Chapter 23
ISAAC
I’d never experienced silence as deafening as I did on the drive over to Gaza. Neither Jasmine or I said a word as we left the studio and climbed into the car, and neither of us broke that silence the entire time we crept along in the traffic leading up to the Pyramid complex.
Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you seriously not going to tell me what this is about?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked, really not in the mood for this or a trip to the Pyramids with her right now, if I was being honest. “I’m sorry I kissed you, okay? I know I’ve apologized before, but I’ll keep doing it because that’s the only thing I can do. Trust me, if I could take it back, I would.”
“You would?” A surprising amount of hurt flickered behind her eyes before she scoffed and turned to face the window. “Great. Thanks. That’s good to know.”
“That’s not what I meant, Jasmine.” I sighed, shoving a hand through my hair and trying to rein in my frustration. “I just meant that apologizing is the best I can do at this point.”
“And to think, you accused me once of being self-involved.”
“It was way more than once, but what does that have to do with any of this?”
“It’s just ironic, considering how deeply you judged me for it but you’re the one being ridiculously self-involved now.”
“I am?” I scoffed. “How?”
“You keep thinking this is about that kiss or something you did when I’ve told you so many times that you don’t have to apologize for it.”
“Well, excuse me for not coming up with anything better when you literally took off the day after,” I snapped. “You left Sharm without even saying goodbye.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I offend you?”
“No, but obviously, something went wrong and since it happened the day?—”
“God, Isaac.” She finally turned to face me, her eyes wide with frustration as I found a spot in the parking lot, probably miles away from the actual Pyramids. “It has nothing to do with you or with that.”
“Yet I’m the one you’ve been ignoring ever since.”
“I told you, I was busy.”
“Sure.” I snorted and killed the engine. “Let’s go with that.”
As I climbed out of the car, I could feel her glaring at me, but I didn’t look back. Frankly, I just wanted to get this little outing over with so I could go back to licking my wounds.
Unfortunately, as I strode away from the car, she caught up to me surprisingly fast. “It really isn’t about you, Isaac. This is about me and what I want for my future.”
“I know what you want for your future, so how is this about that? Why would you ignore me now over something that hasn’t even happened yet?”
Unsurprisingly, she didn’t give me a straight answer. “Right now, this is just what I need to do, okay? I won’t apologize for that.”
“Obviously.”
We marched ahead, but things just weren’t the same anymore. Something had changed after that conversation she’d had with Basel. Guarded Jasmine was back in full force, and worse than that, she was angry and distant too, her fuck-off shields ten feet high.
An elderly couple wandered up behind us when we joined the throng of people waiting to gain entry to the complex. Naturally, they took to us immediately, the woman beaming at Jasmine.
“Oh, you two make such a lovely couple,” she cooed, holding out her hand. “Would you like us to take a picture of you together? Trust me, you’ll want to look back on these memories in the future.”
“Excuse me?” Jasmine said flatly, her arms coming up to fold over her chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Norm and I used to be exactly the same,” she said, smiling up at her husband. “We bickered for our entire honeymoon, didn’t we, dear? But now, we’ve been married forty years and I still smile every time I look at those old photographs.”
I sighed but handed over my phone and managed a very weak smile while Jasmine just stared at the camera. Thankfully, we were inside the complex just a few seconds later and we broke away from the couple when they stopped to inspect the souvenirs on offer at a stall.
She glanced up at me, the defensiveness vanishing from her eyes for a moment as she sighed. “Do you think we really look like a married couple? I mean, that wasn’t the first time someone mistook us for it, obviously.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Where to first?”
She rolled her eyes, finally plucking her sunglasses off the top of her head and pushing them on before storming a few paces ahead. “Just follow me and keep up.”
“Aye aye, captain.” I blew out a heavy breath through my nose and wondered how the hell we’d even ended up here, in yet another dusty desert under the blazing hot sun when clearly she wasn’t in the mood for this right now either.
Although my mood had less to do with her than my irritation over the whole situation with David. If Joseph’s suspicions are true?
I shook my head, inhaling a deep breath as I tried to get a handle on myself. Jasmine was off, sure, and it might have to do with David, but she’d made it perfectly clear that none of those things were any of my business.
As much as I was annoyed and maybe a bit hurt about it all, she’d actually been right on the money about that.
It wasn’t any of my business. She was nothing of mine and her father was my boss, which was why, despite the annoyance and the hurt, I mostly just felt like a fool for thinking this could be anything other than what it was.
A business arrangement.
That was why I’d come to Cairo in the first place and why Basel had asked Jasmine to act as my guide. He’d intended for her to show me around so I could get some inspiration for my designs, not my future wife.
I tightened my jaw and tried to remember that the only reason I was in Egypt was because Basel had hired me. The job was supposed to have been what I was focused on all along, and so I did my best to do that.
Here I was, at arguably one of the most famous sites on the face of the entire planet, and I was brooding about my client’s daughter instead of taking it in.
Tourists milled about everywhere, the guides called out in at least half a dozen languages, and camels groaned under the weight of some of the people they were carrying.
This was what most people thought about when they heard Egypt.
They didn’t think about the Old Market in Sharm, or the Obelisk in Heliopolis, or the narrow, crooked little streets that characterized daily life in most of the older parts of Egyptian cities. They thought about this place. These structures.
If I was going to make our compound globally recognizable, this was where I should be drawing that inspiration from. When we rounded a rise, I finally managed to put my troubles aside. Fuck, I even forgot they existed for a moment.
Every photograph I’d ever seen of the Pyramids had lied. Not a single one of them had prepared me for the scale of those three ancient mountains of stone, each block painstakingly placed by human hands thousands of years ago.
Standing there, I couldn’t even comprehend it. The joints, the geometry, and the staggering precision were mind-blowing. I tipped my head farther back and then a little bit more, taking in the apex of one of the smaller Pyramids against the afternoon sunshine.
“If anyone looks at these things and only sees giant triangles, they need to have their eyes examined.”
To my surprise, Jasmine let out a hushed chuckle, her hand pressed to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun as she followed my gaze.
“Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I always forget how magnificent they actually are when I haven’t been here for a while.
The whole experience of having to come to this complex puts me off so much that it becomes pretty easy to ignore the real reason it’s even here. ”
I nodded slowly. “I get that. These are some of the most impressive architectural structures in history and modern humans are ruining them. It’s happening everywhere, though. Not just here.”
“I know,” she said softly, sighing as she leaned a little closer to me. “Pictures really don’t do them justice, do they?”
I chuckled. “I was just thinking the same thing a minute ago. There’s, like, an aura about them that no one will ever manage to capture, but it’s not just that. They also just don’t seem so big on pictures.”
Jasmine smiled. “Yeah, true. But if you’re done staring, I have one last surprise for you.”
“What’s that?”
Her gaze lingered on mine for a beat, as warm, soft, and open as it used to be. “Sometimes, being a Saad has its advantages. The name carries some power in this town, at least.”
While it sounded like there was a lot hidden beneath those words, she spun on her heels and motioned for me to follow. We left the crowds behind, passing through a gate that was very clearly not intended for tourists, but the security guard greeted Jasmine by name.
They exchanged a few words in Arabic before he unlocked another gate and waved us through. Once again, I followed, but once we were out of earshot, I leaned a little closer. “Please tell me we’re not breaking into the Pyramids.”
“No.”
“No, what? No, we’re not breaking into the Pyramids, or no, you can’t tell me that?”
“Just no.” She flashed me a grin, but then we reached another guard, and she spoke to this one too, only saying a few more words before he unlocked another gate and waved us through exactly like the first. “Did that feel like breaking in to you?”
“How am I supposed to know?” I whispered loudly. “I’ve never broken in anywhere before.”
“Well, the clue is right there in the name. Breaking in. Have we broken anything?”
“Apart from possibly the law? No.” I stopped talking when we reached a set of stone steps leading underground. Then I stopped walking too. “Seriously, Jasmine. Where are we going?”