“…deceitful!” she decided with a little bounce of fury that briefly ballooned the silk of her trousers. “There! You deceitful …”“Gillia…”“…misleading, dishonest, insincere…”“Those are all the same words, Gill—”“Ooh! Liar!” She’d managed to get her hands on a small pillow. He ducked just as it whizzed past him. In justice, however, it did strike the mosaic vase behind him on an engraved mahogany pedestal, and it tipped and spun on its base before landing in a shattered heap on the bare floor. “Now, look what you’ve done!” she accused tearfully and bolted from the room.”

“He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn’t a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army’s nose. She’d taken his hand, thrown herself down a sand dune on a dare, and then beaten him back up it. She’d glared at him and refused to part from his side. A coward? “Never,” he said again.”

“She accepted it uncertainly. “This will help?” Without waiting for an answer, with that unsettling trust of hers, she popped open the lid and dug in her finger, smearing the slick substance on and around her mouth. Going outside of the lines, as he deduced she did with most everything in her life. When she was done, she looked absolutely ridiculous.Caine barely resisted smiling at her. “It will help immensely.”

“Wait for me.”If his voice was just a bit hoarse, she didn’t seem to take note of it. She looked at him as though he had reached over and slapped her. “You don’t trust me? After all that talk of taking me for my word—”“This isn’t about trust.”“That is precisely what this is about.” Her fingers fisted in her skirts. “Because I’ve trusted you.”It hurt him to hear it. He didn’t know what else to do. He had no contacts left. He was walking around now like a blind man. He didn’t need the added weight of her safety on his conscience. Caine’s eyes fell away again. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”That earned him a flustered: “You told me to!”

“She’d said she loved him. She'd put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.”

“Anger swirled in him, a tempest readying her strike. And like a helpless vessel caught in her fury, he felt himself dashed against the rocks without mercy.”

“He felt, rather than saw, her chin lift toward him. But instead of pulling her hand from his grip and turning away, she tightened her own fingers and unceremoniously, unexpectedly, threw herself down the incline, dragging him with her.Dragging him with her!”