“You rat! You used me to smuggle it into Tangiers! You used me again!” Dana swung out at him, flailing wildly. Filled with anger and self-disgust, she regretted every minute she’d spent in his lying arms.
Alex tried to protect himself from her attack and reason with her at the same time. “Stop for a minute. Just listen!” He grabbed her shoulders and guided her toward the bed where she fell back with him on top. Suddenly Alex started laughing.
Dana saw red. “Don’t you dare laugh! This isn’t funny.”
“But it’s getting to be a habit. In order to make you listen, I have to fall on you!”
Dana’s response was to start struggling again, but he pinned her down easily. “Now,” he said, “we can talk like civilized people.”
“Civilized?” she snapped. “You? Never!”
Despite her struggles, he managed to kiss her. Dana turned her face away. “Not this time, Alex. I won’t give in.”
“But you will, Dana, when you hear my plan.”
“I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want—”
He raised his voice, drowning out her protests. “I’m donating the elephant to a museum.”
Dana quit struggling and lay absolutely still, immobilized by surprise. Finally, she found her voice. “You’re doing what?”
“Donating it to a museum. I’ll need your help in working out the details.”
“You’d never do that. Not after all you went through—after all we went through.”
“Yes, I would. Because I love you, Dana Baldwin, and I don’t want to live another day of my life without you.”
Dana let a deep sigh of happiness escape her lips before remembering what he’d done. “You say you love me, but you still used me to smuggle the Elephant d’Or out of Kenya? What if I’d been caught?”
“Never would have happened, not with all those American embassy types hovering around you.”
“Let me up,” she said, pushing at him.
Alex moved, and Dana sat up, rearranging her clothes.
“You could have told me,” she said angrily.
“You would have refused.”
“True. Still, you used me. You knew how painful it was for me to say goodbye, and you let me suffer.”
“It was hard for me, too. I wanted to keep you in my arms forever, but I had to get the elephant out. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“Eventually, but only because you’re doing the honorable thing by giving it to a museum.”
Alex groaned, rolled over and sat beside her. “Don’t turn me into some kind of a hero.”
“But what you’re doing is honorable.” She started to reach out for him and then caught herself. “Wait a minute, Alex. If you’d decided to give the elephant to a museum, why did you go to all the trouble of hiding it inside the teak statue and having me smuggle it out? You could have made plans to donate it from Nairobi—from anywhere.”
For a moment he didn’t answer.
“Alex?”
“I guess I have some more explaining to do,” he conceded.
“I guess so,” she agreed, moving away from him to the other end of the bed.
Alex spoke quietly, not looking at Dana. “I never planned to give the elephant up, not when I gave it to you to smuggle out for me, not even after you left with it.”
She watched him with no idea what he was going to say, her emotions whirling.
“When you left Nairobi, I knew we’d see each other again.”
“Because I had the elephant,” she said flatly.
“Yes,” he replied. “I planned to get it from you and leave. That’s the kind of thing I’ve always done, but I didn’t count on my feelings for you. I didn’t count on missing you so much. Twenty-four hours after you left Nairobi I realized I couldn’t live without you.” Alex still hadn’t looked at Dana.
Finally, he turned toward her and took her hand. “I knew that you were worth any sacrifice. The Elephant d’Or is the biggest prize I’d ever gotten my hands on, but next to you, it’s nothing.” Then he added, “I’m sorry about sending you through customs with the elephant, but believe me, you were never in any danger.”
“Danger’s not the point, Alex. It’s trust,” she said softly. “And love.”
“I know that now. And I know that I need to make some changes in my life, and I need you to help me.”
Dana pressed his hand against her cheek. “You can deny it, but to me you’re a hero,” she insisted, “and to be honest, before you got here, I’d been thinking of returning to Kenya to look for you, elephant or no elephant.”
“Going back to look for me? Why?”
“To tell you that I love you and want to be with you. And to work out a compromise about the elephant.”
“Then I turn up and offer to donate the elephant to a museum.” Alex’s green eyes narrowed speculatively. “Wait a minute. Would you have considered another option?”
“Maybe. But it’s too late now. You’ve already volunteered to give it up.”
“I could be talked out of that.”
“Oh, no. A deal’s a deal.” Then she frowned. “But how do you know a museum will take the elephant off your hands?”
Alex smiled knowingly. “The most reputable museums—the Prado, the Louvre, even New York’s Metropolitan—have been known to accept gifts with less that perfect credentials. And usually they offer a nice fat finder’s fee.”
“I should have known your intentions weren’t totally altruistic.”
“Of course not,” he agreed cheerfully. “I might even get into a little bidding game by adding the Portuguese government to the mix. Wonder what they’d pay for the return of their fabled elephant, no questions asked?”
“Don’t be greedy, Alex.”
“Don’t worry. I only want enough money for you and me to get settled here in Tangiers.”
“You and me?” she repeated.
“Yes, us. Unless you have other ideas. Maybe you don’t want to give up your old life?”
Dana’s heart was dancing wildly. “I’m dying to give it up,” she told him, “but what would we do here?”
“You could study at the institute and work on your father’s papers. Your papers now. And I could—well, I could always open a bar. I know a little about that.”
“You wouldn’t get bored after a while?”
Alex took her hand and kissed her fingers one by one. “I used to be a wanderer, but that was before I met you.” He kissed her lips then, slowly, hungrily and thoroughly. “And if we get bored—”
“We can always take a ride down the Congo,” she suggested.
“Or a trek through the jungle.”
Dana hugged him exuberantly. “I’ll go anywhere,” she said. “As long as I’m with you.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8376-3
Tall, Dark and Deadly
Copyright © 1995 by Madeline Porter and Shannon Harper
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