Not straightway approachable after the way she’d ripped into him at the ER, but he’d still been a gentleman.
Not exactly the boy-next-door type and yet he’d laughed with her.
Had all that been just a mask to get her into bed?
He prowled into the room and leaned against the opposite wall, forcing her to raise her gaze. Her stomach was tied up in knots, but she refused to let him intimidate her.
Standing up, she moved behind the chair and mirrored his stance.
He folded his hands and pinned her with that hard gaze. “Why are you here, Lauren?”
“Ask your thugs that question.” She gripped the back of the chair with shaking hands, and tilted her chin up. “Sorry, I mean, your guards.”
He raised a brow, quiet arrogance dripping from every pore. How had she not seen this cloak of power he wore so effortlessly? “This is not the time to play with the truth.”
“Look who’s talking about truth,” she said, anger replacing the dread. “Is it true? What that man said?”
An eternity passed while his gaze trapped hers. But she saw the truth in it.
In fact, the truth or a shadow of it had been present all along.
In his tortured words whenever he spoke of Behraat, in the anguish in his eyes when they had watched a TV segment about the old sheikh still in coma, in the pride that resonated in his voice when he spoke of how Behraat had emerged as a developing country under the sheikh’s regime.
Even in that sense of stasis she had sensed in him, as though he was biding his time.
His very presence was a ticking powerhouse in the small room. He shrugged. Such a casual gesture for something that shook her world upside down. “Yes.”
The single word grew in the space between them, bearing down upon her the consequences of her own actions.
Her throat dried up, every muscle in her quivered. All the stories she had heard from a fascinated David about Behraat, of the ruling family, they coalesced in her mind, shaking loose everything she had believed of Zafir.
She stared at him anew. “If you’re the new sheikh, that means you’re...”
“The man who ordered the arrest of his brother so that he can rule Behraat. The man who celebrated victory on the eve of his brother’s death.” His words echoed with a razor-sharp edge. “But be very careful. You’ve already committed one mistake. I might not be so lenient again.”