Dangerous Entanglement

Greg grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry. But there’s no harm in getting to know our neighbours, is there? After all, I’m the one that’s going to be stuck out here doing all the hard work—you’ll just be buzzing in and out in your little toy helicopter, looking important.’

Alex snorted at that friendly dig at his pride and joy, his Bell Jetranger, which he piloted himself. ‘The privilege of rank,’ he returned loftily. ‘Besides, they won’t be here much longer—once we start blasting, they’ll have to clear out.’

He lifted his binoculars again, watching the girl as she finished hauling up a trolley-load of rubble, and tipped it into a wheelbarrow. All that heavy work certainly kept her in good trim, he reflected, somewhat revising his earlier opinion. Most of the women he knew dieted to the point of tedium, and spent hours working out in aerobics classes, but any one of them would have killed for a shape like that.

But he had an unpleasant suspicion that she was going to prove herself to be a damned nuisance—she seemed perfectly capable of launching a campaign to delay him until she had finished excavating her piecious tombs. He lowered the binoculars, and swung himself behind the wheel of the Land Rover.

‘Come on—if you’ve seen all you need to see out here we might as well be getting back to town,’ he grunted impatiently. ‘I’ve got some calls to make.’

Greg glanced at him faint surprise, but climbed into the passenger seat beside him. ‘Right-ho,’ he agreed easily. ‘Although…it wouldn’t hurt just to stop on the way and take a closer look at the bottom of that ridge,’ he added with a wolfish grin.

Alex slanted him a look of ironic amusement. ‘Strictly business, of course?’

‘Oh, of course.’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_2423bba6-8088-500e-ad45-89e413018829)

‘THERE’S a Land Rover coming this way—the same one that went past an hour ago.’ Annette stood up straight, shading her eyes with her hand as she peered along the dusty road. ‘I wonder who it is?’

Joanna barely glanced around as she checked the balance on the block and tackle they had rigged above the tomb entrance. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she responded with a careful lack of interest. It had been a week since her unfortunate encounter with Alex Marshall, but she had known it wouldn’t be long before he was back.

Of course, it might not be him in the Land Rover, but there wasn’t much reason for anyone else to be driving along that rough track through the desert—it didn’t lead anywhere but to an old oasis, long deserted since the water had dried up.

‘There’s two of them,’ Annette announced. ‘I think one of them’s Alex Marshall himself!’

There was a lilt of excited anticipation in her friend’s voice, and Joanna felt an odd little stab of something she didn’t care to put a name to. If Annette should succeed where she had failed in persuading him to delay the start of his operations, it would be all to the good.

‘He’s going to stop.’ Annette swiftly brushed the dust from her shorts, and pushed her hair back tidily from her face. ‘At least it’s nice of him to say hello.’

Joanna snorted derisively, refusing to leave her task. If Annette chose to make the effort to be pleasant to the arrogant Mr Marshall, that was up to her—all she hoped was that she would retain enough common sense not to let that smooth charm turn her head; she had no confidence at all that he would have any scruples about taking advantage of her youth and innocence to entertain himself.

She took the rope, and wrapped it around her hands, and began to pull. She had loaded the trolley a little more than some of the others, and it was maybe a little too heavy for her to lift on her own, without Annette to help, but there was a certain vicious satisfaction in meeting the physical challenge. Gritting her teeth, she felt it begin to budge.

It was just an odd prickle of awareness that warned her that he was watching her. She did her best to ignore it, but it would have taken a stronger will than she possessed to resist the temptation to slant just one covert glance in the direction of the Land Rover.

He sat resting his arms across the steering-wheel, a faint smile curving that cynical mouth as he responded to Annette’s flirtatious advances. He was wearing those dark sunglasses again, so it was impossible to be sure of exactly which way he was looking—and she certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking it bothered her in the slightest. Turning him an aloof shoulder, she continued hauling up the sack of rubble.

She had managed to raise the heavy trolley to the top of the wooden ramp they had rigged at the entrance to the tomb, to make it easier to tip the rubble out into the wheelbarrow, when she sensed that he had come up behind her. He leaned casually against the rock wall at the entrance to the tomb, regarding her with a faintly mocking smile. ‘Isn’t that a bit too heavy for you?’ he enquired, deliberately provocative.

She returned his look with a frosty glare. ‘Not at all,’ she responded, tying up the rope and manoeuvering the wheelbarrow into place. The front-panel of the trolley was designed to lift out, allowing the contents to pour out easily.

He laughed softly. ‘You’re a very independent lady, aren’t you?’ he taunted.

‘Very.’ The wheelbarrow was awkward to manage, but she’d be damned if she’d concede, with him standing there watching her. Somehow she managed to trundle it over to the dump and tip out the rubble, struggling to ignore him; but it wasn’t easy—she could feel the heat of his gaze with every move she made.

There had been a time, a long time ago, when she might have been flattered by that sort of interest from such an attractive man. Brought up to believe that a woman’s role was to be pretty and pleasing, and not to threaten the fragile male ego in any way, she had seen marriage as the only goal a woman needed in life. She had taken her university degree simply as a way of passing the time, and her father had been delighted when she had married one of his brightest young protégés.

Real life had come as a rude awakening. Happy only to be helping her husband, she had been merely puzzled at first to find that she was the one doing most of the research, while he took all the credit. It had dawned on her only slowly that she was being used to advance his career, but with that realisation had come the stirring of her own ambition.

Paul hadn’t liked it, of course, when she had started to assert a little independence; he had done all he could to keep her in what he saw as her place—he had even sunk so low as to try to persuade her to have a child, and when she had refused he had called her an unfeminine bitch. And then he had compounded the humiliation by starting an affair with one of her oldest friends.

The divorce had been painful, but at least she was older now, and wiser—too wise to fall for a man like Alex Marshall. Her defences had been erected with care. The first of them was her deliberate neglect of her appearance—which made it all the more disconcerting that he seemed not to have noticed that her hair was such a mess, her clothes old and work-worn. If the newspapers were anything to go by, he usually went for the sleek, well-groomed sort—models and actresses, mostly. But she sensed that he was the kind of man who would always have an eye for a woman, even if she was dressed in a sack.

He watched her walk back from the tip, trundling the barrow. ‘How’s it going?’ he enquired. ‘Found anything interesting yet?’

Joanna slanted him a suspicious glance from behind her sunglasses. The remark seemed casual enough, as though he was merely making conversation—except that she doubted Alex Marshall ever made casual conversation without having some ulterior motive. He was probably concerned that if she came across something really valuable the Egyptian government might change its priorities and allow her to continue the dig.

‘We’re still clearing the passage into the burial-chamber,’ she returned warily. ‘It’ll be at least a week before we can get through.’

‘I checked with your friend Mr Makram from the Department of Antiquities,’ he informed her, a definite hint of steel underlying his bland tone. ‘He confirmed that your licence was only granted on the condition that you vacate the site as soon as I declare it unsafe.’

‘I’m perfectly well aware of that,’ she responded with icy dignity, all her attention on unravelling the rope, which had somehow got itself tangled around the pulley. Damn—the thing would be just a fraction too high for her to reach! She balanced herself somewhat precariously across the tomb entrance, stretching up on tiptoe, all too acutely aware that her T-shirt, which admittedly had seen better days, had parted company with the waistband of her jeans, permitting him a tantalising glimpse of her slim, suntanned midriff.

He came over, reaching up easily and freeing the rope. Again she felt that sudden sense of vulnerability as he brushed against her, and she breathed the musky male scent of his skin. She stepped back, struggling to control the ragged beating of her heart.

‘Th…thank you,’ she managed, her voice sounding oddly unsteady to her own ears.

‘Don’t mention it…’

There was a strange huskiness in his tone, as if he too had been affected by that fleeting touch. She lifted her eyes to look up at him and found him looking down at her. Something was weaving a spell around them, holding them both in a kind of thrall…

‘Where are you staying?’ he enquired softly.

All of a sudden red lights and alarm-bells started going off frantically inside her head; that question, in her experience, had all too frequently been the prelude to a request for a date. Instinctively she retreated on to the defensive. ‘Why do you want to know?’ she countered jaggedly.

At once that smile took on a sardonic twist—whatever she had seen, or thought she had seen, was gone. ‘Simply out of concern for your safety,’ he returned drily. ‘I wouldn’t like to think you’d be out here after dark. I’ll be moving my men out here over the next couple of weeks, and while I can guarantee that they’ll be kept too busy during the day to even think about a woman, once that whistle blows their time’s their own.’

She glared up at him in angry defiance, her hands on her hips. ‘Are you trying to intimidate me, Mr Marshall?’ she challenged.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Ms Holloway,’ he returned, placing a mocking emphasis on the title she had insisted on. ‘I was simply making you aware of the situation. There’s more than one reason why this site may be considered unsafe for you.’

‘Thank you,’ she responded tartly. ‘I’ll try and remember that.’

‘I would if I were you.’ Now his voice held an unmistakable warning. ‘I don’t like people trying to stand in my way.’

‘So I’ve heard.’ She allowed a sardonic edge to creep into her own voice. ‘Whoever they are.’

‘Oh?’ He arched one dark eyebrow in mocking enquiry, knowing exactly what she meant. ‘You’ve taken an interest in my past career?’

‘Who could miss it?’ she retorted with cool disdain. ‘You seem to have a flair for publicity.’

‘Not intentionally. And you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.’

‘Oh? You mean it’s all a pack of lies?’

He laughed without humour. ‘Well, not quite,’ he conceded. ‘Let’s just say the tabloid version tends to be somewhat economical with the facts.’

She slanted him a sceptical glance. Maybe that was true, to some extent; but there was no mistaking his arrogance, or his ruthlessness—it was written into every line of that hard-boned, aquiline face. A small shiver ran through her. He was the kind of man who would get what he wanted—whatever he wanted. And he wouldn’t be too particular about his methods.