And then, blessedly, it was over.
Coughing, Rita struggled out of her curled position, crawling up to sit on the sand-covered seat that she had abandoned.
At her side, she could hear the sand shifting as Jag moved as well.
With a cough of his own, Jag asked, “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” Rita said, unwrapping the layers of her jacket from around her head and sending a cascade of sand falling down all around her.
There was sand everywhere.
And not just sand, but dirt and bits of rock—even nestled among the crooks and crevices of her gargantuan jewelry.
Abruptly overwhelmed by the sensation of drowning in sand, Rita reached for the door handle and pulled it open, stumbling out of the car amidst a river of sand and more coughing.
On the other side of the car, Jag did the same.
Upright, Rita began the process of shaking the invasive grains out of all the places they had bombarded.
Removing her hair tie, she bent forward, flipping her hair over in the process to rake and comb her fingers through it, shaking free as much sand as she possibly could.
Like glitter, the rain of it seemed never-ending.
Finally, after reaching the limit on the amount of rattling her brain could handle, Rita came upright, letting her now-loose, dusty black hair fall. It tumbled freely over her shoulders and down her mid-back.
Further examination and dusting of her person, however, revealed that aside from the now-sand-encrusted over-jacket and collection of slightly sandy priceless accessories, her outfit had come through the harrowing experience not much worse for wear.
Whereas she wasn’t sure she would ever get all the sand out of her ears, the catsuit had somehow prevented any and all sand from penetrating its barrier.
Saved from the well-known horror of copious amounts of grit in unmentionable places, Rita was more than glad to see that Jameel’s fashion efforts had proved to be so practical.
The same could not be said for Jag.
“What are you doing?” she asked, though it was very clear that he was in the process of removing his shirt, dexterously unbuttoning it from the top down. Strangled panic gripped Rita’s throat, squeezing as her eyes locked on the motion of his deft fingers quickly working their way down the fastened column.
“What does it look like?” he said, not looking at her from his task. “I’m getting out of this sand-sodden clothing.”
“And into what?” she croaked.
Rolling his eyes, he said dryly, “Why, into the change of clothes you can see that I packed.”
He was being sarcastic. She knew it. There were no clothes in the Ferrari.
“You’re just going to go naked?” she said, panic rising. He couldn’t go naked. Outside of images, Rita had never seen a naked man.
“Men have been known to go without clothing,” he noted, amusement at her obvious embarrassment overwhelming his earlier irritation.
She knew that, rationally.
He had to disrobe to shower, and she didn’t imagine he had been born wearing clothing.
But that didn’t mean that she was prepared to be around him in all of his naked glory.
Heat coming to her cheeks, she whirled around, turning her back to him as she belatedly gave him the privacy she should never have breached.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“For what?” He chuckled. “The fact that my ensemble doesn’t appear to be as sealed as your own?”