Mirage (3 page)

“Yes,” she said flatly, rolling her eyes behind her dark glasses. She hated that he called her
Miss Julie
.

Duh—I’m here, aren’t I?

“Come over here and take a closer look at the detail of these carvings. You won’t see anything like this again.” His smile was borderline lecherous as he motioned with his hand. He could have been inviting her into his bedroom.

He was right about the artwork, Julie knew, but she didn’t want to play his game. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me for a moment.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the public restroom.

It was only mid morning, and the sun was hot in the pale sky, bleaching the landscape. She kept her face down as she picked her way over broken bits of stone, bricks and tile. She didn’t want to sprain an ankle on their first day in the field.

That was when she saw them.

The tire tracks.

A chevron pattern, leading her to her heart’s desire.

Again, in the powdery sand they looked as clear as if they’d been cast in concrete. She followed them with her eyes, and almost gasped when they ended under the bike. It was missing its driver, parked in front of the administrative buildings just outside the compound walls. A helmet was resting on the seat, but no backpack.

With a furtive glance at her mother and Bish—still discussing the carving techniques of the ancients, she assumed—she picked up her pace and walked quickly toward the bike. Not really knowing what she was going to do once she reached it, she took off her hat and smoothed her hair.

Three young men, locals, were sitting on a stone wall beside the bike. When she drew near they leered at her, one of them pointing toward the public toilet.

“Ten pounds,” he said, holding out his hand. Julie frowned, but then she saw the small, hand-lettered sign for the ladies’ toilet.
Ten pounds.
It was a pittance, in Canadian money—about a dime—but she didn’t need to use the toilet.

She shook her head and kept walking until she got to the main entrance of the largest building. The structure appeared to be divided into offices, according to various signs, all in English. But one sign leaped out at Julie—
The Danish Archaeological Institute. Second floor.

Aha! The plot thickens. Maybe he’s an archaeologist. That would be awesome.

She pushed open the heavy door and was met by a wall of stale, stifling air. No air conditioner. It was eerily quiet, and she felt like a trespasser.

Just as she spotted a staircase leading to the second floor, she heard a door open and close somewhere above her head. Then heavy footsteps. The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs and she looked up to see boots. Serious boots. From her vantage, they looked pretty sexy. Thick black leather. And then they were coming down the stairs toward her. She saw a fine pair of legs encased in lightweight grey pants. Not riding pants. Stay-around-town pants. A leather belt around a trim waist. A pale grey cotton shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Strong brown arms. A pair of square shoulders and a smooth brown throat.

Then all she saw were the eyes. Grey and hard as steel. The owner of those eyes glared at her. She tried to step toward him, but found she couldn’t move a single muscle. Her body seemed to have gone numb.

“Can I help you?” he asked in English, with an accent that threatened to melt her bones.

“I, um, no. I mean, no, thank you. I was just looking around and I thought I’d come in out of the sun. It’s awfully hot already, although it isn’t even ten yet. I’m not used to the heat, and…”

The look on his beautiful face stopped her short. He was clearly not impressed. She shut her mouth.

God! I’m such a dope. Get a grip.

Extending her hand, she took a deep breath and stepped toward him, saying in a completely different voice, “Hello. My name is Julie Stevens, and I’m traveling with a cultural tour from a university in Vancouver, Canada. I’m afraid I may be a little jet-lagged and culture-shocked at the moment. But I am very glad to meet you.”

He took her hand in his. He was strong, but he shook it lightly. It was exciting. She thought she’d never felt so much pure masculine energy in a handshake before. When he let go she was momentarily confused.

Then she heard what he was saying to her in his lilting English.

“I am Torval Jensen, from Copenhagen. You can rest in here for as long as you like, but I must excuse myself. I have a meeting. Goodbye.”

He walked past her and out through the door.

Gone. Just like that.

Julie was rigid with surprise. And deeply disappointed. She thought she’d never see her mystery rider again, but here he was. It was as if the gods, the muses, or the planets had conspired and aligned to give her a perfect opportunity to get over her wounded heart. But the Dane, damn him, wasn’t cooperating.

He was still in town—yes—yet she couldn’t keep him engaged for more than five seconds. She needed to try harder. She wanted another crack at him.

Her body was making it perfectly clear to her head that she
had
to see him again. Somehow, she felt, it was fated.

Tor turned off the highway onto an unpaved road, eased the throttle of the big BMW, and relaxed back into his seat. The road looked softer than it was. A layer of fine sand lay on the surface, but underneath it seemed as hard as concrete. It probably hadn’t rained out here for a hundred years, he thought.

He could see evidence of the dig up ahead—a few jeeps and some scooters were parked haphazardly under an expanse of pale blue sky. A makeshift tent provided shelter from the burning sun. There was also a portable latrine. But he was still too far away to make out his cousin John and the team of European archaeology students who’d chosen to spend their spring semester digging in a sweltering pit in the middle of the Syrian desert.

Christ, when I was their age I chose to wait tables on a party boat in the Mediterranean. And then there was the year I worked that crazy bar in Majorca. Easy work. Lots of cash. Lots of fun.

But Tor hadn’t been having much fun these days now that he was a grown-up, with a grown-up’s problems.

He slowed down and veered off the rutted road onto the even more rutted parking area and shut off the motor. He sensed about a dozen people watching him take off his helmet and shake the dust from his clothes. A tall blond man leaped out of the excavation and walked toward him, hand extended, a big smile on his face.

“Torval! You found us,” he said in Danish. “I thought you were lost.”

“Yeah, it took me a while to get my bearings, but here I am.” Tor answered in Danish, his native tongue sounding a bit strange after weeks of speaking mostly English.

“Come on out of the sun. Do you want a drink? We’ve got cold Tuborg.”

“Excellent.”

The two men walked to the tent and sat down on overturned plastic crates.

“So tell me about your trip,” John said as he handed Tor a beer.

“It’s been good. Long. Tiring. But good.” Tor took a strong pull on the bottle.

Ahh. Delicious.

Throughout northern Syria, Tor had problems finding liquor of any kind. Muslims didn’t drink, of course, and tourists had to be pretty savvy to find purveyors of any kind of alcoholic beverages. He’d managed to secure some second-rate wine in Hama and Aleppo, and this was the first good beer he’d tasted since Bulgaria.

“Any problems en route?”

“Not really. I’m lucky to have made it this far without any major incidents.” If I don’t count almost getting my prick cut off by that crazy son-of-a-bitch in Istanbul.

“How long have you been on the road?”

“Just over three weeks. I haven’t been in a hurry.” He stared at the Danish lettering on the bottle in his hand. He wasn’t feeling homesick yet. It was good to be away. “I stopped a few days in all the major cities on the way—Berlin, Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, Budapest.” He drained the bottle and set it in the sand beside his feet. “Then down to Sofia and east to Istanbul, where I stayed four or five days. One night in Hama, two in Aleppo, and here I am.”

“Want another?”

“Thanks, maybe one more. That was great.” He swept a hand out toward the hole full of students, now industriously back at work. “How’s it going for you?”

“As well as can be expected,” John said, lowering his voice and draining his own bottle. “The usual funding cuts. Politics. Horny Norwegian chicks who can’t keep their hands off me.” He grinned. “Want one?” He dipped his head toward the diggers.

Tor laughed. “No, thanks. I’ve decided I need to steer clear of women for the next little while. Just me and the bike and the open road, you know?”

“Smart man. If Allison finds out about what I’ve been up to it’s going to be game over for me. I’ll lose the house, the kids, half my money. And I’ll probably have to pay her legal costs, too. Life just isn’t fair,” he said as he fumbled in the cooler for another beer.

Just then a shapely young woman wearing short shorts and a skimpy tank top stepped out of the pit and walked toward the two men. She wore that I’m-so-irresistibly-sexy simper on her pretty freckled face as she whipped off her hat and fluffed her blonde curls. She probably wasn’t more than twenty-one, just ripe for getting into trouble, Tor figured.

Keep the hell away from me. I’ve got enough problems, thank you very much.

John introduced Karen—one of his best students, he said—to his cousin, then dismissed her by saying they were having a private conversation. She sidled away prettily, casting a come-hither glance to Tor as she rolled her shapely hips.

Fuck! Can’t they leave me alone?

That was when he remembered the young Canadian woman he’d brushed off back at the institute’s offices. She was standing alone in the foyer when he came downstairs. She seemed lost, and babbled something about being disorientated and over-heated. But then she turned all businesslike on him when she introduced herself. She offered her hand, and he recalled how small and soft it felt. Vulnerable. Delicate. And sexy.

Fuck! Can’t I stop thinking about sex? I’m already running away from one woman. I don’t need any more. I have to keep my head down and my pants zipped up.

But that Canadian was really pretty. Classy, too. Elegant, even, in her pale pants and blouse. No jewelry, but thick chestnut hair. Really sexy eyes, dark and kind of naked-looking, whatever that meant. Her clothes were too loose for him to guess at her body—a wise move in this part of the world. But she was a little taller than most, and slender, he guessed.

Tor shook his head and tried to erase her image from his mind. He asked his cousin about his family. The answer took more than twenty minutes.

John had been married young to his childhood sweetheart. They had three children in rapid succession, a hardship for the struggling graduate student. But they’d pulled through, and now John was a full professor at one of Copenhagen’s best universities. He taught archaeology courses in the fall and winter, and led digs on site in the spring. During summers, he was free.

But the rigors of marriage, parenting and full-time academic life had not made John a happy man. Tor sympathized. He and John had been close, growing up, and shared many of the same values. They’d both wanted to travel. They’d both wanted to have lots of adventures before they settled down.

But an unplanned pregnancy had locked John into domestic life long before he was ready. Now, almost ten years later, Tor found himself fighting against the same fate.

Elsa came into Tor’s life two years ago. He was almost thirty, and she was barely in her twenties. Young as she was, she knew what she wanted. She wanted Tor. But once she caught him, she wanted even more. She wanted him to change. Then, she wanted a wedding. After that, she wanted two children—a boy and a girl. To house them all, she wanted a detached rural home. And a dog.

He and Elsa loved each other, Tor was certain. But he just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t finished playing. Sure, he’d done a lot of traveling, enjoyed a lot of adventures, several love affairs and many, many one-night stands. But he expected there was something
more
waiting for him out there.

Once he fell in love, though, he made compromises for Elsa. He’d moved out of his bachelor loft into a tidy two-bedroom with her and her cats. He’d stopped partying, and cut down on the number of business trips he took. Then he traded in his small motorcycle for a touring bike with a big cushy back seat. He wanted to ride around the world with Elsa tucked in behind him.

The problem was, Elsa didn’t want to go touring on the back of a bike. They’d had one disastrous trip to Holland, and that was enough to convince Tor that they were at cross purposes. She liked to travel in comfort, she explained. With a lot of luggage. Riding on the bike hurt her back. It dried out her skin and hair—her list of complaints was long. Her idea of a holiday was to fly First Class to a city with five-star hotels and high-end department stores.

Then came the hard part. Breaking up with Elsa had just about driven Tor mad. First there was her denial. Her refusal to accept the facts. Then came the anger, the acting out, the threatening, pleading, cajoling telephone calls, emails, and texts. Finally, she’d resorted to threats of suicide.

That was when Tor fled. In all fairness, he’d tried everything he could to deal with her pain. Talking, listening, crying. Even, against his better judgment, make-up sex. Then it was time to call for reinforcements—her mother, her friends, a counselor and a physician. She was diagnosed with depression and treated with the newest generation of anti-depressants.

Heavily-medicated, Elsa turned into another woman entirely. Introverted, passive—lazy, even. Tor was frightened. He felt responsible. And if that was what a relationship could do to a person, he wanted no part of it. He packed a few clothes, jumped on his bike and spun his wheels out of town. The plan was to head as far south as Aswan on the Nile. He’d never been to Egypt. Then he’d play it by ear.

He felt guilty, but he believed making himself unavailable to her would actually help her recovery. It had certainly helped him. He hadn’t seen her for a month, and every day he came closer to accepting that getting out was the best thing he could have done.