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“Jaci!”
Led by the diminutive woman in the Gator visor, Thornton’s travel companions rushed to greet her.
“We saw you fall! Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay. Just, uh, banged my knee a little.”
“More than a little if you can’t walk. You’d better have it x-rayed, dear. Hanif, where’s the nearest hospital?”
The gun-toting guard frowned. “Not far. I will call someone to take her, yes? The rest of you can go on with the tour.”
Jaci’s heart sank. The next portion of their itinerary included a visit to the base of the Great Pyramid, time to explore the Sphinx and dinner at an open-air restaurant before the spectacular laser light show telling the history of these ancient monuments. She couldn’t come all this way and miss the show.
“I don’t need to go to a hospital. Really.”
Hard to sound convincing while hefted in the arms of a total stranger. Embarrassed all over again, Jaci wiggled against his chest.
“You can put me down, Mr. Griffin. I’m fine.”
Except she wasn’t. When her tall, broad-shouldered rescuer eased her to her feet, she grimaced and had to lean heavily on his arm.
“I’ll just …” She gulped, fighting tears of both pain and disappointment. “I’ll just take a taxi back to the hotel and wrap my knee in ice. If it’s still hurting tomorrow, I’ll find a doctor.”
“Oh, Jaci.” Susan Grimes clucked her tongue in sympathy. “I know how much you were looking forward to the Sound and Light Show this evening.”
“How about I offer a solution?”
The whole group, Jaci included, looked to her rescuer.
She’d had plenty of time to study his profile while he’d carted her up the slope. The strong, square chin. The gray eyes framed by lashes as black as his neatly trimmed hair. The faded, almost invisible scar above his left eyebrow.
She’d had time, too, to feel the muscles under his lightweight tan sport coat. He’d carried her so easily, with such a sure, long-legged stride. No doubt about it. The man was buff.
“The show doesn’t start until dusk,” he said in a slow, easy voice that hinted at Southwestern roots. “That’s a good three hours yet.”
Three hours to sit in her hotel room with an ice pack on her knee. What a way to spend her evening! Jaci tried not to let her disappointment show while her rescuer continued.
“The wife of one of my business contacts here in Cairo is a physician. She operates a clinic just across the river. I could drive you there, have her check you out and bring you back to your group in time for the show.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that! You have business to take care of.”
A look she couldn’t quite interpret flickered in his slate-gray eyes.
“My plans are nothing if not flexible. Hold on. Let me call my friend.”
Like she could do anything else? Wobbling on one leg like a tipsy stork, she clung to his arm while he flipped up a cell phone. The fact that he had his business contact on speed dial told Jaci he dealt with the man on a regular basis.
“Kahil. It’s Deke. Is Fahranna holding clinic today?”
His glance cut to Jaci. Smiling, he nodded.
“Good. How about giving her a heads-up to let her know I’m bringing in a patient?” He paused a moment, listening, and his smile took a wry tilt. “I’ll explain later.”
“I don’t feel right about this,” Jaci protested after he hung up. “You have other things to do besides chauffeur me around Cairo. If you’ll give me the address of the clinic, I’ll take a taxi.”
“It’s your call. But …” Her rescuer shrugged. “You might find yourself taking the long way into town. Cairo taxi drivers have elevated milking tourists to a fine art.”
Jaci hesitated. During her day and a half in Egypt’s capital, she’d found the people to be warm and friendly. Falling prey to a wily camel driver hadn’t changed that opinion but it had made her a little more cautious.
Mrs. Grimes, too. Hands on hips, the silver-haired grandmother demanded some identification. “How do we know you’re who you say you are and not some white slaver?”
“You don’t,” he replied with a nod of approval for her caution. “Here’s my card. If it’ll reassure you, we can give my operations center a call. I have someone on duty 24/7.”
Jaci hovered on her good leg and peered at the card with Mrs. Grimes. The embossed lettering identified Deke Griffin as CEO of Griffin Aeronautical Consultants, based in Arlington, Texas.
“Aeronautical?” Mrs. Grimes read aloud. “Are you a pilot?”
“You bet,” he replied, his mouth curving.
Later, much later, Jaci would kick herself for letting that cocky grin erase all doubts about driving off with a stranger. At that particular moment, though, all she saw were a pair of glinting gray eyes and an impossibly sexy smile.
“If you’re sure it’s no trouble?” she said a little breathlessly.
“No trouble at all.”
“Then I’ll take you up on your kind offer.”
“Good. Keep the card,” he told Mrs. Grimes as he scooped Jaci up in his arms again. “Have your tour guide call me in a half hour or so, and I’ll let y’all know what the doc says.”
The address on the card and that easy “y’all” confirmed Jaci’s initial guess. The man sprang from Western stock.
Unlike her. Born and raised in Illinois, she’d followed her high school sweetheart’s lead and applied to the University of Florida. Unfortunately, Bobby had used the year between his graduation and hers to dramatically expand his sexual horizons. Worse, he hadn’t bothered to tell Jaci he wanted to continue his extracurricular activities until after she’d shown up for her first semester.
She’d endured a miserable four months while he strutted around campus with a variety of different women. Then his partying and late nights caused him to flunk out at the end of the semester. Jaci considered that sweet justice, but his abrupt departure from her life didn’t lessen the sting.
She’d pressed on and completed her degree in library science. A subsequent job offer at the university’s Architecture and Fine Arts Library had kept her in Florida after graduation. She’d never joined the lively on-campus party crowd, though—or the beach bunnies who headed for white sands and green waters every weekend. Her values were still solidly Midwestern, and her interests were more academic than social. Work filled her days, and an assortment of study groups took up several evenings a week.
It was one of those groups that had hooked her on ancient cultures—especially Egypt. Since joining the group, Jaci had dreamed of visiting this cradle of modern civilization. Three years of watching her pennies had made the trip a reality. She refused to let a fall from a camel ruin it!
She confided as much to her knight errant once he’d deposited her in the passenger seat of his rental car and had taken the wheel.
“I really, really appreciate you doing this. I can’t afford to waste a minute of my time in Egypt.”
He slanted her a quick look. “Have a full schedule laid out, do you?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe! I’ve been planning this trip for ages.”
She settled back in the seat, thinking of the months of study and preparation that had gone into her trip. Thank goodness for the Thursday-night group. One of the members had been born in Egypt. A former adjunct professor at the Health Science Center, Dr. Abdouh had retired from medicine years ago. He’d been a great help to Jaci in preparing for her great adventure.
She would have to email him about her near disastrous camel ride and send him a digital picture of the little scarab now tucked in her tote bag. Maybe he could interpret the markings on the beetle’s back. He’d probably tell her the inscription read “Made in China,” she thought ruefully. She didn’t care. It was …
A shrill horn and the screech of tires cut into her musing. Gasping, she thrust out an arm to brace herself as a taxi shot into their lane. Her self-appointed chauffeur stood on the brakes and let loose with some Arabic. When Cairo’s unbelievable snarl of exhaust-spitting traffic had sorted out a little, Jaci gave him a sideways glance.
“You must spend a lot of time in Egypt if you’ve learned to speak the language.”
“I’ve picked up a few phrases. Not anything you’d want me to translate, though.”
There it was again—that quicksilver grin. Jaci felt its impact all the way down to her toes. She curled them inside her sneakers and barely cringed when Deke had to swerve into another lane to avoid a donkey cart filled with cabbages piled to an impossible height.
Jaci twisted around for a better look. This was Cairo at its most vivid, she thought on a rush of pure delight. Donkeys were vying for road space with exhaust-spewing vehicles. Multistory concrete buildings were decorated with Arabic arches. Old men were fishing in canals dug by their ancestors millennia ago.
“So where’s home for you, Jaci?”
The question brought her back around in her seat. “Gainesville, Florida. I’m an assistant research librarian at the university there.”
“Guess that explains the gator on your friend’s visor. The lady who took me for a white slaver.”
“That’s Mrs. Grimes,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “She’s a former high school teacher. She takes nothing—and no one—at face value.”
“Smart lady.”
Very smart, Ace thought with a sideways glance at his target.
“Here we are.”
He dodged a stream of oncoming vehicles and pulled through an arched entry into a palm-lined courtyard. Kahil’s Egyptian-born, American-educated wife had opened her free clinic two years ago. Ace had been present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. His company also contributed heavily to the clinic’s operation. Dr. Fahranna El Hassan was nothing if not persuasive.
She was also tall, slender, gorgeous—and iron-willed enough to have tamed Wild Man Kahil. And now that she had her husband on a short leash, she’d moved Ace to the top of her list for reform—a fact she reminded him of after an attendant had showed him and Jaci Thornton into an exam room and the doctor burst into the room.
“Deke!” She threw her arms around him, digging her stethoscope into his chest as she kissed him on both cheeks. “Why didn’t you give Kahil and me more warning of your visit? I have a cousin I want you to meet. She just might be the woman to wean you from your evil ways. Or …”
Her curious eyes swept over the female perched on the edge of an exam table.
“Have you brought one of your own for me to check out?”
“Curb your matchmaking instincts, Fahranna. I’ve brought you a patient.”
All brisk business now, the physician addressed Jaci in her usual blunt manner. “I am Dr. El Hassan. And you are?”
“Jaci Thornton. Mr. Griffin, uh, Deke and I just met.”
Fahranna lifted one delicately arched brow. “Did you?”
“We were at the pyramids. He was kind enough to bring me here after I fell off a camel.”
“Ah, yes,” she said with a wry smile. “The camels. What did you injure?”
“My knee, but it hardly hurts anymore.”
“Let’s take a look at it, shall we? You will have to remove your slacks. Deke, take yourself back to the waiting room.”
To Jaci’s relief, Dr. El Hassan’s diagnosis confirmed her own. She hadn’t broken any bones, just collected another bruise. The doctor recommended an ice pack if her knee started to swell and heavy-duty aspirin for pain.
When she walked Jaci to the waiting room, Deke tossed aside the newspaper he’d been perusing and offered his arm for support. Jaci took it with a shy smile that the physician didn’t fail to note.
“You must come for dinner,” she announced with a gleam in her dark eyes. “Kahil will want to meet the woman who moves his friend to such noble acts of chivalry.”
Jaci opened her mouth to decline the offer, but her companion preempted her.
“You know I never turn down a free dinner, Fahranna. I’ll give you a call later and set up a time that fits with your schedule and Jaci’s.”
Chapter 3
Ace waited until he had his target back in the rental car and was headed back to Giza to dig the hook in deeper.
“How long will you be in Cairo, Jaci?”
“Three more days.”
“What does your agenda look like?”
“It’s packed, morning to night. We’re doing a breakfast cruise on the Nile, a visit to the pyramids of Saqqara and a whole afternoon at the Cairo Museum.”
With its priceless gold and lapis lazuli statue of the goddess Ma’at, Ace remembered with a sudden tightening of his belly.
Coincidence? Could be. A trip to Cairo’s famed museum was on every tourist’s agenda.
“And,” his passenger added with a flush of excitement, “we’re going to the Valley of the Kings! We’ve got a whole day to explore Luxor and Karnak.”
The Valley of the Kings, where Hatshepsut had constructed the temple to Ma’at. The same temple supposedly raided by tomb robbers more than a thousand years ago, giving birth to the legend that the goddess would someday send a messenger that it was time to restore cosmic order.
Another coincidence? Once again, it could be. But Ace had spent too many years in this business to take anything on supposition.
“What evening could you have dinner with Fahranna and her husband? You need to see their home,” he added when she looked doubtful. “It’s been in Fahranna’s family for generations. The mosaic tiles in the entryway were supposedly fired in the same kiln as the tiles in the Grand Mosque.”
“Really?”
She chewed on her lower lip, obviously torn. Ace reeled her in even further.
“The garden alone will make think you’re in something right out of Arabian Nights. Moorish arches, marble fountains, swaying palms. Last time I was there, they even had a nightingale warbling away.”
“It sounds incredible.”
“It is. How about tomorrow evening?”
She’d taken the bait. Her eyes were as bright as emeralds.
“If that works for you and your friends.”
