As a compromise she pushed the struggling form, sending it falling to the floor. But when she regained her own balance, ready to run, it was to discover that Hassan, huffing and puffing, was running into the room. The whole screen was blazing now, and smoke was everywhere.
Hassan looked ready to kill. Colleen turned and ran across the bed. Hassan followed her, staggering this time. If she could run quickly…
She started to run toward the door, hope soaring in her heart. But even as she ran, she screamed. Something flew hard against her. Something warm and breathing and living that seemed to have flown straight through the window….
She winced with pain, tears flooding her eyes as she hit the floor. Dazed, she realized that it couldn’t be Hassan. Hassan was on the bed. The thing was gone from her—and it wasn’t a thing. It was a body, a man. That man was standing on the bed over Hassan, shouting furiously, ready to pounce like a tiger.
Colleen gasped, astonished. “Bret!”
Someone raced into the room, a young man. Stunned, Colleen gasped out his name. “Ben!”
Colleen struggled to her knees. Bret was still swearing at Hassan, trying to drag him up by the back of his shirt.
“Stop!” Ben pleaded with him. “The fire. We’ve got to get out of here!”
Hassan said something, and the young man answered him. Then he spoke to Bret. “Mr. McAllistair, leave him! Let’s get out of here! This man is not at fault. He purchased her through an arrangement. Dear Allah, let’s go before his friends arrive!”
Bret was staring at Hassan again with fury and the lust for vengeance in his eyes. Colleen was still on her knees, stunned and amazed. Bret was here, in Morocco. And Ben was with him.
“Mr. McAllistair!” the young man pleaded.
For another long moment Bret held Hassan in a death grip. Then he dropped both the shirt and the man and leaped from the bed to Colleen, reaching down to drag her to her feet. Dimly she saw Hassan getting up, and she heard more footsteps.
“Let’s go!” Ben pleaded.
He led the way. Bret followed, pulling Colleen. Outside the door they passed a number of heavily veiled women racing along with buckets of water and blankets.
They ignored the fire brigade and pelted down a stairway. The house was a blur to Colleen. She saw a courtyard and another door, and then she was out in the night, her wrist still clutched in Bret’s hand. They ran out to a clay wall, and then they were running down the empty street. Far ahead Colleen could see a large black automobile. Its engine was suddenly gunned.
She could barely breathe; her side ached from running, and tears stung her eyes. Bret was here; she was with him, and she was free of Hassan. Ben hadn’t set her up; he had somehow met Bret and brought him to save her. Oh, God! She was so relieved and grateful.
“You stupid, stupid idiot!” Bret rasped out at her as they neared the car. “God Almighty, woman, I don’t believe you have an ounce of sense in your entire frilly head!”
The chilling disdain of his words sent gratitude falling from her like a discarded coat. She stiffened, feeling his hand at the small of her back as he opened the rear car door. Ben was racing around to the front.
“Idiot!” Colleen swung around, pushing Bret’s hand away. “And I suppose you think you’re some damned kind of Errol Flynn? I was out of there before you ever made your appearance, Mr. Wonderful.”
His voice dropped to a low and furious pitch. In the moonlight his eyes glittered like silver knives, narrowing in on her. “You ungrateful little bitch! Next time you’re determined to kill yourself, I’ll be damned if I’ll stop you.”
“Please!” Ben called. “Get in the car.”
Both of them had the good sense to look back. It seemed that a flock of black crows was flying after them; a score of servants had rushed from Hassan’s clay manor.
Colleen felt herself shoved into the car next to another body. She issued a long exclamation of shock when she recognized Sandy Tyrell, and then saw that an old man—looking dignified, even in the darkness—sat on Sandy’s other side.
“Sandy!”
“Are you all right? I had to come after I realized the danger I had sent you into!” Sandy said earnestly.
Ben jerked the taxi into a shrieking tailspin, and they sent dust flying onto the horde behind them.
Colleen gripped the seat. “I’m, uh, fine.”
“You shouldn’t be!” Bret snapped from the front seat.
“Oh, honestly!”
“Bret, please,” someone else said from the front seat, someone with a familiar voice.
“Carly!”
“Hi, sweetie,” Carly said pleasantly. He twisted around to grimace. “Couldn’t miss out on this one.”
She thought she heard a low growl rumble from Bret’s throat. He sounded like an enraged Doberman held in control by an invisible leash.
Colleen ignored him and looked past Sandy to the old man, a forced smile on her lips. “How do you do? And if you don’t mind my asking, who are you?”
He chuckled softly. “General James MacHowell.”
“MacHowell!” Colleen echoed. The same awful fear she’d experienced earlier seemed to crash over her like a waterfall. She was ready to jump over Sandy and throttle the old man, but she didn’t. She screamed at him instead, her voice shaking. “You bastard! You set me up! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Colleen!” Bret snapped. “If it weren’t for the general, we might never have found you.”
“It’s true, my dear,” Carly told her.
“But Eli was the contact! Your contact!”
MacHowell was shaking his head sadly. “Eli is a free agent. It’s true he knew where to find me. But Eli has a tendency to work for the highest bidder.”
“And you, Colleen, have a tendency to be an idiot,” Bret said dryly.
Colleen’s eyes jerked from MacHowell to Bret. It was very dark as they moved along the rutted dirt road; she could see only the shadow of his profile, but it was enough to tell her that his jaw was set at a furious angle. God! She’d wanted to see him so badly; she’d longed for him; she’d been so sorry for all that she had done.
And now here he was, behaving like a whip-cracking staff sergeant. Her eyes seemed to burn with sudden moisture, and she stiffened with furious resolve. “Bret, I repeat, I was doing fine without you. With or without your dramatic entrance, I was on my way out.”
He turned in his seat so abruptly that he startled Ben, who was left to struggle with the veering car as he jerked the wheel. Sandy gasped, but Bret didn’t seem to notice.
“On your way out! To where? How far would you have gotten before Hassan’s people came after you? And, Mrs. McAllistair, Hassan was nothing more than a minor torment. A night’s discomfort. You would have survived Hassan.”
She didn’t understand the look on his face or the way his fingers seemed to tremble, as if more than anger were goading him.
Suddenly she remembered Eli’s words to her. “Someone dislikes you very much.”
She swallowed, trembling with a cold fear that coursed along her spine. Her mouth felt dry. “I—I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“You were about to become a star in the East, Colleen. Hassan…has uses for women in his business deals.”
“What? You’re crazy! He thought I was a prostitute, or so Eli warned me. He would have—”
Bret turned around, effectively ending the conversation. General MacHowell spoke much more gently than Bret would have. “He would have turned you over to one or more of his partners, Mrs. McAllistair. I’m afraid such things are reality here. Women have few rights. You would have disappeared, American or no. And as long as you were appealing and useful, you would have survived. As soon as you caused too much trouble, you probably would have fallen into a canal or something of the sort.”
“Oh, God!” she said, gasping. She swallowed hard, afraid that she was going to get sick or faint.
Sandy suddenly clutched her hand, trying to offer
some kind of support, but Bret didn’t turn around. It was silent in the car. Then she turned to search out MacHowell’s eyes again.
“I don’t understand this! If you didn’t set me up, who did?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Bret gave a snort. “There’s only one party left who it could be.”
“Holfer? Rudy Holfer?” Colleen whispered.
“MacHowell thinks he’s here, too,” Bret said stiffly. “He’s never seen him, but he believes it.”
Again Colleen started to shiver. What kind of a human being could so coldly and calculatedly have set up the entire thing? Her kidnapping and sale—through a third party—to men capable of thinking of her only as a commodity, to be disposed of when they were through!
The same person who had ordered Rutger’s death.
And the only suspect left was Rudy Holfer, the German who had been transferred to the elite SS corps of the Third Reich just before he had disappeared.
“Oh, God!” she whispered again.
Bret seemed to suddenly explode from the front seat. “Idiotic…brat!”
“Children, children, please!” Carly interrupted pleasantly. “Bret, I really think we’ve had enough excitement for the night without causing poor Ben to drive off the road. You’re wrecking his nerves. We have a long drive ahead of us.”
“And you’ll all come back to my place, of course, where we can sort this bloody thing out,” MacHowell said easily. Colleen could have sworn that he winked at her. “In warfare, my dear, you learn that the most frightening battle, once it’s over, must be considered a battle won. And then, of course, it is time to go on to the next.” He smiled. “You do realize that we now have three pieces of the puzzle. And each other. We’ll get some sleep and look at everything afresh in the morning.”
In the morning…
It was almost morning, Colleen realized. Her second morning in Morocco. And Bret was here.
And they were already three-quarters of the way through the puzzle.
* * *
The sky was pink when they reached Marrakech. MacHowell’s place was actually on the outskirts of the city, but Colleen’s luggage had to be retrieved from her hotel. She and Bret were careful not to speak to each other except in necessary monosyllables; they were both tired and furious yet determined not to explode again in front of the others.
After picking up Colleen’s luggage Ben began driving to MacHowell’s residence. He seemed depressed until MacHowell casually invited him to stay, too. “You might as well, dear boy. You’ve been in on things this far!”
It was about seven o’clock when they drove through a set of immense wrought-iron gates and approached a marvelous, two-storied estate in the native shell pink. It had romantic Moorish archways and endless balconies and towers; the arches were framed with dazzling tiles, and the entryway was an elegant study in marble. Surveying the place, Colleen found herself surreptitiously watching MacHowell and wondering if he hadn’t found the diamonds years ago. Surely this mansion had cost an arm and a leg, even on the outskirts of Marrakech.
He must have noticed her gaze because she found him watching her with a sad, little smile as they crawled out of the car.
“Family money, my dear. After the war I sold all my holdings in England. There was nothing left for me there except guilt. I came to Morocco and bought a tile factory.”
She nodded, lowering her head, not sure if she believed him or not.
A slim woman in a caftan and a man clad in a robe hurried down the steps. MacHowell said something in Arabic; the two nodded and hurried back up to the house.
“Fatima and Abhad will have rooms ready for you in a few minutes. We’ll have coffee in the courtyard.”
Seconds later they were all in the courtyard, gazing about with fascination. There was a fountain in the center, tinkling melodiously and catching the reflection of the rising sun. Massive stairways leading to the living quarters flanked the tiled courtyard. Carly commented idly that someone could do a story on MacHowell’s estate alone.
MacHowell served them all coffee in delicate china cups. Ben leaned back against a pillar and stared about him. Carly wandered around, and Sandy and MacHowell sat across from one another at a little table and began to speak in quiet tones, MacHowell telling her all the good things he could think of about her grandfather.
Colleen tried to keep her distance from Bret. His eyes were red rimmed from lack of sleep, his hair was disheveled and his chin sported a night’s growth of tawny beard. She wasn’t ready to offer her gratitude to him yet. She was still too stunned by recent events, both threatened and real, and too hurt by his anger and total lack of tenderness. And too tired. She was afraid that if they tangled now, it would be a cat fight. They both needed sleep.
MacHowell’s houseman, Abhad, returned quickly to say that their rooms were ready. Colleen was relieved. She felt a bit like falling apart and was praying that she wouldn’t until she was alone. She murmured a thank-you to MacHowell along with the others and nodded when they all agreed to adjourn at three o’clock in the courtyard.
But as soon as they reached the top of the stairway, she knew she was in trouble. Abhad pushed open the door to a huge, breezy room with a view of the distant mountains and indicated that it was to be Bret’s.
Bret gripped her wrist. “Thanks, Abhad. My wife and I will be very comfortable here.”
Colleen stiffened, too nervous and tired for one of his private tirades. She was also keenly aware of the others around them and of the warning silver sizzle in his eyes.
She smiled. “Bret, we’re both so exhausted…” Her voice trailed away with the silent reminder: and everyone here knows that we’re in the process of a divorce!
His smile was even more pleasant than hers. His voice might have been the most congenial purr. “Sweetheart, I wouldn’t dream of letting you out of my sight again.”
A slight push against her back sent her stumbling unprepared into the room. Bret told the others quietly, “Good night. 3:00 P.M.”
Then he closed the door, turned around and leaned against it—and stared at her like the cat who had just cornered the canary.
CHAPTER 9
“Bret, I am not sleeping in this room with you!”
“Why not? You didn’t have any problems the other night.”
“I didn’t intend—”
“Oh, I know you didn’t. You intended to charm me into a stupor and nothing more. But…” He lifted his arms in a helpless gesture. “‘The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.’ Robert Burns wrote that, I believe.” He sounded polite. Very cordial.
Nerve-rackingly cordial. And he was smiling now, leaning against the door. “And your plans did go slightly astray, didn’t they?”
“My plans?” She reiterated sweetly. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the one who sat over at Carly’s swilling Scotch all day. I didn’t have a damned thing to do with it.”
“Ah. I see. The dinner, the whirlpool, the wine…that was all just because you’re really sweet and giving at heart, right?”
“Why not?” Colleen returned with nervous bravado. Damn him. He looked good. He was standing there goading her, and he looked good. Disheveled, bearded, bleary-eyed and all, he looked wonderful to her. And all in all, whatever his motive, he had come flying through a window, ready to do battle for her. Besides, he was right. How far would she have gotten? She swallowed, chilled at the thought of having been caught. Returned to Hassan, then passed on when he was through with her.
If only he hadn’t yelled at her with such furious hostility. If only…
If only what? she wondered bleakly. They were constantly at odds. Constantly going in different directions. Constantly fighting.
And he had a tendency to win. He would win tonight. But she wasn’t going down without a fight. Not when this little interlude of his was going to cost her all over again in heartbreak.
His lashes lowered; then he rubbed his stu
bbly chin with his palm and grimaced. “I see. You were all charm, Colleen. It was sheer accident that you forgot to warn me that you intended to run out in the morning. To Marrakech, of all places. One man has already been murdered, but you blithely run off to Marrakech. A slip and nothing more.”
Colleen turned around to walk over to the window. Beyond her lay a fertile oasis of palms and brush, and behind that, far away, rose the mountains, gold and mellow with the morning. The floor beneath her was fabulously tiled and scattered with rich Persian rugs. The bed was massive, larger than king-size, and covered with a handwoven brocade spread. The dressers and wardrobes and end tables were low and Moorish and beautifully carved. She could see the open door to the bath, done all in white, with curved windows and a massive, round, claw-foot tub that seemed to beckon.
Two people. This was a perfect place for two.
She closed her eyes. She was crazy. She had been crazy to get so close to him again, crazy to make love with him. Crazy to risk an involvement that could only end in pain. That would end completely in divorce court, not even a month from now.
She turned around. He was still leaning against the door, watching her lazily. Like a smug cat again, pawing away at the canary playfully—before the kill.
“Really, Bret, think about the situation. It would be best if we didn’t sleep together.”
“You’re welcome to the floor.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to drag you into bed against your will, Colleen, even if you do deserve a little dose of your own medicine. A little good old-fashioned treachery. But I’m too damned tired to play games. I’m not going to attack you, seduce you or touch you. But neither do I intend to let you out of my sight again.”
Colleen clutched her fingers together, not sure if she was relieved, insulted or heartbroken. She was tired, though, and dangerously close to tears. She’d wanted to be competent, but now, more than anything, she wanted to be held and cherished and assured that everything was going to be all right. Even if it were a fantasy.
But he didn’t want her.
“Well?” he inquired lightly.
Double Entendre Page 15
