Challenging the Doctor Sheikh Read online

  “Is he okay? Is he alive?” she asked, standing as he approached and offering the sword back to him.

  Well, he didn’t want to wear it. Grabbing it by the scabbard, he tucked it under one arm. The car wasn’t far away.

  “He was when the helicopter left. And we’re past anything that can be done from our end.”

  “Where is he going?”

  “Dubai, since we can do nothing for him here. Their best trauma center has agreed to take our overflow, but the other needed surgeries will be shunted to different hospitals in different countries, decided by urgency and diagnosis. But trauma will always go to Dubai. Let’s hope we don’t have too much of it.”

  This ugliness was another thing that made him prefer England. Today there had been very little he could do for the injured man, and that helpless feeling made being home worse. There were always the other aspects, the family stuff—him never saying what he felt, doing what he felt, only what was expected of the younger brother—but this was worse because he should’ve been able to avoid it. The other stuff he was used to.

  He’d long ago accepted he’d never be important to his country, not really. The only thing that could make him so was something he never wanted to see—something happening to Zahir. Freedom to live his life as he saw fit was the only really acceptable exchange in his mind, something he didn’t have here. He didn’t want to be the eternal follower. Even now, without Zahir or his father in the country, the hospital project was the only place he felt he could make his own decisions, rather than just sticking to the pattern set by others, and that might change at any minute.

  “Let’s go. I need to get out of this shirt.”

  His hands were clean, and he took her hand to walk to the car. Propriety be damned. She felt good, and he needed something good right now—something that felt real, and good. Maybe it was just how good it felt to be with someone he could relax around, or simple base attraction.

  He led her to the car and got into the back, letting go of her hand so he could start unfastening his shirt, something else he could do around her.

  “I wish I could’ve done that inside the hospital. It should be burned. Everything is practically medical waste here.”

  Stuffing the shirt under the seat, he tilted his head to catch the gaze of the driver in his rearview mirror, and redirected him. “Palace.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  DAKAN HAD SAID “PALACE.”

  They were going to the palace.

  Nira settled in the back beside him and tried not to look at the extremely nice naked male torso on display beside her. Remember that shirt was soaked with blood—he probably had blood on his skin too if she looked too closely. A good reason not to look.

  He was in such a mood she didn’t even know if she could even be excited about going to the palace. From a run-down hospital to a freaking palace.

  Play it cool. Pretend her stomach didn’t swirl with excitement at the prospect.

  “We can’t stay long. But I can’t very well go around the city in bloody clothes, and I don’t have anything to change into at your place.” He reached over and took her hand again, and the excited swirling in her tummy moved up her torso to collide with the sizzle running up her arm.

  When he’d taken her hand to walk to the car, she’d put it down to the idea that he wanted to go quickly and keep track of her. Something besides wanting to touch her. But now...there was nothing to keep track of.

  Unable to help herself, she turned to look where their hands joined and up his arm—over the dusting of dark hair on tan skin, over the definition of muscle at the upper arm, to a shoulder she could sink her teeth into. That was the best muscle. She didn’t have one really on top of her shoulder, at least nothing noticeable, but that smooth, developed cap of muscle made her keep looking.

  Oh, God, she was going to be stupid. He was holding her hand, she was ogling his body...and they were going to what was effectively his place. If she made a pass at this man right now he’d take her to his room. Chamber. Wing. Place where he kept his bed.

  Which would mean she...

  “Nira?”

  She was yanked from the mental acrobatics it took to try and figure out why she shouldn’t make a pass at him.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I asked if you’d mind waiting for an official tour later.”

  Tour?

  “Oh. I...I...don’t...ah...”

  God. She wiggled her fingers and firmly extracted her hand from his. When she had it safely in her lap again and her eyes forward, it became possible to think.

  “I’m fine. Later. I’m fine with another later tour.”

  It was now possible to think, just not easy yet.

  “I mean to say I know we’re in a hurry and I should get back to the flat so I can start on the new project.” There. Complete sentences and everything. “So, yes, another time.”

  And while he went to change, she had her sketchbook and her phone so she could maybe get some pictures for later gazing. She could make do with one room. For this visit.

  Change the subject.

  “You’re a proper doctor, right? Done with schooling?”

  “I am. Fully licensed. In the UK.”

  “What kind of doctor are you? You seemed pretty at home in the emergency.”

  Yes. The emergency. Think about the blood, not about half-naked Dakan...

  “I’m not big on emergency. That’s Zahir’s territory. Initially I trained as a doctor so I could help overhaul the medical system, but then I actually found I liked it. Hospitals aren’t my thing. I want to take care of people, have patients I can come to know and keep healthy.”

  “So you’re training to be a GP?”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem like you’d be into something...”

  “Flashier? More high profile?”

  “I guess I would’ve thought you’d like that kind of adrenalin-rush medical practice.”

  The smile in his voice registered, and when she glanced at him, the dimple in his cheek confirmed it.

  “Not really. It’s valuable, I get that. It’s actively saving lives. In big facilities, emergency consultants can often say they saved a life on their shift or maybe several. I just like helping people more than life saving. I like kids and old people. Seeing the same patient year in and year out, watching kids grow up. I like that more. I like knowing I can help someone’s life be better. I never get that chance when I’m here. Born to follow, my father said that once. He said Zahir was born to lead, and I was born to follow.”

  As he spoke, it became impossible for Nira not to look at him. It didn’t seem to fit at first, not with what she saw of him. She’d always thought of GPs as more for jumpers and button-downs. When she thought of Dakan as a doctor, in her imaginings he wore scrubs. And she’d never seen him in anything but a suit.

  Before she could process this new piece of the Dakan puzzle, before she could even figure out what to say to him, he shook his head. “I don’t know why I told you that. I don’t even know why I thought it, really. Just thinking about...” He stopped and focused again out his window.

  Her gaze followed as the palace came into view.

  “You were talking about never getting to help people have a better life here,” she prompted, trying to split her attention between Dakan and the palace. What he was saying sounded important to him.

  “Right.” He nodded, “I guess that’s what makes the hospital project special. I’ll be able to help all of my countrymen have better lives in one fell swoop so we won’t have any days in the future like today.”

  Nira looked at the hand she’d escaped earlier, and slipped her own back into it.

  Dakan turned back to her from the window, smiled, some of the tension in his brow diminishing. �
��Would you like me to roll down the window so you can see better?”

  “I was trying not to geek out and ask. Really, I thought about opening the sun roof and standing up... Your window is probably the more sensible option.”

  He pressed a button and let it slide down, then tugged her a little closer to him so her view would be less obstructed.

  “It’s so sparkly...”

  “It’s Qasr Almas.”

  Diamond Palace. Palace of Diamonds...

  “I know, but photos I looked at online never really did it justice. The camera always caught some sparkle, but compared to this it just looked like some kind of lame photo effect. Click the ‘add sparkle’ button.”

  She was supposed to be keeping her cool!

  “It’s strange, but beautiful. I can’t even imagine someone building with that sort of mindset in this century. I’m still surprised any time a new building has a dome, and I love them. You have...” she paused to count and shook her head “...seven domes...”

  “Seven is a holy number,” he murmured, and then added, “You’ll be able to see the large dome from the inside when we get there.

  Seven domes.

  And a beach that probably still had Lego lost in the sand.

  And a magnificent prince who had depth, layers that surprised her, and who couldn’t go a single visit without flashing that freaking adorable dimple in his charming left cheek.

  “I have no idea when my parents will be returning, but with my luck today, if we stick around more than a few minutes, they’ll come strolling in while I’m half-clothed with you, then the lectures will begin.”

  The car stopped and Nira scrambled out so she could get a close-up look at the exterior stones and the precious stones set into the whole wall. Colored stones—sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and some other stones she couldn’t identify. Much fewer diamonds than she’d expected, considering the name.

  It sparkled almost as much as the man himself.

  Her hand still tucked in his, she kept up, not asking a single one of the millions of questions swarming her mind. Let him change and clean up, she’d have time to unleash the barrage on the drive back to her place.

  Vaguely aware there were other people there, Nira tried to look the grand entranceway over quickly before they moved on. Minimal attention to people was about all she could manage right now, in the presence of gilded opulence, the high vaulted ceiling of the entryway—a half-dome in its own right—and the carved doors she’d barely gotten a look at.

  Alarmed voices dragged her attention back to the living, but it still took her a few seconds to concentrate enough that she could understand what they were saying.

  Dakan was shirtless.

  Dakan had blood on him.

  Dakan held the hand of a strange woman.

  Despite the impropriety of pretty much everything surrounding the two of them at the moment, Dakan answered smoothly, first assuring them the blood was not his, and going from there.

  She’d forgotten it all in the narrow and extreme focus that had overtaken her the instant she’d stepped out of the car. She’d even somehow forgotten he was shirtless.

  He gestured the people out of the way and began walking again, and it took her only a heartbeat to get moving too.

  Marble floors, several different minerals visible along with gold veining that looked... “That gold veining isn’t natural, is it?”

  “No. Impressive eye.” Dakan stopped as she stopped, continuing to hold her hand as she bent over to look more closely at the contrast of pale pinks intermingled with at least three shades of sand.

  “Why is it there?”

  “The marble is beautiful, but fragile. Anywhere a pre-existing crack or seam opens, it is repaired with some process that uses gold. An idea pilfered from the Far East by my great-great-grandfather as a young man while on a diplomatic visit. It preserves centuries-old marble while increasing the beauty and interest.”

  “I’ve never seen that done before...”

  She wanted to lie on the floor with a magnifying glass and study the surface, see how it had been worked in. With her free hand, she pressed her fingertips to the seam and ran them along where the thin golden vein was sealed to the marble. Perfectly level. It felt as smooth, as if cut by modern diamond saws. Could they just melt gold and pour it in there? Marble cracks further with extreme heat...

  “Nira?”

  “Sorry...” Nira stood back up and they resumed walking. Although the floor had been repaired in an admittedly fascinating manner that was entirely new to her, she wasn’t here to see the floors. It was all about the dome.

  They walked through another set of doors she’d like to study, and Dakan let go of her hand. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  A meager nod was all she could muster as her eyes tracked upwards.

  Not an inch of it didn’t shriek color or pattern. The stone walls were carved in high relief, and transitioned to blue and gold tilework laid in a pattern so intricate the only thing her mind could compare it to was a kaleidoscope.

  Her vision swam and when the colors blurred together she looked down long enough to swipe at her eyes, but the tightness didn’t leave her chest so quickly. She hadn’t even looked at the freaking dome yet...

  And she’d thought all architecture affected her. The repaired gold marble floors were beautiful—as beautiful as the mosaic—but they had only inspired fascination in her. Not this... There wasn’t even a word in her for it.

  Love was the word she’d use, but it kind of offended her to think of it that way.

  Awe was utterly unequal to the feeling.

  Wonder came close.

  Reverence came closer.

  Connected... Moved...

  She finally allowed herself to look up at the dome.

  Where the walls started to round into the dome, there sat a short span of stone carved in a band of words circling the base of the dome. Above, the tile resumed, right up to the oculus. So many shades of blue—from the pale light of a morning sky to the darkest blues of twilight—mixed in with shades of sand.

  After several minutes, having her head tilted back, the room began to spin. If she didn’t right herself soon she’d probably pass out. But she hadn’t finished looking.

  Not caring if anyone lingered who might notice her strange behavior, Nira moved directly under the center of the dome and lay down on the floor on her back for the best view.

  Nothing she could’ve imagined could compare to it.

  And the people who lived there probably never really even saw it any more. They were probably so used to it that it blended into the background, so they missed how beautiful it was, how meaningful. Taken for granted, like family—so at least there was that commonality to make her feel slightly less sensitive...

  She had no idea how long she lay there, anyone could’ve come and gone without her knowledge. Anyone but Dakan. He’d never allow himself to be ignored for the sake of a pretty ceiling.

  Not a sound registered with her as he approached, he was just suddenly in her vision, standing over her—unattainable perfection with the curve of beautiful color behind his head.

  “It’s so beautiful...” she whispered up to him, glad she’d finally stopped dribbling tears after the rush of it had finally subsided.

  Dakan offered a hand to her, nodding but not saying anything, helped her to her feet and waited for her to get her balance.

  “I know you think I’m silly.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Do you even see it?”

  “I do see it,” he said softly, keeping her hand and leading her from the domed chamber, back the way they’d entered. “I just see as much value in the modern. Today, what happened at the hospital? That kind of thing colors my ability to love the history—especiall
y history not allowed to slip into the past.”

  Too soon they were back in the car, the soiled shirt now cleared away, and soon the palace stood behind them.

  “I hope your perspective changes when the hospital is done. Even if you go back to London. One day, your kids will want to see all this. Trust me.” And what he’d said to her about being destined to be a follower, never able to really help his people, came back to her. “We’re coming at it from two different sides of the same coin.”

  “What coin is that?”

  “We most want what was kept from us as children.” She reached out and took his hand this time. “I want to know all of this, see all this, experience everything that was denied me. You want to do what you feel has been denied you.”

  He listened—that was something else that made the man so attractive to her. He listened to everything she said to him. She’d spent so much of her life having her thoughts silenced, on this matter at least, but Dakan listened and didn’t seem to judge. Granted, she’d been able to get rid of the sneaky tears before he’d got back to witness them, but she’d pretty well bared this weirdness of hers to him and he hadn’t said one single harsh word about it.

  “That’s not what I want most right now,” Dakan said, his thumb starting to stroke the side of her hand from wrist to thumbnail, back and forth in a slow, thorough caress that sent a shiver up her arm. Something in the air changed, and the gentle and somewhat companionable way he’d held her hand became something that heated her insides and messed with her breathing.

  He pressed a button and a darkened window slid up between them and the driver, but he never took his eyes off her.

  “What do you want?” She asked the question, knowing the answer. He wanted the same damned thing she wanted—to be really, really stupid.