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But at least he now knew where this animosity was coming from. While he hadn’t factored in that this would be her stance regarding the fiasco between him and Maysoon, it seemed she had accumulated an unhealthy dose of prejudice against him from the time he’d been briefly engaged to her half sister. And she’d added an impressive amount of further bias ever since.
She slammed another filing cabinet shut. “This damn file isn’t here.” She suddenly turned on him. “But you are. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
So it had finally sunk in, the improbability of his stumbling in on her here in his sister’s office.
Having already decided to throw her off, he said, “I was hoping Johara would be working late.”
She frowned. “So you don’t know that she and Shaheen are throwing a party tonight?”
“They are?” This had to be his best acting moment ever.
She bought it, as evidenced by her return to mockery. “You forgot that, too? Is anything of any importance to you?”
He approached her again with the same caution he would approach a hostile feline. “Why do you assume it’s me who forgot and not them who neglected to invite me?”
“Because I’d never believe either Johara or Shaheen would neglect anyone, even you.”
When he was a few feet away, he looked down at her, amusement again rising unbidden. “But it’s fully believable that I got their invitation and tossed it in the bin unread?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I’d believe you got a dozen phone calls, too, or even face-to-face invitations and just disregarded them.”
“Then I come here to visit my sister because I’m disregarding her?”
“Maybe you need something from her and came to ask for it, even though you won’t consider going to her party.”
He let out a short, delighted laugh. “You’ll go the extra light-year to think the worst of me, won’t you?”
“Don’t give me any credit. It’s you who makes it exceptionally easy to malign you.”
Hardly believing how much he was enjoying her onslaught, he shook his head. “One would think Maysoon is your favorite sister and bosom buddy from the way you’re hacking at me.”
The intensity of her contempt grew hotter. “I would have hacked at you if you’d done the same to a stranger or even an enemy.”
“So your moral code is unaffected by personal considerations. Commendable. But what have I done exactly, in your opinion?”
Her snort was so cute, so incongruous, that it had his unfettered laugh ringing out again.
“Oh, you’re good. With three words you’ve turned this from a matter of fact to a matter of opinion. Play another one.”
“I’m trying hard to.”
“Then el’ab be’eed.”
This meant play far away. From her, of course.
Something he had no intention of doing. “Won’t you at least recite my charges and read me my rights?”
She produced her cell phone. “Nope. I bypassed all that and long pronounced your sentence.”
“Shouldn’t I be getting parole after ten years?”
“Not when I gave you life in the first place, no.”
His whole face was aching. He hadn’t smiled this much in...ever. “You’re a mean little thing, aren’t you?”
“And you’re a sleazy huge thing, aren’t you?”
He guffawed this time.
Wondering how the hell this pixie was doing this, triggering his humor with every acerbic remark, he headed back to Johara’s desk. “So are we done with your search mission? Or going by the aftermath of your efforts, search-and-destroy operation?”
“Just for that,” she said as she placed a call, “you put everything back where it belongs.”
“I don’t think even Johara herself can accomplish that impossibility after the chaos you’ve wrought.”
She flicked him one last annihilating look, then dismissed him as she started speaking into the phone without preamble. “Okay, Jo, I can’t find anything that might be the file you described, and I’ve gone through every shred of paper you got here.”
“You mean we did.” Aram raised his voice to make sure Johara heard him.
An obsidian bolt hit him right between the eyes, had his heart skipping a beat.
He grinned even more widely at her. He had no doubt Johara had heard him, but it was clear she’d pretended she hadn’t, since Kanza’s wrath would have only increased if Johara had made any comment or asked who was with her.
And he’d thought he’d known everything there was to know about his kid sister. Turned out she wasn’t only capable of the subterfuge of setting him and her partner up, but of acting seamlessly on the fly, too.
Kanza was frowning now. “What do you mean it’s okay? It’s not okay. You need the file, and if it’s here, I’ll find it. Just give me a better description. I might have looked at it a dozen times and didn’t recognize it for what it was.”
Kanza fell silent for a few moments as Johara answered. He had a feeling she was telling Kanza a load of ultra-convincing bull. By now, he was 100 percent certain that file didn’t even exist.
Kanza ended the conversation and confirmed his deductions. “I can’t believe it! Johara is now not even sure the file is here at all. Blames it on pregnancy hormones.”
Hoping his placating act was half as good as Johara’s misleading one, he said, “We only lost an hour of turning her office upside down. Apart from the mess, no harm done.”
“First, there’s no we in the matter. Second, I was here an hour before you breezed in. Third, you did breeze in. Can’t think of more harm than that. But the good news is I now get to breeze out of here and put an end to this unwelcome and torturous exchange with you.”
“Aren’t you even going to try to ameliorate the destruction you’ve left in your wake?”
“Johara insisted I leave everything and just rush over to the party.”
So she was invited. Of course. Though from the way she was dressed, no one would think she had anything more glamorous planned than going to the grocery store.
But it was evident she intended to go. That must have been Johara and Shaheen’s plan A. They’d invited him to set him and Kanza up at the soirée. And when he’d refused, Johara had improvised find-the-nonexistent-file plan B.
Kanza grabbed a red jacket from one of the couches, which he hadn’t noticed before, and shrugged it on before hooking what looked like a small laptop bag across her body.
Then, without even a backward glance at him, she was striding toward the door.
He didn’t know how he’d managed to move that fast, but he found himself blocking her path.
This surprised her so much that she bumped into him. He caught an unguarded expression in those bottomless black eyes as she stumbled back. A look of pure vulnerability. As though the steely persona she’d been projecting wasn’t the real her, or not the only side to her. As though his nearness unsettled her so much it left her floundering.
A moment later he wondered if he’d imagined what he’d seen, since the look was now gone and annoyance was the only thing left in its place.
He tried what he hoped was the smooth charm he’d seen others practice but had never attempted himself. “How about we breeze out of here together and I drive you to the party?”
“You assume I came here...how? On foot?”
“A pixie like you might have just blinked in here.”
“Then I can blink out the same way.”
“I’m still offering to conserve your mystic energies.”
“Acting the gentleman doesn’t become you, and any attempt at simulating one is wasted on me since I’m hardly a damsel in distress. And if you’re offering in order to score points with Johara, forget it.”
“There you go again—assigning such convoluted motives to my actions when I’m far simpler than you think. I’ve decided to go to the party, and since you’re going, too, you can save your pixie magic, as I have a perfectly mundane car parked in the garage.”
“What a coincidence. So do I. Though mine is mundane for real. While yours verges on the supernatural. I hear it talks, thinks, takes your orders, parks itself and knows when to brake and where to go. All it has left to do is make you a sandwich and a cappuccino to become truly sentient.”
“I’ll see about developing those sandwich-and cappuccino-making capabilities. Thanks for the suggestion. But wouldn’t you like to take a spin in my near-sentient car?”
“No. Just like I wouldn’t want to be in your near-sentient presence. Now ann eznak...or better still, men ghair eznak.” Then she turned and strode away.
He waited until she exited the room before moving. In moments, his far-longer strides overtook her at the elevators.
Kanza didn’t give any indication that she noticed him, going through messages on her phone. She still made no reaction when he boarded the elevator with her and then when he followed her to the garage.
It was only when he tailed her to her car that she finally turned on him. “What?”
He gave her his best pseudoinnocent smile and lobbed back her parting shot. “By your leave, or better still without it, I’m escorting you to your car.”
She looked him up and down in silence, then turned and took the last strides to a Ford Escape that was the exact color of her jacket. Seemed she was fond of red.
In moments, she drove away with a screech right out of a car chase, which had him jumping out of the way.
He stood watching her taillights flashing as she hit the brakes at the garage’s exit. Grinning to himself, he felt a rush of pure adrenaline flood his system.
She’d really done it. Something no other woman—no other person—had ever done.
She’d turned him down.
No...it was more that that. She’d rebuffed him.
Well. There was only one thing he could do now.
Give chase.
Three
Kanza resisted the urge to floor the gas pedal.
That...rat was following her.
That colossal, cruelly magnificent rat.
Though the way he made her feel was that she was the rat, running for her life, growing more frantic by the breath, chased by a majestic, terminally bored cat who’d gotten it in his mind to chase her...just for the hell of it.
She snatched another look in the rearview mirror.
Yep. There he still was. Driving safely, damn him, keeping the length of three cars between them, almost to the inch. He’d probably told his pet car how far away it should stick to her car’s butt. The constant distance was more nerve-racking than if he’d kept approaching and receding, if he’d made any indication that he was expending any effort in keeping up with her.
She knew he didn’t really want to catch her. He was just exercising the prerogative of his havoc-inducing powers. He was doing this to rattle her. To show her that no one refused him, that he’d do whatever he pleased, even if it infringed on others. Preferably if it did.
It made her want to slam the brakes in the middle of the road, force him to stop right behind her. Then she’d get down, walk over there and haul him out of his car and...and... What?
Bite mouthfuls out of his gorgeous bod? Swipe his keys and cell phone and leave him stranded on the side of the road?
Evidently, from the maddening time she’d just spent in his company, he’d probably enjoy the hell out of whatever she did. She had tried her level worst back in Johara’s office, and that insensitive lout had seemed to be having a ball, thinking every insult out of her mouth was a hoot. Seemed his jaded blood levels had long been toxic and now any form of abuse was a stimulant.
Gritting her teeth all the way to Johara and Shaheen’s place, she kept taking compulsive glances back at this incorrigible predator who tailed her in such unhurried pursuit.
Twenty minutes later, she parked the car in the garage, filled her lungs with air. Then, holding it as if she was bracing for a blow, she got out.
Out of the corner of her eye she could estimate he’d parked, too. Three empty car places away. He was really going the distance to maintain the joke, wasn’t he?
Fine. Let him have his fun. Which would only be exacerbated if she made any response. She wouldn’t.
When she was at the elevator, she stopped, a groan escaping her. Aram had frazzled her so much that she’d left Johara and Shaheen’s housewarming present, along with the Arabian horse miniature set she’d promised Gharam, in the trunk.
Cursing him to grow a billion blue blistering barnacles, she turned on her heel and stalked back to the car. She passed him on her way back, as he’d been following in her wake, maintaining the equivalent of three paces behind her.
Feeling his gaze on her like the heaviest embarrassment she’d ever suffered, she retrieved the boxes. Just as the tailgate clicked closed, she almost knocked her head against it in chagrin. She’d forgotten to change her sneakers.
Great. This guy was frying her synapses even at fifty paces, where he was standing serenely by the elevator, awaiting her return. Maybe she should just forget about changing the sneakers. Or better still, hurl them at him.
But it was one thing to skip around in those sneakers, another to attend Johara and Shaheen’s chic party in them. It was bad enough she’d be the most underdressed one around, as usual.
Forcing herself to breathe calmly, she reopened the tailgate and hopped on the edge of the trunk. He’d just have to bear the excitement of watching her change into slightly less nondescript two-inch heels. At least those were black and didn’t clash like a chalk aberration on a black background.
In two minutes she was back at the elevators, hoisting the boxes—each under an arm. Contrary to her expectations, he didn’t offer to help her carry them. Then he didn’t even board the elevator with her. Instead, he just stood there in that disconcerting calm while the doors closed. Though she was again pretending to be busy with her phone, she knew he didn’t pry his gaze from her face. And that he had that infuriating smile on his all the time.
Sensing she’d gotten only a short-lived respite since he was certain to follow her up at his own pace, she knew her smile was on the verge of shattering as Johara received her at the door. It must have been her own tension that made her imagine that Johara looked disappointed. For why would she be, when she’d already known she hadn’t found her file and had been the one to insist Kanza stop searching for it?
Speculation evaporated as Johara exclaimed over Kanza’s gifts and ushered her toward Shaheen and Gharam. But barely three minutes later, Johara excused herself and hurried to the door again.
Though Kanza was certain it was him, her breath still caught in her throat, and her heart sputtered like a malfunctioning throttle.
Ya Ullah... Why was she letting this virtuoso manipulator pull her strings like this?
