I sank back into the leather seat and closed my eyes, still anchored by his hand holding mine. My reaction to that really shouldn’t have been to think, Crap, should it?
I mean, this was Lex—my first date, first love, first time. My first, second, and third heartbreak.
But damn it, my plane was leaving soon, and I still had an international security check to get through. “Lex…”
“I love you, and I hate that you’re leaving. This is the Middle East you’re talking about, Mag.”
When I opened my eyes, there that ring sat, peeking loosely through our fingers, undecided. “Egypt isn’t the same as the Gaza Strip.”
“It’s not the same as Cleveland, either,” insisted Lex. “Less than a decade ago more than fifty tourists were massacred in the Valley of the Kings.”
“I’m not going to the Valley of the Kings, I’m going to Alexandria. It’s the other direction.”
Lex stared at me, unswayed.
I fisted my hand in his, ring and all. “I’ll be fine.”
“Like you were the last time you went after a chalice that certain people didn’t want found?”
“Certain people don’t know I’m going this time.” Or… Old suspicions settled in my chest. “Do they?”
Lex took his hand back and released the parking brake in an angry movement. “You’ve really got this not trusting me business down, haven’t you?”
Again—crap. I reached awkwardly across my lap to reengage the brake, since my left hand was still fisted to keep from losing the ring. “Hey. I wasn’t saying you told them. Did you hear me saying that?”
Then again, if they learned about my quest some other way, I wasn’t sure he could have told me, either.
When Lex turned back to me, his expression was impassive—and his eyes desperate. “We really don’t communicate well, do we?”
I might not be able to tell him that it would all work out, not with any certainty, but I could at least reach for him, cradle my palm across his clean-shaven cheek. If words couldn’t ease his uncertainty, maybe simple touch would.
As if I’d drawn him, Lex leaned nearer, braced his forehead lightly against mine. “I can’t lose you again.”
Which on some levels was so tender, so vulnerable, that I felt half-ready to ditch everything, just to taste his lips, just to ease some of the uncertainty from this man’s deep, golden eyes. When I looked at him I saw too much—a boy dying of leukemia, a teenager grieving his dead mother, a man determined to keep promises he should never have had to make….
But on some levels, intentional or not, his words were manipulative as hell.
“You first,” I whispered, turning my head to rest it on his shoulder. Lex really had great shoulders, solid and strong, even without the crisply tailored suits. He would make a really great leader of warriors.
“Me first, what?”
“You promise to stop doing dangerous things, taking transatlantic flights to unsafe places—”
“Mag.” The sardonic note he put into my name told me we were done with the puppy-dog eyes for now.
“…move to the suburbs, ditch the sports car….”
He sighed and leaned his weight into me, hard enough to nudge me fully back into my own seat.
“Then maybe,” I finished, silently laughing at his scowl as I straightened, “maybe we’ll talk a deal.”
The scowl didn’t falter. “I know you can handle yourself, but I’m just not hardwired to leave it at that. Maybe it goes back to cavemen killing saber-toothed tigers that threatened the camp, but there’s something in men that makes us want—need—to protect our women.”
Our women? Instead of jumping into that frying pan, I chose the proverbial fire. “A lot has changed since then. For one thing, those cavemen probably worshipped a goddess.”
“In the good old days before testosterone screwed up the world, right?” Sarcasm clearly intended.
“I never said testosterone didn’t have its uses.” And whoa—I sure didn’t mean that to sound quite as seductive as it did. I saw it immediately in the way his expression stilled, his eyes darkened to a whiskey color, his breath caught. He glanced quickly toward the tiny clock display over the rearview mirror.
Worse—I did, too.
The heat that washed through me had nothing to do with summer in the city, and everything to do with my body’s dissatisfaction at having gone so long without his kisses. Maybe my heart was wary. But the rest of me…
“I’ve gotta go,” I murmured, turning the air conditioner dial to full blue.
To his credit, Lex managed in three long, deep breaths to regain his mask of disinterest. He released the parking brake and shifted into Drive. “Yes. Security gets more complicated every day.”
“I’ll call you when I have a hotel room.”
“Please do.” But before he pulled out of the space, he turned his head to look at me full-on again. “And wear the ring, Maggi. Let me do that much for you.”
And really, what could it hurt? “‘Wear the ring,’ please,” I prompted softly.
“Please,” he repeated, and the edge of his mouth quirked before he eased onto the gas. “With sugar on top.”
So what the hell? I slid the band fully onto my finger, as if it belonged there. “Fine. But it’s all about not rocking the Egyptians’ boat, right?” I clarified. “It has nothing to do with making Rhys Pritchard uncomfortable?”
“I like Rhys.” Lex sounded waaay too innocent for my tastes. “I’m sure neither of us would want to make the other one uncomfortable.”
Yeah. Like guys thought that way. The same gender that came up with the concept of a pissing contest. “Uh-huh.”
But I was stuck. I’d already agreed to wear the ring.
The other player in this triangle, Rhys Pritchard, was my prize at the end of the long process of my arrival in Cairo—a metal staircase onto the hot tarmac, a bus to the terminal, customs, a temporary visa, and an increasing awareness of all the head scarves and galabiya and Arabic being spoken around me.
It was great to see a familiar face.
I surged toward him as best I could amid the crowd and saw that he was making the effort to shoulder his way to me, too. The closer he got, the better he looked. Rhys has a coloring I would normally call “black Irish,” except that he’s Welsh. Dark, unkempt hair. Bright-blue eyes. Lanky—what he has on Lex in height he loses in breadth. But here in Egypt, Rhys had gained a secret weapon—sunshine. His U.K. complexion, though still pale by swarthy Egyptian standards, had been gilded by the Mediterranean sun. A touch of pink on his nose and cheeks made his eyes seem to glow.
Or maybe that was just pleasure at seeing me.
“Maggi!” he exclaimed, his smile wide and welcoming. I reached for him—
But he stopped short. “Let me look at you.”
“Only if you return the favor,” I warned, eyeing him up and down. He wore his usual faded jeans and a slightly wrinkled, long-sleeved jersey that had been washed too often. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I told you—I dodged the car that tried to run me down.” From the scrapes on his hands, where he’d landed, I judged he’d had only modest success in that. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it except for what it might signify.”
“That