LITMIR.BIZ

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voiced trailed away as his hands manacled her wrists. He forced her fingers away from his skin and dropped them with palpable distaste, and all the while the beautiful ocean-hued eyes bored unblinkingly into hers. “It didn’t take you long to accept that I was dead—or was it a case of out of sight, out of mind?”

      The injustice of that caused her to reel away, almost tripping over the visitor’s chair in front of her desk. Clea sank onto the padded black leather, her legs weak.

      How could Brand believe that?

      Especially when she’d never stopped believing in him!

      Five days after her last telephone conversation with Brand, unable to contact him, Clea had sounded the alarm. It had taken another thirteen days—the longest stretch of Clea’s life—for the official channels to relay back to her that Brand was no longer in Greece. He’d entered Iraq over two weeks earlier through the Kuwait border and had checked into a battle-scarred hotel once favored by foreign businessmen in Baghdad. No one knew where he’d gone after checking out a few days later.

      There had been nothing left to do but wait. She’d made every excuse in the book for him. But time passed and still he hadn’t gotten in touch.

      To the men in black suits who materialized like spooks at her workplace Clea had insisted there had been nothing suspicious about her husband’s visit to Iraq; after all, Brand made his living from dealing in antiquities, a love he’d developed while stationed with the Australian Special Air Services elite forces in Iraq. But it had been galling to admit that he hadn’t told her about his intention to enter Iraq, and she decided not to tell her visitors about the argument she’d had with Brand the second to last time she’d spoken to him.

      Once the shadowy men in black suits departed, on her father’s advice and using his extensive contacts, Clea had hired a firm of investigators to locate her missing husband.

      It had never been a case of out of sight, out of mind.

      She hadn’t stopped thinking about him, not for one minute. Even the two identical clocks on her office wall bore testimony to that—one set to Eastern Time, the other to Baghdad time. She’d never stopped thinking what he might be doing at any moment of her day. She’d wanted her husband back. She’d wanted answers about his disappearance. Real answers. Not speculation that he’d deserted her for another woman, which had been the first theory the investigators had come up with. The news of the grisly discovery of the burned-out SUV in the desert had terrified her. But she’d stubbornly clung to her belief that she would’ve known in her heart if Brand was dead. She’d demanded incontrovertible proof.

      When they’d brought her his wedding ring nine months ago, Clea had been shattered, her dreams pulverized to dust, her hopes charred to ashes.

      The idea of a baby had become a lifeline to sanity.

      Getting pregnant had given her back her life. Not the life she’d hoped to share with Brand, but something better than the hopelessness that had overtaken her.

      Yet now Brand stood over her accusing her of forgetting him. Instead of taking her in his arms, he was behaving like the world’s biggest bastard. And he showed no signs of listening anytime soon. Clea shook her head to clear it and pressed her hands protectively over her stomach.

      Brand laughed—a harsh, grating sound she’d never heard before. “Nothing further to say? How unfortunate for you I didn’t remain dead.” The sea-green gaze had turned arctic.

      Slumped in the chair, Clea’s whole body ached. Her feet. Her head. Her heart. Was it possible Brand was hurting every bit as much as she was? “I can explain …”

      Brand recoiled.

      “I don’t need your explanations!” He looked down on her from the full height of his six-foot-two-inch frame. His eyes froze her out. “It’s easy enough to see what happened.” One side of his mouth kicked up. “So who’s the lucky man?”

      “Will you stop interrupting me?” Her voice rose. Hauling in a shaky breath, she tempered her tone. “We always talked about having a family—”

      “Our family,” he said, pointedly inspecting her belly, covered by the silk of her designer dress and sheltered by her clasped hands. “Not some other man’s bastard.”

      “Brand, wait!”

      Clea rose to her feet and reached for him, then dropped her hands to her sides at the icy look he bestowed on her.

      “Please listen—”

      “What’s the point of listening?” There was contempt in the frigid gaze that met hers, and something else …

      Disappointment?

      His lack of faith stung. She deserved a chance to explain, and she didn’t doubt that he’d listen once he’d calmed down. Brand might have a dangerous reputation, but he loved her.

      Or did he?

      The first shadow of doubt stole over her. Clea stilled. She’d always imagined that something terrible must’ve happened to keep him away for so long. A horrific accident. Memory loss. Trauma so terrible he hadn’t wanted her to see him in such a state.

      Instead he stood before her looking breathtakingly hunky in the tuxedo and black shirt, his body even better conditioned than four years earlier—some feat because Brand had always honed his body to perfection. His face was burnished bronze by the sun, contrasting with the color of his sea-green eyes to devastating effect. An aura of reckless danger now clung to him, causing her heart to beat faster.

      He might not be the Brand she’d kissed goodbye at the airport—but he wasn’t damaged or scarred.

      Yet she had to admit, dressed all in black, he looked like the devil incarnate.

      Without taking her eyes from him, she toed off her shoes, adding another two inches to the height advantage he already possessed. “So why didn’t you tell me you were going to Baghdad?” she challenged.

      Brand stared back at her.

      Did he cause Anita Freeman’s heart to beat faster, too? “Answer me!”

      Nothing. Not even a blink. He simply kept watching her with that basilisk stare she was starting to loathe.

      “I’ve waited—”

      A brow lifted ironically at that. “Waited?”

      “Yes! Waited.” Clea pushed a tendril back off her face. “The last decent conversation we shared, you were in London—about to go to Greece. We argued about that. Remember?” She’d wanted to rearrange her schedule and had asked Brand to wait until she could join him. He’d refused—and ordered her to stay home. Clea hadn’t taken kindly to being so summarily dismissed. It wasn’t the first time that Brand had made decisions for her. She’d sulked. He’d called her once more from Athens—and their conversation had been stilted and brief. Just before he’d cut the connection, he’d told her he loved her.

      Then there’d been no more contact.

      When he didn’t respond, she said, “You never told me you planned to go to Iraq.”

      His gaze didn’t waver. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

      Could the explanation really be that simple? Or had the business trip to Greece been a cover for an affair with another woman? Had the investigators’ first theory—supported by her father and Harry—been correct after all?

      The ticking of the two wall clocks was the only sound in the room.

      Clea broke the silence. “That’s all? That’s the reason you never mentioned it?” If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, Clea might have missed the sideways flicker of his eyes.

      Brand wasn’t telling her the truth.

      Or at least not the whole truth.

      The

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