LITMIR.BIZ

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Amira was dead. She had to be brave for their baby.

      Hands braced on her thighs, she leant forward to get her breath. It was time to be honest. If she didn’t it would be her own insecurity that stretched the gulf that had opened up between them tonight.

      She was so caught up with her own internal dialogue that as she straightened up and brushed the hair back from her face she almost missed the figure that emerged from the garage block, the figure carrying the cane. The figure of the colonel...

      For a moment literally paralysed with fear, Hannah felt herself dragged back to that room of her nightmares—the bright white light, the stains on the wall that she didn’t like to think about and the sinister tap, tap of that cane.

      But he wasn’t tapping his stick. He wasn’t doing anything to attract attention to himself. As he moved towards the staff quarters he looked furtively left and right, then over his shoulder. For a moment he seemed to be looking straight at her and, standing there in the pale ball gown, she felt as though there were a neon arrow above her head. Then he turned and walked away quickly.

      It was only after he had vanished that she began to breathe again.

      She was ashamed that she’d felt so afraid. He couldn’t hurt her any more. He never had; he’d only been playing mind games. He was harmless really. But harmless or not, remembering the expression she had caught a glimpse of earlier that evening when his cold little eyes had followed Kamel across the room made her shudder.

      ‘Hannah, you’re way too old to believe in the bogey man.’ Firmly ejecting the hateful little creep from her head, Hannah was turning to retrace her steps when she lost her footing. By some miracle she managed not to fall, but she did jar her ankle. Flexing her toes and extending her foot to see the damage, she noticed a dark patch on the ground. There was a trail of similar spots leading all the way back to the garage. Unable to shake the feeling that something was not quite right, she found herself following the breadcrumb trail of spots. It led back into the large hangar of a building that housed Kamel’s collection of cars.

      She had seen them before and had made a few appropriate noises of approval, though in all honesty her interest in high-end vintage cars was limited. So long as the car she drove got her from A to B she was happy.

      The lights were off in the building, but as she walked inside the internal sensor switched them on, revealing the rows of gleaming cars inside. Only one was absent—the vintage sports car that Kamel had driven off in. Where it had stood in the empty space the trail came to an end.

      While Hannah’s interest in cars was limited, a condition of her being given driving lessons for her seventeenth birthday had been she attend some basic car-maintenance classes. Some things had stuck with her, like the unpleasant smell of brake fluid.

      She dipped her finger in the pool, lifted it to her nose and gave a whimper, the colour fading from her face. The images clicked through her head. The hate in that man’s eyes, his furtive manner as he’d left the building. Why hadn’t she challenged him? Would the little coward dare...?

      She didn’t follow the line of speculation to its conclusion; she didn’t think of the security guard who might have kept a discreet distance but was undoubtedly within calling distance, or even the internal phone on the wall behind her. She just ran.

      The palace compound was more like a village or small town than a single residence, and, though it was possible to take a direct route to the heavy entrance gates, there was also a more circuitous route. She had complained recently that Kamel treated it as if it were his own private racing track. He had laughed when she’d closed her eyes and squealed at the last hairpin bend, convinced they were heading straight into a wall.

      Without brakes... She shook her head to clear the image and pushed on. On foot it was possible to take a much shorter, direct route. She ought to be able to cut him off before— She refused to think that she was not going to make it in time.

      The information did not make it to her lungs. They already felt as though they were going to explode and when she was forced to stop to catch her breath it also gave her body time for the pain in her ankle to register. That was when she remembered the phone in the garage block. She could have rung through to the entrance gate—someone would be there now, ready to warn Kamel. She was trying to decide between the options of going back to the phone or trying to intercept him when she saw a really ancient bike propped up against a wall.

      Sending up a silent thanks to whoever had left it there, she climbed aboard and began to pedal through the trees.

      * * *

      Kamel had gunned his way out of the garage.

      It all happened so fast the sequence of events was a blur: the car appearing, throwing herself into the road, arms waving, then the crunch of metal as the front of the Aston Martin embedded itself into a tree.

      I’ve killed him!

      She felt empty, her body was numb—and then the door of the car was being wrenched open. It actually fell off its hinges as Kamel—large, very alive and in what appeared to be a towering rage—vaulted from the vehicle. The feeling rushed back and she began to laugh and cry at the same time.

      ‘You little fool! What the hell were you doing? I could have killed you!’ Looking white and shaken and a million miles from his indestructibly assured self, Kamel took her roughly by the shoulders and wrenched her around to face him. He registered the tears sliding down her face and hissed out a soft curse. How could you yell at someone who looked like that? ‘You just took ten years off my life.’ If he had no Hannah he would have no life; the blinding insight stretched his self-control to the limit.

      ‘I had to stop you—the car, the brakes...’

      His ferocious frown deepened. ‘How the hell did you know about the brakes?’

      She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of one hand and sniffed. ‘You knew?’

      ‘I stopped a few yards after I left the garage.’ To ask himself what the hell he was doing. Throwing some sort of tantrum because she didn’t immediately express unconditional trust? He’d moved the goalposts of this relationship on an almost daily basis. Hell, at the start, he hadn’t even wanted a relationship. If he had to work for her trust, he would. ‘Or tried to.’ He had used the gears to slow down to a crawl, planning to pull over at an appropriate place, which was the only reason he had not hit Hannah.

      He closed his eyes and swallowed, reliving the nightmare moment when she had rushed into the road.

      ‘So you knew about what he tried to do?’

      ‘Who tried to do what?’

      ‘The colonel. He cut your brakes and I think he might be the one who sent the photos.’

      Understanding softened his dark eyes as he placed a thumb under her chin, tilting her tear-stained face up to him. ‘Really sweetheart, that man can’t hurt you and I promise you will never have to see him again.’

      She pulled away from him. ‘No!’ she gritted emphatically through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t look at me like that, and don’t even think about humouring me. I am not imagining things and it was you he was trying to hurt. You humiliated him. I saw the way he looked at you tonight, and then when I followed you he was in the garage and he didn’t want to be seen. So when I saw the brake fluid I knew...’ She pressed a hand to her chest and gulped back a sob and whispered, ‘I had to stop you.’

      ‘You were following me?’

      ‘I just told you—someone tried to kill you.’

      ‘I’ll look into it. He will be brought to justice if he is guilty.’ There was no hint of doubt in Kamel’s voice. ‘You followed me?’

      She nodded.

      ‘Why?’ He hooked a finger under her chin and forced her to look at him, Hannah met his interrogative dark stare steadily, not trying to look away, feeling weirdly calm now the moment was here.

      ‘Because you asked me a

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