Heather Graham (25 page)

Dan laughed, and the sound was deep and pleasantly throaty. Alex glanced at him, biting her lip unwittingly as she flushed a pale pink.

“Doctor,” he teased, pouring the champagne, “upon our first meeting you barged into my bathroom, where I was rather innocently naked. You barged into my bed, where, once again, I was innocently naked, to demand that I marry you. And now that we have finally been most thoroughly intimate, you would deny me the pleasure of your nudity? Really, Dr. Randall, that doesn’t seem at all fair. Besides,” he added dryly, “it’s a bit late and ridiculous, don’t you think?”

Alex lowered her lashes and ignored his question as she sipped her champagne, but she didn’t make any mad grabs for the sheets. Instead she headed for seemingly safer ground. “Dan, what do you think will happen in Cairo?”

He shrugged. “It depends on what you mean.” He smiled softly in the dim-glowing light. “But I believe sincerely—and don’t ask me why—that your father is alive.” He chuckled suddenly. “What I do find difficult to believe is that Crosby is your father. I should probably be ashamed of myself. He’s not a hell of a lot older than I am.”

Alex forgot the situation and laughed. “Don’t feel too much like a child molester!” she charged him. “Jim isn’t a lot older than I am, either.”

They laughed together, and then Dan suddenly sobered. “What happened to your first marriage?”

Alex felt her laughter fade away, her smile go stiff and then disappear. Then she shrugged and drained her champagne glass, to have it instantly refilled. “Are you trying to make me inebriated?” she demanded, attempting to regain the lightness they had shared. “I guarantee you, the story isn’t worth the effort and you’ve already …”

“Had my way with you?” he queried. “The story is worth it to me. Tell me what happened.”

“Sometimes I don’t know,” Alex murmured, studying the rim of her glass and running her forefinger around it. “Our marriage looked terrific on paper. Two Egyptologists—and Egyptologists, I guarantee you, are often lucky to have interested friends, much less spouses! But …” Alex gnawed on her lip and shrugged again. “Wayne never believed I actually wanted to work, which was strange. Sometimes I think he married me because of my father, strange as it may sound. I think he wanted to be James Crosby’s son-in-law without any interference from James Crosby’s daughter. And then at other times, I question myself. We didn’t actually split up over the work bit. We, ah …”

“Go on.”

Alex continued to stare at her glass rim. But she had downed her first glass of champagne quickly, and it felt as if the bubbles had gone straight to her brain. For some reason it didn’t seem so terribly awkward to try to put into words the secrets, doubts and pain of her heart.

“Rumor reached me—or perhaps I should say several rumors reached me—about Wayne’s extramarital activities. I didn’t want to believe the rumors at first; I suppose I couldn’t accept the fact that Wayne didn’t love me as I loved him. Anyway, it was eventually what I didn’t hear that finally made me ask him. My colleagues at the museum,” she explained, “suddenly started becoming silent when I walked into a room. Wayne was going a bit hot and evidently heavy with a tour director. When I did hear about that, I challenged him, ready to believe him if he denied it. Except he didn’t deny it. I suppose he thought I had him red-handed, which I didn’t. To make a long story short, Wayne told me it was my fault. If I stayed home and used my education to support his work, none of it would have ever happened. A wife should be ‘convenient’—not gone for fifty hours a week, and certainly not planning expeditions, unless it was to stand behind her husband.”

Alex broke off suddenly and tossed down her second glass of champagne. She was going to have one hell of a headache in the morning, she warned herself woefully. But at the moment it didn’t matter. The room was too beautiful, the night was too beautiful, and it was strangely wonderful to tell it all to Dan D’Alesio. And at the moment she felt good. She smiled a little wistfully and lethargically handed him her glass as she stretched out beside him, cradling her pillow. “What do you think?” she demanded. “Was it all my fault?”

Dan set the glasses down and stretched beside her, gently cradling her in his arms and hiding a wry smile. A few glasses of champagne and all the rough edges of her spiky temperament smoothed away. Her eyes, heavy lidded, were sweetly sensual, and the sleek, fluid curve of her body was even more so.

He made a mental note to himself to remember to pack a couple of cases of good vintage champagne for the expedition into the Valley of the Kings. Oh, those desert nights …

“No, I don’t think it was all your fault. Unless you tried to leave Wayne at home with an apron tied around him and a sponge mop in his hand; did you?”

“No,” Alex said with a giggle. “I’m not a brilliant cook, but a decent one, and I’m fanatically neat—”

“I believe that,” Dan said solemnly. “And I repeat, I doubt that it was all your fault. Things are very seldom all one person’s fault to begin with. In your case, though, it sounds as if Wayne deserved a ninety-percent share of the blame. You don’t marry a ‘Doctor’ without expecting her to ‘doctor’ something. Granted, the vast change in sex roles in the past years has been hard on many relationships, but most men learn to cope. I don’t think anyone—male or female—wants to change basic sexuality. Besides, it sounds to me as if you were doing all the work on the home front—hardly robbing anyone of masculinity. When two people work, two people should be putting in. But you were cooking, you were keeping the home, and I can personally guarantee that there are no doubts whatsoever as to your complete femininity, and your absolutely marvelous effect upon masculinity.”

He kissed her nose lightly with the last words and began stroking his fingertips over her body from her shoulders to her lower abdomen, slowly, soothingly, and yet arousingly. Alex caught her breath, trying to ignore the subtle taunting of his fingers. She had given honest answers; she wanted a few herself.

“What about you?”

His dark eyes were following the trail of his hands, but he lifted and dropped a brow and she knew he had heard the question. “What about me?”

“You—ah—never married.”

“No.”

It was getting difficult to talk, but his reply maddened her. Why? She had no ties on him.

“Why?”

“Hmmm?” He seemed fascinated and totally distracted by the angle of her hip.

“Why haven’t you ever married?”

“Oh … lots of reasons. I travel continually, and I haven’t met too many females I think I would trust—or women who would want to share my life-style. I’m a loner; I like being unhampered. And mainly, I suppose, because I never met a woman with whom I was sure I wanted to share my life. Until death do us part, you know.”

“I see,” Alex murmured a bit resentfully, attempting to roll away from him. But he rolled with her, keeping her a prisoner beneath his carefully balanced weight.

“I can see your point of view,” she said analytically, trying to maintain a uninterested cool despite the fact that they both knew she had been irritated by his reply. “The field is large, isn’t it, Mr. D’Alesio? And you play it quite well. Magazines continually picture you with exotic beauties. But don’t you ever miss any of them?”

His eyes caught hers, and he smiled devilishly. “Certainly not at the moment.”

“I’m serious, Dan.”

“So am I.”

He dipped his head to kiss her, then kissed her again, slowly, as if he were taking all the time in the world now to explore and analyze.

He drew his lips from hers a second time and answered her. “Quite seriously, my love,” he murmured, seeming to bathe her with a warm glow with the simple husky use of the endearment, “I can’t ever imagine missing anyone when I’m with you.”

Alex caught her breath. Was it real? Or was it a line he might be very adept at using?

He started moving his kisses over her throat, then lower, to leisurely taste and savor her breasts.

Alex tried to catch his hair and to continue speaking rationally.

“Dan … do you believe that people change? I mean, change their beliefs, their ideas on commitment?”

He raised his head, and his weight settled over hers as he cupped her face between his hands. “No,” he said blandly.

“But—”

“But what? There are no
‘buts.’
Not now. …”

Get a grip on yourself, Dan warned himself. He could feel his temper rising because he knew she was questioning him because of her ex-husband. He hated the man without knowing him. And what was going to happen when they got back to Egypt? Randall would be waiting with his promises of changing. Dan didn’t believe in any of those changes. Alex had been open, willing to take blame. And it didn’t appear as if Randall had ever had anything to complain about. And worse than that, according to Haman and Zaid, James Crosby was concerned about his son-in-law’s too-convenient habit of stumbling upon him. Randall just might have something to do with Jim’s disappearance.

At best Randall was a parasite, and it was possible that he was far worse. And somehow, Dan thought grimly, he was going to make sure Alex didn’t manage to reconcile her past marriage.

He knew that what the two of them had together was special. He had sensed it before he ever touched her; and now he had proof that the electricity between them was a certain magic that comes seldom in a lifetime. And he knew he could sweep her into that magic, take her to silver clouds where the fusion of their bodies swept away all else. He could give her more than she had lost. He just had to keep reminding her. …

She was frowning slightly, but he had no idea that she had taken his anger and vehemence in an entirely different way.

He cares about me—but not enough. He wants me, but not involvement, Alex thought, and it was surprising just how painful the thought was. He was coming to mean far too much to her. She was a fool, because he had blatantly declared he would never change. She closed her eyes against the pain she had not expected to experience—and the desire to have more with him than she had ever admitted to herself. And then she closed her mind against the future. They were together now, and she had no intention of even attempting to pretend that she didn’t want him, that he couldn’t touch her and create a wildfire. At the moment he was hers, just as she was his. And for the first time in her life, she couldn’t really give a damn about morals or issues. She was willing to live only for the moment—and whatever moments there might be.

“I really don’t want to discuss your past or mine, Wayne or any other women. I admit I have met my share of lovely females, but not one who could in any way compare with you. You go beyond beautiful, Alex,” he said huskily, shaking her head slightly between his palms to make his point.

She smiled. “Mr. D’Alesio, you do have a talent with eloquence. Are you so complimentary to all women?”

“Nope,” he said gravely. “Only the ones I capture on the desert and seduce into passionate affairs.”

“Really?” Alex murmured.

“Really. …”

He shifted his body above hers, and she gasped and shuddered deliciously as he entered her a second time. It was a surprise, but a beautiful surprise, one that swept her mind away as her body trembled in delight and instinctively responded to his. Wave upon wave of deliciousness washed over her as his body moved in a melding rhythm with hers. “I want to make love all night,” he whispered to her.

His mouth, lips, teeth and tongue captured hers. She gasped for each breath, which he whispered he loved, because each breath arched her more tightly against him. And in the end it was silver magic again, and they lay together again, entwined and content.

Eventually he shifted. Alex smiled lazily and closed her eyes and adjusted herself luxuriously against the silk sheets. She felt his whisper against her ear. “What are you doing?”

“Falling asleep!” she said with a laugh.

“The night,” he said indignantly, “is nowhere near over.”

Alex laughed softly. “We’re supposed to head for Cairo first thing in the morning. Ali—”

“Ali?” Dan queried with a dry laugh. “I promise you, Ali will not insist upon leaving first thing in the morning. He’s been in the desert with Shahalla, and his ‘town’ wife has been alone a long while. His are equal-opportunity marriages, I’ll have you know.”

Alex’s smile spread across her cheeks, and she warily opened her eyes. Dan was standing with the champagne tucked under his arm and the glasses in his left hand. He reached for her hand with his right. “Come on,” he told her huskily.

“Where?”

“The hot tub, of course! This is the perfect Arabian night. The moon is silver, the air is soft and fragrant. We’re surrounded by the exotic beauty of a sheikh’s palace. Tiles, mosaics, silks—and an incredibly sensual, golden beauty. You can’t expect me to waste all this, can you?”

Alex couldn’t help laughing again. “Dan, I’m not even sure I can walk.”

“No problem,” he assured her, dipping low to the bed and balancing the bottle and glasses as he swept her into his free arm. “I’ll carry you. Now, circle your arms around my neck.

Still giggling delightedly, Alex did so, loving the ease with which he held her, unable to resist the jet eyes that held hers in dark enchantment. Unable to deny that she, too, wanted the spell to last forever, and equally unable to deny that she loved even the simple body contact between them, the heated strength of his shoulders and arms, the crisp tease of his hair-roughened chest against the vulnerable softness of hers.

They were in the land of exotic enchantments. And it was a mystically beautiful Arabian night.

UPI—July 28

DR. ALEXANDRIA RANDALL TO PROCEED WITH EXPEDITION

Late yesterday afternoon Dr. Alexandria Randall reentered Egypt, accompanied by Sheikh Ali Sur Sheriff of the United Arab Emirates and Daniel D’Alesio, to announce her plans to resume the expedition planned by Dr. James Crosby before his disappearance on July 6.

After finishing research preparations in Cairo for the next week, the trio will set up headquarters in Luxor while preparing for the dig in the Valley of the Kings.

When asked if she was certain she knew where her father had been intending to go, Dr. Randall replied, “Of course. My father and I have always worked very closely together. It may take time, but hopefully our information is such that we will be able to zero in immediately on the correct area.”

Asked if she believes her father has met with foul play, Dr. Randall answered, “No. I believe my father is alive and well, but for reasons of his own, keeping himself unavailable.”

“We will not accept the possibility of foul play unless such evidence becomes irrefutable,” said Daniel D’Alesio. “And unless such evidence does come to us, we will continue to search for him in all good faith. However, due to Dr. Crosby’s disappearance, Dr. Randall will be given twenty-four-hour protection.”

“There are those,” reports Sheikh Ali Sur Sheriff, “whose only interest in the study of the past is their current desire to fill their own pockets or place their names in the annals of history. Since Dr. Crosby has disappeared, we find it prudent to guard not only Dr. Randall but that information she alone has deciphered.”