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She blinked once, and then again. He watched her smile slide away then, even as her eyes turned smoky with recognition as they kept that connection across the bustling marketplace.
Until the stallholder alongside her said something that snagged her attention and she blinked again, and this time turned away. A shake of her head and wave of her hand later, and she was practically fleeing from the market, leaving the disappointed vendor wondering how his in-the-bag sale had gone so wrong.
A tap on his own shoulder saw Kadar presented with his change and an apology for making him wait.
He accepted both the same way as he accepted her vanishing act.
Philosophically.
Because he wasn’t interested.
Not really.
After all, he did have plans to visit Mehmet.
Besides, he told himself again, with maybe just a pang of regret, he wasn’t looking for a woman. Especially not one who would flee like a startled rabbit.
He left the rabbits to the boys who liked to chase.
In his world, the women came to him.
* * *
What the hell had just happened?
Amber Jones stumbled blindly through the market, past shops with their displays of dried fruits and spices and all manner of bright and beautiful souvenirs, ignoring the calls and the banter from stallholders on either side as she passed. Because everything was fuzzy. Nothing was distinct or clear, the sights and sounds of the market that she’d found so fascinating just minutes ago now all a blur. All because she’d been blindsided by a man with golden skin and whose eyes had burned bright like a brazier at midnight.
A man who’d been watching her through those heated eyes.
It had been more than any niggling prickle of awareness—it had been a compulsion that had made her turn her head to catch him staring—and she’d felt the gaze from his dark eyes like a rush of heat—a darkly heated wave that had sent a ripple of promise down her spine and collected in a hot swirling pool deep down in her belly.
Why had he been watching her?
And why had she seen sex in the dark depths of his eyes?
Hot sex.
Jet lag, she thought, searching for logic to lend explanation for the sensation. She was bone weary and operating in a time zone nine hours later than her own. In three hours her body would expect her to be tucked up for the night in her bed back in Sydney, whereas here in Istanbul it was barely time for lunch. No wonder it suddenly felt so crowded in the marketplace. No wonder it suddenly felt so hot.
Fresh air was what she needed—to feel the late winter breeze on her skin and let the sea air cool down her heated, clearly travel-weary body.
She stepped outside the entry to the marketplace, reefing off her scarf and then her jacket, breathing deep of the cool air as it stripped away her heat and soothed fractured nerves and calmed a panicked mind.
And with relief came logic and rational thought along with a little disappointment in herself.
So much for being the strong, independent woman she’d promised herself she’d be when she’d decided to venture halfway around the world to follow in her great-great-great-grandmother’s footsteps. Clearly the old Amber was still lurking, the risk-averse Amber who’d settle for second best rather than chase after what she really wanted, if she could be spooked by a look from just one man.
Because it hadn’t been jet lag at all.
It had been him, with his face drawn in slashes of the artist’s charcoal.
Him, who owned the space he occupied with such a supreme confidence, so that the air fairly shimmered around him.
She shivered, this time nothing to do with the cool January air, irrationally—insanely—missing that sudden flush of heat that had warmed her core and made her think of long nights and hot sex. How had that happened in just one moment in time? In all the two years they’d been together, Cameron had never once managed to turn her thoughts to long, hot sex with just one heated look.
But the stranger in the market had.
How could that even be possible?
And yet his eyes had drawn her, compelling and insistent and communicating to her a dark promise that her body seemed instinctively to understand—and instinctively to respond to.
A dark promise that had spawned dark thoughts of all kinds of forbidden pleasures.
No wonder she had run.
For what did Amber Jones even know of forbidden pleasures? Cameron hadn’t exactly encouraged creativity in the bedroom. Or in any other room come to think of it. And there were times when he’d fallen asleep alongside her and she’d lain there in the dark and wondered if there wasn’t more.
For surely there had to be more.
