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“Can you imagine that Princess Zara would have encouraged me to come here, into the home of her own family, if such a dreadful thing had happened?”
“If she was pretending to herself it hadn’t happened, she might,” she felt driven to point out. It wasn’t that she believed it, necessarily, but it was possible. He had to see that.
He stared at her, honestly startled. “Pretending to herself? How could a woman pretend such a thing? Why would she?”
Clio felt anxiety creeping up in her. “It does happen, you know! Women take the blame on themselves, or they don’t want to face what happened to them! Denial does happen!”
He was silent, watching her. Then he said softly, “Does it, Clio? Are you sure?”
“If you understood anything about psychology you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“Do you deny something? Has someone hurt you, so that it is easier to imagine I hurt your sister than to accept what happened to yourself?” he asked, proving that he understood more than somewhat about psychology.
She gasped in indignant fury and clenched her fists. Never had she so wanted to hit someone. But she looked at Jalal and saw the warning in his eyes. Gentle as he was with the children, his look warned her that he would not be gentle with her if she attacked him.
“Nothing has ever happened to me!” she exploded, her rage escaping in words. “Let’s get one thing straight, Jalal—whatever did or did not happen in your camp, we’re enemies, and it’s because of what you yourself did.”
He shook his head in flat contradiction. “We are not enemies. That is not what is between us,” he said softly.
Five
Clio opened her mouth soundlessly as shivers like a flood ran over her body.
“You make your sister an excuse to avoid what frightens you. That is all, is it not?”
He stepped closer, and she backed up against the counter. In the pit of her stomach a hard ball of fire suddenly revealed itself.
“I am not afraid!” she protested hotly.
“Good,” he whispered, and when she lifted a hand in protest his hand wrapped her wrist. Every nerve leapt at the touch. Fury seemed to come from nowhere and whip against her like wild wind.
Slowly he bent closer. He was going to kiss her.
She couldn’t allow it. She wanted to hit him. Something like a scream was in her throat and she wanted desperately to beat him off. But she couldn’t seem to work her muscles.
“Do you always just do what you want without asking?” she demanded.
“I want to kiss you,” he murmured thoughtfully, his mouth only inches from her own. “In this country, do men ask permission for such a thing?”
She tried to swallow. “Yes,” she said defiantly. Her mouth felt as dry as the desert he came from, where the rules between men and women were so different. She wanted to push him away, to get to a place where the air was clear. But the unfamiliar lassitude would not let her go.
“Then they understand nothing.” He drew closer, and she felt the heat of his arm encircle her back, his firm hand at her waist. His breath touched her cheek as his eyes challenged hers. She felt the look deep inside her, stirring the depths of her self.
He stroked the skin that she had so foolishly left bare between her short top and low-cut shorts. Sensation skittered down her body to her toes. Under the thin top, her breasts shivered.
Suddenly she was angry with herself. This was the man she had sworn only days ago would be always her enemy!
“What do men do in the desert?” she demanded cynically. “Grab whatever they see? Well, of course they do!” she told herself brightly. “You proved—”
“In the desert we first make sure that a woman longs for the kiss, and then we kiss her without asking.”
The sheer male arrogance of such a statement caused angry fire to leap in her chest and abdomen. She clamped her teeth together, because she could hardly prevent herself from shouting at him that he was an arrogant barbarian. But he had warned her….
His hand was moving against her spine. His other hand touched her neck, and his thumb traced her jawline.
Her mouth felt swollen—not that she wanted any kiss from him! But he was as mesmerizing as a snake, he really was. She flicked her eyes up to his.
The naked desire she saw there shook her to the core. She had thought him attracted, but not as powerfully as this! He looked at her like a starving man. Clio’s heart tripped into an unsteady rhythm. Feeling she didn’t recognize roared through her.
“Then you will never kiss me,” she said, finding her voice.
His hands stilled their motion. The heat was too much. She felt burned.
“Do you challenge me, Clio? When a woman challenges a man, she must beware. He may accept her challenge.”
She had no idea why his words created such sudden torment in her, or what that torment was. Her whole body churned with feeling. She felt faint, almost sick. She wished he would get away from her, so she could breathe.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you hear the word no as a challenge?” she asked defiantly.
His thumb tilted her chin, bringing her face closer to his full mouth, and her heart responded with nervous, quickened pulse. He smiled quizzically at her.
“But I have not heard the word no, Clio. Did you say it?”
Bee-bee-bee, bee-bee-bee.
They were both jolted by the high, piercing sound. Jalal frowned and looked around, and Clio tried to gather her wits.
“Is it a fire alarm?” he asked.
She finally identified the noise. “Oh, my God, it’s an intruder alarm!” Clio cried, and as he released her she ran to the monitor panel above her father’s desk in an alcove. A dozen lights glowed steady; one was flashing its urgent beacon. She bent down to read the tag.
“Solitaire!” she breathed. “It can’t be Dad, he wasn’t going there today.”
He watched as she opened a small cupboard and snatched up a set of keys, then stood back out of her way as she whirled and lightly ran to the screen door of the kitchen and opened it.
“Ben!” she called.
Jalal followed her as she ran along the wooden porch and down onto the dock. When she reached the boat, he was right behind her. She quickly untied the stern rope, and when Jalal bent to the bow, Clio clambered aboard and started the motor. Meanwhile Rosalie and Donnelly raced towards the dock from further along the beach.
“The intruder alarm has gone off at Solitaire! It’s probably a raccoon!” she cried, as Jalal came aboard with more grace and expertise than his first effort. Clio swung the boat in a wide arc, and as they passed the end of the dock, she continued to Ben and Rosalie, “You’d better call Dad! Tell him I’m on my way there and I’ll call him if there’s a problem.”
Rosalie stood holding Donnelly’s hand, and all three were nodding. “Be careful!” And then Clio booted up the motor and the boat obediently climbed up out of the waves and planed across the surface at top speed.
“What is Solitaire?” Jalal asked, settling beside her.
She blinked and seemed to see him for the first time. “Oh, hi!” she said. It had seemed so natural for Jalal to be there that it was only now she actively registered his presence.
“One of the rental cottages,” she said. “It’s kind of isolated.”
He knew the family owned and rented cottages on the lakes. He had visited a couple with Brandon, doing repairs. “Will your father meet us there?”
Clio shrugged. “He might not bother unless I call to say it’s something really bad. It depends where he is, I guess. Ben will tell him you’re with me.”
“What weapons are on this boat?”
Clio blinked. “What, you mean like a shotgun?” She shook her head. “Nothing that you could call a weapon. We aren’t going to kill the raccoon, just open the door and scare him out. The point is to get there before he tears the place to ribbons.”
Jalal eyed her calmly. “You are certain that it is a raccoon?”
“Well, unless a deer got frightened and jumped through the picture window. That’s been known to happen. More likely a window got broken somehow and a raccoon got the screen off. Solitaire is empty this week.”
He had a vision of a mysterious little animal with a black mask over its eyes. Take a screen off a window? Well, he would like to see that.
“And what if it is not a raccoon?”
“Well?”
“You are setting out to challenge intruders in a remote place, not knowing their numbers, without weapons of any kind?”
Clio blinked.
“And you were surprised to see that I was aboard,” he continued ruthlessly. “If I were not here, you would have gone alone on this mission?”
How to explain that she had known he was with her, but half unconsciously? How to say that, maybe because she had felt safe with him there, she forgot to stop and consider?
She hardly noticed the curious fact that her unconscious mind was so very far from considering Jalal the enemy.
“Why not?” she said, since that confession was impossible.
He was angry, she could see.
“I’m sure it’s a raccoon,” she said, half placatingly. “We have to get there fast before he wrecks the place. Raccoons can be worse than thieves half the time.” He nodded, unconvinced. “Are you afraid? People around here aren’t usually violent, they just rob.”
He shook his head. “How many times have you challenged people who are just robbing a cottage?”
She was abashed. She really had acted too quickly, but that was probably Jalal’s fault. If he hadn’t had her in such a confused state to begin with, she probably wouldn’t have been so hasty. He was right—what if it wasn’t a raccoon? She looked at the powerful shoulders under the snug-fitting polo shirt and unconsciously relaxed.
“I think Dad surprised some guys once, but they heard the boat and got away before he landed.”
He didn’t make any comment, instead began looking around him at the boat. “Where is the storage?”
“Some in lockers below, and some under the bench seat at the stern.”
He stepped to the stern, and she noticed, not for the first time, how lightly he moved. His body was muscled and well-knit, and when he shifted from one position to another all his muscles seemed to regroup and rebalance. A hunting cat, a panther, she thought, with the promise of power in every economical movement. The tiger had been an appropriate choice of plaque, though she knew he had chosen it only to irritate her.
Meanwhile he moved around, opening lockers. He found a paddle, and his fist closed around it and he hefted it testingly. Satisfied, he returned to the cockpit and slipped into the seat beside her.
No wasted effort. She felt no anxiety from him, just watchfulness. Waiting, like a cat, till the moment when effort would be needed. Then the muscles would bunch and flex, but for now they were long and easy.
She was sure she was completely safe with Jalal, whatever they might find.
“What is the position of Solitaire?” he asked.
She described it to him: an island in a narrow, shallow river, surrounded by forest. At the top end, beyond the island, the river narrowed and became an impassable creek. There was only one way out by water, the way they would go in. A picturesque wooden footbridge led over the water on one side, but only to a footpath that went for miles through the forest before you reached even another cottage.
He took it in in silence, and she could see him building a picture in his mind. She did her best to fill in the details, describing the dock, the approach, the land around the house, even though she was almost sure he was overreacting. There was something about his air of readiness that communicated the more serious possibilities.
“Here’s the river mouth,” she said at last, and he nodded. His mouth was set, his jaw firm but not clenched.
“You will stay in the boat until I make a check,” he said. “You will keep the motor running. If there is danger, you will turn the boat immediately when I tell you, and go to find your father, or the police. Do you understand?”
Clio stiffened. “You aren’t in your rebel camp now, Prince Jalal! And I am not one of your followers!”
“No,” he agreed calmly. “None of my followers would act so stupidly as this. Nevertheless, you must obey me. If someone captured you, I could do nothing. I would have to surrender if they threatened to hurt you.”
Six
It was called Bent Needle River because of its shape. A long ribbon of water looped around an island that formed the eye of the needle. The river twisted at the bottom end of the island, so that from the air its shape was like a darning needle bent sharply just before the eye. Beyond it, a few hundred yards of creek stretched like a short thread trailing from the eye of the needle.
The cottage was on the far side of the island, and the sound of their approach, she knew, would be well muffled by the trees and thick foliage until they were around the bend and almost at the dock. She approached at low speed. The channel was not marked and there were shallows on both sides.
A small motorboat bobbed against the dock, secured only by the stern rope. Goods were stacked on the dock. Clio saw the television set, the video player, a cardboard box. The front door of the wide-windowed cottage gaped open, broken on its hinges. There was more loot collected on the porch.
Not a raccoon, then. She thought of her danger if she had come here alone, and threw Jalal a look as she guided the powerboat quietly around the bend and coasted up to the dock. Just then a man stepped out onto the porch, carrying the vacuum cleaner.
Jalal seemed to take in the whole scene with one comprehensive glance and make up his mind. “Stay in the boat, keep the engine running, and be ready to go if I give you the signal,” he commanded quietly. He leapt lightly off the boat onto the dock and stood there, leaning casually on the paddle he had taken with him.
She saw the man break stride for a second, then make up his mind to brazen it out. He kept walking down towards the dock. Thin and wiry, with shoulder-length dirty brown hair, in his forties, she thought. His clothes were grubby but not really dirty—a light grey T-shirt with some kind of logo, black denims.
“Hello there! Can I help you?” he called casually, but too loudly, and she hoped Jalal had picked up the information that there was someone else in the cottage.
“Are you moving out?” she heard Jalal ask, with easy interest.
“Oh, I wish, eh?” The man was grinning self-deprecatingly when she looked again. He clearly did not want to arrive on the dock, but had no choice. He set down the vacuum cleaner and straightened warily.
In the doorway of the house a shadow moved. “Naw, I’m just the hired moving man, eh?”
Jalal nodded. “I understand. But you have the wrong address. No one is moving from this house. So why don’t you get in the boat and go?”
The man feigned indignation. “Hey, buddy, who ya think you’re talking to, eh?” But Clio could hear his essential weakness in his voice and breathed a sigh of relief. He would bluster and then obey.
Already he was inching towards where his boat was moored.
“I know very well who I am talking to. Now I tell you, you are making a mistake, and you can get in your boat and leave, and your friends, too.”
He raised his voice. “Why don’t you come out? Your friend is leaving and you may go with him.”
A figure appeared in the doorway. “What the frig’s goin’ on?” he said, and Clio’s breath hissed in between suddenly clenched teeth. This man was very different from his partner. He was big and muscled, his head shaved, his lower jaw protuberant with low intelligence and aggression. His white singlet and camouflage pants were cleaner than his partner’s clothes. He wore a wide belt and hard boots, several metal studs in one ear.
