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1
Everything is going to be OK, Susan Chalmers repeats to herself for the hundredth time that evening. She is rocking herself on a sofa downstairs in the lounge – knees crossed, arms wrapped around her bent legs. For some reason, a song keeps intruding into her head.
Can’t help falling in love.
She doesn’t know why she can’t get those lyrics out of her head, especially the chorus, because they are most inappropriate in the current situation. Not to mention – in all probability – forever unrequited.
Channing has not returned from wherever he has gone to. Not that he tells me anything, his future Vice-President. She pictures him at the police station, giving the police a description of his volatile twin brother. He looks exactly me. Sure, go ahead and take a mug shot.
And yet . . . Channing might not have gone to the police about this.
So much she doesn’t know. So much she thinks he isn’t going to tell her. After all, what relationship does she have with him other than a purely business one? A mutually beneficial arrangement that lets him fuck her and do anything to her as he pleases, and in return, he gives her coveted promotion?
By next Friday. Easy peasy. Except that now . . . it’s complicated.
No, not really, the rational voice in her head tells her. Nothing has changed. So you were almost raped by his twin brother. But order has been restored. Here’s the calm after the chaos. Life goes on. The deal goes on.
Does it?
What if he doesn’t want to continue with her after this? What if this spanner in the works is bigger than she thinks it is, and he’s going to call the whole thing off?
“Sorry, Susan, but something came up. I’m not going to be able to promote you after all. You’re gonna have to make it on your own merit.”
She’s shocked that she’s even thinking of business after her ordeal. What kind of a woman thinks like this?
Footsteps sound outside the lounge and she looks up fearfully. A man appears at the doorway. For a moment, she freezes, and then she remembers.
“I’m security,” he says affably.
She’s wearing one of Channing’s bathrobes. Its sash is tightly strung around her waist, and underneath, she’s wearing a shift she found in the chamber of closets – the very one right outside his dungeon.
She doesn’t fully let down her guard. “What security company are you from?”
The man hesitates. Like Channing, his head wears a tight buzz cut. From the way he moves and carries himself, she thinks he has a military background.
“We’re not from any security company. We’re Channing’s old buddies.”
“From Iraq?”
“We served together, yeah.”
She licks her lips. So much she wants to ask him, and now is her chance. “Please tell me . . . what happened in Iraq? What does Channing’s brother mean when he says Channing left him for dead?”
The man once again seems reluctant. “It’s not in my place to tell you, Miss. Perhaps you better ask Channing himself.”
She expected this. His men seem loyal to him to a fault. As with Ms. Radcliffe. What is it about Channing that renders people to extremes, herself included? She still doesn’t know what she feels about him. Does she feel affection for him? Her skin certainly scorches at his touch, and last night, she had the most amazing dream about him. In her dream, he was kissing her as though they were a normal couple in a love-filled relationship, and when he looked at her, his eyes were burning with desire.
“Susan,” he was saying her name huskily. “Susan.”
Of course she woke up, and that was when she knew it was only a dream.
He doesn’t kiss.
She’s not without some degree of feminine guile however. Even in her current shaken state, she turns on the charm. (Or whatever charm she thinks she can rustle up.)
Her large eyes are pleading and scared as they gaze upon the man.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”
“It’s Fred.”
“Fred.” She nurses the name like it’s her only lifeline. “Please, Fred, is there nothing you can tell me? I was very much involved. He tried to – ” she chokes out the word “ – rape me. Please . . . I need to know.”
Fred seems extremely ill at ease.
“Please,” she says again.
He creeps closer, stopping just a few feet away from her. He shuffles on his soles.
He says, “After the war . . . or after our tour of duty, rather . . . Channing Crawford, William Peterson and Derek Fulham decided to stay back and fortify Iraq, or so they claimed. They went East while the rest of our division went back to Baghdad. Channing was joined by his brother, Hugh, who wasn’t a soldier but flew in for the spoils. “
She listens with bated breath.
“No one quite knows what happened there, of course. But word among the vets was that Hugh was caught in a crossfire where they were. They got out, but he didn’t.”
“Where were they?” she ventures to ask.
Fred crinkles his brow. “It was somewhere called ‘Desert Rose’ in the local language.”
‘Desert Rose’. She savors the name. “Did they find gold like all the rumors said they did?”
“Gold was not the only thing they found.” He shakes his head. “I’ve said too much. Anything else you want to know, you’d best ask Channing yourself. Don’t tell him I told you anything.” He shoots her a warning glance.
“I won’t,” she promises. She deliberates for a while, and when he starts to move away, she quickly asks, “What sort of man is Channing?”
Fred raises his eyebrows as if to say, You are clearly his lover, and you don’t know?
Yes, she wants to whimper. I am clearly his physical lover in every sense, but I don’t have a fucking clue about the man.
Her expression must be one of angst and frustration because he takes pity on her.
He says, “Anyone can say anything about the man and what he did in ‘Desert Rose’ – and no one knows what he did for sure – but I would take a bullet for Channing Crawford any day. We were behind enemy lines when I took shrapnel in my leg. I couldn’t walk. We were surrounded by enemy soldiers. I thought I was done for.
“Channing came charging back for me, even though he was under a barrage of enemy fire. He lifted me onto his back and went out the same way he came, shooting at anything that moved. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be standing here. I owe him my very life. I have a wife and three young kids. He gave me back to them.”
He takes a deep breath. “I’d kill anyone who tries to hurt him.”
His suddenly savage expression seems to say ‘And that includes you’.
2
Channing didn’t specify where she should sleep, so she goes back to the bedroom she boarded herself up in. And promptly falls asleep in her shift.
Her dreams are disturbing.
She is in the desert in front of a huge, baked brick citadel. Everything has a mild red tinge, as though she is watching the landscape through rose-tinted lenses. The citadel is large, forbidding and ancient. Its parapets are manned by dark shadows with rifle points sticking out of their backs.
She is wearing her sexy maid’s outfit – the one that allows her naked breasts to be lifted suggestively by its whalebone pushups and her bare pussy to be exposed beneath its flouncy black taffeta skirt. She walks towards the citadel as a mournful wind howls around her, whipping her brown tresses into a moving halo.
“Channing?” she calls.
She knows he is in there instinctively, in this citadel called ‘Desert Rose’. Is he in trouble? Is he being tortured?
The iron gates of the citadel are closed, but now an ancient mechanism cranks them open. She watches with trepidation as the gates whine open to reveal a yawning gloom.
The clouds of murkiness part. A figure walks out. It is clearly a man. As he strides towards her, she can make out his broad shoulders and large frame . . . and then his clean, handsome features. He wears a long sheikh’s robe – dazzling in all white. It is Channing and yet not Channing. His long wavy hair whips in the wind behind his well-shaped scalp. He resembles a biblical prophet.
He holds a flaming torch in his hand.
She wakes up, screaming. She bolts up in bed, her skin feverish and damp from sweat. A hand immediately reaches out and clasps her arm. She freezes.
“Susan?” It’s Channing’s voice in the dark. “It’s just me, Channing.”
“Channing?” Her voice is nervous, querulous. She can never be sure anymore. Their voices are the same.
“Yes.”
She hears sounds of movement and then the click of a switch. Partial light floods the bedroom. Channing is on his elbow beside her in bed, his close-cropped hair gleaming in the lamplight. He is naked from what she can see above the covers. His forehead is creased with concern.
“You OK?” he asks.
She’s not. She’s still spooked by her nightmare. She’s spooked by this entire house.
“Yes,” she lies, her heart beating rapidly. She can hear its thud-thud-thud in her ears amid the roaring of her blood.
“It’s only a nightmare,” he guesses correctly. “Go back to sleep. I’m right here.”
He turns to switch the light off and they are in the darkness once more. The moonlight in the window outside is a pale shadow of what she’s used to, as though the night too is bleached of all color. He settles down beside her. His large hands are surprisingly gentle as they wind themselves around her shoulders and ease her head onto his chest.
