Heather Graham (29 page)

By mutual agreement they remained silent and not touching in the elevator. Not until the door to their suite was opened and then closed behind them did Alex let loose.

“D’Alesio,” she raged venomously, stalking across the room and tossing her purse onto a sofa as she spun around it, making the piece of furniture both a barrier and a scapegoat as she dug her nails into the fabric of the high-rising back. “This is it! The last straw! The deals are over and done with. I could kill you. I could honest to God kill you. How could you do such a thing to me? It’s all right for you to trot off and talk to an old acquaintance—whose name you don’t even remember—but you not only keep me from talking to Wayne, you create an entire performance for him. You stabbed me in the back, Dan. I’m not a damned rug, and I’m not property! You knew I wanted a reconciliation! You made me look like an idiot first, and then you wouldn’t even let me talk to Wayne. Not only that, you turn around like a prizefighter and knock him down—”

“Don’t get on that!” Dan interrupted sharply, his tone deceptively quiet, his features tightly drawn as he stood just inside the door, his stance casual as he idly lit a cigarette. “The guy came at me twice before I hit him—in self-defense.”

“Because you had me! What did you expect him to do? Say, ‘Oh, excuse me, Mr. D’Alesio’?”

“Yeah,” Dan said dryly, his eyes narrowing at her. “I guess I did.”

“What? That’s preposterous.”

“How so, Doctor?”

Alex hadn’t realized how angry Dan himself was until that moment, when he jerked out of his jacket and tossed it in a furious motion across a chair. “Doctor, you
are
with me. For the duration. Now I did nothing but say hello to that woman and trot right back to the table. I’ll admit it was pleasant to realize that you might be jealous over me. But you are not going near Wayne Randall. We’re talking a very different story here, my love, and we both know it. I repeat: you are with me now.”

“Because we made a deal, Dan.”

“And we both know we agreed upon certain stipulations.” Alex was surprised he didn’t strangle himself with the vehemence with which he ripped off his tie.

“Well, I want out of the deal.”

“So that you can run after a man who cheated on you? Who didn’t have the self-confidence to accept that his wife might be brighter in his field than he?”

“He may have changed—”

“A man who says he cheats because his wife works isn’t going to change.”

The possible truth of his statement did little to cool her wrath.

“It’s none of your business!” she snapped.

“You’re my responsibility,” he said in return, “and that makes it my business. You’re not going to make a fool out of yourself on my time!”

Alex stood dead still for a moment, feeling her fury run through her bloodstream in static jerks. “Like I said, D’Alesio,” she murmured through tightly clenched teeth, “the deal is off. I’m walking. And then it will be my time.”

“And what about your father?”

Her head was spinning. Further pain clouded it, and suddenly, as angry as she was, she was ready to cry. “I can raise an expedition on my own,” she said coolly, leaving her stance at the sofa to swerve around it and retrieve her purse. “I’ll send for my things.”

Only an idiot, she admonished herself seconds later, would have believed she could walk out the door just like that.

He allowed her to reach it, but then took only two steps to reach her and swing her back around to face him.

“You’re not walking,” he promised in a quiet but heated tone. “We went through all this at Ali’s. The deal was that we see it through together. Just consider it a deal you really made with the devil, Doctor. No backing out once the papers are signed.”

She stared at him, fighting back the absurd urge to cry that had seized her moments ago. She didn’t really want to go, but she was wise enough to know that the delay would be even more painful. Until they saw it through; that was what he kept reminding her.

“Let me go!” she suddenly raged, banging her fists against his black-vested chest. You’re the idiot, D’Alesio, she thought. Don’t you realize that I’m falling in love with you and that’s the worst fall that could ever happen? Into a black pit where there is never a landing, never any hope of anything except falling through eternity, broken into pieces against the jagged rocks of memory.

“I will not let you go!” he bellowed. “Never! Not back to that man. I can make you forget him, and if I damn well have to prove it, then so be it, that’s what I’ll damn well do!”

“What?” Alex shrieked, freezing her flailing fists. No, she thought desperately, don’t touch me, not now, because I’m confused and vulnerable and I’ll melt like hot lead.

“I can make you forget a man named Wayne Randall ever lived, Ms. Randall.” His whisper was touched by both anger and determination as his lips hovered close to her ear. “I can promise you that I can make you call my name with a need more intense than any you ever felt for that man.”

“No,” Alex protested weakly. His words were a breath of heat and moisture, sending tiny shivers of arousal down her spine, all the more heightened because they knew one another well now, so well that her body automatically anticipated the delights of his expert hands and lips and hard-muscled body.

He released her, taking a step back to discard his vest as he held her with the jet demand in his eyes. For a moment she stood still, fighting the desire that his whisper alone could stir, the hypnotism of natural response. Her eyes were wide. She was already trembling.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, determined to sidestep him as he worked at the buttons of his immaculately tailored shirt.

She didn’t make it around him; she hadn’t expected that she would. But she’d had to try, for what remained of her heart.

He didn’t just stop her, he lifted her into his arms. “You’re fighting yourself, not me, Alex,” he told her grimly as he stalked with her into the bedroom.

“Dan, please …”

He stood her up and pulled off the belt of her dress and slipped down the zipper despite her fumbling countermeasures to stop him. And before she could chatter out his name a second time, he had swept her onto the bed and his weight was partially over her as he surveyed her body in matching black bra and bikinis and nylons.

“Dan!” she shrieked out furiously as he lowered his head to nuzzle the ivory mound of her breast that stood firm above the low line of the French-cut bra. He ignored her, moving his lips lower to capture the nipple through the thin wisp of lace.

Alex swallowed convulsively. The intensity of fury that had raged through her rechanneled itself into desire. The moist persuasion of his mouth and the knowing, gentle graze of his teeth were so exotic over the lace that a flash of explosive heat instantly rendered her body into shudders. She caught her breath, knowing she had never wanted him with a more volatile need than at this moment.

“No …” she moaned quietly once more.

But he did know her, and he did know that he could make her cry out his name. He knew her every erogenous zone, and as if she were a delicate and custom-made musical instrument, he had learned how to play upon her to bring forth the most delightful and tempestuous of melodies.

He moved his kisses over her trembling torso, gentling her hips, teasing very soft and very feminine flesh again through the exotic touch of lace and silk. He felt her freeze and gasp as he delved within, felt her open sweetly to him.

And she called his name. Tenderly he removed her stockings, then the lace and silk that had been erotic in the play but now created barriers against his need to have her completely. He rose to shed his black trousers and briefs, and she kneeled on the bed, burying her face against his chest as she murmured against it.

“This isn’t fair to me, Dan …”

He dug his fingers through her hair and tilted her face to his. “It is fair, Alex,” he murmured huskily. “The stipulations were all in the deal.”

“Devil deal,” she whispered in return. But her arms were circling around him, and he claimed her lips as he embraced her in return, bringing them both back to the bed. The tempest within her suddenly made her the aggressor, determined to touch him with delicate fingers and thirsting lips until he knew the wild extent of the hunger he had caused to curl within her.

He allowed her to take the lead, whispering how he loved it when she touched him, how good, how very, very good it all was. And all the while his hands found her, cradling her curves, exploring the ivory beauty of her flesh, breasts, hips, shoulders, thighs, until Alex straddled him, her hair a tangled fan that fell in wild, beguiling disorder over her breasts. He reached up to touch it, threading his fingers through it, drawing her face to his so that their mouths might meld as their bodies did. But when they broke the kiss, he swept her beneath him in a strong, fluid motion that didn’t mar for a second the beauty of being one together or alter a stroke in the smoldering rhythm set by his velvet thrusts.

“Whisper my name, Alex,” he murmured huskily to her.

“Dan. …” And she whispered it over and over, gasping as all that had been fury became the storm of unleashed passion. Smoldering fires grew to high-leaping flames, and the craving, the yearning, the beauty that was a sweet hunger that one prayed could go on and on while soaring toward its reward, exploded within them both like a heaven-reaching burst of fire sparks.

And she called his name again, a jagged but sweet refrain, embracing his heart as her slender limbs embraced his body. He smiled, shuddering slightly with the aftermath, as he rested his head against the dampness of her breasts, feeling himself drained, his life force filling her. And he knew then that he loved her, more deeply than he had loved before.

The knowledge was painful, especially since with the intimacy of their passion cooling, they were both silent, touching but inwardly withdrawing from each other. Lovemaking could be a respite, sometimes a beautiful respite that was a moment of heaven to cling to, but after the sweet fury of the storm, nothing had really changed.

He could make her forget Randall; yes, he could make her call out his name. But he couldn’t erase the argument that had been the catalyst of the storm from either of their minds.

Dan sat up and drew his hands to his temples to rake his damp hair back against his head. He stood without glancing at Alex and walked to the closet to pull out his robe. With the terrycloth wrapped around him, he stepped onto the balcony, drawing in air as he stared out over Cairo, his fingers clenched over the wrought-iron railing.

What am I trying to do? he wondered. In the end, he wouldn’t be able to stop Alex from returning to Randall.

Unless Randall was in on something. But he didn’t want to mention to Alex just how possible that might be. He wanted her to see for herself. And maybe he was wrong; maybe it had been Haman trailing James Crosby all the time. Haman was devious and crooked enough to be up to anything.

None of that particularly mattered at the moment. What did matter was Alex. He was in love with her, totally, deeply. She was in love with another man. And he was using force to keep her away from him. What a fool. By stopping her, he would make her more and more determined to see Randall.

But he had to stop her just in case Randall was in on something rotten. He had to slit his own throat. Both Jim’s and Alex’s lives might be at stake. If he came out of it all looking like the heavy, he would have to take that chance, no matter what his personal feelings.

Dan glanced down at the streets of Cairo. There was little activity now. But out in the distance toward Giza, the Great Pyramids were still standing sentinel, wrapped in mystery by the darkness and the moon, guardians of Cairo’s ancient past They were a reminder of the wealth that lay in that past. And a reminder that modern man, as well as ancient man, would risk the death curses of the pharaohs, imprisonment or even life to possess the vast riches of gold and precious gems to be found within the sands.

Dan turned from the balcony and headed back into the bedroom. Alex had her back to his side of the bed and the covers pulled tightly over her shoulders. She wasn’t sleeping.

He wondered if he should try to explain. He opened his mouth, then closed it. When he spoke to the back of her head, his voice was grating and harsh, which he hadn’t intended at all. “I’m sorry, Alex. You did make a deal. But even if you hadn’t, I couldn’t allow you to talk to Randall now. Please don’t try. I’ll have to stop you.”

She didn’t reply. He slid out of his robe with a sigh and crawled beneath the sheets. She remained rigidly in her position, turned away from him, not touching.

Dan stayed on his own side, staring bleakly up at the ceiling. In time he slept, reminding himself that they would be in the Valley of the Kings tomorrow, searching, and making themselves the ultimate bait.

The phone was ringing. Still half asleep, her eyes refusing to open, Alex fumbled for the receiver. She touched a hand.

Her eyes finally opened. Dan had come around the bed to answer the phone. He glanced at her with little expression as he said, “Yes?” and then listened.

Alex gazed at the rugged angles of his face for moment, watching his eyes with their hard, unreadable jet, then lay back against her pillow, closing her eyes.

It would be useless to question him about the call. She felt safe to assume that she would never receive a phone call; she knew now that Dan had decreed that she not speak to anyone and therefore she wouldn’t be able to. She didn’t doubt that Wayne had been trying to get through to her for days, probably since they had reentered the country. But did it really make any. difference? Dan was right; she was kidding herself if she thought Wayne would ever change. But that didn’t even make any difference.

“Yeah,” Dan said, “put it through.”

He placed his hand over the mouthpiece and shook Alex’s shoulder. His eyes were steadfastly upon her.

“It’s your ex-husband. Rajman says he insists upon speaking with you, and I think you may as well talk to him and straighten things out.”

Alex reached jerkily for the phone, unable to believe that Dan was actually giving her the call. He had spent last night convincing her he would never allow her to talk to Wayne while he was around.