After their frightening ordeal at the creek that afternoon, the children had eaten and gone to bed early. The house was quiet now, save for the voices of the tiny people in the box. She liked to rest here in this pleasant room, with its comfortable furniture and a carpet as decorative as one that might have belonged to a sheikh. For nostalgic reasons, Nesrin had placed the brass lamp on a wide shelf above the rock fireplace. Parker had not objected.
She sensed his arrival in the room before she heard him. Perhaps all of those years in the lamp had made her senses particularly acute. At least, when it came to Parker that seemed to be the case. She caught his special masculine scent on the lightest movement of air, a mixture of leather and sunshine. Even from a distance, she became aware of his nearness from the heat that radiated from his body. And always, she felt drawn to him.
“Can we talk, Nesrin?”
She glanced up and smiled. “If you wish it.”
In a few easy strides, he crossed the living room and pressed the button that made the box go dark. He had bathed before dinner and his sand-colored hair still curled damply at the nape of his neck. She remembered when he had released her from the lamp she had linked her fingers around the back of his neck and felt the spun gold of his hair. She wished she could relive the same experience again but knew she did not dare.
In her mind’s eye, she saw herself in his arms. They would sway together in the same way she had seen men and women dancing inside the television. Parker would be strong, holding her tightly. And she would mold her body against his. Then he might press his lips to hers in what she had learned was a kiss. The music would swell, her heart flutter with joy.
It was a lovely image that teased through her mind, but when she blinked it was gone and Parker was frowning at her.
He stood in front of the television, his legs spread slightly apart, his arms folded across his chest. He appeared troubled, puzzled. And very stern.
He shook his head as though to rid himself of unwelcome thoughts.
Nesrin shifted uneasily on the couch. Surely he had not seen the vision of them dancing together.
He cleared his throat. “Is there anyone who might have known you were planning to come to the States?”
“I do not think so.” She had not known so herself.
“Well, Louanne tells me there were a couple of guys in town asking about Marge. I figure they might have been looking for you.”
Anxiety prickled along her spine. “What did they look like?”
“Dark hair, middle-aged.”
Nesrin’s eyes widened. “Did one have a long, beaklike nose and black eyes filled with evil?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know about that. But if there’s somebody looking for you, I need to—”
“A tattoo?” Her voice hitched. “Did either of them have a tattoo on his thumb?” Nesrin fought a rising sense of panic.
“Yeah,” he said slowly, a frown pressing his eyebrows into a straight line. “A snake. On his thumb.”
Terror drove Nesrin to her feet. “It’s Rasheyd! He’s come after me!” By all that was holy, it was not fair. She had done nothing wrong. She had not submitted to another. The wizard had no need to track her down like some rabid wolf stalking a helpless victim.
She shivered and hugged herself. “You must help me escape, Parker. I’ll hide in the mountains. There must be a cave. Somewhere safe. I can’t go back into the lamp. I can’t...” Her voice trailed off into a shuddering sob. The thought of renewed darkness terrified her...that and the knowledge that if she were sent back into the lamp she would never see Parker again.
Parker did the only thing he could. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. She trembled against him, small and fragile, and needing his protection. In all of his years of facing danger, even leading young, untried troops, he’d never known anyone so thoroughly frightened. He wanted to find this Rasheyd character and flatten him. No one had a right to terrorize a woman this way.
And Nesrin, he realized, was at heart a brave woman. She’d traveled across the globe on her own. She’d ridden the wildest stallion without an ounce of fear. Somehow she’d managed to save Amy. And she damn well didn’t deserve this kind of treatment from any man—even if it was her brother, or worse, a husband she hadn’t told him about.
That last thought tightened a knot in his gut. He didn’t want her to have a husband—estranged or otherwise. He wanted her all to himself. Permanently. His need to hold her, dance with her was so powerful he could almost imagine the feel of her in his arms, as though he were recalling something that had actually happened and not a dream inspirated by his frustration.
“Nesrin, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I can’t help you if you don’t.”
With a shuddering sigh, she lifted her face, and he used his thumbs to wipe tears from her cheeks. Her skin was warm and so soft he ached to do more than simply brush away a few tears.
“You will not...believe me,” she said.
“Try me.”
She did.
She told him incredible things, slowly at first and then with more authority. He didn’t for an instant doubt that she believed her wild tale. She was too wrapped up in the story to be faking such outrageous lies. But what sane person could believe in ancient curses, an evil wizard with a tattoo, emeralds and rubies, and being condemned inside a lamp for centuries?
“Just how many households have you been in?” he asked, trying to play along and at the same time glean information about who might be looking for her...or Marge.
“Dozens. So many I have lost track. Sometimes, for long years at a time, the lamp was put away in some silent place. Perhaps a storeroom. I could not be sure.”
“How come someone would buy the lamp and then not use it?”
“No flame would stay lit, for which I was very grateful. Had they burned a wick too long, I might not have survived.”
Right. It probably would have shortened her life expectancy by a couple of hundred years. “So what did you do all this time?”
“When I was a part of a household—as I was with your sister—I listened very hard so I could learn their language. I speak several Arabic tongues, plus Turkish, German and, of course, English.”
“Of course,” he echoed. It all sounded so logical the way Nesrin told the story, but Parker knew damn well there wasn’t a grain of truth in a word she’d said. There couldn’t be. Though he was pretty darn sure this man named Rasheyd had traumatized her, Parker figured the rest of the story was her way of coping with painful memories. Sometimes men broke under fire and reacted in the same way. He could understand that.
She looked at him guilelessly. Lord, he wanted to protect her and make everything all right.
“You say this all started during the Crusades?” he asked. He’d been tracking her as she paced around the room, holding her when she became so overwrought she couldn’t speak, and giving her room when she needed it.
“I believe that is what your historians have called that time. I know my people feared attacks from the infidels in the north.”
“But you don’t know the man looking for Marge is this Rasheyd fellow you’re worried about. Not after nine hundred years, give or take a few centuries.”
Her gaze darted around the room as if she expected a bogeyman to pop out of the woodwork. “Who else could it be?”
Parker didn’t know, but he was damn well going to find out. He had a few connections who could tap the right sources. With the loan on the ranch about due and his father nipping at his heels for guardianship of the kids, Parker wasn’t in any kind of a mood to tolerate another problem tossed in his lap. Particularly a nine-hundred-year-old problem.
After he convinced an exhausted Nesrin to go to bed, Parker picked up the phone and jammed in a long-distance number.
“Colonel Billingsly,” came the gruff response at the other end of the line.
Parker instinctively snapped to attention, then relaxed. Military protocol was a t
hing of the past for him. “Hello, Bill. Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Parker, you old son of a gun, it’s past midnight here. Don’t you know there’s a time difference between Colorado and Washington?”
“Does that mean I’ve caught in you bed with some gorgeous blonde?”
“Redhead. Now what do you want?”
Parker chuckled to himself. Some things don’t change, and the men of Special Forces had a tendency to live hard and fast, on or off duty. He used to be the same.
“A couple of guys have been in town asking questions about Marge.”
“Your sister? I was really sorry to hear she’d died. An accident somewhere?”
“Yeah, and it’s funny somebody would be asking questions about her now, here in Colorado. That’s why I was hoping you could check them out for me.”
“Sure. You think there’s a problem?”
“Probably nothing serious.” Assuming you didn’t believe in wizards and curses, and Parker could get Nesrin a green card from his other buddy in the Immigration Service.
After Parker told Bill what little he knew of the two strangers, the colonel said, “So how’s your ankle doing?”
“Never better.”
“Man, I don’t even know how you can walk around. You’ve got so many metal plates and pins in your ankle, you’d mess up a compass at ten paces.”
“Going through an airport X-ray machine is always an interesting process.”
“I bet.” The colonel lowered his voice. “I’m still grateful, man. You know that, don’t you?”
“It was my pleasure, Colonel.” Free-falling a half mile in an effort to catch up with Bill when his chute failed to open had been an instinctive thing, not an act of courage. It had cost Parker a severely injured ankle and his military career. But it had saved a good man’s life. That struck Parker as a fair trade-off. And in some ways he’d been relieved when he no longer had to prove he was general material like his father.
“Let me know when you find out something about those two guys,” Parker said.
“Now can I get back to what I was doing?”
“Sure, buddy. Didn’t mean to interrupt—”
An abrupt click terminated the phone call. Parker smiled and his thoughts traveled upstairs to Nesrin’s bedroom. Damned if he didn’t envy the colonel, but his preference would be for a brunette.
* * *
A HORN BLARED AND Nesrin winced.
She had not been out of the house for two days, not since she learned Rasheyd was looking for her. In fact, she still didn’t want to be anywhere but in hiding. Parker had assured her, however, that there had been no sign of the two strangers in the past couple of days. So, in spite of everything, Nesrin found herself quite fascinated by her wild ride in Parker’s motorized vehicle and her first visit to the nearby town of Gunnison.
In her village, the buildings had been constructed of mud and rough stone, those of the wealthy or powerful decorated with floral designs, or the outlines of animals. Here the structures were an interesting mix of white and pink and beige stucco. Those who would sell their wares had set up shop in long lines of buildings along the length of a wide boulevard, not tucking their businesses within a labyrinth of streets so narrow as to be nearly impassable.
She squeezed her eyes shut as Parker aimed his truck between two stationary vehicles that looked very much like the one she was riding in. When she heard no scraping of metal on metal, she opened her eyes again and heaved a relieved sigh. Modern transportation was far more frightening than crossing the desert on the back of a camel and certainly more rapid.
As they walked from Parker’s truck to the store that offered food for sale, Nesrin held Amy’s hand tightly and stayed close to Parker and Kevin. She would not want to be left on her own in this unfamiliar place. It was enough she had endured the journey here at such breakneck speed.
A slender young man with long, lank hair and wearing a soiled shirt approached Parker.
“Wonder if you can help me out, mister. My mom’s real sick and I’m trying to get bus fare so I can go visit her in Denver. Just a dollar or two would help.”
“Sorry.” Parker kept on walking.
“Whatever you’ve got,” the young man persisted. “A quarter, maybe.”
Parker responded with a stony silence that horrified Nesrin. She hurried to catch up with him.
“Parker,” she whispered, “you cannot ignore the beggar.”
Halting before the door to the store, Parker said, “He’s a panhandler, Nesrin. He probably has more money in his wallet than I do.”
“But his mother—”
“That’s a line, a complete prevarication so he can gain our sympathy.”
“You do not know that, Parker.”
“Sure I do. Every summer we get vagrants coming through here, all of them with sad stories that are a bunch of bull. They hang around the shopping center or down at the park. In the winter it’s ski bums. There’s an ordinance against panhandling, but it’s not enforced unless they make a real nuisance of themselves.”
He started to turn away, but she stopped him with the touch of her hand. “It is your holy duty to give the beggar a coin,” she warned.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. In my village, beggars even give to beggars. It is the way of our people.”
“Well, it’s not my way. Giving those guys even a dime just encourages them.”
She folded her arms across her chest in stubborn defiance. “Then I have no choice but to beg from others until I have a coin which I can give to him.”
He scowled. “You wouldn’t.”
“It should not take me long. These people look very generous.” She glanced at the passersby, most of the men dressed like Parker in jeans and cowboy hats. But none were as handsome, she observed. Nor did the sight of them make her heart skip a beat as it did whenever she caught a glimpse of Parker.
“I’d give you somethin’,” Kevin said, “but I didn’t bring any money with me.”
“You are a sweet, kind boy, unlike your uncle,” she said pointedly.
“We could go back to the ranch,” Amy suggested. “I gots a penny bank at home.”
Nesrin gave Parker a self-satisfied smile.
He looked incredulously at the threesome. “Look, guys, he’s a bum. If he worked at a job as hard as he does at panhandling, he’d be worth a fortune.”
Looping her arm around Kevin’s shoulder, Nesrin said, “Would you children help me beg a few coins for the man? We do not want to keep your miserly uncle waiting too long, and I am sure—”
“No!” Parker dug into his pocket and handed her a fistful of coins. “You three are suckers, you know that? But give him the damn money and let’s get on with our business. We can’t hang around here all day.”
“As you wish—” she stood on tiptoe to place a soft, teasing kiss on his cheek “—most generous and wise uncle of two fine young children.”
“Yeah, right,” he grumbled.
His face colored with a blush, and Nesrin had to suppress a smile. She suspected Parker had a more charitable heart than he cared to admit. He had, after all, made a home for Kevin and Amy, and taken her in when she had arrived so unexpectedly. Yes, in his gruff way, he was a good and kind man, she was sure of that.
Parker waited irritably while Nesrin delivered the handful of change to the vagrant. The foolish woman probably would have started begging if he hadn’t given in to her whim. And don’t you know she would have had a purse full of money in minutes. Every guy who’d walked by had taken his own sweet time ogling her. They were far too interested in the sway of her slender hips, and the contrasting motion of the long braid that hung down her back. Parker didn’t like those lingering perusals, not one damn bit. If he hadn’t wanted to keep an eye on her himself, he would have left her back at the ranch. But Rusty and the boys had come into town on their own, and there was nobody to watch out for her.
Next time he’d figure a way to leave her
at home. A woman like Nesrin needed to be protected from these mountain cowboys. They weren’t exactly shy when it came to taking advantage of innocent young women.
He rubbed his hand on the spot she had kissed. Not shy about innocent, nine-hundred-year-old women, either, if you believed her screwy story. Which he didn’t.
He glanced around the parking lot. No sign of two out-of-place strangers here. Maybe they’d lost interest in tracking down Marge...or Nesrin. He didn’t even want to consider the possibility that someone was after the kids. Or that his father had put a misbegotten pair of inept private detectives on his tail to prove he wasn’t worthy of parenting the youngsters.
It would help if he’d get word back from his buddy in Special Ops.
When Nesrin returned from her mission of mercy, he cupped her elbow, and ushered her and the kids into the store. It wasn’t safe to leave her loose on her own. No telling what kind of mischief she might get into.
He sent the kids off with the rest of his change to play at the video games and grimly began the grocery shopping.
In the canned-good aisle, Nesrin clapped her hands with glee. “Look, Parker, the picture tells you what is inside the can.”
His lips twitched from a surly scowl to a half smile. “Yeah, makes shopping easier that way.”
“So very clever of you Americans. And you have so many choices!” she exclaimed. All but dancing from one side of the aisle to the other, she selected an assortment of vegetables, dropping one can after another into the cart.
His smile grew a little wider. Nesrin was so excited about her visit to the grocery store, he couldn’t even complain when in the next aisle she picked a dozen different boxes of cereal to pile into their already heaping shopping cart.
But when she came to an abrupt halt in front of the pet food he wondered why.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She looked pale, her delicate features clouded with worry. “Do you eat...cats and dogs?”
It took him an instant to puzzle out what she was talking about. Then he realized there were pictures of dogs or cats on their respective pet food cans, just as there had been pictures of beans on the cans in the vegetable aisle.
The Cowboy & The Belly Dancer (Heartbeat) Page 7
