To Touch a Sheikh by Olivia Gates Page B

moment, she’d catapulted after him, tried to drag him back.
    He’d ordered her away, just as he had his guards, assuringthem he wouldn’t hold it against them if they ran for their lives. Then, in total disregard for his own safety, he’d gone back to help those who’d been trampled. Needless to say, none of his guards had left. To his fury, neither had she. She’d worked with him until everyone had been evacuated and Zohayd’s elite bomb squad arrived.
    The bomb had been a hoax. But the damage the panic had caused had been real. As real as his anger after he’d dragged her to be examined by his physicians before taking her to his offices and blasting her.
    He’d made the same delicious sight he did now, majestic in his wrath. She’d believed that while he’d risked his life for others on principle, his concern for her had been personal. His aggression, like it was now, had been relived fright laced with what-if scenarios he found insupportable.
    She’d soothed him, asked why he found it strange she’d do what he had for her and for others?
    For a magical moment, she’d felt her sincerity tearing down some barrier inside him, about to let her in.
    Then the moment had been lost.
    She’d never hated the sound of anything more than his phone’s imperative one-note ring, which had called him away to deal with the incident’s repercussions.
    To her dismay, she’d found his barricades in place the next time they’d met, and she’d never been able to resurrect that sublime moment of closeness again. Until now.
    Not that he looked close to her right now. He looked incensed.
    â€œVery funny, Maram,” he hissed. “Last time you were playing the hero to impress me. What was it this time? You couldn’t wait to have the answer to your ultimatum?”
    Suddenly anger injected her bloodstream with a dose of resentment over the echoes of fright and despair.
    She glared up at him. “I thought you were at best lying in Dahabeyah’s stall facedown, after she kicked you senseless. As you deserved to be for scaring me this way.”
    â€œScaring you how? Did you think I left you behind? Is that why you rushed out without protection?”
    â€œIt would never cross my mind that you’d leave me behind. You didn’t leave me behind when you thought a bomb could detonate and blow you apart, or bring the whole building down on you.” The fury and exasperation in his eyes wavered, just like it had that time years ago. “Just like I wouldn’t leave you to your fate even if it was one you so stubbornly and recklessly chose. But once I was convinced you were out there injured, maybe critically, every second counted. I couldn’t barricade myself in cloth that would have slowed me down or crippled me when I found you.”
    She could feel him resisting, even when logic and the evidence of experience corroborated her words.
    He still sounded nothing like his ridiculing self when he finally said, “ Aih, of course. It was all for me.”
    â€œSo what are you proposing? That I was afraid for you only because I need you to survive? Hate to break it to you, but I don’t. If you were injured or…worse—” she swallowed the pain that choked her even from imagining it “—I’d still be safe in here for months if need be. After the sandstorm was over, a self-serving person would look for you only to get your phone and GPS and get help for herself.”
    â€œFlaunting self-preservation could be on account of unreasonable, self-defeating fear for one’s own…”
    He stopped. Distress the likes of which she’d never thought to see in his eyes seethed there, as if it was far more hazardous for him to believe her than to risk nature’s wrath or a bomb’s explosion.
    She reached out with everything inside her, gentling his worry, transmitting her certainty.
    Belief in him provided