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‘You told him I was a thief.’ Neither of them had said anything after making their farewells and they were halfway back to the apartment along grey, rain-slicked streets, both of them with hands jammed in pockets, gazing steely at the wet pavement ahead, when the niggling nagging knowledge got too much to bottle up any longer. ‘Why did you tell him that?’
‘Because he was talking madness. Making up stories in his head. I had to show him how wrong he was.’
‘By telling him I was a thief?’
‘Isn’t that why the polis took you in?’
‘I wasn’t charged.’
‘Only because I interceded.’
‘I am not a thief.’
‘And you tried to run away.’
‘Only to get away from you.’
‘There is no getting away from me. Not while I am responsible for your actions.’
‘Look, this is pointless. There’s no need to babysit me. I’m not going to get into trouble again.’
‘No. Not on my watch, you’re not. But where exactly did you think you were going to run to? Back to that fleapit of a hostel?’
‘It wasn’t that bad!’
‘No?’
She grumped into silence. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that good either. And maybe she’d been crazy to think she could run away or that she even had anywhere to run away to. But she’d never been a party to the deal he’d cut with the polis, so that was his problem. She’d gone along with him for one night but be damned if she’d have him looking over her shoulder and watching her every move, waiting for her to transgress for the rest of her trip, whatever she ended up doing. He was too intense. Too sure of himself.
Even if he was the best lover she’d even known.
And there was another reason right there to get the hell away from him as fast as she could. Too many nights of passion like that and a girl wouldn’t want to go home. A girl might start making noises about wanting to hang around. A girl might end up looking sad and getting evicted.
She didn’t want to be that girl.
She wanted to draw a line under their one-night encounter and walk away, while she still could.
‘I thought as much.’
Amber blinked, rewinding the conversation until she found where he was at. Still back at the hostel. Well, she’d moved on. ‘I don’t care what you say. It still doesn’t mean I’m a thief.’
‘If it is any consolation, Mehmet believes you.’ He snorted. ‘I think my old friend is finally losing his mind.’
‘I thought he was very cogent. He’s worried about you, that’s all.’
‘He would be better off worrying about himself.’
‘So why have you never married? Is it because of your scars?’
His head snapped around. ‘What is it to you?’
‘You must have been very young when it happened.’
He shook his head. Maybe it would have been better for them both if he had let her run away. ‘Why did you let an old man touch your face?’
The abrupt change of topic threw her. ‘What?’
‘To most people—most Anglophiles—having a stranger in their personal space would be foreign to them. Discomfiting at least, if not abhorrent. But you offered your face to Mehmet’s fingers without even a trace of hesitation.’
‘He’s blind. How else was he expected to see me?’
‘But how would you know that?’
‘Maybe because it’s my job to know such things.’
‘Why? What do you do?’
She smiled and tossed her head back as she marched down the street, stepping out of the way of an old woman towing a trolley full of groceries out of a small supermarket.
‘Well?’ he said, when they had come together on the other side.
She looked across at him. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘What?’
‘Well, surely what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Why should I tell you anything?’
He sniffed. ‘It is hardly the same thing.’
‘I understand you see it that way. You want to know the answers to your questions but you don’t want to give the answers to mine.’
‘That is not what I meant.’
‘No. Then you meant that your questions were somehow more important than mine. Well, pardon me if I disagree.’
‘You are an infuriating woman.’
She smiled. ‘Thank you.’ And marched on, dodging pedestrians, both local and tourists.
