her mouth. And she had to think fast, before he came back.
    But he didn’t.
    Every minute he was gone wound her up tighter. She tried to stay busy and stop obsessing as an hour passed. He had been gone longer than that in Dahabeyah’s stable before. Then another hour passed, still in the range of the acceptable, if he was