Relentless - By Cherry Adair Page 0,24

a burning car, and the thick, oily smoke filled the vehicle, making Isis cough. Thorne silently handed her his handkerchief and she pressed it to her nose.

She was way too bloody perky. Too cheerful, too… fresh and appealing in an annoying, girl-next-door way that made his teeth ache. None of that had any kind of adverse effect on his dick, which liked her a great deal. Of course, he hadn’t had sex in almost a year, which would account for his irrational attraction to a woman he wouldn’t have given the time of day to a year ago.

He had a preference for tall, bosomy blondes who disliked commitment as much as he did. This woman was all up in his face as if, by paying Lodestone’s fee, she had a goddamned right to ask him questions that were none of her bloody business. She smelled wholesome, not sexy at all. Like something one should eat, he thought with irritation. Well, yes, there was that, Thorne thought wryly.

Out of sorts, and anticipating staying that way for the duration, Thorne braced one hand and his good leg on the seat back as they screamed around a corner, narrowly missing a pack of ragged kids darting across the busy street. The kids scattered like buckshot.

Isis shouted, “Thanks.” And Thorne realized too late that he’d slammed his forearm across her chest to prevent her from being thrown through the windshield. He removed his arm, but not before he felt the imprint of her soft breasts as a tingle on his skin. Bloody hell. He glared out his window.

Cairo was, to Thorne, the seventh level of Hell.

He’d never encountered such brazen flies. They were everywhere, and no amount of encouragement dispersed them from clothes or skin. They just stuck around for the free ride.

“I haven’t been here since last year.” Isis held her hair at her nape to lean out the window. Thorne grabbed her arm and drew her into the relative safety of the interior of the taxi. She wore a pink T-shirt, and his fingers clamped on bare skin. Silky soft, satin smooth, lightly tanned, bare skin.

Releasing her arm, he shifted as far to his corner as was possible without riding outside the vehicle. No touching, he decided.

He imagined he could smell cinnamon. Nonsense. The windows were open, blowing muggy Cairo-stinking air around them. He was delusional because he didn’t want to be here. Here reminded him of eighteen hours in surgery, a month in traction, more months of physical therapy. Here reminded Thorne of Boris Yermalof. A sharp boning knife, high-velocity bullets, bone fragments, and metal rods. Plates and pins and the possibility of fucking-well hobbling for the rest of his life.

Here was exactly where Thorne did not want to be.

He didn’t like heat. Or sand. Now he could add cinnamon to the list.

There were no working streetlights in the city, making it a free-for-all, with every man for himself as they slalomed through the busy thoroughfares without the benefit of the horn. Most people didn’t bother with headlights, either, so cars came out of the darkness at breakneck speeds. The only good thing Thorne could say about the taxi was that the brakes worked. Worked loudly, but functioned. Which was imperative since the driver used them often, with no warning, and accompanied by a litany of yelling, screaming, and arm waving.

Thorne didn’t care for the pungent stink of the streets, or the dust clogging his nose, or the lunatics sharing the road, but Isis was wide-eyed and happy as hell to be risking whiplash. One step closer to her goal. He’d forgotten that he’d promised himself to send her on her merry way once he found a jumping-off point for her in Cairo.

He’d leave her tomorrow, head back to Seattle.

“I’d like to go straight to the location,” she told him, looking around eagerly. With the temps in the seventies, it was downright tropical compared to a London summer, which compared favorably to a Seattle summer: chilly.

Warm, dry wind from the western desert blew in through windowless openings, sending Isis’s cinnamon-scented hair across his face. She’d changed into a breast-hugging pink T-shirt tucked into her jeans before they’d left the London hotel. Her strappy sandals revealed the fluorescent pink polish on her toenails. If Thorne didn’t have a shitload of things to worry about right then, he could become quite fixated on her pretty feet. As it was, he had more pressing concerns.

Since leaving London earlier that evening, he’d had a fucking