V.S. Carnes

By now, she was far from the scorch of these sands. After the ransom deal, she would be safely married in England. To Ashton. And Caine, who had hurt her far more than anything Abdullah had planned for her with that long, curved dagger, deserved no better than this torment of knowing it.

Care for her. He was unworthy of such a gift. Unworthy of her blind trust and her sparkling, slightly crooked smiles, let alone her heart. But he wanted her, selfish fool he was and had always been. Care for her? Ah, God, she consumed him.

_deceitful!_ she decided with a little bounce of fury that briefly ballooned the silk of her trousers. __here! You deceitful ___illia___misleading, dishonest, insincere___hose are all the same words, Gill____oh! Liar!_ She__ 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. __ow, look what you__e done!_ she accused tearfully and bolted from the room.

Shifting uneasily, Caine cleared his throat, left to wonder why her eyes would make him so unbelievably uncomfortable now after all that had already passed between them these past few weeks.__aine?__hat would be why. It was a question of insurmountable proportions. A single word that held every fear he had ever had__nd every wish he had ever made on those cursed stars. She needn__ say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.

In a land that knew only dark beauty, she was something of a hybrid no one dared touch. But the tall Arab did not appear in the least daunted by her abnormality. No, she saw his eyes. He was not daunted in the least.

The blood dried on his good hand, he passed his palm over her hair. It curled about his wrist and sprung back into displace as the breeze fluttered by. In the firelight, it was golden like the dandelions of which she__ spoken. The ones that had grown along the Franklin riverbank in late summer. The ones he had lost any faith in since he__ committed his first murder there.

I remember every good thing about you. Every sweet and perfect thing. And nothing else._ He touched her chin, tipped it up to look into her wet brown eyes. Even smudged, they were gorgeous. The dawning light in them filled his heart, and healed it. __othing else.

Better this way, what remained of his battered sensibilities told him. He was no good for her, anyway. She didn__ understand him. She didn__ understand that he was cursed. And, selfish as he was, he__ rather she hate him than he hate himself any more than he was already going to. Any more than he already did.

Caine might have smiled at her, had his heart not been breaking to smithereens inside of him.

He heard the voice that had called to him in dreams, had saved him from the sands and from following his brother into the river.

She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an entirely different instinct, altogether: to fool her and anyone within a dart's range... to protect himself.

Looking back at him was a man who was battered and broken.And alive, for the first time in his life.

He wanted to die. He prayed for it. Through the roar in his ears, he begged for it.

Caine was a murderer. A liar. A cad. A skulker in shadows and a heartless wretch. What sort of woman or God would love someone like him?

Caine usually woke from the recurring dream mid-air, having yet to be dashed upon the rocks, whimpering and panting like a child crying for his mother. Now he lifted his eyes to a dark, empty room in Jizan and the unusual, lingering scent of roses, and wept in his hands for his Father.

She wondered how a man could look into a woman__ eyes and lie so completely, so convincingly. She wondered how he could have looked and not seen the love that had glowed there, the blind faith, the unconditional devotion. She wondered how he would sleep at night, knowing he had betrayed her so effortlessly.

I know I am flaky, I accept that__nd I know, as well, that I can mangle the good king__ English like no one else in my or the next ten governesses_ acquaintances, but that will not prevent me from speaking! I may not be as wise as you in the ways of the world, I may not have wounds that run as deeply or scars to wear upon my chest like medals of valor, but at least I don__ retreat and hide the moment a soul comes within reach of my fingers!

He watched her for her reaction, or possibly watched her just to watch, his eyes hooded by his lashes and his mouth impassive. A faceless man__uch as the one she had dreamed of since she was a child__is identity not obscured by mist or flying sand or swirling dust, but by a mask he readily employed whenever he wished. As a shutter closed against a gale. Closed against her, no matter the impact of his words. He seemed to speak them against his will, just as he seemed to care for her against his will.