Captive of Kadar

‘What happened?’ she asked, missing the heat of his hand and the stroke of his thumb on her shoulder and that pooling heat between her thighs. ‘What did you tell them?’

He glanced around, over her head, as if he was searching for something beyond the crowd. ‘Only what I saw, that the old man approached you with the coins and let you pick them up when he dropped them.’

‘He had a walking stick,’ she explained. ‘I thought it would be easier for me.’

‘Of course. You were supposed to think that so that you could not pretend they were not yours or that you were not going to buy.’

‘But I was going to buy them,’ she said glumly. ‘I was about to when the polis arrived.’

‘I know that too,’ he said tersely, his mouth tight. He spotted a movement beyond the crowd. ‘Ah, here is my car,’ he said, taking her elbow. ‘Come.’

If his voice had sounded more an invitation than an order—if she had seen his hand coming and been warned of its approach... If either of those had happened, she might have been prepared. She might have steeled herself. But as he gave his command, and took her arm with his strong and certain fingers, it was as if he were not only claiming possession, but also taking control of her, and she knew that if she got into that car with this man her life would never be the same. Something jolted deep inside her then, a fusion of heat and desire and rebellion and fear, and the bag of bread spilled from shaking fingers onto the ground.

He must have felt that jolt move through her, even before she dropped the bread, because his feet paused, and he looked down at her. ‘Are you all right?’

She could hardly tell him the reason why her lungs had squeezed so tight in her chest. ‘I...’ she started, searching for some kind of excuse. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

He inclined his head. ‘I apologise. We seem to have skipped the usual formalities. My name is Kadar Soheil Amirmoez, at your service.’

She blinked, still shaken. ‘I’m hopeless with names. I’m never going to remember that,’ she admitted, and then wished she had never opened her mouth. He already thought her a naive tourist. Why give him reason to think even less of her?

But instead of the rebuke she was expecting, he smiled a little, the first time she had witnessed him smile, and shadowed planes shifted and angles found curves and his dark eyes found a spark, and where before he’d been merely striking with his strong dark looks, now he tipped over into truly dangerous. Her heart gave a tiny lurch.

She had reason to feel fear.

And still, she was glad he’d found her again.

‘A simple Kadar will suffice. And you are?’

‘Amber. Plain old Amber Jones.’

‘Never plain,’ he said in that rich, deep voice, taking her hand, and probably her last shred of resistance along with it. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you.’

He knelt down before her and retrieved the bread, now half spilled from its bag onto the pavement scattering sesame seeds and already being eyed by a dozen opportunistic birds. ‘You cannot eat this now,’ he declared, tossing bread and bag into a nearby rubbish bin, setting birds flapping and squawking desperately in pursuit. ‘Come. After you have made your statement, I will take you to lunch.’

And after lunch?

Would he whisk her away and make good on the promise she’d witnessed in his eyes?

Or was she so overwhelmed by all that had happened that she was spinning fantasies out of thin air?

‘You really don’t need to do that,’ she said, testing him. Because she’d seen the tightness in his expression when she’d admitted how close she’d come to buying the coins. He was duty-bound to deliver her to the police station, sure, but he might already be regretting coming to her aid. ‘I’ve taken enough of your time.’

‘I have ruined your lunch,’ he said solemnly as he ushered her to the kerbside where his car sat idling, waiting for them. He opened the back door for her to precede him inside. ‘I owe you that much at least, Amber Jones.’

The way she saw it, he owed her nothing, but she wasn’t about to argue. Neither was she planning on running again. He might have made taking her to lunch sound more like duty than pleasure, but she remembered the way he’d looked at her across the market with eyes as dark as midnight and lit with red hot coals and she remembered too the warm weight of his hand on her shoulder and the promise his touch conveyed.

And maybe the new brave Amber wasn’t so far away from her as she’d feared.

Because she wanted more.

* * *

It was more than two hours before they emerged from the police department into the crisp outside air. A shower of rain had been and gone and the air was fresh and clear after the overheated offices and because it wasn’t far to the restaurant, he’d suggested they walk.

Trams dinged and rumbled along the centre of a road forbidden to private vehicles and taxis, making room to hear the call of seabirds wheeling above, and the sound of a dozen different languages on the air around. And then, over it all came a sound she was slowly getting used to, the call of the Imam calling the faithful to prayer, and huge flocks of birds rose as one from the many-domed roof of the Blue Mosque and found comfort in each other from their shared fright, forming an endless circling ribbon of white in the sky.

And it struck Amber in that moment how lucky she was that she was free to enjoy the sight. ‘They could have charged me,’ she reflected, the shock of her narrow escape setting in as she remembered the stern expressions of the police who’d questioned her and taken her statement. She’d imagined when the police had let her travel with Kadar to the police station that completing a statement was nothing more than five minutes’ work, telling them how the old man had approached her, offering coins. A mere formality. She’d been wrong. Dealing in antiquities was clearly not a crime they took lightly in Turkey. ‘I thought they were going to charge me.’

‘You sound almost disappointed.’ He raised an eyebrow as he glanced briefly at her.

Disappointed? Not likely. She wouldn’t be here now, watching the birds swirl and wheel to the Imam’s prayers. Relieved was what she was. Not to mention a little confused. ‘I just don’t understand why at first it seemed not such a big deal and then they made such a fuss of it at the station.’

He shrugged. ‘What you did was foolish. Of course they needed to make you appreciate the severity of what you were doing.’

Foolish? The judgement stung, threatening to topple all the secret fantasies she’d been harbouring about how this day might progress. She didn’t want him to think of her as foolish.

Desirable or sexy, like the way he’d made her feel when she’d found his eyes on her across the marketplace, sure, he could think that. She wanted him to think that.

Not foolish.

‘I didn’t know there was a law against buying old coins.’

‘Surely you do research before you enter a country as a visitor? Surely, if you are any kind of responsible tourist, you find out about their customs and laws before you leave home.’

Well, yes, there was that, then again... ‘But they might just as easily have been fake!’

‘And you would have been happy exchanging good money for fakes?’

She sniffed. She hated that she sounded so defensive and she hated him because what he said was true. She had been hoping the coins were genuine and of course she would never have considered spending the money if she’d thought them no better than rubbish.

And she would have done her research. Normally. But the decision to come to Turkey hadn’t come twelve or even six months ago, and so giving her lashings of time to check out every traveller site going. The decision had been made barely two weeks ago, when she’d had to work out what to do about a cancelled holiday to Bali: stay at home or use whatever credits she could get for her cancelled flights and accommodation towards a trip somewhere she really wanted to go.

Turkey had been a no-brainer. The seed had been planted when she’d come across her great-great-great-grandmother’s diary ten years before when she’d been helping her mum sort out her gran’s old house back in England, the house her mum had grown up in before she’d moved to Australia. The diary that told of a young girl’s excitement about her upcoming trip to Constantinople and beyond, that she’d found bundled together with a pretty bracelet in an old oilskin rag and tucked away in the bottom of a long-forgotten trunk in the dusty attic. Half the pages were missing, so there was no record of her actual travels, and what was left was barely legible, but it was the words a young woman so long ago had penned in ink on the front page—follow your heart—that had lodged in Amber’s sensible brain.

And whether it was because she shared a name with her great-great-great-grandmother, or because the young Amber Braithwaite’s anticipation was infectious, that seed had grown, until she’d known that one day she wanted to experience for herself the exotic capital that had fired up her ancestor’s imagination more than a century and a half before.

Follow your heart.

Cameron had thought she was mad to even suggest it.

‘Why would you want to go there?’ he’d asked her. ‘Bali’s much closer and it’s cheaper.’

‘But nobody goes to Bali in January,’ she’d reasoned. ‘It’s so humid.’

‘Trust me,’ he’d said, and to her eternal shame she’d not only put her dreams on hold, but she’d trusted him, all right. Right up until the time she’d come home early from work and found him shagging her supposed best friend in their bed.

A supposed best friend who’d begged for forgiveness and told her it would never happen again because Cameron wasn’t even that good in the sack.

Thanks for that.

No, it was about time she followed her heart. And she didn’t have to explain any of that to this man.

‘So maybe I didn’t have time,’ she simply said, downplaying the whirlwind of emotional fallout from the double betrayal that had accompanied that time. It had taken a week before shock and the self-pity had turned to anger, and then it was a no-brainer that she would head to the one place Cameron was never likely to go.

It wasn’t until she’d buckled herself into her seat on the plane and taken a deep breath that she’d had clear air to think. So, admittedly, there hadn’t been a lot of time to brush up on the finer points of Turkish law or the hazards she might encounter along her journey.

It had been enough to know she was finally fulfilling a dream to visit the country that had bewitched her great-great-great-grandmother more than a century ago. ‘Maybe I had other things on my mind.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he suspected she either hadn’t bothered or she didn’t give a damn what laws she might break in someone else’s country, so long as she got what she wanted.

She gritted her teeth, wondering when exactly the desire she’d witnessed in his eyes had evaporated—in the officious and overheated surrounds of the police station, or when she’d admitted she’d been intending to buy the coins? But did it matter what he thought of her? She’d probably never see him again after today—she’d probably never see him after lunch. What did she care?

Except that she did.

‘I’m surprised you’d risk being seen with me, given my propensity to commit random acts of stupidity.’

He actually had the nerve to laugh. ‘Oh, I know there’s no chance of that.’

It was the laughter more than the certainty that got her hackles up, though the certainty ran a very close second. ‘How can you be so sure? You hardly know me. You have no idea of what I might try next.’

‘It’s the reason you got out of the police station with just a warning.’

Her head snapped around. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I heard them talking—there’s been a surge in reports of coin sellers and the police are planning a crackdown. There was talk of making an example of you to deter other tourists from trying the same thing. A pretty young tourist charged with trafficking in antiquities—that would get the attention of the world press.’

She gasped. She’d felt she’d come close, but she’d been blissfully ignorant of by just how much. ‘So why didn’t they?’

‘Because I told them that until your departure on your tour tomorrow, I would guarantee your good behaviour. I promised that they would have no more trouble with you while you were my responsibility.’

His responsibility? She stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You told them that? Who the hell do you think you are? I don’t need someone to be responsible for me. I don’t need some kind of babysitter, least of all some man I’ve barely just met!’

He didn’t look remorseful. But then she suspected this man was incapable of doing remorse. ‘You would have preferred, I take it, to have been charged and to be languishing right now in a Turkish prison cell?’

Well, no. There was that. But still...

‘No, I thought not,’ he said, reading her answer in her expression. ‘Come,’ he said, taking her arm in his before she could protest—before she could do anything, really—urging her forward once more along the busy street.

She hated him then for his arrogance. For his supreme confidence that what he was doing was right.

And she hated even more that he was holding her too close.

Much too close.

She could feel him all the way down from her shoulders to her hips, every step they took creating a friction that became more delicious by the second—more evocative—every brush of their clothes giving her another burst of the heat that came from being in close contact with him.

Arousal warred with outrage, and she cursed him for his ability to both infuriate her and excite her. How could it be that his touch wanted to make her lean into this man’s strong body, the very man who’d not only insulted her, but quite clearly doubted her integrity and imagined himself some kind of babysitter?

What kind of fool was she?

‘So this is actually duty for you, then, taking me to lunch.’

This time it was he who stopped, jerking her to a standstill and snapping her to face him on the side of the pavement this time, so they weren’t blocking everyone’s way. ‘I take my responsibilities seriously. I said I would ensure you wouldn’t get into trouble while you were in Istanbul before you join your tour group tomorrow morning, and I will do what I promised,’ he whispered, the note in his voice dangerous, his dark eyes intent and focused hard upon hers, before he paused and lifted a hand to her cheek and ran the barest trace of his fingertips down the side of her face, a touch as gentle as it was electric. ‘But who said duty has to come at the expense of pleasure? Because I suspect our time together could be quite pleasurable, if you would allow it to be so.’

The shudder started at her cheekbone where his fingers grazed her skin and reverberated down her body until it rolled out of her curling toes, its scorching trail leaving her in no doubt what he was offering.

And then he shrugged and dropped his hand away. ‘But if you want me to stop at duty, then just say the word. If you decide it is not pleasure you wish for, then I will keep my undertaking to the polis and ensure you do not get into any more trouble before you join your tour. But I will not pursue you. I am not in the habit of pursuing unwilling women.’

A tram rattled past, pedestrians walked by spouting words in a dozen different languages, and Amber blinked at the unfamiliarity of it all. She could scarcely believe she was standing in the oldest part of Istanbul, her cheek still tingling from his touch, let alone having this conversation with this man.

‘So,’ he prompted, ‘what’s it to be, Amber Jones? Duty or pleasure?’

All her life Amber had done the right thing, making sensible choices, playing it safe, never taking risks. All her life she’d been responsible.

Sensible.

And just look where that had got her.

With an equally safe choice of boyfriend who clearly hadn’t valued her and who hadn’t turned out to be a safe choice at all.

Her blood fizzed with the possibilities this man was offering. As, if she was honest, it had been fizzing ever since she’d seen him watching her in the Spice Market.

God, she was in Istanbul, exotic, colourful Istanbul, and she might as well have been a million miles from her old life. And maybe it was foolhardy to agree to spend a night with a stranger in a faraway country. Maybe it was reckless.

But maybe it was time to be a bit reckless. Time to pay heed to the excitement in her blood and take a step on the wild side, as her great-great-great-grandmother had been brave enough to do more than one hundred and fifty years earlier.

She looked up at this man, with his golden skin and dark-as-a-hot-desert-night eyes, her heartbeat thumping loud in her chest at just being close to him, and knew that if she played it safe, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

And her answer came as clearly as the calls of the seabirds wheeling in the sky above.

‘Pleasure.’

His dark eyes flared with heat, his lips turned up in approval as he enclosed her hand in his. ‘Then pleasure, it shall be.’

* * *

He smiled to himself as he led her towards a nearby restaurant that had windows overlooking the park, the glass frontage, he knew, would be filled with colourful dishes, from stuffed eggplants and peppers, casseroles of chicken and chickpeas and lamb, and rice, spiced and fragrant, alongside which lamb and chicken roasted on vertical spits.

So his meek little rabbit had turned out to be less timid than she’d first appeared? She’d fled from him in the Spice Market, and he’d been prepared to let her go.

But there was spirit there, under that nervous exterior, even if he’d had to dig to find it. But it was there, and given the choice again she’d chosen pleasure. At least the time spent babysitting her wouldn’t be completely wasted.

Not that he trusted her, despite all her innocent claims of not knowing the laws—after all, what else did foreigners claim when they were caught red-handed but tried to plead ignorance?—but then, he didn’t have to trust her. All he had to do was keep her out of harm’s way until he got her on that tour bus and sent her on her way and his job would be done.

Keeping her out of the way of illegal street vendors would be no problem given what he had in mind.

Blond tendrils of her hair bounced enticingly on the breeze as they walked, the leather of her jacket brushing against his coat sleeve, and as he turned his head towards her he caught a hint of her perfume, floral and light. He had never been a fan of such scents. He preferred his women dressed in musk and spice and preferably not a lot more, but on her the scent seemed to make sense. Innocent, with a hint of sensuality. A hint of promise.

He liked the fit.

He liked the promise even more.

He smiled. If only his three friends could see him now, they’d laugh. They’d tell him to be careful, that he was tempting fate. He remembered the last time they’d been together at Bahir’s wedding. He remembered the taunts of the two newly married desert brothers. Who would be next? Zoltan and Bahir had laughed. Which of Kadar and Rashid would be next to fall into marriage?

And Kadar and Rashid had both pointed at the other and laughed.

Of course, the very idea that the two remaining friends would soon follow was ridiculous. Zoltan had married Princess Aisha in order to secure his kingdom of Al-Jirad and Bahir had been reunited with Aisha’s sister and his former lover, Marina, along the way. Both marriages had been bound to happen, even if the idea that two of the desert brothers would be married in short order had been unimaginable once.

Well, it had been a good three years since Bahir’s wedding and he didn’t know about Rashid, but he was no closer to marriage than he’d ever been. And why should he be?

The four men were as good as brothers, bound together by more than blood. They had met while they were at university in the States and, apart from Mehmet, they were all the family he’d ever needed.

And now, while their bond was still strong, he didn’t feel any desperate need to follow his friends into the state of matrimony. Marriage was for people who were whole. People who wanted family. But he’d been alone since he was six years old and he was doing just fine. He couldn’t see that changing any time soon, especially not when every woman he’d ever met was only too pleased to move right along. So his friends could think what they liked, but if anyone was to marry next, it wouldn’t be him.

He wasn’t planning on marrying anyone, let alone a woman he’d saved from the clutches of the polis.

So he was hardly tempting fate merely spending a night with her.

She was nothing but a pretty tourist.

A short-term visitor to Istanbul.

Temporary.

Perfect.

CHAPTER THREE

THE SCENT OF roasting meat and two dozen delicious-looking dishes wafted out of the open door to tempt Amber, and for a moment she almost forgot that she’d just committed herself to a night dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh. But right now she had more important things on her mind. ‘I think I’m starving.’

He ushered her inside. ‘You can choose from here or there is a menu if none of these dishes appeal?’

For a woman whose most recent meals had been airline food, fast food or no food at all, she didn’t have to think about it. ‘No,’ she said, mouth watering, in no desire to wait for an order to be prepared when there was such an array before her to choose from, ‘this is perfect.’

They made their selections and were shown to a table near a window upstairs while their order was prepared. And then, once again, she was awed—by their vantage point, offering a glimpse of the domed roof of Hagia Sophia with its dancing fountain to one side of the window, and the minarets of the Blue Mosque to the other.

By the man sitting opposite now being greeted by a smiling waiter welcoming him back, a man larger than life with his dangerous dark looks and heated eyes. Long-lashed eyes, she realised as she took advantage of their proximity to study him in more detail. Satin black lashes and long as sin...

And by the knowledge that he’d guaranteed there would be no more trouble with the law while she was under his watch.

Where was the outrage she’d felt when he’d first revealed that little snippet? Had she shrugged it off as easily as he’d discarded his tailored black coat and handed it to the owner who was busy fawning all over him—or simply because of it? Because what lay beneath would blur the edges of any protest. A soft dove-grey knitted sweater lovingly skimmed a chest that could have been carved from stone. Nice, she thought, having to drag her eyes away in case they lingered too long, suddenly feeling warm. She unzipped her jacket, and peeled it from her arms, laying it on the chair next to her. The scarf at her neck came off next, tugged out from behind her neck and making her messy knot even messier as more ends worked free. She put a hand to her head, hoping it didn’t look as messy as it felt. And then she looked up and stilled when she saw him watching her, his expression deep and unfathomable, and she felt hot and bothered and confused and muddled all over again. ‘What’s wrong?’

Nothing was wrong. It was all going exactly the way he’d imagined it. Except she’d been the one to peel the jacket from her arms, not him. But just as he’d imagined, he liked what he saw underneath.

He liked it very much.

Her breasts filled the fitted scoop-neck top to perfection without overfilling—without under-filling, for that matter—and he ached to run his hand down the side of her while she lay naked next to him on his bed, down that delicious slope of ribcage to the sudden dip of waist and up the jut of hip to thigh. He longed to drink in her contours through the seeking palm of his hand.