Page 48 of Captive of Kadar


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Flying out with it was so much more of a risk than flying in. An X-ray machine was bound to find it. Why hadn’t she just left it at home?

But then, she’d never had any idea.

That had been her problem all along. Having no idea had got her into trouble with the coin seller. Having no idea had seen her bring a bracelet that she should have left at home.

She sat on the bed, turning the bracelet in her hands. The other Amber’s bracelet. The adventurous one’s. Strange to think that, when her own visit had turned out to be nothing but an adventure.

She slipped the bracelet on her wrist and the jewels glinted in the light, and she smiled, thinking of her courageous ancestor, looking at these same stones, the gift from a sultan...

‘Amber, before you go...’

Kadar’s voice shattered her thoughts, his presence turning them to disarray. Instinctively she swiped her arm behind her back. ‘Almost done.’

He stopped dead. His eyes narrowed. Troubled eyes that now swirled with suspicion. Her stomach flipped.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Sure. Just a few last bits and pieces to go. I’ll, er, be with you in a second.’

His eyes honed in on the arm still held behind her back. She swivelled a little on the bed so she didn’t look as unnatural as she felt, her heart tripping over itself as if in a bid to get away. She wanted to run with it.

His head tilted, his focus one hundred per cent on the arm that she dared not move, and she cursed herself for the impulse that had made her slip it on. ‘What have you got there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No,’ he said, coming closer. ‘There was something. So I’ll give you another chance to tell me. What have you got behind your back?’

His voice was low and purposeful and threatening and made her thoughts all but curdle. If she’d been frightened before about how to hide her bracelet for the journey home, it was nothing to how she felt now. It would be a miracle if she even made it to the airport with it.

And then another thought chilled her to the bone.

It would be a miracle if she made it to the airport, period.

And because she knew the best form of defence was attack and because she had nothing to lose, and because he was so damned tall, she raised her chin defiantly as she stood and turned away from him, hiding her wrist before her now, and said, ‘It is nothing that concerns you. Nothing you need concern yourself with.’

He followed her as she moved on shaky knees towards the window. ‘Show me!’

‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you will think the worst of me if I do! Because you will jump to conclusions like you always do!’

He made a sound like a growl, low and threatening behind her, making her knees quiver and her lip tremble. ‘Do I have to pull you around and see for myself?’

She blinked furiously as tears pricked at her eyes, searching for escape. But before her was a window and behind her was Kadar and there was nowhere to flee. ‘Why can’t you just trust me, for once?’

‘How can I, when you hide something from me that you know will make me angry? And why will it make me angry, I wonder? Unless it supports everything I ever thought about you.’

She looked over her shoulder at him, his face so angry, so contorted with rage, and she didn’t want him to be angry. She didn’t want him to rage. But she knew he would. She knew there could be nothing but rage now.

And it scared the hell out of her that there was not a thing she could do to prevent it.

He took a step closer and she gasped at the set of his shoulders and the determination in his features. He looked as if he would tear her limb from limb.

‘Okay, I’ll show you,’ she said in a rush as she cringed closer to the window. ‘But before I do, you have to know that this is mine,’ she said, keeping her hand clutched tight over her wrist. ‘You need to know that. It’s mine.’

His eyes didn’t so much as flicker, his jaw set rock hard as slowly she turned and lifted her hand from her wrist. ‘I brought it here. It’s mine.’

Her fingers lifted and he saw the glint of colour and gold and the bottom dropped out of his newly constructed world. Because it was the bracelet. The one she’d been unable to drag her eyes from in the display at the Pavilion of the Moon. And every cell in his body turned around and pointed at him and said fool!

‘How did you pull this off? How did you manage to steal it?’ he demanded, almost unable to rasp the words out, he was so overcome by his own stupidity. He’d been going to come in here and tell her that he couldn’t bear to live without her. That she should stay. That he loved her. And now—this?

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