To Tempt a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 2)

“I’m not sorry. In fact, I owe your misbehaving brother a debt I can never repay. Your misplaced belief in his innocence drove you to Zohayd and into my life. Amjad and Shaheen pulled some major strings, but I personally paid back with interest everyone he defrauded, and it feels like such a tiny price for having you.”

Then she was in his arms, burrowing deep into his chest and deeper into his being and bawling her eyes out.

He filled his aching arms with his every reason for life, every source of happiness. When he’d thought he’d lost her, had never had her… He shuddered. He couldn’t even think of those soul-gnawing hours. And he had to tell her something else.

“I’m not here because you called, ya talyeti. I was on my way here. That’s why you amassed those missed calls. But I am ecstatic that you didn’t give up on me, even after hearing the horrors I was forced to utter about you, that you still called, still gave me the benefit of the doubt.”

She looked up from the depths of his embrace, her heavenly eyes brimming with love. “How could I not, when I sobered up and remembered what we shared?” She told him about her own phone call, and they both realized at the same moment. She articulated the realization. “My informant masterminded everything. Threatening my safety to you, forcing you to say what you did and forcing me to hear it.”

“But that’s where he went wrong.” He gathered her to him more securely, feeling his heart stagger with the blessing of having her belief, so deep it had withstood that brutal test. And he had no doubt, would stand a lifetime of tests, come what may. As would his. “He didn’t count on you being too ethical to lash out by doing his dirty work for him, and loving me so much that you’d give me a chance to exonerate myself.”

The adoration in her eyes enveloped him, made him feel invincible. “And he didn’t count on you being unable to believe I could use you that way, that you’d come after me, and that we’d talk, get past the doubts and hurt and find each other again.”

He suddenly swung her in the air around and around. Her unfettered laughter echoed his overwhelming relief and elation, fell all over him like pearls tinkling off crystal.

He finally put her down, cupped her beloved face in his hands. “And now we have. And with your brother free and no doubt planning to atone, and with us being on the final leg of aborting the conspiracy now that all the pieces are in place, and now that I’m certain the threat against you was just a ploy to get you to hear me and lash out, all our obstacles have been removed.” He kneeled in front of her. “I have nothing to give you while I make this offer but everything I am. So will you now take me, ya talyeti, ya ghalyeti, ya noor donyeti, all of me? Will you marry me and make me whole?”

Talia would have fallen if Harres hadn’t caught her by the hips.

She stared down at him as he kneeled before her, shock and overwhelming joy twisting her tongue as she choked out, “Y-you’re not—not promised to some m-marriage of state?

He smiled up at her, that annihilating smile that vaporized her mental functions at a hundred paces. “I’m not. I am free to marry the wife my heart chooses. And my heart, and everything in me, chooses you.”

And she threw herself all over him, sobbing her love and relief. “Considering I’m yours forever, too, it’s wise of you to make use of the fact.”

From somewhere far away, she heard clapping and hooting.

Her infernal colleagues. They were still here?

Well, doctors in the E.R. didn’t have much of a private life. She’d seen most of their revealing and embarrassing moments. They’d witnessed many of hers, too. Let them now share her most incredible one.

As she lost herself in Harres’s fate-sealing kiss, one of her male colleagues said, “There’s a very nice-size supply cabinet just around the corner, dude.”

They both turned on him with a simultaneous, “Oh, shut up.”

Then, exchanging a conspiratorial look with Harres, she grabbed his hand and they rushed out of the room.

On their way out, a female colleague asked, “What if the Chief sees you signed in but nowhere around?”

“Tell him I have a gunshot victim to tend to,” she said.

“Yes,” Harres added. “Someone who’s so impressed by her uncanny medical skills, he’s going to donate any number of millions she sees fit to your department in gratitude.”

They left the room to an explosion of excitement.

Once they reached that supply cabinet, he dragged her inside, pushed her against the wall. “And to this golden virago who owns my heart by awakening it, my life by saving it, my faith by inspiring it, what would you see fit I donate?”

She dragged him down to her, begged in his mouth. “Just your love. Just you.”

And he pledged to her as he made her whole, “You have it, and me, always. Forever.”