Heather Graham (27 page)

“The hell you didn’t!” Dan laughed at Ali’s professed innocence.

“Alexandria needed total protection. More than I could give her. She needed the protection of a possessive man. Of a lover.”

“Sure,” Dan said with a grin. Then he sobered suddenly. “With all these people running around, do you still think it’s safe to go out to dinner?”

Ali shrugged. “Nothing’s going to happen in downtown Cairo. Besides, nothing is going to happen until someone finds something out. All these people following Alex are just going to keep following her until she leads somewhere.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Dan mused. “And it’s time we stop playing quite so safe. We won’t learn anything if we don’t dangle a little bait.”

“Precisely,” Ali agreed. “Tonight we get to see who will crawl out of the woodwork. By the way, do we have any idea where we will be leading with our bait when we reach the Valley of the Kings?”

“No,” Dan said with a grimace. “Even Alex doesn’t know yet.”

“Know what?” Alex suddenly demanded, appearing at the bedroom door. Dan felt his heart take a little leap when he saw her. She was dressed in black for the evening, a soft knit with a high collar and billowing sleeves. It was secured at her waist with a wide belt, above which the material hugged her form attractively and below flared with a swaying grace. High-heeled black sandals drew special attention to the length of her shapely nyloned legs, and her hair, against the black of the dress, appeared as soft and tempting as a gold-streaked cloud.

Dan noted with a raised brow that Ali as well as himself had become momentarily tongue-tied.

“Know what?” Alex persisted, apparently unaware of the stir she had caused them both.

Ali cleared his throat and gazed at Dan with an apologetic grimace. “That somewhere in the back of your mind you might know where the tomb is,” he said a bit gruffly.

“Oh,” Alex murmured, sweeping her lashes low over her cheeks as she shook her head unhappily. “No, Ali, I don’t think I do,” she said apologetically.

Dan set down his glass and approached her, offering his arm. “Let’s forget the tomb for the evening, shall we, Dr. Randall? You look ravishing—so ravishing that if we don’t get out of here quickly, my better nature will fail me and I’ll discover that I have one appetite surpassing the desire for dinner. …”

Alex flushed at his compliment and glanced over his shoulder at Ali. “Don’t tease, Dan,” she murmured lightly.

“Who was teasing?” he said with a groan. “And don’t mind Ali. He’s a big boy with four wives—although I’m sure at the moment he is wishing he were totally unattached.” Dan glanced with a wry smile at Ali as he began to lead Alex to the door. She was surprised when his head lowered to hers as they walked and his whisper seemed to sear her ear.

“But then you’re not unattached either, Alex. Remember that.”

Alex quickly jerked her eyes to him in surprise, but Dan was staring straight ahead, his countenance as fathomless as the granite she sometimes thought he must be partially composed of.

What had he meant? she wondered, her blood suddenly seeming to take a tingling race through her veins.

She quickly squelched whatever dreams were blossoming in her heart. He meant that they had made a deal. He had said that she was his for the duration—until it was all over—that was what he had meant.

She unobtrusively bit into her lower lip and cast the man beside her a surreptitious glance. He was striking tonight; exceptionally so. He was in black, which had made her choose the color herself. She smiled slightly as she remembered him in the black desert robes—so different from the suit he wore with the matching vest and tailored cream shirt, yet also worn with such a natural flair. He could be in any costume, any guise, and he would still be naturally striking, but the European suit fit his tall frame to a devastating T. It amplified his innate electricity; he appeared both elegant and rugged. And when his eyes lit upon her, the devil-jet within them was given further fire from the midnight darkness of his attire.

Alex glanced hastily ahead of her, strictly reminding herself that the man she was admiring was Daniel D’Alesio. He was hers to borrow, not to keep. She had walked into everything with her eyes wide open, determined to be mature, to accept and enjoy the magic of the affair and accept—if not enjoy—the fact that she was involved in an affair created by expediency, nothing more.

I am in love with Wayne, she tried to tell herself as they walked. And as soon as I am able to find him, I’ll explain everything … not everything! … almost everything, and he will be reality and maybe, just maybe, we will have both learned and we can create a real world between us again. What I feel for Dan is hero worship. I am not really in love with him and I will be mature enough to smile and bow out.

Ass! She chided herself. You are in love with him. And you will never, never forget what he can do to you with a glance, with a touch. Wayne could never in a thousand years make you feel what you feel with him.

Alex clenched her fingers around her evening bag. Dan was an experienced lover; he could whisper things to drive her wild, and encourage her to totally uninhibited abandon with his husky murmurs of all that she did and was that he loved. But he didn’t love
her.
He was an extraordinary man, capable of great giving, and she was a fool—no, an idiot—if she expected his appreciation of her to be any greater.

Wayne!
She screamed the name aloud in her mind. Strange, but there had been a time she hadn’t dare think about him because of the pain. And now she had to force herself to think about him to avoid pain.

Despite the growing darkness, the streets were busy. Egyptians tended to dine late, and the restaurants were flourishing. Alex was accustomed to the stares they drew as she, Dan and Ali walked the short distance to the restaurant. Tourism was big in Cairo, but Westerners were still a bit of an anomaly to the populace. On her first trip as a child, she had been frightened when people were fascinated by her hair and wanted to touch it. She was no longer frightened, nor was she a child. Nor was anyone likely to attempt to touch her when she walked with Dan and Ali. They were both men who seemed to radiate danger.

Ali had drawn to her other side as they walked, and he and Dan had been talking, although Alex had no idea what they had been talking about. She hadn’t realized how absorbed she had been in her own thoughts until Dan pulled on her arm. “Whoa, Doctor! This is it. We’re here.”

A dark and rather foreboding alley led to the restaurant. But once they were inside the building, everything was lovely. The tables were covered in snowy white linen, with gleaming silver placed upon them. The lighting was subdued but not dim, and soft Arabic chatter could be heard along with the sound of dinner utensils clinking against china. They were seated by Rajman’s cousin, a slender young man with dark eyes as soulful as Raj’s. He gave them a table in a corner bordered on both sides by high wooden dividers adorned with hanging plants.

Dan said that Raj had suggested they have seafood, since his cousin’s place was known for having the freshest in Cairo. Alex and Ali both agreed to the idea of a mixed shellfish platter, and they placed their orders for drinks and entrées at the same time. Their drinks appeared promptly; the entrées would take longer. Alex sipped at her Scotch and tried simply to relax and forget about her confused relationships. She could feel Dan’s eyes on her, but she pretended not to notice.

His left arm was behind her, on the upholstery of their booth. He brought it around and gently ruffled her hair against her temple. “Why are you brooding?” he asked quietly.

“I—I’m not,” she lied, smiling across the table at Ali. “I’ve just been thinking—about the eighteenth dynasty.”

“Why don’t you think aloud?” Ali suggested.

Alex shrugged. “It was a strange time,” she murmured, sucking the Scotch off her swizzle stick and idly twiddling it with her fingers. “Right before the eighteenth dynasty, there was the Second Intermediate Period. Egypt had been in chaos—the last pharaoh had been very weak, Upper and Lower Egypt had split, and a people called the Hyksos had invaded and seized power. The eighteenth-dynasty pharaohs were princes of Thebes who seized power back. Two pharaohs died expelling the Hyksos; then Ahmos drove them out of the country. Amenhotep I followed Ahmos, and his tomb was robbed in antiquity. Anyway, you eventually have Pharaoh Ikhnaton, who decided to worship Aton rather than Amon Ra. The first was the actual, physical disc of the sun, while Ra referred to something more abstract, more spiritual. Ikhnaton made a little bit of a mess of his reign, devoting himself to his new religion. He moved his capital and then refused to leave it. Consequently there was a downfall of power in the northern provinces. He was followed by one boy king and then another. Here is where Tut comes in—Tut-ankh-Amen, who reinstated the old religion. Tut was followed by Ay, and then Horemheb. Horemheb, dated his reign back from Amenhotep III, ignoring Tut, Ikhnaton, Ay, Smenkh-ka-Ré—and our own Anelokep. But because Anelokep fits right in there, he should be near Tut. But I don’t believe he is. Something is off, and for some reason I think it has to do with Hatshepshut.”

Dan stared at her blankly, as did Ali. “Marvelous,” Dan said dryly. “Who the hell was he?”

“Not he,” Alex corrected with a small smile, “She.”

“She?”

“Ummm. You might be surprised, Mr. D’Alesio, to learn that the royal line passed through the females. A man could only become pharaoh by marrying the heiress. Which is why the family trees were so crazy. A pharaoh had to marry his own daughter—and whatever other
females
came after her—if he wanted to continue to be pharaoh after the death of his ‘Great Wife.’”

“Really?” Dan exclaimed, and Alex laughed.

“Really!” she assured him. “And if a son wanted to be pharaoh after his father, he had to marry his mother quickly, and then his sisters.”

“And you think my marriages are strange!” Ali said with a laugh.

Alex shrugged. “Hatshepshut more or less co-reigned with her father, whom she must have married upon her mother’s death. He was Thutmose I. And then she was married to Thutmose II, and Thutmose III—”

“And then Anelokep?” Ali interrupted.

“No.” Alex shook her head. “She lived a long time before Anelokep!”

Dan laughed at Alex and Ali’s confusion. “I think what Ali is getting at is this—what does Hatshepshut have to do with anything?”

“I’m not sure yet. But there are references to her in all the available hieroglyphics and records pertaining to Anelokep’s burial.”

Dan was gazing at her steadily, and Alex saw a peculiar light suddenly blaze in his eyes. “You do know what it is, Alex.”

“I don’t—”

“You don’t think that you do, but it is there. Just keep thinking about her and talking about her.”

Their food arrived as Dan finished the sentence, and Alex stared mournfully down at her plate. She glanced back at Dan. “I’d rather think about shrimp.”

“I didn’t mean that you should force it,” he said quietly. “But talk out loud about what you’re thinking.” He chuckled softly. “You may consider me a bimbo as far as Egyptology goes, but Ali and I make marvelous listeners, and the questions we ask may actually help.”

“Don’t forget, Alex,” Ali said, clasping her hand across the table, “we leave tomorrow to set up in Luxor.”

Alex nodded. She hadn’t forgotten, and she had copied everything she thought might possibly help from the museum. The cordial staff had photographed ail the broken pieces of the ancient walls and the granite slabs that might possibly contain anything in reference to her needs. “There’s nothing much else I can do in Cairo anyway,” she murmured. She bit into one of the shrimp swimming in an aromatic concoction of butter, garlic and various herbs. It was delicious. She tasted a scallop, grateful that both Dan and Ali spoke and read Arabic and had made the purely Egyptian restaurant available to her.

She glanced up suddenly to see that both men were watching her. She frowned, returning their scrutiny. “What is it?” she demanded with exasperation. “Have I got parsley on my nose or something?”

The two exchanged glances, laughed, then sighed and relaxed. “I guess we were both waiting for you to suddenly hit upon the main clue,” Dan said apologetically.

Alex grinned and shook her head. “Sorry,” she murmured. “You should both eat; the platter is delicious.”

Dan lifted a brow wryly in Ali’s direction and began to eat. As soon as Ali automatically joined in, Alex smiled, swallowed another scallop and began talking.

“Hatshepshut was very remarkable. Although future pharaohs ignored her in their records, she claimed to rule as king, and she probably did! Thutmose II reigned only thirteen years, and while Thutmose I was still just a lad, she was virtually pharaoh. Her temple at Deir el Bahri is not only magnificent but renowned for its fascinating sculpture and inscriptions. Egypt was at peace at this time; building and trade flourished.” Alex smiled. Ali and Dan had both stopped eating again. “The royal lady did maintain a little of the power she claimed into eternity: she was not buried in the Valley of the Queens but in the Valley of the Kings.”

Still smiling sweetly, Alex returned to her own meal. She watched covertly as Dan and Ali shrugged at one another and started eating again.

Then she was no longer smiling as she ate because she was overwhelmed by frustration. Why can’t I see what Jim meant for me to see? she wondered. She had all the puzzle pieces. She had been staring at them day after day, and she still didn’t understand. And she had to solve the puzzle. If she did, she could find Jim. She knew it.

She had to find the tomb, and she had to find him. And when they were together they would share the dream of cataloging and clearing the ancient treasures of the Egyptians. And her deal with Dan would be over, but she would still have to see him day after day because he would be filming. …

Alex set down her fork as her appetite suddenly left her. How would she be able to stand seeing him day after day after they had lived together so intimately? She chanced a glance in his direction, to see that he was staring across the room, strange emotions filtering across his face. She followed his line of vision.