LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

      NICKY’S hand trembled as she reached for the phone on her father’s desk, pushing aside the tiny cup of thick black coffee the servant had brought her a few moments ago. She had all the jitters she needed without the caffeine.

      She dialed the number and heard the ringing of the phone on the other side of the world. Her heart was beating so frantically, it was frightening. She stared out the window as the phone kept ringing, at the view of palm trees and the tall minaret of the mosque silhouetted against the cobalt blue Moroccan sky.

      Finally the ringing stopped and a female hotel employee answered the phone in English, her voice accented and cheerful. The line was clear, as if the voice came from the house next door rather than from Manilla in the Philippines.

      Nicky closed her eyes and braced herself, her chest heavy with anxiety. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Blake Chandler, please. I don’t know the room number.”

      “One moment, please.”

      The phone rang again. In Blake’s room. Finally, his voice—short, clipped, deep. The voice she loved more than any other in the world. The voice of her husband.

      Yet her heart was not racing with love and excitement. It was thundering with trepidation.

      “Blake, it’s Nicky,” she said.

      “Nicky?” He sounded surprised. “I’m glad you’re calling. I was about to call you. How are you?”

      She swallowed. “I’m fine.”

      I’m not fine, she corrected silently. I’m scared. Blake, I’m so scared.

      “And your mother?”

      “She’s doing much better.”

      Nicky was in Morocco with her parents because her mother had become ill and she’d wanted to be with her. Her father worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and he and her mother had lived in Marrakech for the past year.

      Nicky tried to relax her hand gripping the receiver. “Why were you going to call me?” she asked. Please tell me you miss me. Please tell me you love me and can’t wait to be home together again.

      “There’s a problem with the project,” Blake said instead. “It will take a couple of days to straighten out. I’ll be home two days late, on Saturday, same flight schedule.”

      Disappointment tasted bitter in her mouth. He wasn’t telling her what she needed to hear. She swallowed. “It’s all right. As it turns out, I’ve changed my plans, as well.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact. “I’m going to see Sophie in Rome on my way back to the States. She’s having her baby and I... I think it’s nice for me to be there.”

      “How long will you stay?” A businesslike question. His voice was expressionless.

      She swallowed hard. Go ahead, do it, urged the little voice inside her.

      Next week Blake would come home and the plan had been for her to be back in Washington, as well. She closed her eyes, steeling herself. “Three weeks,” she said, feeling her heart grow cold.

      A slight pause. “We won’t see each other, then,” came his voice. “You won’t be back home until after I leave again for Guatemala.”

      Her hands shook. She clenched her left one hard around the receiver. “Right.” She gulped in air. “Do you mind?”

      They had not seen each other in almost three months and if she didn’t go straight home next week they wouldn’t see each other for another month or so until Blake came back from his next consulting trip to Guatemala. And she was asking him if he minded. “You have to be there for your friends,” Blake stated. There was no inflection in his voice. “I’ll manage. I’m a big boy.”

      She felt as if she were suffocating. He doesn’t care! came the desperate thought. He didn’t care last time and he doesn’t care now. What was it he had said last time?

      If your mother needs you, then of course you have to stay. That had been five weeks ago when she had called him and told him she wouldn’t be home when he came back from his business trip because her mother still wasn’t very well.

      Which had been true enough, but the virus she’d caught had not been serious, just took its own sweet time to run its course, making her mother tired and cranky.

      Nicky could have gone home to Washington and spent time with her husband while he was back in the country preparing for his next consulting job overseas. She could have been home cooking food for him, sleeping in his arms, making love, planning the future.

      Instead she’d decided to stay at her parents’ house in Morocco and Blake had not objected. He had not said he minded, that he would miss her, that the house was lonely without her.

      Now, after not having seen her for three months, he still didn’t

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