Home to Hope Mountain (Harlequin Superromance) (27 page)

“We can work this out,” he repeated.

“Stuff it, Jean-Marc.” Yeah, she was being rude. Dad’s wife, Laura, would be appalled. Dad, on the other hand, would applaud. He was a fighter like Emily. A scrapper. She’d held her tongue for too long, the result of being involved with one’s boss. Foolish girl.

Two nights ago, she’d caught Jean-Marc in bed with the latest PhD groupie, another one drawn in by his charisma. Until now, she’d been able to deny these things happened. In a weird and wonderful way, she was relieved that it was all out in the open. She could end it cleanly. If only she didn’t feel so lousy. If only her breakfast would stop playing hopscotch in her stomach.

Over the years, she’d endured whispered rumors about his affairs and pitying glances. She’d ignored it all. No longer. “I’m sick of it.”

She lifted her backpack onto the bed to fill with her carry-on items. She had a flight to catch. Yesterday, she’d boxed up her tools and had arranged to have them sent home. She’d said goodbye to dear friends and colleagues.

A hot breeze blew the dust of the desert in through her open window. Local merchants hawked their wares four stories below. Inside, Jean-Marc tried to sell her damaged goods. “Come on,” he said. “Be reasonable.”

God, what an asinine phrase. Jean-Marc meant,
Agree with me.

“Save your smiles for the young women you chase.” She packed her cosmetic bag. “They no longer work on me.”

Emily shoved a sweater into her backpack, ready to walk out of this man’s life for good. It had taken her a year to come to her senses.

“You’re running away.” If one more man told her that, she would scream.

Disillusioned with him, she’d also come to the end of her love affair with the past. Somewhere along the way, archeology had lost its magical allure, had changed from the excitement of revealing ancient treasures and had become...digging in the dirt.

Relics, the secrets of ancient worlds, still commanded her respect and awe, but she was tired of it. She needed a firmer attachment to the present. She needed to get a life that worked. Past time to go home, she was determined to get out of here in one piece, with her sanity intact.

Too late, kid. That’s long gone.

She swiped a hand across her brow, skimming sweat from her forehead. She was used to the heat of the desert, but today’s heat was way too high for May. Even her brain felt foggy. She’d lost track of their argument. What had Jean-Marc said? Oh, yeah.

“I’m not running away,” she stated. “I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”

“Explain it to me.” She already had, but Jean-Marc was a notoriously bad listener, especially when he disagreed with a point.

She’d given the man too much, because that’s what she did as a matter of course. When she committed, she gave her all. It had been her downfall with Jean-Marc.

Time for self-preservation.

She stuffed all of her socks beside her one sweater. Why did she bother? They were ragged. It might be hot as hell in the desert in the daytime, but nights were cold. She’d worn the daylights out of her clothes. They’d become as ragged as some of the relics she’d unearthed in her career, and a sad metaphor for her life.

Time for a new me. It starts with a clean break.

“We can work things out,” Jean-Marc insisted.

“Really? By me being a doormat while you sleep your way through all of the young beauties of the Sudan?”

“You’re exaggerating. I made only one or two mistakes.”

Emily sent him a repressive look. “You’re beginning to believe your own lies.”

“You are a prude,” he snapped. “This is how modern people conduct affairs.”

Emily slammed her alarm clock into her backpack and snapped the buckles together, then tossed it toward the bedroom door. “I’m tired of your lies and your vanity. My God, is there another archeologist on earth, another
man,
with a bigger ego?”

Jean-Marc became a mini–Mount Etna, ready to blow. If she weren’t so angry, she’d laugh. He didn’t look much like the suave playboy now, did he? “I have an ego because I’m good. The best.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.” Her anger whooshed out of her on a giant exhalation. Her shoulders slumped. “Why me? If you wanted to sleep around, fine, but why keep me dangling? Why not just let me go?”

In a split second of honesty, his smile a ray of sunshine, he said, “I love you, chère. Don’t you know that?”

She wouldn’t give in to that smile, as she’d done so many times in the past, because it was too small, and she wanted,
deserved,
more. Love should be huge. Grand. She’d been sucked in by his larger-than-life personality and brilliance, but it hadn’t translated into a big love. Only a troubled one.

She gestured between them. “I can’t keep doing this. I need peace and quiet. I’m going home.”

“Yes, to your small town where people do nothing magnificent, nothing lasting, where they never become world citizens working to enlighten all of humanity.” She’d rejected his moment of sweetness, and his spiteful side took over.

She thought of Salem, with his light hidden under layers of modesty, and the way everyone with whom he came into contact respected him. How hard he worked to teach the community about his culture, with quiet humility. With Jean-Marc, she’d chosen flash over substance.

“Some people don’t need the whole world held up to them as a mirror. Some people do great things even while they are humble.”

“I don’t need to be humble. Nor should I be.”

“Please, Jean-Marc.” Her head pounded. “Be a better man than this. Leave while I finish packing. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I will ruin you.” There was something smug about his disgusting little smile, all sunshine gone now, proving as he often had that his ego was stronger than his love. He left the bedroom and, a moment later, the apartment door slammed shut behind him.

She double-checked that she hadn’t left anything behind then carried everything to the front door, but decided to use the washroom one last time before going. She wished her stomach would settle down. Those airport lineups could be brutally long and slow. Khartoum was a small airport by international standards, but busy. She was washing her hands when she thought she heard something in the living room.

“Hello?” She stepped out. No one. Just her imagination.

She reached for the doorknob to leave. The door stood open a fraction of an inch. It should have been shut tightly, especially because Jean-Marc had slammed it on his way out. Had it been closed when she put her bag here? She rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t remember.

She studied the small rooms. Nothing was amiss. She glanced at her knapsack and violin case. They looked fine. A thread of doubt ran up her spine and she opened her case. Jean-Marc would know where to hurt her most, by damaging her precious violin.

She checked every square inch of the instrument and found it sound, then packed it back into its case.

Her headache set off fireworks behind her eyes and she just wanted out—of the country and the relationship—so she shrugged off all thoughts of what that open door might mean. A shuffle in the building hallway alerted her. Someone was there. She threw open the door then let out a breath. Not Jean-Marc come back to wreak vengeance, thank goodness.

Instead, seven-year-old Maria Farouk, in all of her cosmopolitan beauty, compliments of an Egyptian father and an Italian mother, stared up at her with liquid brown eyes in an olive-skinned face. Her thick hair had been brushed to glossy perfection.

“Maria,” Emily said. “What are you doing in the hallway alone?”

“I came to say goodbye.” The child sounded too solemn. Of all of the farewells Emily had made in the past two days, this would be the most difficult.

Emily glanced toward Maria’s apartment. Her mother, Daniela, stood in her doorway making sure her child was safe alone in the corridor. When she saw Emily, she waved.

Emily leaned forward and cupped Maria’s face with her palms. “We became good friends, didn’t we?”

Maria nodded. “Can you send me postcards?”

It had become a game with them, that Emily would find the funniest cards in her travels and mail them to Maria. Also, because she’d loved the child so much, she had bought her a child-size violin and had taught her to play.

“Yes, lots of postcards,” she promised. “Will you practice your violin?” Maria had great talent, more than Emily would ever possess.

“Every single minute,” Maria shouted. Emily laughed and kissed her forehead.

“Not that much, little one. Make time for fun.” She made sure she had eye contact before saying from her heart, “I promise you this. When you grow up and become a famous violinist, I will come to your concerts.”

“You will come backstage,” Maria ordered. “I will give you a pass. You come say hello to me.”

“I will. I promise.” Emily had to leave right away because if she stayed, she would cry, and that would sadden Maria. “In the meantime, I’ll send you a postcard of a bear from Colorado.” From home. Her longing overcame the sadness of leaving. She wanted home. Her family. Peace and quiet.

Maria returned to her apartment. Emily watched until she was safely inside. Despite the clean break, bits of Emily would linger behind, with Maria, with her friends Penelope Chadwick and Les Reed, and with her impassioned colleagues. She had enjoyed her time with them all.

But Jean-Marc? That connection was gone for good, severed as cleanly as though she’d taken an amazon’s sword to it. If not for the sweat seething from her pores, she would be on top of the world. Free at last.

Only one more goodbye left. She went down to the second floor of the apartment building in which all of the archeologists lived. Penny answered the door when she knocked.

Jean-Marc used to call Penelope Chadwick the Horse. Yes, she had a long face and those endless legs, but also a bosom most women envied.

Her smile eased some of Emily’s apprehension. Penny, in her oversize T-shirts and baggy trousers, with her manly tramping about the toughest terrain on her muscled athletic legs, had been a dear friend, and Emily loved her every capable, unfeminine, not-too-attractive molecule.

Penny was one of the good people.

Behind Penny, Les Reed, her compatriot and lover, touched Penny’s elbow, the movement a subtle sign of possession and pride.

Where Penny was tall, Les was short and rotund. When Penny held Les, her ample breasts would flank his face. Emily wondered if he ever felt smothered. Judging by his satisfied grin, he would die a happy man.

She loved these people. She loved their honesty, loyalty and boundless integrity. Why couldn’t everyone in the world be like them?

She fell into Penny’s enveloping embrace. “I will miss you so much.” Her sinuses ached. Why wasn’t life easier? Why couldn’t she carry her friends with her in her pockets, wherever she went, and take them out when she needed them? “I’ll write often.”

“You’ll visit us in England when we’re at home.” From Penny, it came out as order rather than an invitation.

“Yes,” Emily promised. “I will.”

After copious hugs and kisses with both Penny and Les, and a too-brief goodbye, Emily was on her way to her new life.

Fifty minutes later, she stood at the airport in a lineup that moved with glacial slowness toward security.

At last second in line, she put her violin case onto the conveyor belt that would carry it through the X-ray machine.

Sweat poured from her face and a pair of Japanese Kodo drummers hammered her temples in unrelenting waves. This had nothing to do with the heat of the desert. She was sick. Some kind of flu. Rotten timing.

Suck it up, kid.
Nothing would hold her back from getting on that plane.

Unsnapping the buckles on her knapsack, she reached inside for her cosmetic bag, where she kept cotton hankies. Her hand touched something unexpected, something she hadn’t packed, and she froze.

Whatever the object was,
she
hadn’t put it there. She peeked inside, keeping her actions unobtrusive. In her palm, she held a tiny ancient prayer book. She’d seen it before. On their dig. It was supposed to be under lock and key at the National Museum of Sudan, where every artifact they unearthed eventually found a home. So what was it doing in her bag?

She dropped it back into the knapsack, but a tiny gasp betrayed her. Despite how insignificant that intake of breath, it drew the guard’s attention. He approached.

Damn, damn, damn.

Her mouth dried up like the Sahara. Too late to turn and leave. If she took her bag and violin from the belt, he would know something was up and would detain her. One way or another, her bag would be searched today.

The penalty for smuggling artifacts out of the country was jail time. No questions asked. No leniency. No compassion. Too much had been stolen from these civilizations over the centuries. They’d been robbed blind.

If she denied ownership, they would think she was lying. If she tried to tell them she’d been set up, they would think she was lying.

There was no good outcome here. She was the most screwed piece of metaphorical toast on the face of the planet, and she knew whom to blame.

Jean-Marc.
Her open apartment door. He’d retrieved the relic from his apartment down the hall and then had slipped back into her place long enough to stash it in her things so she would be caught with it as she left the country. Vindictive piece of decrepit crap.

I will ruin you.
Yes, he had.

Rage filled her, and not just because of what he was doing to her, but because this precious article shouldn’t have been in
his
possession. Why was it, damn him?

The day she let Jean-Marc win was the day she rolled over and died. She had to get out of this airport and get the relic back where it belonged, with the people of the Sudan.

Think. Think!

What could she do?

Sweat dripping from her forehead burned her eyes. She grasped the hankie in her hand and ran it over her face. The man in front of her in the lineup hadn’t bathed recently, and the smell made her ill.