A few years had passed since they had seen each other, but it was nothing so major that they couldn’t pick up where they left off. She had only spent two years in Alaska, and had been back in Texas for a year now. Her life seemed to be moving ahead swiftly. Her career was doing just fine and she was ahead of the game—farther ahead than many people thought she would be at this stage in her life. She hadn’t expected any less because her parents were driven, successful and near genius it seemed, in their professions. Anything less from her would have been a betrayal of the way they raised her and the education they gave her.
“You know Kelly and I broke up the same year you moved to Alaska,” he stated, not asked.
“I heard…that is I knew you might. She had something on the side in California—at least that’s what I found out when I went through on my way to interview for the Alaska job—it was my third interview, but it was my first in person interview. I told her she was wrong, that she had no right to hurt you like that. She said some things that hurt me and we stopped being friends. What happened to her after that I wasn’t really sure until now. I kind of put her out of my mind and my life and I moved onward.”
He nodded. “I tried to do the same. I ended up in a couple not so great relationships, one ended badly because she cheated on me too.”
“Gosh, Alex. You just sell yourself short too often. You can do so much better than somebody who doesn’t appreciate what she has.”
He laughed. “Yeah, where were you when I needed to hear that?” He chuckled playfully as he drove to his home in Hill Country. “Anyway, the other lady, Carissa…well, that just didn’t work out too well. I thought we might make something of us, but she seemed to side with my family more on what I should want for my life. They liked her though. She’s a successful business woman so of course they liked her.”
She laughed. “Well at least you were able to move on.”
“I’m not seeing anybody, Zahara.” He turned up a long drive. She hadn’t been to his home since he bought it. She knew he had bought one because her mother had let that little detail slip over one of their phone conversations.
“You’re still pining over her?”
“No. I’m over it. Enough time has passed, for me anyway, and I’m over it. Next time I’ll be smarter about it.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Next time.” Next time probably wouldn’t be with her, no matter how much she wanted it to be.
“I can’t go to Egypt in this.”
“Natalia has you covered; trust me on that. She’ll get you something to wear. The two of you aren’t the same height, but I’m sure she can either find you something in her closet or get Micah to take her by the mall to get you whatever you need before the mall closes.”
She grinned. “Thank you. I’ll have to pay her back for this. My wearing this outfit to Egypt could get me killed.”
“Anybody wants to get to you they’ll have to go through me,” he said seriously—so seriously it sounded lethal—maybe it sounded so lethal because it was a threat of finality. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her. “You should remember that about me, Zahara. Nobody messes with my friends and gets away with it.”
Friends…that’s what they were, and that’s what she should get used to being. Why couldn’t he look at her the way those other men Ariana told her about looked at her? Ariana had sworn that her beauty attracted men. Why couldn’t it attract this man? She wanted him to notice. She was wearing such a reveling costume compared to the way he had seen her before and still he didn’t notice. Maybe she just wasn’t his type.
“Home sweet home,” he said as he pulled into the garage. He got out the car and jogged around to open her door, but she had already opened the door, got out the car and closed the door before turning around to find him looming over her.
“What?” She stammered. He didn’t look happy.
“I was going to get the door for you, Zahara.”
“Oh,” she smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. “I don’t know any men who do that.”
“Then you don’t know the right men,” he said dryly as he moved closer to her. She took a step back and felt the coolness of the steel caress her spine. She took an immediate step forward because she didn’t want any of the decorations on her clothes to scratch his car. She wasn’t wearing the traditional noisy coin belt, but that didn’t mean the few beads on her hip scarf wouldn’t scratch up his vehicle. Her movement forward brought her extremely close to him. She tilted her head back to look up at him.
“Maybe I should have a talk with your boyfriend,” he stretched one arm out, placing the palm of his hand on the car and bringing his body closer to hers. “Maybe I need to teach him how to treat a lady.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she whispered. “We broke up.” They had broken up before she left Alaska, when he realized her heart wasn’t into their relationship because she had already given it to somebody else. She didn’t know why she had gone out with Dennis. He wasn’t her type. She didn’t like him. He hated astronomy, science and anything else dealing with nature, and he liked to hunt which she hated. She hated the entire process of people killing animals for sport. Food was one thing, but sport was just a pathetic man’s attempt to dominate everything in his path and she hated it. Why had she gone out with him again? Oh right, her mother had been in town and convinced her to say yes to the man’s constant nagging. After that she just thought she would try to make it work, but the harder she tried the more she saw a man she didn’t want to be with. He wasn’t Alex. He wasn’t even close. Two things were wrong with that admission; the first thing was that it wasn’t fair to Dennis to look at him as a replacement for the man she couldn’t have, and the second was that there just wasn’t another Alex out there to be found. Alex was one of a kind, one hundred percent goodness and she knew no matter how far she searched, no matter how hard she searched, she would never find another like him.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she shook her head. “We should…um…we should go inside; don’t you think?”
He looked her over, those green eyes nearly peering through her. She felt her stomach fluttering like a thousand butterflies were having a party in there. He smiled and shrugged. “Sure. Let’s get some food in you so your stomach can stop growling.”
“What?”
He laughed. “Your stomach has been talking to you since you got in the car.”
She hadn’t heard it. She laughed. She hadn’t eaten much more than fruit and cheese before the show because she was too nervous and she was afraid her nerves wouldn’t keep anything heavier down. Maybe those butterflies weren’t butterflies at all. Maybe she was just reacting to her hunger for food instead of her hunger for the man in front of her.
Once again he placed his hand on the small of her back and ushered her forward. This time when he opened the door she allowed him to hold it for her. She waited on the other side until he had locked the door from the garage into the washroom and then led her deeper into his abode. Every touch of his hand on her body made her want him more. She shouldn’t have felt this, not now, not after all these years, but she did feel it—she still loved him, still wanted him. She couldn’t have him and she needed to find a way to deal with that; to deal with their “just friends” relationship. She didn’t want to lose the friendship, not again. She wouldn’t lose the friendship. So she put on her bold woman face and hid her passion for him from him. Her focus needed to be on getting Ariana back home safely, not on getting Alex to make love to her.
Chapter Six
Preston hadn’t been asleep when the door opened. It wasn’t time for the bathroom break they had given him when they saw fit to. Those bathroom breaks had been interesting seeing as though they covered his head with a black cloth before unshackling him, only to remove it once he was by the toilet. He would guess they didn’t want him to get a look at the view outside.
He surveyed the situation. There was only one guard this time so that told him h
e wasn’t about to be unshackled. What surprised him was when a man walked in carrying a woman with a cloth over her head and he placed her down on the floor gently. Who was she?
“You have company until he comes. You die, she goes with him. Don’t get attached,” the man laughed as he left and closed the door behind him, locking it once again. The woman was clearly unconscious, but she hadn’t stayed that way for long. He would estimate that fifteen minutes passed and then she roused. She pushed up into a seated position and yanked the cloth from over her head. He cleared his throat to try to alert her to his presence. She turned sharply, the look of anger on her face turned to surprise and recognition.
“Ariana?”
“Preston?” She sat there and stared at him in shock. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” and he truly meant that. He didn’t know, but what he did know was that if they were both here that couldn’t be good. “Do they know who you are; that we were married?”
She crawled over to him and studied his face, his body. “Are you hurt?”
“Answer my question first, Ariana.”
She shook her head no. “I don’t think so. I awakened once, but I couldn’t see them. I heard their voices, but I’m not really sure,” she shook her head. She placed her hand on her chest, letting her fingers slightly trace her neck. “I gave my locket to Zahara before my dance because she had a spot on her outfit where it would fit without falling out. They wouldn’t have seen the picture.”
“You still have that locket?”
“Of course,” she said. He looked at her hands and he saw the ring he had given her still on her finger, not the finger he had placed it on, but still on it nonetheless. “Are you hurt?”
“Not yet,” he said. “How did they get you?”
She shrugged. “That’s the million dollar question. I don’t remember much. I went back to my dressing room. There were flowers that I received before the show with instructions not to open the card until after my first dance. I went back after Zahara danced and I remember picking up the card; I remember opening it and I think there was kind of a puff of something…I don’t know, it was kind of a surprise like the popup books. I don’t remember anything after that. Except when I came to it was dark. I don’t think they realized I was awake at first, but the moment they did they stuck me with a needle and once again everything went black until I awakened here, with you.” She looked around and then back at him. “Where are we?”
“Egypt I think. At least that’s where I was before I ended up in here.”
She nodded. “This is bad isn’t it?”
“You could say that,” he said dryly. “Does anybody know you’re missing—that is do you think anybody knows you’re missing?”
“Zahara should. She was supposed to come to my dressing room. And if I’m in Egypt I would guess everybody else should know by now too. I have to admit they did it the smart way. Everybody would have been so busy with the show, getting ready for their dances, that it would have been a while before anybody noticed I wasn’t there. Not that I go off the radar often, but you know it’s just so busy and chaotic that I think it would have been long enough for them to leave unnoticed.”
“Then for your sake and mine I hope this Zahara noticed you were gone sooner rather than later.”
“Me too. But why would it matter for you if she noticed?”
“She would have reported it. It would have made the news and I’m hoping my guys would have seen it and put my missed check in with my missing ex-wife together and know to come find me. Of course I’d much rather get myself out of here instead of waiting for rescue. What day is it?”
“It was Friday when they took me. I don’t know, maybe Saturday by now.”
“Can you see out that window there?”
“I’ll try,” she said as she got to her feet and went to the set of bars, lifting on tiptoe enough to look out. “Desert,” she said. “That’s all I see is sand and nothingness.”
“Egypt,” they both agreed simultaneously. She came back to sit beside him.
“How are your legs feeling?”
He shrugged. “They’ll be fine. I have been moving them as much as I can.”
She nodded before kneeling beside him. She went to touch him and for some reason he pulled away. “I’m just trying to help,” she said softly and he reminded himself to relax—if that were at all possible. She started to slowly massage one leg, starting at his ankle and working her way up to his thigh. She spent a good deal of time on that one before moving to the other. She always did have the magic touch that could both relax and arouse him and right now was no different. He was shackled to a wall and all he could think about was how good her hands would feel if they went just a little farther in a north eastwardly direction.
“This is so not good,” she mumbled. “I don’t even have my passport.”
“Seriously?” He looked at her. Was she seriously worried about the fact that she had left the country—unwillingly actually—without her passport?
She stopped what she was doing to look in his eyes. “How am I supposed to get back into the country without my passport?”
He growled low. “When we get out of here you can believe me when I tell you that we’re going to be getting back in the U.S. with or without passports. We’ll fly back in under the radar if we have to.”
“You’re taking me with you?”
“Did you doubt that I would, Ariana?”
She looked at him briefly before turning her attention back to the massage she was giving him. “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t think you would leave me here.”
“Good. Just because you left me doesn’t mean I would abandon you.” He hadn’t meant for those words to come out, but they had. He was tired, angry and maybe the control he thought he had and would have when he saw her was just gone.
“Are you kidding me?!” She looked at him with sheer anger in her eyes.
Oh great, now he had pissed her off and Ariana pissed off wasn’t fun on a good day, let alone one that was this bad. Well she had left him. He saw no need to skirt the issue now that the words had left his mouth. “You sent me papers, Ariana.”
“You told me that your career, that the Air Force, was the most important thing in your life.”
“And?”
She chuckled and shook her head, moving away from him, sitting back and settling down faster than he thought she would. “Our marriage should have been the most important thing, Preston. I never asked you to give anything up. I never asked you to not care about your military career. I never asked you to abandon what you clearly saw as your sole responsibility, but I wanted you to care as much, maybe even more, about our marriage—about us. Our marriage should have been the most important thing. It was for me, and I wanted it to be for you as well. Clearly it wasn’t for you so I moved on.”
“Ariana—”
“Forget it, Preston. Now is not the time to discuss any of this.”
Before he could open his mouth to defend himself the doors were opening once again. The bald one came in this time. He looked to Ariana. “Come,” he said flatly. She slowly pulled herself from the floor and looked back to Preston. He tried to pull on the chains holding him back. The look on her face was one of fear, yet still she found a way to calm his futile rage. He could not do anything to help her and if they didn’t know that she was his ex-wife he didn’t want to give it away. She mouthed the word “no” to settle him, and he settled. He felt helpless as he watched her being taken from the room and the door closing behind her. If she didn’t return, if they hurt her, then escape wouldn’t be his only mission. He was going to kill them all, starting with the woman who set him up in the first place and ending with the bastard who orchestrated this charade.
“Hello, Ceridwen”
“Ariana,” she said defiantly as she looked to Panhsj. He was the man who had come in to see her while she prepared for the show. He worked for somebody, but right now she couldn’t remember the
man’s name, just that he had been fascinated with her dancing. “What is this about?”
He grinned bigger than the Cheshire cat and that grin sent a shiver of fear racing up her spine. She was, however, defiant to the core and she wouldn’t show her fear, not to this man, not to any of them. There had only been one man in her life that she allowed to see the full range of her emotions and that man had thrown her away for a plane in the military.
“I told you when we met, Ceridwen—”
“Ariana,” she stipulated. Ceridwen was her dance name, not her off stage name and if he were going to hold her prisoner the least he could do was use her right name.
On the Line Page 7
