‘Perhaps, but he is not particularly mature,’ Azrael remarked. ‘Surely you noticed that, at least?’
Molly bridled at the faint edge of scorn to that question. ‘Well, yes, I did notice but I was very aware that he was from a different culture and I don’t know what’s normal for young men in your society.’
‘We are people, exactly the same as you!’ Azrael lanced back at her with simmering irritation.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, what I’m trying to say is that, yes, I did notice that he was immature but I kind of blamed that on his upbringing and his not having any experience of my world,’ Molly expanded, refusing to rise to the bait of his annoyance. ‘I am not prejudiced in any way, Azrael.’
‘If that is so, I am glad to hear it,’ Azrael conceded, his wide, sensual mouth compressed. ‘Unfortunately for all of us, my brother gave no prior sign of the insane thing he did to you. Tahir is an average boy. He spends hours playing computer games and he’s mad about cars and girls.’
‘And he kidnaps his English teacher, who is almost seven years older than him! No way is that typical!’ Molly shot back at him fierily and she spun away from him, exasperated beyond bearing by his arguments.
‘No, it is not typical,’ Azrael admitted grudgingly. ‘But I cannot help but blame myself for not taking more of an interest in him. It is unlucky that he is so much younger and that I have been so preoccupied here. Our mother died last year and it hit him very hard—’
‘I refuse to listen to a sob story on Tahir’s behalf!’ Molly flung back at Azrael in frustration, her eyes bright with mounting fury. ‘That is not fair to me. Why should I consider Tahir’s state of mind when he did not consider what he was doing to me?’
‘I said that we should not discuss this here,’ Azrael responded icily. ‘I do not want you shouting at me.’
Molly’s hands knotted into fists. She watched Spice sidle back out to the front of the cave, presumably as spooked as his owner by her loud voice, and then turned back to scrutinise Azrael’s lean, darkly handsome but undeniably frozen features. She was darned if she was going to apologise, most particularly not when it felt amazing to not care about the impression she was making and to speak her mind freely. After all, growing up she had been deprived of that freedom far too often. Forced to fit in with other people’s expectations, she had had to try to placate her stepmother simply in the hope of gaining peace. But appeasement hadn’t got her very far and hadn’t made the older woman any kinder.
‘My emotions don’t come with volume control,’ she confessed tightly. ‘And I am not usually this emotional but the past forty-eight hours have been very upsetting for me and I’m on edge, which means my temper is on edge too.’
Almost imperceptibly, Azrael’s lean, powerful frame became a little less rigid. ‘Obviously I can understand that but I cannot tolerate shouting.’
Molly sucked in a steadying breath, dismayed by the realisation that the more he prohibited her natural behaviour, the more he simply made her want to shout. There was something very basic in her, she sensed, that literally had to fight Azrael’s dominance and, inexplicably, when she spoke her mind to him in anger, she felt as if she was finally being herself and was unashamed of the fact. ‘And I cannot tolerate being told that I can’t shout,’ she confided guiltily. ‘Yet I very rarely do it. Obviously you make me angry and aggressive—’
And without the smallest warning, Azrael smiled and it illuminated his serious features like a sudden flash of sunlight, firing up the gold in his eyes enhanced by his ridiculously thick black lashes, accentuating his exotic cheekbones, revealing even white teeth and a wonderfully shapely mouth. That charismatic smile made him so handsome that her heart jumped inside her and her tummy dropped as though she had gone down in a lift too fast. She was startled; her mouth ran dry and her breath caught in her throat.
‘So, it’s my fault that you shout,’ Azrael derided silkily in a tone she had never heard from him before.
‘Yes,’ Molly replied squarely. ‘I find you extremely annoying. You try to tell me what to do. You patronise me. Then you freeze if I get annoyed...but you’re the one making me annoyed!’
Azrael paced closer as silent as a stalking cat on the trail of prey. ‘I don’t annoy other people—’
‘And I don’t shout at anyone else,’ Molly interposed.
‘Perhaps you are focusing your anger with Tahir on me,’ Azrael suggested.
‘No!’ Molly disagreed, reluctant to acknowledge that she could possibly be that unaware of her own responses. ‘But why did nobody tell me that I was teaching a teenager? Looking at him, I’d never have guessed that he was still only a boy. Someone should have told me what age he was.’
Azrael lifted a fine ebony brow. ‘Or you should have asked one of the embassy staff.’
‘I had no reason to suspect he was that young and I’m not sure it changes anything.’ Molly looped a long coppery rope of curls back from her hot face and glowered at Azrael accusingly. ‘Why should it change anything? It was a grown-up crime,’ she blustered, not knowing what she planned to do or how she felt about the unexpected fact she had just learned.
But the fact of the matter was that occasionally teenagers did do crazy things and, ironically, nobody knew that better than Molly. At the age of fourteen, Molly had packed her bag and run away from her family home. She had planned to go to London to become a musician in a band, for goodness’ sake. Sadly, the cost of the train fare had thwarted that fanciful ambition and in a rage of tempestuous teenage fury she had landed on Maurice’s doorstep, where he had talked some sense back into her.
Maurice had returned her to her father’s home and when she had seen her, her stepmother had said angrily, ‘I knew it was too good to be true. I knew you’d come back again!’
And then her father and Maurice had had an argument, for which she had also received the blame. Her slight shoulders drooped at her distressing recollection of that day. That was the moment that she knew that she would not approach the police in London about what Tahir had done. He was sixteen and, while she couldn’t forgive him for the fright he had given her and the risk he had taken with her health, she knew that teenagers could make stupid decisions and fatal mistakes and she realised that she no longer wanted him to pay the full adult price for his wrongdoing.
In addition, if she went to the police about what Tahir had done, it would inevitably attract the interest of the press and she didn’t want her name and her face splashed across the newspapers or people speculating about whether or not she might have encouraged Tahir in his delusions. Nor would the subsequent scandal improve her employment prospects. No, there would be no benefit to her in making an official complaint.
Abstractedly, she studied Azrael, guessing that he had probably been a very sensible teenager with an outlook older than his years. ‘You never did tell me how far we are out here from the airport.’
‘Several hundred miles,’ Azrael murmured, his attention welded to the tender fullness of her naturally pink lips while he inevitably wondered if they would taste as soft and lush as they looked.
Her green eyes flew wide. ‘Several hundred?’ she repeated in disbelief, clashing with shimmering dark golden eyes that made her feel oddly light-headed and even more oddly detached from her brain. ‘But how did you get me to the fortress yesterday?’
‘By helicopter, of course,’ Azrael explained. ‘We fly in and out. The cars pick us up at the landing site and drive us the rest of the way—’
‘But there must be a road somewhere nearby—’
‘No. Beyond the oil fields we do not yet have a country-wide network of roads, nor will we have until our construction engineers embark on that