The Other Guy's Bride (18 page)

Jim stood bare-chested in the pool, wringing the water from his shirt. He’d been dunking and twisting the shirt for the last ten minutes, and from the way he was going at it he might just wring it in two. But then, if he hadn’t been so engrossed, he would have noticed her staring at him.

The corrugated muscles rippled in his flat stomach as he leaned over, his biceps and the long tendons in his forearms standing out in stark relief as he twisted the poor shirt with a violence all out of proportion to the task. The light furring of dark gold hairs that covered his arms and chest grew darker and thicker, as it narrowed low on his belly and disappeared beneath his waistband.

He would have looked like a selkie, all clean and unmarked, except for a puckered divot on his upper left arm; and the long, jagged rope of red scar tissue along the ladder of his ribs; and another thin sickle-shaped mark beneath his right shoulder blade; and a…Good Lord, the man was a morass of scars. Unexpected anger filled her that he’d so abused such a perfect body, that he’d so little regard for himself. But she didn’t have any right to feel proprietary about Jim Owens.

She huddled, growing more disconsolate with each moment, the fleeting pleasure provided by her dunk in the water gone.

He must think her the worst sort of trollop, engaged to one man and swooning in the embraces of another. If only she
had
swooned. No, she’d been as fervent to touch as she had been to be touched, as eager to kiss as be kissed.

Evidently, despite his caustic self-denouncement, she’d repulsed him because he couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at her, and when he did his face was tight with something she could not interpret but feared was censure. How could it be anything else? In Jim’s eyes, she had betrayed Colonel Lord…Lord—What was the drat man’s Christian name?! She’d acted dishonorably, and for a man as honorable as Jim, that would be anathema.

She deserved his censure. At least, Mildred Whimpelhall deserved it, the hussy.

However, might not Ginesse Braxton be judged more gently? After all,
she
was not promised to anyone else. She had not committed herself to another man. She was simply a young woman with a passionate nature, a little impulsive and sometimes reckless. But she hadn’t betrayed anyone or anything, except perhaps a certain unnecessarily restrictive and really, when one considered it in the light of historic precedents, obsolete morality.

If only Jim could see it that way.

Her mouth twisted. If he
could
see it that way, then without a doubt she would be flat on her back beneath him. No, she could not tell Jim Owens who she was. Her masquerade was her best chastity belt. Possibly her only chastity belt, she thought dolefully, eying his broad, muscular back. But that didn’t mean he had to think Mildred Whimpelhall was a completely fallen, or in this case fall
ing
, woman.

She stood up as he waded out of the pool. He glanced at her, then averted his eyes and headed into the shade at the far end of the outcropping. There he sat down and grabbed hold of his boot’s heel, yanked the boot off, upended it, and dumped the water from it. He did the same to the other, then stripped off his socks and wrung them dry.

She took a deep breath and walked over to where he sat. He saw her approach and dug into the kit beside him for a shirt and hastily pulled it on. Then he simply sat there warily watching her approach, his knees bent, his feet flat on the earth, his hands curled into fists atop each knee. Tension radiated from him. She couldn’t help glancing at the heavy ridge between his legs and remembering the feel of that male member pressed against her hip. Heat poured into her cheeks.

“I’ve come to apologize,” she said.

He stared up at her, looking utterly confounded. And then, with what sounded like a long-suffering sigh, his hands uncurled, his arms relaxed, and his shoulders sagged. “You really mean it, don’t you?” he asked.

She frowned. “Of course I do. My actions were unconscionable. I am engaged to be married. I should never—”

“Hold on. Stop right there,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Did it ever occur to you that I ought to be the one apologizing?”

He raked a hand through his damp hair, shedding sparkles of water. “I was entrusted with taking another man’s bride-to-be to him so they could wed. I can’t think of a more inviolable charge than that. But I betrayed it. No honorable man would have done so.”

He was taking the high road, absolving her of her part.

Her frown turned into a scowl.

She didn’t
want
to be absolved. She wanted equal status in that embrace. People she cared for were always making excuses for her and finding some implausible explanation for the things she did that turned out wrong. She understood, she even appreciated the impulse, but those would-be champions failed to understand that by assuming her sins they relegated her to the role of child.

What she’d felt last night—what she felt now—was definitely not childish.

“Nor any honorable woman,” she said with some heat. “I betrayed an even greater trust because I accepted Colonel Lord Pomfrey’s proposal of marriage. I am supposed to love him.”

“
Supposed
?” He seized on the word.

She cleared her throat. “I mean, I do love him.”

“Do you?” He’d only come a step closer, but with that small movement he filled her vision. She could see the rise and fall of his chest beneath the linen shirt, the little jump of a muscle in his jaw, the deep indigo ring around the pale blue-gray irises.

“I’m marrying him, aren’t I?”

“Are you?”

She stepped back; he followed her, his arms loose at his side, his pace slow yet somehow predatory.

“Are you?” he repeated.

She stopped her retreat and lifted her chin, feeling her lips quiver, on the cusp of telling him the truth. What would he do? Would he despise her? Of course he would; he was an honest man, and he would despise dishonesty in others. Her courage deserted her on the thought.

“Yes,” she whispered.

The single word stopped him in his tracks, as though he’d taken an unexpected blow.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He looked tired. Beat. “You’ve already apologized,” he said, half turning from her.

God knew what impulse drove her. She could have stayed mute,
should
have stayed mute. “You said you ought to apologize. But you haven’t yet. Why not?”

He turned his head, impaling her with a piercing gaze. “Don’t play with me, Miss Whimpelhall.” His voice was a dusky vow, a promise and a threat, a warning and a temptation. “You might not like how the game turns out.”

“Why didn’t you apologize?”

He faced her. His gaze had gone dark and lambent, except for the spark deep within, a carnal awareness that made her knees go weak and her heart start racing. Nervously she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. His gaze fell on the simple act with wolfish intensity. “Because I don’t regret it.”

Something had changed in him. His smile was lazy but his attention was sharp and focused, all his concentration bent on her, leaving room for nothing else. The desert dissolved around them, the heat, the pond, the sun, all of it disappeared, leaving only the two of them.

She couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t think of a word that might dispel the strange sensation. She bit her lip and too late realized she’d again drawn his narrowed gaze. She felt as though he were kissing her again. Her body tingled with sensual awareness, a slow, molten heat pool, low, between her legs.

“Don’t do that,” she said a little desperately. The cool, grave cowboy had been replaced by a predatory male. She wasn’t sure she liked it; she was definitely sure she didn’t know how to handle it.

“Do what?” he asked.

“That.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re…importuning me.”

Her word choice seemed to amuse him, but he backed away a few steps and leaned against the boulder, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. “No more than you’re importuning me,” he said.

“I’m not. I won’t. I realize the danger now, and I won’t…do anything that would require me to apologize again.”

“Damn.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Why?”

His words vexed her, his gaze, his smile, the quality of his attention inciting a sort of deep itch in her. It tingled in her lips and fingertips, a light throbbing in her nipples. It was an itch she could not scratch. Only he could. She moved a step nearer to him, frowning at his self-containment, his amusement.

“Because you must never kiss me again, and I must never kiss you,” she said breathlessly, knowing she was tempting him, knowing full well that she placed herself at risk, at risk of something dangerous and exciting, something she intuited she would only know from him.

“I know.”

“We owe it to…to Colonel Lord Pomfrey.”

“I know.”

He was watching her approach, his pose relaxed, even indolent. She wasn’t fooled. There was an underlying tension, a coiled quality lurking behind his cool gaze.

“I am a woman alone and dependent on you.”

He did not say a word.

Emboldened, she took another step forward. “I am at your mercy.”

“Miss Whimpelhall,” he said in a low voice, “I doubt you have ever been at anyone’s mercy.”

“I am,” she insisted. She took another step and had to tilt her head to look up at him.

“I could say the same thing to you.”

Above a jaw roughened by a day’s growth of beard, his skin was fine-grained and clear. His lashes shadowed the gray eyes, and the small lines at the corners deepened as they narrowed. She couldn’t have stopped herself from cupping her palm against his cheek had she tried. With her touch, his eyes fell shut, and when they opened again, they blazed emotion.

“You’re walking close to the fire, Miss Whimpelhall,” he said.

It hadn’t been her intent: she had always been a creature of impulse, following instincts both deep and inexorable. She followed them now, resting her hands lightly on his chest. It rose and fell heavily beneath her touch, his heart drumming thickly against her palms.

She angled her head and touched her lips lightly to the base of his throat. A shudder passed through his body, and suddenly, he came alive. His arm lashed around her waist, dragging her hard against him while the other cupped the back of her head, as he dipped her back so that she needed to cling to him to keep from falling.

“What is it you want? A primer course in seduction?” he growled down at her, his lip curling back over his strong white teeth, his eyes burning like embers in his dark face. She shivered. “Of course. What else would I be?” he said with a feral smile. “Well, I can do that. I can be that.”

His mouth descended on her, hot and urgent and punishing, and she reveled in it, in his strength, his hunger, his want. Eagerly, her mouth opened to his, her tongue welcoming his. It swirled in her mouth, the heavy warm muscle simulating the sex act in her mouth. Little lights danced across the tapestry of her inner eyelids as she arched into him, her fingers digging deep into his shoulders.

Vaguely, she became aware that he was lowering her to the ground, of pebbles and rock shards sharp beneath her back and legs. He covered her, his leg between her thighs, one arm beneath her shoulders, the other clasping her jaw, holding it still for his sensual assault. She panted against his mouth, her hips rotating in an instinctive invitation against his leg.

He jerked his head away, closed his eyes, and sucked in a deep, agonized breath—

Which is why he didn’t see the rifle barrel until it prodded him in the side.

There were four men, all dressed in indigo robes, and that was about all Jim had time to notice.

He grabbed the rifle barrel and shoved, unbalancing the gunman, then yanked the rifle from his grip as Mildred scrambled for his kit and the pistol inside. He surged to his feet, swinging the rifle like a bat and catching his assailant in the side of the head. He collapsed, unconscious, as Jim spun to face the next man just as a rifle blast went off next to his face. He froze.

Somewhere behind him a man shouted at him in a language he didn’t understand. Jim raised his hands in the universal sign of surrender. A man in inky blue robes and a turban, his face so heavily veiled only his eyes were visible, snatched the rifle from his upraised hands and clouted him sharply on the head. He rocked back, dazed, but managed to stay upright.

Another man grabbed Mildred by the arm and jerked her to her feet. He dragged her over to where Jim stood and shoved her at him, barking an order neither of them understood. He caught her arm and edged her behind him.

“We are English citizens,” Jim said. “You will be punished if any harm comes to us.”

“They’re Tuaregs,” Mildred said in a voice gauged for his ears alone, “not Egyptians, and they are a hundred miles from their homeland. They must be traders. They
could
be slave traders.” She kept her voice low, her eyes averted. “If they are, they might speak Arabic.”

Jim didn’t question her. He’d heard of the Blue Men of the Sahara with their distinctive blue robes, but he’d never crossed their path before. They lived far west of the places he haunted. These must be the same riders who’d been shadowing them before Neely and his men had taken off. When they saw that Neely split apart, they’d evidently decided since the odds now favored them they might as well take the opportunity to rob them. Damn Neely.

Quickly, he assessed their situation. Besides the one lying unconscious at his feet, they faced three men: the one who’d spoken, the one with the rifle, and one holding the lead line of half a dozen heavily laden camels, at the end of which was tied a magnificent smoke-gray Arabian stallion.

Jim figured the one who’d fired the rifle to be their leader. Though he was not the one shouting orders, he was the only one with a firearm, currently trained on Jim. Jim addressed him.

“You will only bring ruin to yourself and your people if you harm us,” he said in careful Arabic. “The English will find you.” Though the man’s face, like those of his confederates, was covered, Jim could almost feel his answering smile because the threat was hollow and they both knew it. The Tuaregs lived in lands occupied by the French, not the English.

“We do not
seek
trouble,” the man replied in halting Arabic, but from the slight emphasis he placed on the word, Jim took it to mean that he wouldn’t avoid trouble if it happened by.

“We came for water and found you here enjoying the woman.” Jim felt himself tense at the flat statement and forced himself not to react.

“Didn’t quite get there, no thanks to you,” he said, winning an amused snort from a couple of the men.

The leader was on a fishing expedition, trying to gauge how much Mildred meant to him, possibly to determine how much he could ransom her for, possibly for some other reason altogether. He just didn’t know. He had to play this right. Both their lives depended on it.

The man pulled the veil off from his face. Years of wearing the indigo-dyed material had stained his lower face so dark a blue he seemed to have an indigo beard. He was neither young nor old, but that indeterminate age between twenty-five and fifty which desert dwellers wear so similarly. His gaze slew toward Mildred. “Who is she?”

“Mine.”

“Your wife?”

Jim thought quickly. The Tuareg might take her for ransom if they thought her valuable enough. Or they might just take her. “No. Just mine,” he said coldly.

The man nodded thoughtfully, then said something in his native tongue to his subordinates. One of them came forward and dragged the unconscious man away; the other took the rifle and trained it on Jim. The leader came forward, stopping in front of Mildred. “She has red hair.” He cocked his head. “At least, red enough.”

“Yes,” Jim agreed. He had no idea whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, and the man’s face wasn’t telling.

“A red-haired woman is good luck.”

Something in the man’s tone, coupled with the manner in which he was eying her, must have conveyed the man’s meaning to Mildred, because she trembled ever so slightly and her skin blanched. She didn’t say a word, however. She simply stood eyes downcast, meekly submissive. Wise girl.

“Is it?” Jim asked with a harsh laugh. “Take a look at the luck she’s brought me.” He waved a hand at the oasis and their inadequate shelter, the antique one-eyed camel.

The man smiled in return and moved to stand in front of Mildred. He cocked his head first one way and then the other, trying to get her to look him in the eye but she refused. He grinned at Jim.

“She is well trained. How long have you had her?”

The Tuareg thought she was his slave. He must be younger than he’d realized or far less experienced with outside cultures. Otherwise he would have known that Europeans didn’t keep slaves.

“A while.” Jim shrugged.

“How much did you pay for her?” he asked, his speculative gaze still on Mildred.

“Too much,” Jim said.

“Hm.”

From his position next to her, one of the Tuareg’s subordinates reached out and cupped Mildred’s breast, grinning. Mildred gasped. Quick as a striking snake, Jim’s hand lashed out and seized the Tuareg by the throat. Choking, the man clawed at Jim’s wrist; Jim barely felt it. He squeezed, his gaze narrowing on the twisting, struggling man.

“Enough!” thundered the leader, but a red haze had descended over Jim’s vision, a primal need to destroy. He shook the man as a mongoose would a cobra, felt the other man’s hands weaken, dimly heard Mildred shouting his name.

“I said ‘mine,’” he whispered, through clenched teeth.

The Tuareg leader grabbed the rifle, shoving the end against Mildred’s temple. “Stop!”

Jim stopped. He opened his hand, and the man slipped to his knees, retching in the sand at Jim’s feet.

The Tuareg spoke sharply, and the man scrambled back, his head low to the ground. The Tuareg returned his gaze to Jim. He did not look happy, and Jim wondered if Mildred could ride, because right now her only hope looked to be if he could distract them long enough for her to get on top of that stallion—

“Forgive that one. He is a pig with the manners of a dog,” the Tuareg said in a hard, angry voice.

Something had changed the situation in the last few minutes; the Tuareg leader’s previous smiling and patently insincere geniality had vanished. He looked like a cat that had had his whiskers shorn. In other words, pissed off.

“He’s disgraced,” Mildred whispered from beside him. “I’ve…I’ve read about this. In his culture, it is forbidden to touch another’s property without his prior consent, and the leader is responsible for the actions of his subordinates. So he has been shamed. He might feel the need to make amends. But be careful what you say; he will try to twist any careless comment into something at which he can take offense.”

Jim gave her a small nod to let her know he had heard. Some of the more isolated tribes he’d come across were notoriously patriarchal, at least outwardly. If he seemed to be asking her counsel, his status would be lowered, which he couldn’t afford right now. The information she’d whispered was invaluable, but he was too experienced to rely much on this man’s sense of obligation. He might make use of it, but only to a very specific point. The tricky part was figuring out where that point was.

The man was a trader, and the first rule of bargaining was to let the other guy make the first offer. So he held his tongue.

For long, silent minutes, the men took each other’s measure, and then, with an impatient gesture, the man began to speak. The words were a mixture of Arabic and his native language and more was left unsaid than said, but in a short few sentences Jim had the gist of it.

Apparently some time ago this group’s chief had insulted another clan’s chief, and as the other clan was substantially stronger, richer, and more powerful, their chief had rethought his initial stance and sent Juba, the man in front of him, to purchase an Arabian mare from Bedouins as a placatory gift. Disappointingly, the Bedouins had been unwilling to part with any of the more valued mares, and they had been forced to return with a stallion.

Jim listened to all this without remark, keeping his expression haughty.

It seemed to work. Juba gnawed on his lip. If Mildred was right, he would be hoping that Jim would make some comment he could purposefully misinterpret. Then he could salvage the situation by taking righteous offense, killing Jim, and taking off with Mildred. But Jim remained implacably silent. The Tuareg would assume he was awaiting an apology.

And once Juba apologized, he’d be forced to let them go unharmed. In every nomadic tribe Jim had encountered, a universal truth prevailed: as much as one might want to, one simply did not rob or murder someone to whom one has made a formal apology. In a twisted sort of way, Jim even understood the concept.

“I have this wondrous horse,” Juba finally said, red-faced with ire. “He is a King of Stallions. See for yourself.”

With apparent boredom, Jim glanced toward the gorgeous creature prancing restlessly at the end of the line. He looked back, his expression noncommittal.

The Tuareg clapped his hands and shouted. From out of the shadows limped the man Jim had cold-cocked with the rifle, leading the stallion. He stopped in front of Juba, warily eying Jim.

“Look,” Juba said. “Every line perfect. Note his noble head, the small, neat ears and wide nostrils. Look how he stands with his neck so regally arched and legs so straight. He is first among stallions.” The Tuareg beckoned him over. “Feel. See for yourself, how sound, how well-muscled.”

With a shrug, Jim crossed over to the horse. The stallion’s nostrils quivered at his approach. Catching scent of something alien, he backed up, pawing the earth, his ears twitching back and forth as he listened intently.

He truly was superb. His topline was level, his back short and broad. As Juba had pointed out, his neck was long and arched, with the clean throatlatch typical in the best of the breed. Unlike the stocky, heavily haunched little mustangs he’d ridden as a boy, this animal, though not appreciably taller, had the long, leaner muscles and smaller hooves of a creature suited to covering long distances.

Jim held out his hand, and the stallion stretched his neck, his large, luminous, dark eyes fixed on Jim. He took a tentative sniff, the warm, moist air brushing over Jim’s knuckles, then withdrew his head and waited. Slowly, Jim ran his hands over the animal’s croup up to his withers and down his legs. The stallion stood easily, every now and again flicking an ear in his direction.

“See? Is it not so?”

“He is a fine horse,” Jim agreed carefully.

“Fine? He is unequaled in all of Egypt. A horse fit for an
amenokal
.”

“Ah-huh.”

Juba scowled, wheeled around, and paced back and forth in front of the stallion, finally coming to a stop right in front of Jim. His blue-stained face broke into a huge smile, displaying very white, very broken teeth. “I like you. You, too, are a son of the desert. You touch a horse knowledgably. Not as knowledgably as a Tuareg,” he lifted his shoulder apologetically, “but as good as a Bedouin.”

Jim didn’t say a word, waiting for what would come next. He had a pretty good idea.

“Because I like you, I am thinking that I will make you a trade. There will be no bartering in this trade,” he said, and from the lethal glint in the otherwise amiable face, Jim could well believe it. He appreciated the warning. “It is not even a trade, really. It is more a gift.”

“Yes?”

“I will trade you this Prince of the Desert, this Brother to the Wind, for that camel.”

Jim waited.

“Yes? I see. I understand. You are struck speechless with your good fortune. As would I be were I you. There. Is it done?”

“The one-eyed camel for the stallion?” he said. “That’s it? That’s the trade?”

“Yes!” Juba laughed, making an effusive gesture. “I amaze myself.” He turned and began to untie the stallion from the end of the caravan, and then abruptly he stopped and turned back around, as if just remembering something, something of such little consequence he was embarrassed to even bring it up. “Oh. And the woman, too.”

He heard Mildred make a small choked sound, but he didn’t so much as glance at her.

“Do we have a deal?” Juba asked.

“You bet,” Jim said.

Ginesse watched Jim secure his kit, emptied of his pistol, over his shoulder and accept the canteen Juba offered. Then he leapt lightly atop the stallion’s bare back—a saddle was not part of the deal. He looked down at Juba. “The girl is a virgin. I believe your leader will set great store by that,” he said in a loud, but otherwise inconsequential tone.