by Valerie Parv
“Jamal shot at us as we took off,” she said, wanting to distract Judy.
The other woman paled. “Did he hit anything?”
“Neither of us,” Tom assured her. “But he damaged the plane. I’ll need your help to get it airworthy again.”
“Are you both okay?”
“We’re fine,” Shara insisted. “Although Jamal punched Tom.”
Tom gave her a “did you have to tell her that” look, but Shara was defiant. If he’d been seriously hurt, she’d never have forgiven herself.
To Shara’s surprise, Judy’s smile widened. “Which hospital?”
Perplexed, Shara asked, “What do you mean?”
“If Jamal slugged Tom, he must be in the hospital by now.”
Shara lowered her head. “Tom couldn’t fight back without betraying me.”
Judy’s attention swung to Tom. “Who are you and what have you done with my foster brother?”
“Very funny. I don’t always argue with my fists.”
“And Christmas doesn’t come once a year.”
Shara was perplexed. It sounded as if Judy had expected Tom to fight. Yet Shara had seen a different side of him. Was he putting on an act for her sake? She had trouble believing that he was a violent man. If he’d been given to responding with force, he would never have stood for Jamal hitting him without retaliating. Perhaps Tom was stronger-willed than Judy knew.
Perhaps stronger than Tom himself knew.
“Did he do any damage?” Judy asked him as they climbed the steps into the homestead.
“I’ll live,” he said shortly, but Shara saw discomfort flash across his face when he lowered himself into a chair. When she moved toward him, he waved her away, his frown closing the subject.
Crazy man, she thought. The men in her family loved being babied at the slightest excuse. Jamal could turn a common cold into pneumonia, requiring nurses in constant attendance, the more nubile the better. She couldn’t imagine him shrugging off any hurt the way Tom did.
Crazy, but heroic. She was in deeper trouble here than she’d known, because she grew hot as she imagined ministering to him. She resisted the thought. He didn’t want her attention.
But he would, as soon as this was over.
A plate of sandwiches and an open book told Shara that Judy had been eating lunch when they arrived. Now she gestured toward the food. “Help yourselves. I made plenty in case Dad was hungry, but he doesn’t want anything.”
Tom helped himself to a sandwich. “How is he?”
Judy chewed her lip. “He had a rough night after the visit from Horvath and Jamal. The doctor came out to see him an hour ago and gave him something, so he’s resting now.”
“Did our arrival disturb him?” Shara asked.
“His room’s at the other end of the house. He won’t hear us if we keep our voices down.” Judy balled her hands into fists. “This stupid mortgage business isn’t helping his condition.”
Tom gestured with his sandwich. “Shara has an idea that may help.”
The other woman’s eyebrows lifted. “He could sure use some good news.”
Shara looked down. “It may not be much. You remember the ancient tribe I was researching in Q’aresh?”
“The one you wrote to me about? The Uru?”
Shara nodded. “I’ve seen what could be proof that the same tribe once lived on your land.”
“When you accidentally hurt your leg,” Judy said with a sharp look at Tom. When he didn’t rise to the bait, she continued, “How does that help Dad with his mortgage?”
“If I’m right, visitors would come from all over the world to see the paintings. Not the ones in the taboo gorge,” she said with a quick look at Tom. “Tom thinks there are other caves with rock art from the same period on Diamond Downs.”
A smile lit Judy’s face. “My Lord, that would be perfect.”
“Except that Jamal took the information I need to be certain. He may not understand the significance of the discovery, but if he thinks it’s important to me, he’ll try to use the information against me.”
“Bait to tempt you out of hiding,” Judy surmised.
Tom nodded. “I’m trying to figure out how to get the tape back without risking Shara.”
Shara’s stomach knotted with fear. “You heard Jamal’s warning. If you cross him again, he’ll kill you.”
Judy put out glasses and a carafe of water clinking with ice. “Dad won’t want either of you taking crazy risks on his account. Horvath had his sights on Dad’s land long before you got here, Shara.”
Shara poured water into the nearest glass. “Tom told me Jamal offered to repay the mortgage if you turned me over to him.”
Judy’s expression darkened. “I hope you don’t think we’d consider any such thing.”
“No. Tom explained the code of the outback.”
“Then you know we stand by our mates.”
The feeling of having her friends try to help her gave her a rush of warmth.
“And judging from the Cheshire cat grin on my foster brother’s face, you more than qualify as a mate,” Judy said. “And don’t tell me it’s because he was pleased to see me.”
Tom’s face flushed. “This seems like a good time for me to check on Des.”
When he’d left the room, Judy leaned toward Shara. “Whatever’s between the two of you is your own business, but Tom has had a hard life. He isn’t the easiest person to love.”
Shara had found him disturbingly easy to love, but knew that wasn’t what Judy meant. “I know why. We met up with Max Horvath in town this morning. He thought I was one of Tom’s trainees, and he flung Tom’s history in his face in my hearing.”
Judy helped herself to ice water. “How did Tom react?”
“He refused to talk about it.” She leaned forward. “Does he fear he’ll end up like his father?”
“You’ve made more progress with Tom than you know,” Judy observed. “The therapist took months to dig that fear out of him, but you’ve worked it out in only a few days.”
It was the only possible explanation for why Tom had been so aghast when he’d grabbed her wrist, Shara thought. And who was to say he wasn’t right, that blood would out? Just because she believed Tom was a compassionate man at heart didn’t mean the violence he’d learned as a boy wouldn’t surface under provocation. Was she willing to chance it?
It wouldn’t come to a choice. Because of Jamal, she was a much greater risk to Tom than he could be to her.
It didn’t stop her heart from skipping painfully when he came into the room. Judy offered him ice water but he shook his head, and took a light beer from the refrigerator, opening it with a pop and hiss.
“How’s Dad?” Judy asked.
“Not good. He needs that transplant soon, if he’s to have a chance of making it.”
Judy frowned. “Even if a donor is found, as long as Diamond Downs is at risk, wild horses won’t get him into the hospital.”
If only the plane had still been in her name, Shara could have done something to help. Surely Des wasn’t so stubborn that he’d chance death before accepting money from her? Yes, he probably would. Australian men were so stubborn and prideful, she thought with a rueful glance at Tom. She would just have to help the family by proving that the Uru had left their mark on Diamond Downs.
Since she couldn’t retrieve her research tape from Jamal without risking being dragged back to her country as his unwilling bride, she would have to use other means to prove her case, starting with the Internet. And she would have to work fast, before Max Horvath could foreclose on Des’s mortgage.
Her head lifted. She could do this. Stubborn pride wasn’t exclusive to the Logans, as Tom was about to discover.
Chapter 15
Judy encouraged them to stay for dinner, but Tom declined. “This is the first place Jamal and Horvath will come once they find out that Shara isn’t at the plane.”
“Don’t worry. I can handle them if they turn up here,”
Judy said confidently.
He squeezed her shoulder. “They’re the ones I should be worried about.”
His foster sister grinned. “Now you’re getting the idea.”
“Doesn’t stop me worrying anyway.”
Judy rolled her eyes. “How brothers do fuss.”
“I know. I have one of my own.” Had, Shara amended silently, wondering if she would ever see Sadiq again. “Our relationship was far more formal,” she added.
“I know a few men who could take lessons from him,” Judy said with a pointed look at Tom.
He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Just as well you love me anyway.”
Shara felt a surge of envy. How wonderful to have such an easy relationship with a sibling. Sadiq had always been conscious of his position as heir to the throne, insisting she use his title in public, and discouraging displays of sisterly affection in private. Their father had approved, although Shara wondered if he would have been more relaxed if their mother had lived.
She would never know, and now wasn’t the time to ponder. Suddenly she felt achingly weary. The day’s tensions and the near miss with Jamal were taking a toll. She stifled a yawn.
Tom noticed. “Time we headed off. It occurred to me that Tracey Blair might be able to help you prove the Uru were here, since you share the same interests.”
“I’m sure she’ll do whatever she can,” Judy agreed. “But not today. Shara looks all in. Why don’t you take her home to bed.”
Shara’s tiredness vanished in the quiver of anticipation Judy’s comment elicited. The other woman might not have meant the suggestion literally, but Shara’s body responded instantly. She shuddered and not with fear, as heat and hunger shot through her. Suddenly his home seemed very far away.
Tom had seen the naked need leap into Shara’s expression, and its twin gripped him as he drove back to town. He wanted nothing so much as to stop the car and roll her into the back seat, tear off her clothes and make love with her like a teenager in heat.
She deserved better. Not only as a princess, but as the incredible woman she was. For her he wanted candles and soft music. A room scented with roses and a bed made with the finest linens. Slow and careful lovemaking, building and building until they scorched the sheets with their passion.
And not tonight.
First she needed time to rebound from the harrowing encounter with Jamal and the upheaval in her life.
Tom wasn’t proud of giving in to his desires on the plane, although he knew she’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her. And he couldn’t suppress a feeling of insufferable pleasure at knowing he’d been her first lover. Had she any notion of how much that meant to a man?
Keeping her safe had become much more than a duty.
How unsafe they were came crashing back when Tom saw his front door hanging drunkenly from one hinge. “Looks like we’ve had visitors,” he said grimly.
She wouldn’t hear of remaining in the car, and shadowed him to the house and through it, muttering in her own language at the wanton destruction they found in every room.
If Q’aresh had swearwords stronger than his own, he could use them right now, he thought, picking his way across a debris field of shredded paper and shattered glass. His couch had been slashed with a knife until the stuffing oozed out. His large-screen TV was a wreck. In his office, the computer hemorrhaged circuitry. Every file had been pulled out of his cabinets and dumped on the floor, then ink from the printer cartridges ground into the pages. His bed was wrecked, his clothes dragged from the closet and dumped on the floor.
“This wasn’t a search. This was revenge,” he said.
“Jamal,” she said, her shocked gaze meeting his.
He hated having to say it. “Yes. Not him personally. Even if he’d lower himself, he wouldn’t have had time, but he or Horvath could have sent one of their henchmen to turn the place over.” Before she could say it, he cupped her face. “It isn’t your fault.”
She trembled under his hands. “I brought Jamal into your life.”
“You brought you into my life. I can’t regret that, no matter what the cost. Everything here is replaceable. I can’t begin to put a price on what you gave me today.”
Had Jamal suspected that Tom had slept with Shara? It seemed possible, judging by the viciousness of the attack. He couldn’t have known for sure, or Tom doubted he’d have been left alive in the clearing. What Jamal would have done to Shara if they were found out didn’t bear thinking about.
She picked up a bark painting that had been broken in two. “This is terrible.”
He looked at the mess. Not as terrible as what was going through his mind. If she’d been here when they came—he drove the thought down, refusing to let himself see her as anything but whole and warm and alive in his arms.
“He’s going to pay for this,” he vowed. His anger toward Horvath and Jamal before had nothing on the cold fury consuming him now.
“Shouldn’t you call the police?”
“I’ll have to, for all the good it will do. Our friends will have made sure they left nothing to be pinned on them.”
She heard what he didn’t say. “You can’t mean to go after them yourself?”
He righted a bedside lamp, the head swinging by its wires. “There’s no longer a choice. This is a declaration of war.”
“Or a cover-up,” she suggested.
He followed her train of thought. “They were looking for your tape of the meeting.” Taking her hand, he helped her pick her way through the debris toward the door. There he paused. “When they didn’t find it here, they must have moved on to the old cottage.”
“Did they have to be so destructive?”
Surveying the wreckage of his living room, Tom nodded grimly. Whoever it was, and he had a feeling one of them was named Eddy Gilgai—had had a personal grudge against Tom. “There’s more to this than a few notes about a vanished tribe, or a tape that’s already half destroyed.”
She picked her way gingerly through the littered room. “You said Max Horvath wants to find your great-grandfather’s lost diamond mine. Could there be a connection between the Uru sites and the location of the mine?”
Just then, Tom pressed his mouth to hers, the kiss hot and sweet, and not nearly satisfying enough. He forced himself to step back. “In his journals, my great-grandfather recorded sighting some cave paintings that were completely different from those done by the present-day groups living on Logan land. He described the art in detail.”
“Identifying those paintings might lead you to the mine,” she speculated.
“And it might not. As kids, we spent a lot of time looking without success, imagining what we’d do with all our riches if we ever found Great-Granddad’s mine. We boys used to scare the hell out of Judy with tales of how his ghost haunts the site.”
Shara gave a slight shiver. “You’d mentioned that some people still believe the site is haunted.”
Tom frowned. “Too bad Eddy Gilgai isn’t one of them. He must have promised to help Horvath find the mine as payback for being exiled from Diamond Downs.”
“Eddy Gilgai was the man your foster father dismissed for stealing, wasn’t he?”
Tom nodded. “He’d been cautioned several times, until Des had no choice but to let him go. He would have been allowed to remain on his traditional land, but his own elders voted to banish him. Evidently he’d stolen from them, too, and messed around with girls who were taboo to him. Tribal law takes such transgressions very seriously.”
She rubbed her calf. “As I learned to my cost.”
His conscience twinged. “Does it still hurt?”
“Seeing the destruction of your home hurts more.”
He rested his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently into his arms. “They’re only things. My insurance will replace them. The main thing is you weren’t here when they came.” Everything in him chilled at the thought.
His mouth hovered over hers and he saw her lashes flutter closed. A sig
h escaped her parted lips. Rattled by what could have happened, he had to taste her again. Only taste.
“What the blazes happened here? I don’t remember a cyclone warning being issued for today.”
Tom wrenched himself away from her as if stung. His foster brother stood in the doorway. “Blake, come in. Sorry I can’t offer you somewhere to sit.”
Blake surveyed the chaos. “Or anything else for that matter. Are you okay?”
“We’re fine. Whoever did this came while we were at the homestead.”
Blake scrubbed a hand over his face. “Any suspects?”
“The obvious ones—Max Horvath and Jamal Sayed. We ran into them near Bowen Creek this morning.”
Blake’s eyebrows lifted. “They didn’t see Shara?”
“She was disguised as Nudge, my current work-experience schoolkid. And she was lying under the car, apparently working on it at the time.”
“That’s about the only way you’d fool anybody into thinking you were a schoolboy,” Blake said to her.
If Blake made just one more untoward comment about Shara, Tom would have to flatten him, he thought, alarmed at the urge to do violence surging through him. His hands were tight fists until he made himself relax them. Blake was only stating the obvious. No call to act like a bull buffalo confronted by a rival.
But he wanted to.
The attack on his home had roused his fighting instincts, he knew. Right now caveman hormones were pouring through him, setting his reflexes to hair trigger. He felt as if he could strangle a tiger with his bare hands if it threatened his woman.
His woman. Now, where had that come from? Just because they’d made love didn’t make her his property. With his family history, he was the last man who could claim her. This fight-or-flight thing was skewing his thought processes worse than he’d allowed for.
He’d instinctively moved between her and Blake, and now he made himself step away. “Shara recorded a meeting between Jamal and his henchmen. Before Jamal caught her, she hid the tape on the plane that brought them here. This morning we were able to retrieve it.”
“Unfortunately, the tape is badly damaged,” she contributed.
