it took him to swallow it. The burn of his eyes challenged her with the fact that he could have been thinking something else entirely but she wasn’t yet ready to go there. Better to clear the air with the things she could deal with here and now rather than rake up old problems and risk ripping open old wounds.
That would have to come, but it was early days yet—not even days! She was still feeling her way with this man who was her husband and yet, after the time he had been missing, now seemed like a stranger to her. She knew his face, his stunning features, his voice, his mannerisms. But was the Zarek she had married, the Zarek she had been intimate with, made love with—no, no—the man she had had sex with—still inside this façade that was so well known and yet somehow totally unfamiliar to her? For now she would do better to stay on safer ground. If Zarek’s detested brother could ever be considered safer.
‘I know how it might have looked to you, but if you’d stayed around last night then you’d have seen how I pushed him away.’
‘Forgive me—’ the twist to Zarek’s mouth, the cynical emphasis to the words made them anything other than a genuine apology ‘—but I was still trying to absorb the fact that my wife wanted me declared dead.’
‘Not wanted. It was the only practical thing to do.’
‘And of course you have been carefully planning the most practical way of dealing with things. With Jason’s help.’
‘I needed someone’s help.’
Penny drank some of her own wine, feeling the rich red liquid burn its way down her throat. The kick of the alcohol entering her blood gave an added spark to the volatile cauldron of emotions bubbling inside her. Sick and tired of managing in the dark—in all ways—she ignored Zarek’s previous command and moved to click on the nearest lamp, flooding the room with light before swinging round to face him with a challenge.
‘And as you said, you were hardly in a position to do anything.’
She was not sure if the light was now helping or actually making matters worse. Yes, she could see Zarek’s expression, but did she really want to know just how intent his eyes were on her face? Did she want to look into their dark depths and see the burn of suspicion, the coldness of contempt? And in the light her eyes were once more drawn to the ugly scar that marked his temple, twisting and distorting the beautiful bronzed skin.
Impulsively her free hand lifted again, needing to touch it, to touch him. She wanted to reassure herself that he truly was real, and at the same time she had a crazy, irrational need to smooth her fingers over that scar as if by doing so she could ease the long-ago pain the wound must have caused him.
But something that flared deep in those stunning eyes had her wrenching her hand down again, clenching it into a fist at her side. She took another swift, snatching drink of wine to bolster her courage.
‘What did happen to you?’ she asked brusquely, not having enough self-control to try and think of some more careful way of phrasing the question. ‘We were told you were—dead.’
‘You heard about the pirates?’ Zarek asked, moving to the open patio doors where he leaned against the wall and looked out into the garden, watching Argus, who was happily investigating something that clearly smelled very appealing.
Penny nodded.
‘I found it hard to believe at first. It doesn’t sound at all twenty-first century. But since you were taken, there have been several other ships that have been boarded by pirates. We saw the reports on the television—saw the pirates get into that small boat and leave the yacht. But at the time we didn’t know that you were with them—that they’d taken you hostage.’
‘No one knew.’
Zarek sipped at his wine again, staring out into the moonlit garden, his attention, his focus, seeming to be totally elsewhere. In an absent-minded gesture he lifted his free hand and rubbed at the ugly scar on his temple, making her shiver in distress at the thought of how he had come by it. She hated to see the evidence of that hurt, was saddened by the way that it marred the male beauty of his face. But, at the same time, in some way it only added to rather than detracted from the powerful impact of his forceful features.
‘The small boat they tried to get away in was covered so the troops who were going to board the ship couldn’t see inside. It was pitch black in there—foul.’
With another swallow of his wine, Zarek frowned at the gleaming path the moonlight made along the sea.
‘They were all nervous, panicking—possibly high on something…’
Penny found that the glass she held was shaking violently as her hand trembled in reaction to the stark, matter of fact way he was reporting the story. He might have been talking about someone else entirely—or recounting a story he had heard. She could only imagine with horror how it had felt to be in that situation. To be trapped in that small, dark boat, bobbing on the expanse of the ocean in the middle of the night, with a group of pirates who were all out of control and even more dangerous as a result.
And the last memory he would have had of her was of the angry, lying words, she had flung at him before he had left for the Troy.
‘They were arguing amongst themselves. Some of them wanted to use me as a hostage—to try and get a ransom out of the company at least.’
With an effort Penny tried to raise her glass to her lips. Perhaps a taste of wine might calm her nerves, reduce the sense of revulsion she felt at the thought of Zarek being trapped in that situation. But her hand was shaking even more, so that she couldn’t manage it.
‘And then when the shooting started all hell broke out.’
‘Oh, my—’
Zarek’s head swung round as Penny finally lost her grip on her feelings and slammed down her drink on the nearest window sill, crashing it against the window.
‘Penny?’
‘They said…’
Her throat closed over the words, refusing to let them out, and her eyes were wild as she looked into his dark gaze. Swallowing hard, she tried again.
‘They said—he said—that he p-put—’
It was unbearable to think of the words, let alone say them. And even with Zarek standing there before her, whole and safe, making a lie of the pirate leader’s claim, she still found the idea too horrific to contemplate.
‘He said that he put a bullet in you—your head.’
Burning tears were swirling in her eyes, blurring her vision, but she recognised rather than saw the now-familiar gesture as he rubbed at the scar once more. And the thought of how he had come by it made her dig her teeth in hard to her lower lip to hold back the moan of distress that almost escaped her.
‘Then he gave himself rather too much credit.’ Zarek’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘And exaggerated his success. He might have planned to do that but the truth is that he missed. His aim was off. The bullet grazed my head and knocked me flying—out of the boat and into the sea. Penny?’
His question was sharp, urgent, his tone changing completely. And suddenly he was right beside her, having moved up close, his powerful body almost touching hers as he stared down into
