now?” he asked. “Why was it so important you get that necklace back now?”
“I…you know why. I had to make sure you didn’t sell it.”
“Are you telling me you were never in Miami? That you never went to see for yourself that I still had it? Not once in six years?”
Her throat grew thick as she fished for an answer she didn’t have. Of course she’d kept tabs on him and what he’d done with her pendant. She’d had to for security reasons. She’d even been in his gallery once when she’d known he was out of town. At the time, she’d been shocked by the sheer magnitude of what he’d built. But how did he know any of that?
He moved even closer, until she felt his chest brush her back and the warmth of his body pressing softly into hers. And that heart rate she’d tried so hard to contain shot straight through the roof. “You could have taken it whenever you wanted. You know I didn’t have it locked up.”
She swallowed. Thought about what she could say. He was right. She’d sneaked into his office that one time she’d gone to his gallery and seen the golden pharaoh sitting on a glass shelf across from his desk.
His fingertip brushed a stray hair at the nape of her neck. “You told me you stayed in hiding all this time to protect your family. If that’s true, then why didn’t you come for it after your mother died? Why did you wait so long?”
“It…it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. You could have cleared your name anytime. I think you stayed in hiding for a reason. In fact, I can only think of one reason why you wouldn’t have come forward sooner.”
Kat’s heart thumped erratically against her ribs, and words lodged in her throat.
“No confession to make on that one?” he asked in an amused voice as he twirled his finger in a lazy circle against her arm.
She bit her lip.
“Then I think it’s time you listened to mine.”
He continued to swirl his finger in that languid way, keeping contact between them that did amazing things to her body but kept her head in a fog.
“You were right about why I went to your tomb that first time,” he said. “About why I came back and why I asked you out. I asked you out because I knew you were an easy mark.”
She stiffened, though she didn’t pull away, because she sensed—okay, hoped—there was more to what he was trying to say. Please let there be more.
“You didn’t know,” he said as his finger brushed over her forearm, “couldn’t know, what you did to me that night. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t thinking about money or what kind of deal I was going to haggle next. That night, all I could think about was you.”
Regret tinged his husky voice, and Kat found herself listening, praying what he was telling her would somehow change things and make them better.
“After that weekend at the Mena House, I didn’t go back to the States like I’d told you. Instead, I stayed in Egypt a few days so I could back out of the deal I’d been brokering.”
He hesitated, and a stillness descended between them, one that froze her pulse because she had a really bad feeling what he was about to say next was something she didn’t want to hear.
“Ramirez was right about one thing. I did know Busir—I’d worked with him before.”
Kat went cold all over, and a sick feeling bubbled up from her abdomen and shot into her veins. That hope she’d clung to burst in an explosion that rocketed through her soul. Everything she’d suspected about him but never truly believed was confirmed in that one instant.
And the heart she’d tried so hard to keep safe shattered at her feet.
She wheeled on Pete so fast, she nearly knocked him over. “How could you!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Hold on, now.”
Pete grasped Kat at the wrists and jerked her against his chest before her fist made contact with his jaw. She barely heard his words or felt his strong grip. All she could focus on was a growing sickness at her naivety. After everything she’d done, how could he? How could he?
She wiggled to the side, then jabbed an elbow in his sternum hard. When he doubled over and loosened his grasp, she broke away and raced for the door.
Two powerful arms engulfed her from behind and lifted her off the floor