A Secret Birthright(18)
And she had to ask the rest, everything, now, before this turned out to be a deranged dream, before she fainted again. “How long will it take? The surgery? The recuperation? How soon can he have it? How much will it all cost?”
“The surgery itself is from four to six hours, and the recuperation is from four to six weeks. He can have it as soon as I prepare everything. And it won’t cost a thing.”
That stopped the churning world. Her tears. Her heart.
“You must have misunderstood,” she finally whispered. “I’m not here seeking charity. I didn’t even think of asking you to perform the surgery, only hoped you’d write me a report stating that it’s a surgical case, so no surgeon could tell me it isn’t.”
He pursed his lips. “First, there’s no charity involved—”
She struggled to detach herself from the circle of his support. “Of course there is. You’re here performing pro bono surgeries. But I can pay. Just tell me how much, and I will.”
“You will pay? Not that it’s an issue here, but why wouldn’t your insurance cover your child’s medical expenses?”
She should be more careful what she said. He noticed everything. Now she had to satisfy him with an explanation or he’d corner her with demands for more information she couldn’t give. “I insisted on costly investigations the doctors said weren’t needed, moving me to an unfavorable insurance category, so the coverage would be only partial now. But that doesn’t matter. I’m very well paid and I have a lot of money.”
He leveled patient eyes on her. “Of course you are and you do. And there is still no cost involved.”
She shook her head. “I can’t accept a waiver of your fee. And then there are many other expenses besides that.”
His lips quirked, teasing, indulgent. “First, I’m a big boy, if you haven’t noticed, and I can waive my fee if I want to, which I mostly do. My ‘reputation’ isn’t totally hype, you know. Second, there won’t be any other expenses back home.”
She gaped at him. For a full minute.
She finally heard a strangled echo. “Back home?”
He rose to his feet with a smile. “Yes. You, Ryan and Rose are coming with me to Jizaan.”
Five
Gwen stared at the overwhelming force that was Fareed Aal Zaafer, and was certain of one of two things.
Either she’d finally lost her mind, or he was out of his.
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would stop the disintegration of this situation, set it back in the land of the acceptable. She opened her eyes again hoping she’d see on his face what should have been there from the start, polite forbearance with a patient’s hysterical mother.
But he was looking at her with that indulgent intensity that singed her. Worse, a new excitement was entering his gaze, as if he was realizing more benefits to his decision by the second.
“As soon as Rose and Emad return, we’ll go to your hotel and collect your luggage on our way to the airport. We’ll be in Jizaan in under twenty-four hours.”
He’d said it again. This Jizaan thing. She hadn’t imagined it the first time. This was real. He meant it.
But he couldn’t mean it. He had to be joking. He did have a wicked sense of humor.…
No. His humor, while unpredictable and lightning-fast, was not in any way mean, at least, not in any of the lectures and interviews she’d seen. It would be beyond cruel to joke now and he was the very opposite of that: magnanimous, compassionate, protective.
But he was also single-minded and autocratic and she had to stop him before this crazy idea became a solid intention.
He detailed said intention. “We’ll go to dinner first, or we can have it on board the jet.” He got out his cell phone, cocked his head at her. “What would you like to have? Real food this time, I promise. I can either reserve seats in a restaurant, or have your choice ready on the jet.”
“I can’t go to your kingdom!”
The shaky statement managed to do the job. It stopped him short.
For about a second. Then he smiled. “Of course, you can.”
She raised her hands. “Please, let’s not start another ‘I can’t’ ‘No, you can’ match. We just finished one about payment.”
“Yes, let’s not. You do remember how you fared in that last match? No point in repeating the same method and expecting different results, hmm?”