was true? If he’d really been involved with the smuggling ring or Sawil’s death, would he have been so upset with her accusations in Cairo? With her showing back up now? If he was being honest with her—and she sensed he was—then the only thing he was truly guilty of was poor judgment. Poor judgment and trying to clean up his life. For her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered as her eyes slid closed and a thousand memories of the two of them together hit her from all sides.
He released his hold and gently turned her in his lap. Blood rushed to her arms, but she barely felt it, didn’t struggle or try to move off him. Was too fixated on everything he’d just told her to consider going anywhere.
“All that stuff at the auction the other night,” he said softly, “all of it was bought and paid for through legal means. You know I left everything I bought from Busir that day in your flat. The only thing I kept was the pendant you sent me. I swear it to you. Every time I’ve come across an Egyptian piece over the last few years I haven’t been able to pass by without buying it and sticking it in storage because it reminded me of you.”
That admission was so sweet, it touched her heart in a place she hadn’t thought existed anymore. And when he brushed his thumb over her cheek in such an achingly tender move, tears threatened behind her eyes.
“Tell me why you didn’t walk away after the auction,” he said. “You thought you had the pendant. There was no reason to follow me. Why were you driving my limo? Why were you outside this building? Why did you bother to step in when Busir had me in the alley? Those aren’t the actions of a woman who hates me.”
“I…I never hated you.”
“No?” A wan smile tugged at his mouth. “You sure didn’t like me very much there at the end.”
Six years of worry and regret, hope and heartbreak, betrayal and beliefs swirled inside her. And sitting there, so close to him, bombarded with questions she didn’t know how to answer, it was too much. Hot tears filled her eyes. She covered her face with her hands to keep the dam from breaking.
She didn’t fight it when his arms circled her, when his legs opened so she could sink lower onto the mattress between his thighs, when he pulled her close so her face was against his throat and she was surrounded by the familiar scent and feel of him.
“Just tell me,” he whispered. “Why now? I need to hear it from you.”
“Because I messed up,” she managed. “Because after Busir and Minyawi saw me at the auction, I knew they were going to come after you. I…I couldn’t let them do that. I spent too many years making sure they never—”
She closed her mouth tight when she realized what she’d been about to admit.
He tipped her face up. “You spent too many years making sure they never went after me,” he finished for her. “You stayed away all this time because of me, didn’t you?”
She couldn’t deny it, not anymore. And part of her didn’t even want to. She closed her eyes as the first tear slipped down her cheek.
“Kit-Kat,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes to look up into his handsome face, a face that had haunted her dreams for so long. A face that was still sporting a shiner from Busir and cuts from their run-in in Raleigh.
“You sent that crouching pharaoh to me instead of giving it to Slade for security. So that in case someone did ever come after me to get to you, you’d have a bargaining chip. Even when you knew it could possibly clear your name.” When she couldn’t answer, he whispered, “Christ. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this days ago?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. And I…” She drummed up her courage and glanced at the open collar of his shirt. “No matter what happened between us before, I was afraid if you knew, you’d walk away, and then you’d be in more danger than I’d put you in originally.”
“You did all that, even though you thought I could have been involved in that smuggling ring?”
She hesitated but finally gave in and nodded.
When he didn’t reply, she chanced a glance up. And saw eyes that went all soft and dreamy the way they had so