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Dangerous Entanglement
‘Oh, come on.’ Annette protested indignantly. ‘You talking as if you’re about a hundred! You’re not even thirty yet!
‘It’s only another three months.’ Joanna smiled, wryly conscious of how much older she felt. ‘But even so, I can’t see any man matching up to what I want.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Annette.
‘Oh…’ Joanna tipped her head on one side, musing. ‘He’d have to have the sense of humour of Victor Borge, and the brains of Steven Hawking, and be as kind and caring as Bob Geldof…and as good-looking as Kevin Costner!’
Annette chuckled, her eyes dancing. ‘You’re not asking for much!’
‘See what I mean?’ Joanna countered.
‘But there are some men like that,’ Annette insisted, earnestly romantic, and then blushed a becoming shade of pink.
Joanna slanted her a teasing glance. ‘Like Greg, for instance?’ she enquired.
Annette blushed even deeper. ‘Well…’
‘Annie, you’ve only known him for ten minutes, at the outside,’ Joanna reminded her with gentle concern.
‘I know, but…’ Annette’s fine eyes took on a dreamy look. ‘How long does it take?’
Joanna smiled wryly. ‘Oh, about ten minutes,’ she acknowledged, reflecting how easily she could have done the same, if bitter experience hadn’t taught her to be more cautious. ‘But just the same, take it slowly,’ she warned anxiously. ‘You don’t know anything about him—I’d hate to see you get hurt.’
Annette’s soft mouth trembled slightly, betraying how very vulnerable she was. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘But…’ The sound of a Land Rover pulling up outside sent all other thoughts spinning from her brain, and she rushed over to the window. ‘It’s him!’ Love had thrown her into a panic. ‘Do I look all right?’ she pleaded, running back to the mirror to smooth her hair and her skirt, and fidget with the neckline of her pretty blouse. ‘Oh…I’d better go and check on the dinner—will you let them in?’
‘Of course I will.’ Joanna smiled her reassurance. ‘And don’t worry—you look gorgeous. If he hasn’t fallen in love with you already, it won’t take him long.’
She had barely finished speaking when there was a rap on the door. Annette squeaked in alarm, and dived into the kitchen; Joanna was outwardly rather more casual as she strolled across the room, though her own instincts were urging her to hide too. But she had to survive this evening—for Annette’s sake. She could still remember what it was like to be young and in love—though it seemed like a long time ago now.
Pausing to steady her nerves with a slow, deep breath, she pulled open the door. Greg was on the doorstep, his eyes alight with an eager expectancy that changed to an almost ludicrous disappointment when he saw Joanna standing there instead of Annette.
‘Oh…Hello…How are you?’ He was far too nice a young man to forget his manners completely, and his open smile won Joanna’s heart; it was so totally obvious that he was every bit as besotted as Annette.
‘I’m fine. Come on in,’ she invited, taking pity on him. ‘Annie’s in the kitchen, checking on the dinner.’
‘Oh…Well, perhaps I should…just go and see if she needs a hand, then, shall I?’ be suggested earnestly.
‘Good idea,’ she agreed, tongue in cheek, noting with satisfaction the signs of the effort he had made to spruce himself up for this evening—a slight redness beneath his chin where he had shaved for the second time, a betraying pleat in his shirt where he had ironed it rather inexpertly.
He shot her a grateful grin, and darted across the room—leaving her alone to face the tall man who had walked in behind him.
‘Good evening,’ she managed, just the slightest trace of stiffness in her voice.
‘Good evening.’ That hard mouth was curved into a wry smile, acknowledging the position they both found themselves in, as gooseberries to the other couple.
He cast a brief glance around, and she followed his eyes, trying to see the tiny flat as he would see it. Close to the centre of town, in the heart of the tourist bazaar, it was above a narrow Aladdin’s cave of a shop that sold everything from T-shirts printed with meaningless hieroglyphics to beautiful hand-engraved glass hubble-bubble pipes and copper tea-trays.
It was far from being a palace, though it was clean and comfortable enough for their needs. There were just two rooms, one of which they used as a bedroom, the other as a study, cluttered with books and papers and dusty finds from the tomb site waiting to be properly catalogued. The kitchen was little bigger than a cupboard, with an ancient gas stove and a huge old stone sink, and an occasional problem with scorpions for which they kept a jam-jar and a piece of cardboard ever ready.
The best feature was the wide balcony at the back, with a spectacular view over the floodlit ruins of Luxor Temple to the wide sweep of the Nile; Annette was trying to grow geraniums out there, not with any great deal of success. Tonight she had spread a red and white-checked tablecloth over the weathered wooden table, and they had pillaged one of the odd chairs from the study to make up enough to sit on.
‘Nice place you’ve got here.’
‘Thank you.’ She returned him a sardonic look, knowing that the remark was mere politeness.
‘Oh, by the way, we brought along a couple of bottles of wine.’ He held it out to her. ‘White—Greg brought red, to be on the safe side.’
‘Fine—thank you.’
She glanced fleetingly at the bottle, recognising the label. It was a very good burgundy—a little extravagant to eat with such a scratch meal, perhaps, but then Alex Marshall looked like the kind of man who would expect a good wine whatever he was eating. Maybe it was just as well he’d brought his own, she reflected with a crisp touch of irony—the anonymous bottle of plonk they had bought from the shopkeeper downstairs had probably been standing around in the simmering Egyptian heat for the past six months, and would taste more like vinegar than anything else.
Alex strolled across the room, and out on to the balcony, standing balanced with his feet a little apart, his hands deep in the pockets of his khaki trousers, his wide shoulders square against the sky. ‘Nice view,’ he accorded casually.
‘Yes.’
Joanna spared a glance for the brooding ruins of the temple, and the tranquil river beyond, glittering darkly beneath the desert moon. If she had been a romantic, she would have said there was something almost magical about the scene…But fortunately she had learned to control such flights of fancy a long time ago.
Well, if this was going to be the height of their conversation, it didn’t bode particularly well for the evening ahead, she mused to herself as she moved across to the table, sitting down and folding her hands together on the cloth to stop them fidgeting.
Alex slanted her a smile of wry amusement. ‘Have you managed to maintain any other topic of conversation this afternoon?’ he enquired, nodding his head in the general direction of the kitchen.
Joanna glanced at him warily, not sure if an admission would be betraying Annette’s confidence. But since he was being so frank, maybe she could afford to be too. ‘Not for very long,’ she admitted. ‘Love’s young dream, eh?’
He lifted one dark eyebrow in quizzical amusement. ‘You sound a little cynical,’ he remarked.
She shrugged evasively, glancing away. ‘Oh, maybe,’ she conceded. ‘I suppose I’ve been around once too often.’
‘Only once?’ he enquired with a trace of ironic laughter.
‘Once was enough.’ She hoped her effort to sound light-hearted about it had come off, though she suspected’he was far too perceptive to be deceived.
With a casual movement he hooked out a chair, and sat down at the far end of the table. ‘You’ve been married?’ he asked with a gentleness that surprised her a little.
‘Once,’ she managed.
‘And divorced?’
‘Three years ago.’
An awkward silence fell again. Joanna was already regretting that she had told him even that much about herself—she had intended to keep an impersonal distance between them. But there was something about this man that was very disruptive to her hard-won peace of mind; and there was no way she could pietend that the way her heartbeat was racing at this moment was due to claustrophobia.
But to her relief, he chose to change the subject. ‘Shall we make a start on the wine?’ he suggested, reaching for the bottle.
‘Oh…Don’t you think we ought to wait for the others?’ she suggested, her voice a little unsteady.
From the kitchen came the sound of merry laughter. ‘If we wait for them, we could be waiting all night,’ he remarked with perspicacity. He pulled a heavy-duty penknife from his pocket, and opened a corkscrew from among the various useful attachments folded into it. ‘Be prepared,’ he mocked himself mildly.
Joanna’s lips quirked into a smile. ‘You were a boy scout?’ she enquired, daring to tease him a little.
He grinned, that hard face suddenly almost boyish. ‘A long time ago.’
She propped her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her cupped hand, her blue eyes dancing. ‘I can’t imagine it,’ she mused. ‘Did you wear shorts and a woggle?’
Dark eyes twinkled with amusement at her across the table. ‘Of course.’ He took her glass and filled it. ‘What shall we drink to?’ he enquired, a lilt of light humour in his voice. ‘Young love? Or wisdom and maturity?’
‘Oh, the latter, I think,’ she asserted wryly. ‘It lasts much longer.’
He laughed in ironic agreement. ‘Unfortunately, you’re probably right.’
Joanna sat back in her seat, enjoying the rich, distinctive flavour of the wine. A few years in the wood had given it a mature subtlety that she found very pleasing, a smooth sweetness that lingered on the tongue, deeply satisfying.
It was a romantic evening, she acknowledged to herself. A slight breeze was rustling the leaves of the palm-trees along the riverbank, cooling the lingering warmth in the air. The sky was a velvet black, spangled with stars, and the water was smooth and dark, disturbed only by a few clumps of water-hyacinth that floated slowly downstream on the current. In the distance, music was playing—there must be a dance on board one of the cruise-boats moored at the ferry-stage.
‘So, what happened with your marriage?’ Alex enquired with the kind of sympathy that could only come from someone who had trodden the same rocky path.
‘Oh…’ She shrugged her slim shoulders in a gesture intended to convey a measure of indifference. ‘The usual, I suppose. We were probably too young. It was fun for a while, but we were heading in different directions. Unfortunately the person he chose to head off with was my best friend at the time.’
‘I see.’
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of laughter from the kitchen. ‘What about you?’ she asked after a moment.
He swirled the wine around in his glass. ‘Remarkably similar, as a matter of fact. Only in my case, it was my brother.’
‘Oh…’ She shifted under the weight of a heavy discomfort. Was that the brother he had displaced from the family firm? Had that been his revenge? But those were hardly the sort of questions she could ask him.
But he went on without a prompt. ‘Like you, we were rather too young—I was twenty-three, she was twenty-one. And I had to be away a good deal of the time—I suppose in a way it was only natural for her to turn to my brother; he was a couple of years older than me, being groomed by my father to take his place as chair of the company. And they had similar tastes,’ he added drily. ‘Expensive cars, expensive clothes…’
She sipped her wine, her eyes studying that darkly handsome face. The only light on the balcony was the glow spilling out from the sitting-room—Annette had put a couple of candles ready in glasses, but they hadn’t been lit yet. But the shadows did nothing to soften the arrogant lines of his features—if anything they lent him an almost…sinister air.
‘But then…you became chairman instead, didn’t you?’ she enquired diffidently.
He nodded, a hint of hardness around his mouth. ‘That’s right,’ he confirmed. ‘Unfortunately, between them, my father and my brother were making quite a mess of things, so I had the board elect me instead. Then I bought them out.’
That brief, ruthless explanation sent a chill scudding down Joanna’s spine. From the newspaper accounts, it had been shortly after his wife had left him for his brother that he had ousted both him and their father from the company. Whatever his rationalisations, the implication was clear—it had been an act of pure revenge.
She had been a fool to let the wine and the moonlight lull her into a dangerously unguarded mood, she chided herself warningly—she ought to have known better. This was a man who got what he wanted, and damn the consequences for anyone else. It would be wise not to let herself forget that, not for a second.
CHAPTER THREE
JOANNA took another sip of her wine. It was difficult to maintain her cool façade, with Alex Marshall sitting there on the other side of the table, still watching her with those enigmatic dark eyes. Was it a spark of genuine interest in her that she could see there? Or was he playing some kind of game with her, to try to prevent her holding up the mining operation?
She shifted edgily in her seat, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘Those two are taking their time in the kitchen,’ she remarked with a nervous laugh. ‘We’ll probably be lucky if we get fed at all tonight.’
But at that moment the other couple appeared, Annette blushing delightfully, her hair dishevelled, while Greg was managing to look both pleased with himself and a little sheepish at the same time. They were each carrying a large serving-dish, which they set down on the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annette apologised breathlessly. ‘The rice got a little bit…overcooked.’
Alex’s hard mouth quirked into a smile of ironic humour. ‘So I see,’ he commented, surveying the doughy sludge in front of him. ‘Er…do I eat it with a fork or a spoon?’
Annette giggled. ‘You might have to use a spoon, I’m afraid.’ She sat down, her eyes sparkling up at Greg as he held her chair out for her. ‘Oh…We left the wine in the kitchen…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Alex put in. ‘We might as well finish this one off first.’
He filled their glasses with the burgundy, leaning across to top up Joanna’s glass before she realised he was going to. She accepted it without protest, but silently warned herself to be careful how much she drank; she needed to keep a cool head—just in case the love blossoming unmistakably between the couple on her left should prove to be contagious.
The rice really wasn’t quite as bad as it looked—just a little soft—and Annette’s lamb kofta was always delicious. She dimpled with pleasure at the fulsome compliments of the two men, but it was obvious whose praise meant more to her.
That was something of a relief to Joanna—she had wondered whether, once she had had a chance to see more of Alex, Annette’s preference might begin to waver. But her manner towards him was characterised by the kind of politeness and respect that suggested that his thirty-five years appeared, from her mere twenty, to be a generation gap as wide as the Nile Valley.
This fact seemed to afford him some amusement. Watching him covertly from beneath her lashes, Joanna was a little surprised to realise that he had a real sense of humour; with Annette, and with his young cousin, there seemed to be no trace of that mocking cynicism. He had a very attractive laugh, too—deep and husky, lighting his eyes.
The table was lit by two candles, stuck in drinking glasses so that they wouldn’t blow out, and their flickering light seemed to sculpt the strong bone-structure of his face, emphasising the intelligence written in his high forehead, the arrogant hook of his nose. He was wearing a casual linen shirt, and in the shadow of the open collar she could glimpse a few rough, dark hairs that curled at the base of his throat.
Her mouth seemed to have gone strangely dry. It was a long time since she had been so acutely aware of a man; after the break-up of her marriage, it was something she had taught herself to avoid. But there was something about Alex Marshall, an aura of power and raw masculinity, that couldn’t be ignored.
Suddenly he caught her eye across the table, and, though they were five feet apart, she could feel the hypnotic power of that gaze holding her prisoner. She didn’t seem able to look away, although she knew that he would see far too much—all the vulnerabilities that she would have preferred to keep hidden behind the brittle mask she customarily wore.
‘…one in the Guimet museum that was wrapped in an old sail. But Joanna’s the one you should really be asking—she’s the expert on mummies. She’s written papers about it.’
The sound of her own name brought Joanna back to earth, and she turned to her friend, as disorientated as if she had switched on the television in the middle of a programme. ‘I…I’m sorry?’ she stammered.
‘The Lyons Sailor,’ Annette prompted innocently— she had been so absorbed in her conversation with Greg that she wouldn’t have noticed if the sky had fallen in around her, let alone picked up the subtle undercurrents passing between the two other occupants of the table. ‘Didn’t they find out it was an old sail he was wrapped in?’
‘Oh…Yes. They pieced all the strips together,’ she explained to Greg, glad to feel herself on safe ground, dealing with the dusty facts of ancient history. ‘It turned out to have been ripped from one large square piece of material, still with part of the rigging in it.’
‘Didn’t a lot of them have bad teeth?’ Alex enquired, joining in the conversation.
Joanna nodded. ‘Yes. Partly because the cereals in their diet were very coarsely ground, which would have caused a lot of wear. But many of the Pharaohs, in particular, had a lot of decay, which suggests that they ate a lot of sugar. It does tend to make it rather difficult to work out how old they were.’
‘Don’t they use carbon dating?’ asked Greg.
‘That’s to find out when they lived, silly,’ Annette corrected him with a teasing laugh. ‘If they want to find out how long they lived, they have to examine the skeleton with X-rays—though even then it’s hard to be sure…’
Joanna slipped back out of the conversation, sipping her wine, watching the young couple with affectionate humour. Greg was prompting Annette with questions, listening raptly to her answers, as if he had waited all his life to hear about the history of ancient Egypt.
It made her feel a little old, and maybe a little sadshe had learned too soon that love wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She just hoped that this promising romance wouldn’t end in the same sort of disappointment she had found—she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
From beneath her lashes, she slid a covert glance towards Alex. He too was watching the younger couple, a glint of tolerant amusement in his eyes. Were his thoughts similar to her own? If they had met when they were younger, as naively open to taking a chance as Annette and Greg, could that spark of physical awareness between them have ignited into a stronger flame?
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