His responsibility? She stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You told them that? Who the hell do you think you are? I don’t need someone to be responsible for me. I don’t need some kind of babysitter, least of all some man I’ve barely just met!’
He didn’t look remorseful. But then she suspected this man was incapable of doing remorse. ‘You would have preferred, I take it, to have been charged and to be languishing right now in a Turkish prison cell?’
Well, no. There was that. But still...
‘No, I thought not,’ he said, reading her answer in her expression. ‘Come,’ he said, taking her arm in his before she could protest—before she could do anything, really—urging her forward once more along the busy street.
She hated him then for his arrogance. For his supreme confidence that what he was doing was right.
And she hated even more that he was holding her too close.
Much too close.
She could feel him all the way down from her shoulders to her hips, every step they took creating a friction that became more delicious by the second—more evocative—every brush of their clothes giving her another burst of the heat that came from being in close contact with him.
Arousal warred with outrage, and she cursed him for his ability to both infuriate her and excite her. How could it be that his touch wanted to make her lean into this man’s strong body, the very man who’d not only insulted her, but quite clearly doubted her integrity and imagined himself some kind of babysitter?
What kind of fool was she?
‘So this is actually duty for you, then, taking me to lunch.’
This time it was he who stopped, jerking her to a standstill and snapping her to face him on the side of the pavement this time, so they weren’t blocking everyone’s way. ‘I take my responsibilities seriously. I said I would ensure you wouldn’t get into trouble while you were in Istanbul before you join your tour group tomorrow morning, and I will do what I promised,’ he whispered, the note in his voice dangerous, his dark eyes intent and focused hard upon hers, before he paused and lifted a hand to her cheek and ran the barest trace of his fingertips down the side of her face, a touch as gentle as it was electric. ‘But who said duty has to come at the expense of pleasure? Because I suspect our time together could be quite pleasurable, if you would allow it to be so.’
The shudder started at her cheekbone where his fingers grazed her skin and reverberated down her body until it rolled out of her curling toes, its scorching trail leaving her in no doubt what he was offering.
And then he shrugged and dropped his hand away. ‘But if you want me to stop at duty, then just say the word. If you decide it is not pleasure you wish for, then I will keep my undertaking to the polis and ensure you do not get into any more trouble before you join your tour. But I will not pursue you. I am not in the habit of pursuing unwilling women.’
A tram rattled past, pedestrians walked by spouting words in a dozen different languages, and Amber blinked at the unfamiliarity of it all. She could scarcely believe she was standing in the oldest part of Istanbul, her cheek still tingling from his touch, let alone having this conversation with this man.
‘So,’ he prompted, ‘what’s it to be, Amber Jones? Duty or pleasure?’
All her life Amber had done the right thing, making sensible choices, playing it safe, never taking risks. All her life she’d been responsible.
Sensible.
And just look where that had got her.
With an equally safe choice of boyfriend who clearly hadn’t valued her and who hadn’t turned out to be a safe choice at all.
Her blood fizzed with the possibilities this man was offering. As, if she was honest, it had been fizzing ever since she’d seen him watching her in the Spice Market.
God, she was in Istanbul, exotic, colourful Istanbul, and she might as well have been a million miles from her old life. And maybe it was foolhardy to agree to spend a night with a stranger in a faraway country. Maybe it was reckless.
But maybe it was time to be a bit reckless. Time to pay heed to the excitement in her blood and take a step on the wild side, as her great-great-great-grandmother had been brave enough to do more than one hundred and fifty years earlier.
She looked up at this man, with his golden skin and dark-as-a-hot-desert-night eyes, her heartbeat thumping loud in her chest at just being close to him, and knew that if she played it safe, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.
And her answer came as clearly as the calls of the seabirds wheeling in the sky above.
‘Pleasure.’
His dark eyes flared with heat, his lips turned up in approval as he enclosed her hand in his. ‘Then pleasure, it shall be.’
* * *
He smiled to himself as he led her towards a nearby restaurant that had windows overlooking the park, the glass frontage, he knew, would be filled with colourful dishes, from stuffed eggplants and peppers, casseroles of chicken and chickpeas and lamb, and rice, spiced and fragrant, alongside which lamb and chicken roasted on vertical spits.
So his meek little rabbit had turned out to be less timid than she’d first appeared? She’d fled from him in the Spice Market, and he’d been prepared to let her go.
But there was spirit there, under that nervous exterior, even if he’d had to dig to find it. But it was there, and given the choice again she’d chosen pleasure. At least the time spent babysitting her wouldn’t be completely wasted.
Not that he trusted her, despite all her innocent claims of not knowing the laws—after all, what else did foreigners claim when they were caught red-handed but tried to plead ignorance?—but then, he didn’t have to trust her. All he had to do was keep her out of harm’s way until he got her on that tour bus and sent her on her way and his job would be done.
Keeping her out of the way of illegal street vendors would be no problem given what he had in mind.
Blond tendrils of her hair bounced enticingly on the breeze as they walked, the leather of her jacket brushing against his coat sleeve, and as he turned his head towards her he caught a hint of her perfume, floral and light. He had never been a fan of such scents. He preferred his women dressed in musk and spice and preferably not a lot more, but on her the scent seemed to make sense. Innocent, with a hint of sensuality. A hint of promise.
He liked the fit.
He liked the promise even more.
He smiled. If only his three friends could see him now, they’d laugh. They’d tell him to be careful, that he was tempting fate. He remembered the last time they’d been together at Bahir’s wedding. He remembered the taunts of the two newly married desert brothers. Who would be next? Zoltan and Bahir had laughed. Which of Kadar and Rashid would be next to fall into marriage?
And Kadar and Rashid had both pointed at the other and laughed.
Of course, the very idea that the two remaining friends would soon follow was ridiculous. Zoltan had married Princess Aisha in order to secure his kingdom of Al-Jirad and Bahir had been reunited with Aisha’s sister and his former lover, Marina, along the way. Both marriages had been bound to happen, even if the idea that two of the desert brothers would be married in short order had been unimaginable once.
Well, it had been a good three years since Bahir’s wedding and he didn’t know about Rashid, but he was no closer to marriage than he’d ever been. And why should he be?
The four men were as good as brothers, bound together by more than blood. They had met while they were at university in the States and, apart from Mehmet, they were all the