Into the Crossfire Read online

  “Pleased to meet you.” Nicole had that phrase in Arabic down pat, having used it thousands of times in Beirut.

  “Welcome to my restaurant. I hope you enjoy the meal.” The beautiful Arabic syllables flowed like water as he took her hand and bowed over it.

  “Thank you, I’m looking forward to it. You have a very beautiful place here,” Nicole answered carefully, now having to create an actual sentence. Arabic was not her strongest language and she was prone to grammatical mistakes.

  Either she hadn’t made a mistake, or Bashir Fakhry forgave her. He beamed at her.

  “A beauty beyond compare and she speaks Arabic,” he murmured, dark liquid eyes gleaming. He shot a sly look at Sam, then smiled back down at her. “Ditch this hobo and run away with me.”

  Nicole laughed. His English was excellent, with a to-die-for accent. Nicole was sure Bashir was a great hit with the ladies. She’d loved the extravagant personalities of the Lebanese, who had managed to retain their humanity even as their country was being torn apart.

  Nicole had been lucky enough to be in Lebanon in the halcyon years after the civil war had ended and before the new war started. Her father had been Deputy Chief of Mission of the Beirut Embassy for two years. She’d just started her studies in Geneva, but she spent her summers in Lebanon, enjoying her parents’ company, desultorily studying Arabic and flirting with the cultural attaché she suspected was CIA.

  Bashir led them through room after room of loud, happy diners to a quiet, small room in the back where a plate-glass wall gave out onto lush-looking fields.

  The room was delightful—intimate and glowing with the evening light. He seated them at a corner table, at right angles to each other. Nicole was amused to note that Sam immediately took the seat with his back to the wall, which meant he had to turn his head to look out at the beautiful view.

  Bashir disappeared without taking any orders, but within a minute, a beautiful young girl who looked like him started ferrying out bowl after bowl of food. A full array of mezze that smelled and looked delicious.

  A young man who shared the family resemblance uncorked a bottle of Syrah from Baalbek and poured a finger in Sam’s glass. He stood at attention as Sam sipped and nodded. Sam waved a long finger at Nicole’s glass.

  “I won’t say anything until the lady has tasted.”

  Nicole sipped and narrowed her eyes at the explosion of taste in her mouth. Sunshine, cherries, oak…“Wow.”

  Sam nodded. “I think that will be fine, then, Maroun. Thank you.”

  The young man disappeared. Nicole looked around, pleased with everything. The room, the view, the food, the wine.

  The man.

  It was already the nicest time she’d had in, oh, at least a year, and she hadn’t even eaten yet.

  So far, Sam Reston hadn’t said or done anything obnoxious, which put him in the tenth percentile of dates. The food smelled glorious, the wine was magnificent.

  Her father was in good hands this evening. She’d landed the contract with the Wall Street Master of the Universe, inching her way slightly closer to, if not wealth, then at least solvency. Maybe.

  The evening reminded her of happier days with her family and carefree summers with friends. It reminded her of another, lost, life.

  Sam dipped a crispy lettuce leaf into the hummus in an enameled bowl decorated with swirling earth colors.

  “If you’re already smiling, then I want to see you after you put this in your mouth.” He held it out to her. Her fingers brushed his as she accepted it.

  It was like a little electric shock. Nicole paused, the leaf trembling in her hand and looked at him, dismayed.

  Oh no.

  No no no.

  Just when she was settling into an enjoyable evening, too.

  When her fingers met his, a powerful burst of heat had coursed through her system, head to toe, as if she’d stepped in front of an open furnace. Classic hot flush, only she wasn’t menopausal.

  Oh God, no. She was attracted to Sam Reston. Massively. It had been hidden by his little trip through Grungeville, but apparently underneath, humming like a powerful engine, there’d been attraction.

  Sexual attraction. Wild sexual attraction, of a pitch and intensity she’d never experienced before.

  She’d been pleased to think that she might be making a friend of him. It would be nice to have someone to go out with occasionally, spiced by a little tug of sexual attraction, just to keep her hormones ticking over. He spent most of his working days across the hallway from her, which meant maybe she could have company sometimes at her noonday meals, which up until now had basically been yogurt and a packed sandwich alone at her desk.

  She needed friendship. She did not need this red-hot connection to every erogenous zone in her body.

  Dismayed, she looked down at the uneaten hummus-laden leaf of lettuce, out the window at the neatly tended gardens below, then back at Sam Reston.

  She winced at the heat in his eyes.

  He saw her trembling hand and steadied it with his own. He removed the lettuce from her fingers, curled his big, rough hand around hers and brought her hand to his mouth.

  His breath was a hot wash over her skin. Goose pimples broke out when he kissed her hand.

  He understood exactly what was going on inside her. His dark eyes were so intelligent and so heat-filled she didn’t know where to look.

  If he had had that annoyingly smug male look of someone who’d hooked a live one, this would have been easy. Put up a wall, eat the nice food, make light conversation, be distant when saying good night, avoid the kiss.

  But he didn’t look smug. He looked serious, stern, as if wild sexual attraction were the most dangerous thing on earth.

  And it was. A loaded grenade, in fact.

  Oh God, she had to nip this in the bud, and fast.

  “Look, I—” Nicole’s eyes widened in dismay. The words didn’t come out. This was terrifying. All that came out was a huff of air as her throat tightened. She had to stop and try again.

  “Look.” Through sheer willpower she steadied her voice, tugging her hand from his. Trying to, anyway. His hold was painless but unbreakable. “There’s something I need to say to you, right up front, Sam. And I need you to listen to me carefully.”

  He bowed his head, eyes always on hers. “Fine.” He tightened his warm grasp slightly. “But I want to be touching you while I listen.”

  Well, hell. Him not touching her was part of what she wanted to say. But her hand felt…wonderful in his. Warm, surrounded by hard male flesh, somehow safe.

  She took a deep breath because this wasn’t going to be easy.

  For a moment she simply looked at him, at this very large, very strong, utterly male man who had most improbably woken up her dormant libido at exactly the wrong time in her life. She had an enormous pang of regret for what she had to say to him, but there was no evading it. It had to be done.

  From the moment she’d gone to pick up her sick father in Dushanbe and had been told by the doctors what condition he was in, she’d known that her old life was over and that everything but caring for her father was going to have to be tossed overboard. Her carefree single life in Geneva, friends, a love life. Everything had to go. She’d seen it all in one moment of brutal clarity.

  The only other thing she could allow into her life was work, and that was purely out of necessity.

  She hadn’t been even remotely tempted to allow anything else into her life before now, but somehow Sam Reston made her yearn, yearn for the affair they might have had if things had been different.

  But they weren’t.

  “This…this thing between us—” she waved her free hand between them, “and you’ll notice I’m not denying that there’s something. But whatever it is, it has to stop here. Much as I’d like to explore it, I can’t.”

  His face was utterly impassive and he held himself still. He didn’t even appear to be breathing. He was completely concentrated on her, all that male power,
tightly focused on her.

  She’d asked him to listen carefully because she thought he wouldn’t want to hear what she was saying. He didn’t show any trace of denial, though, as most men would have. Maybe that was a soldier’s gift—to see what was. If you couldn’t see reality, no matter how unpalatable, you were dead.

  “Explain, please.” The deep voice sounded thoughtful, not angry or defensive.

  “Okay. I need to tell you where my life is right now.” Deep breath. Let it out in one controlled stream. Just like her yoga teacher had taught her. “A little over a year ago I was living in Geneva, where I’d gone to university. I was working for the UN as a translator. I loved my job and I had a wide circle of friends and an active social life.”

  She looked out the window for a second, allowing herself the sharp pang of pain at what had been lost.

  How incredibly happy she’d been. Young, single, earning well. She’d loved translating, her colleagues, her friends, her life. The UN paid very well, in Swiss francs and tax free. Geneva was a dream city—pretty and green and safe, surrounded by gorgeous mountains with the best skiing in the world. A short train ride away from southern France and northern Italy.

  The world had been her oyster. She suppressed a sigh. Those days were gone, forever.

  She looked back at Sam, watching her steadily. “Well,” she said briskly, “I imagine you know all that if you checked my website. Or at least you’d know the basics.”

  “Yeah.” The deep voice was quiet. “I know you lived in Geneva and worked for the UN. Sounds interesting.”

  A sharp little stab to the heart. “Yes, yes it was interesting. I loved it.” Nicole sat up straighter, stiffening her spine. It had been good. It was now over. Deal. “But now I have other priorities. I’ve always been close to my parents. My mother died in a car accident in 2004 and it was a huge blow to my father and me. We just had each other. When I graduated and started my new job, he was appointed ambassador to Tajikistan, with special plenipotentiary powers. He seemed as happy in his new life as I was in mine. So I had no inkling of trouble when the call came. Midnight, on the fourteenth of May, a little over a year ago. The call was to say that Dad was in the hospital.”

  Nicole’s mouth tightened. She remembered the scene so vividly. The call had come on a Friday evening. She’d been packing for a ski holiday on the glaciers, happily thinking of snow and schnaps and schnitzli. Then her world fell apart. The caller was an embassy secretary, to say that her father was in the ICU. An hour later, Nicole had been at the Geneva airport, waiting for the first of four connections for the 24-hour trip to get to her father’s side.

  “The Embassy said that my—my father was very ill, in a coma. I left immediately and when I arrived in Dushanbe, Dad was just coming out of it. In carrying out a CAT scan to exclude a stroke, they discovered that—”

  Oh God. This was so hard to say. Her hand in his started trembling and his hold tightened slightly.

  Just say it.

  “They discovered that he has brain cancer. Not one big tumor, which would be serious but perhaps treatable. His brain is riddled with them, almost too numerous to count, the doctors said. Inoperable. The only thing they could do for him was radiotherapy to extend his lifespan a little, and some chemotherapy. I was making arrangements to fly him back with me on a medevac flight to Geneva, when he started waking up. I knew I could cope in Geneva. I could find a larger house to rent; medical care there is excellent; the UN has a very generous health plan that includes relatives; I was phoning people, working it all out. When he was fully awake, Dad was told his condition. And—and he told me he’d served his country abroad all his adult life, and that now he wanted to go home, back to the States to—”

  Nicole’s throat seized up, simply wouldn’t work. Her eyes prickled and she had to look away for a second. She swallowed. Sam didn’t show any impatience at all. He simply sat, looking at her, holding her hand. Quiet and still and focused.

  A minute, two. She stared blindly out the window until she could get her voice back. She drew in a shuddering breath and looked back at him.

  “To die. He wanted to come back home to die,” she finally whispered. A single tear spilled from her eye and plopped onto the table. And here she thought she had no tears left.

  Sam dried the track it had left with his thumb. The skin of his finger was rough, like a cat’s tongue, the touch delicate.

  “Sorry,” she said, bowing her head. A weeping dinner date was no fun.

  “Sorry?” He frowned. “For what?”

  She was sorry about everything. Sorry that she was soon going to lose her father, sorry about her reduced life, sorry that this attraction couldn’t go anywhere.

  Okay, the next bit just had to be said.

  “From that moment, from the moment I learned that my father was very ill and that he wanted to come home, my life changed on a dime. I quit my job and we moved here, to the house my grandmother left me.” Nicole tried to make her voice brisk. “So, Sam. Like it or not, this is my life. My father is dying and we have no money. While closing up Dad’s affairs, I discovered that Dad had invested his life savings in a mutual fund run by Lawrence Karloff.”

  She nodded when he winced. The tangled lawsuits of the thousands of people who’d lost every cent of their savings in the giant Ponzi scheme run by the Wall Street legend were still making headlines.

  “Yes, indeed. Dad lost every penny he’d ever put aside to that bastard Karloff. He is essentially penniless. That SOB took everything. And since Dad had to retire from the State Department early for reasons of health, he has a reduced pension. Basically, the pension pays for the utilities, food, taxes and that’s about it. The State Department covers hospitalization. But the costs for his nursing care, our housekeeper, his physical rehab, the drugs…they’re all astronomical and they’re all on me. I don’t think we could have afforded to actually move back to the States if my grandmother hadn’t left me our house. Luckily, we don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage. Otherwise I don’t think it would have worked and Dad wouldn’t have gotten his—his wish.

  “So we came back to the States. I founded Wordsmith with my contacts from university and from my UN job. I tried to work out of the house all last year, but it wasn’t ideal. Dad, bless him, interrupted a thousand times a day, and I do need to meet with clients, so that’s when I decided to get an office downtown. At Wordsmith we’re good at what we do, but it’s a typical small company that is growing steadily but not always fast enough. With what I earn from it, I can barely keep up with the medical bills.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. Recounting her life like this was painful and depressing. And, unfortunately, necessary.

  “I’m not saying any of this to make you feel sorry for me. Please don’t. I’m doing exactly what I want to do and right now, I wouldn’t have my life any other way. But I do need you to know that this is my life and there’s no reason why any of my problems should be a part of yours. It’s no fun dating someone who has no money for anything. And it’s not just money I lack. Every second of my day is dedicated to my father or to work. That’s it, that’s what I do. I take care of Dad and I work. I don’t go out, I don’t go to the movies or to plays or concerts. I can’t even think of a vacation—not even just a couple of days away. I won’t leave my father alone and I couldn’t afford it anyway. This is the situation as long as my dad is alive, which I hope with all my heart will be as long as possible. So you see, I am not free to just…come out and play with you. There’s nothing lighthearted or easy about my life right now, Sam. I am, in all senses, a burden. I’m saying this to you because you—well, your body language is pretty clear. You seem to be, for want of a better word, attracted. Am I right?”

  He nodded, eyes never leaving hers. “Jesus. Absolutely. From the first second I saw you.”

  She sighed. He wasn’t making it any easier. The attraction was mutual. Except she’d been able to explain away the sharp awareness of him, the accelerated heartbeat
, the slight trembling when she saw him as fear of a dangerous-looking man.

  He was still dangerous-looking, but it wasn’t fear she felt. Oh God, no.

  He wasn’t handsome but he had sharp, clean features, the strong features of a man used to wielding authority. The whole package—the outsize body, the big rough hands, the penetrating dark eyes, the no-nonsense air, the deep voice—was delectable and made her tremble deep inside.

  She’d been so caught up in what she was telling him that she had had no sense of herself, but now sensations came rushing back in.

  She was aroused by him, it was absolutely unmistakeable. Right now, in a perfectly nice Lebanese restaurant, blood was rushing to her sex and her breasts, her breathing was speeding up, her head filled with heated images of her crawling onto his lap and simply licking him all over.

  Nicole hated machos. She’d grown up in third-world countries where the most idiotic male felt he was superior to all women because he had a Y chromosome and a piece of flesh dangling between his legs.

  She was immune to their posturing, to their torrid glances and boasts of sexual prowess.

  But Sam Reston was the real deal. He didn’t flaunt his maleness, it just…was. As much a part of him as his hands or feet. Male strength, not just of his muscles, but of his will, exuded from him, together with a godzillion male pheromones that had her heart racing.

  He was still holding her hand and the connection felt electric, the heat running all the way up her arm. Even his smell was delicious. Not a cologne, just clean male skin, the starch in his blindingly white shirt, and a faint scent of soap. Not Armani or Boss, but still guaranteed to make female hearts trip up. He simply exuded power and sex.

  Hormone city.

  She was as turned on as she’d ever been in her life, yet they were simply sitting in a restaurant, hand in hand. Though nothing overt was happening at all, her chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe. She was hot all over, like she had a fever.

  She had never felt this before, and it wasn’t…unpleasant. How sad to have to give it up without even having a chance to taste it first.