Cressida bolted upright, Ian’s sudden violence a shock after the tenderness in his touch. Now she felt exposed to be naked while he cursed and looked like he wanted to kick the table again.
She grabbed the blanket and rolled over to pull it from underneath her body and cover herself.
“Well?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He slammed a hand into the tent’s thick center pole.
She jumped.
He faced her with his hands curled into fists.
She wrapped the blanket tightly around her and scooted backward. “Stop trying to scare me.”
“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m asking why the fuck you didn’t tell me about the necklace.”
“Because when I first realized the pendant was important, I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
“That was two and a half days ago. Why didn’t you tell me when you told me about the map?”
“I considered it, but couldn’t trust you wouldn’t take the pendant and leave me.”
For some reason, that seemed to take his breath away. He just stared at her. Mute. Finally he said, “Well, I’m glad to know trust isn’t a prerequisite for sex for you.”
Her belly did a slight flip at the hurt in his tone. She had no choice but to go on the attack. “Oh, like you trust me. If it’s okay for you to screw me without trust, then I don’t see why I can’t do the same.”
His jaw snapped closed, and she felt bitter satisfaction at pointing out his gross double standard, until he said, “Well, that’s where we’re different. Because I trusted you.” He jerked on his jeans and headed for the tent flap. He paused in the opening but didn’t turn to face her. “If you try to run, Cressida, know that the nomads will never help or protect you. You are here with a bed and a tent thanks to me. I’m your only hope and protection.”
With stiff shoulders, he left, and she sat reeling over the fact that she’d hurt him. Deeply.
She looked at the damn necklace. He must have seen it on Hejan. It was just common enough that it had required a close inspection to realize it was actually a unique piece.
What had Hejan intended when he gave it to her without instructions beyond “never take it off”? He’d said it would protect her, but all it had given her was grief.
And now it had driven a wedge between her and Ian, just when things had gotten very promising. She dropped the pendant. No. The evil eye hadn’t driven the wedge. She had. She hadn’t trusted Ian. Had, in fact, kept a vital secret from him, refusing to tell him she may hold the key to clearing his name.
No wonder he hated her. And from the look on his face when he pulled on his clothes, she had no doubt he hated her. She flopped back on the sleeping pallet, pulling the blanket tightly around her as she tried to hold back tears. The sweat from their lovemaking hadn’t even dried.
She wanted to blame this miserable feeling on her lousy taste in men, her horrible track record, but she had a feeling this one was all on her. Ian had lied to her, sure, but it was his job…and his job was far more important than anything she’d ever done. Hell, it was only US national security hanging in the balance.
Ian was one of the good guys. And everything he’d done for her… Well, he hadn’t known she still had the microchip, so the only possible reason for him to stick by her was because she was an innocent in the crossfire. That made him far better, in fact, the very best guy she’d ever known or was likely to meet.
And she’d just fucked up. Big-time.
She wiped her eyes. She would not cry. She was so far beyond crying, and this wasn’t even close to the worst thing that she’d had to deal with since arriving in Van.
She grabbed the cleanest shirt she had left from her backpack and slipped it on. Then she gathered the flowers that had scattered across the floor. Purple, pink, blue, and orange, the small blossoms were bright and cheerful in the dim oil-lantern-lit tent. She could identify only two among the dozen different types—the scarlet and blue pimpernels, which were closed buds inside the shadowy tent. Pimpernels, she knew, only opened when the sun shined.
As a freshman in high school, she’d devoured the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel, and her troubled romantic soul had planted the scarlet variety in a planter box on the tiny balcony of her one-bedroom third-floor apartment she shared with her mom. Just as the seeds began to sprout, her mother’s boyfriend—unnumbered because he didn’t count among the predators—dropped the terracotta bin off the balcony to make room for his pot plants.
Cressida had retaliated by throwing the pot plants over the railing and paid for it with a broken arm. She never attempted gardening again.
Until this moment, she’d only seen the bloom in pictures. But now she held one in her hand.
Had Ian recognized the flower or read the book? The story, about a British baronet with a secret identity—the Scarlet Pimpernel—who smuggled French aristocrats out of France during the height of the Reign of Terror, had been her first romance novel. The first time she’d fallen in love with a fictional man.
And now, here she was on the run with a covert operative in Eastern Turkey who was trying to smuggle her out of the country, and he’d given her pimpernels right before making love to her in a Kurdish nomad tent. She suspected her heartache was due to realizing she was falling in love with the enigmatic spy, but he would never forgive her for holding out on him.
* * *
Ian cursed himself as he marched on the cold steppe. Could he be more pathetic? Storming off? He should go back, take the necklace, and break it open. Find out what treat Hejan had placed inside. But he’d left to gather his emotions first.
He would never, ever hurt Cressida, but that didn’t mean he didn’t fear for the table and other objects in the tent. He was a man used to taking out anger and frustration in the gym on punching bags. Right now he needed an outlet, and all he could do was walk.
He reached the narrow stream where he’d gathered wildflowers earlier, disgusted with himself for giving in to the ridiculous impulse to treat Cressida as anything other than a mission. He should just have fucked her without the sappy gesture. It had been a stupid, wasted effort for a cold woman.
Except, nothing about Cressida was cold. And nothing about her made him feel cold. Quite the opposite. Being with her made him feel alive, to the degree that he hadn’t realized how dead he’d felt before.
But fuck it. The microchip was back in play, and he had a job to do. There was no room for sappy craptastic emotion. He needed to figure out how to get himself and Cressida out of Turkey and back to the US with the microchip—which, holy hell, she’d had all-fucking-along—and get it into the hands of the CIA, where the information could do some good.
That chip was his ticket out of being branded a traitor and executed. If he handed it over at Langley, there would be no question about his loyalties. With his cover blown, he could never again work as a covert operative, but there were other options—ones available to him again thanks to the microchip. No one understood the situation in Turkey better than he did. He could stay on with the company as an analyst. Plus, he liked the idea of not being executed. A lot.
It was time to get his head out of his ass, face Cressida, and take the goddamn chip. He returned to the tent, braced, almost expecting to find her gone. But there she was in the dimly lit shelter, sitting up on the bed where they’d just made love, clutching the flowers he’d given her. She looked forlorn, but he’d be damned before he fell for that one.
Cressida Porter was a mission, nothing more. He’d screw the hell out of her—he had no problem playing the emotionless fuck game—if that was what she wanted, but any ridiculous thoughts of something more between them were long gone.
For a moment—a stupid, fanciful moment—he’d thought a relationship between them might be possible. His life with the CIA was over. The old rules were gone. But now he had his mission back, bringing the old rules with it. It didn’t matter that Cressida didn’t trust him, that for her it had just been a fuck, because for him, that was all it could ever be.
“One question, sweetheart.” He couldn’t help but put a hard-edged emphasis on the endearment. “Did you ever plan to tell me? Or were you just going to continue letting me risk my ass to save yours, when I had no idea you held the key to our salvation?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe? We’ll never really know.” She dropped the flowers on the table and pulled the pendant from under her T-shirt. “How did you know this was Hejan’s?”
“I saw him wearing it. More than once. The filigree work makes it unique.” And now, he realized, Hejan had wanted him to see it.
How long had Hejan planned this? Clever bastard. He had to know he was going to die.
“You saw it in the shower. You didn’t notice it then.”
“I was distracted then.” He did not want to think about how she’d looked in the shower, her perfect breasts slick with water. He held out his hand.
She sighed and lifted the chain from her neck and handed it to him. He held it near his eye and stepped closer to the oil lamp hanging from a hook on a wooden beam.
There. A hairline seam on the back.
She pursed her lips. “So you really think the plans to the Death Star are inside?”
“Cute.” He ran his thumbnail along the seam. He might be able to open it with a thin blade.
She stood and stepped up behind him, standing close so she could look over his shoulder at the pendant. He stiffened. He could smell their earlier lovemaking on her and didn’t like the reaction it stirred in him. She touched his shoulder. He shook her off and stepped away.
She caught her breath, and that small hitch of hurt stabbed at him. “Ian, I’m not a spy. I’m a grad student who hired a guy to do some translation work. That’s it. This—what’s going on—isn’t my world. This isn’t my life. I don’t know who to trust. The only constant in my world right now is the North Star. It’s the only thing that’s exactly what it should be, doing its job and giving me direction. But even that can be hidden in cloud cover. Then I’m lost.”
She tapped at the evil eye. “Until we fought in the bathroom in Siirt, I thought it was just a necklace given to me by a superstitious man before I took off on a risky trip to an unknown place. He gave it to me after I’d had a nasty run-in with an ex-boyfriend who shouldn’t even be in Turkey. I accepted the necklace because…hell, why not? I needed something to ward off evil.” Her voice cracked. “But all that damn pendant did was bring it on. And for the record, I’ve been wrong about every other man in my life, so why should you be any different? You lie for a living, after all.”
“I lie for the good guys, Cress.”
“How am I supposed to know that?”
He knew it was a fair question, but still, it rankled. “Maybe because you’ve gotten to know me? Hell, you were willing to fuck me. It seems like that should mean something.”
“Well, I’ve screwed other men who I found out were liars after the fact. I’ve learned I can’t trust my instincts.”
Ian put the pendant around his neck. He was beat, and it was too dark in here to try to crack open the back with a knife. He might damage the chip. “I’m going to bed.” He stripped down to his boxer briefs and slipped under the covers.
Cressida stood by the oil lamp, staring at him.
“Blow out the lamp and get in bed.”
She rubbed her eyes and looked like she wanted to continue talking. But he was done talking, done hearing the hows and whys of her distrust. He rolled to his side, presenting his back to her, and pulled up the blankets.
Behind him, he heard her soft breath. The dim light flickered, then vanished, casting the tent in deep darkness. She climbed into the bed, but he didn’t feel even a smidgen of heat. She was keeping her distance.
In spite of everything—including the fact that he’d gotten off not an hour before—just the thought of her in his bed triggered an erection. Biological reaction. That was all.
He lay there, breathing slowly, willing the hard-on to go the fuck away. Slowly, the tightness eased, and eventually, sleep came.