to be tucked up for the night in her bed back in Sydney, whereas here in Istanbul it was barely time for lunch. No wonder it suddenly felt so crowded in the marketplace. No wonder it suddenly felt so hot.
Fresh air was what she needed—to feel the late winter breeze on her skin and let the sea air cool down her heated, clearly travel-weary body.
She stepped outside the entry to the marketplace, reefing off her scarf and then her jacket, breathing deep of the cool air as it stripped away her heat and soothed fractured nerves and calmed a panicked mind.
And with relief came logic and rational thought along with a little disappointment in herself.
So much for being the strong, independent woman she’d promised herself she’d be when she’d decided to venture halfway around the world to follow in her great-great-great-grandmother’s footsteps. Clearly the old Amber was still lurking, the risk-averse Amber who’d settle for second best rather than chase after what she really wanted, if she could be spooked by a look from just one man.
Because it hadn’t been jet lag at all.
It had been him, with his face drawn in slashes of the artist’s charcoal.
Him, who owned the space he occupied with such a supreme confidence, so that the air fairly shimmered around him.
She shivered, this time nothing to do with the cool January air, irrationally—insanely—missing that sudden flush of heat that had warmed her core and made her think of long nights and hot sex. How had that happened in just one moment in time? In all the two years they’d been together, Cameron had never once managed to turn her thoughts to long, hot sex with just one heated look.
But the stranger in the market had.
How could that even be possible?
And yet his eyes had drawn her, compelling and insistent and communicating to her a dark promise that her body seemed instinctively to understand—and instinctively to respond to.
A dark promise that had spawned dark thoughts of all kinds of forbidden pleasures.
No wonder she had run.
For what did Amber Jones even know of forbidden pleasures? Cameron hadn’t exactly encouraged creativity in the bedroom. Or in any other room come to think of it. And there were times when he’d fallen asleep alongside her and she’d lain there in the dark and wondered if there wasn’t more.
For surely there had to be more.
And then she’d seen more in a stranger’s eyes and she’d fled.
More fool her.
Damn.
And not for the first time, she wished she were that strong, independent woman she wanted to be; the way her great-great-great-grandmother must have been, to venture as a young woman of twenty so far from her home amongst the rolling fields of Hertfordshire, in search of adventure in the Middle East all those years ago.
So courageous.
But as she pulled her jacket back on she could see why her namesake Amber had wanted to come. Istanbul was everything she’d imagined it must be. Colourful. Historic. Exotic. She might not be half as brave, but already she could see she was going to love her time in Turkey.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d risen and left the hostel before breakfast, sick of slamming doors and a body refusing to sleep when it knew it should be daylight. And there, just across the plaza was one of the carts she’d seen selling bread shaped like bagels and sprinkled with sesame seeds. It would do until she could find something more substantial.
She was waiting for the bread to be bagged when a hunched old man with a walking stick approached. ‘Inglis?’ he asked, with a gappy smile in a nut-brown face, with skin that looked as if it were made from leather. ‘American?’
‘Australian,’ she said, getting used to the drill, knowing she stood out as a foreigner with her colouring and dress and that she was an easy target for every street vendor going.
‘Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!’ he said and his smile became a grin, as if they now shared a common bond. She just nodded and turned her attention to the man with the cart, accepting her bread. ‘I have some coins,’ the man whispered conspiratorially, as if bestowing upon her a favour. ‘Good price. Cheap.’
She barely glanced his way. Sam had a coin collection and she’d promised to bring home her change to add to the few overseas coins her younger brother already had. But she had no wish to buy more. ‘No, thanks. I’m not interested.’
‘Ancient coins,’ he persisted, unmoved, ‘from Troy.’
That got her interest. ‘From Troy? Really?’ That would make a pretty cool souvenir to take home for Sam.
‘Very old. Very cheap.’ He drew her away from the bread cart and pulled something from his pocket, slowly unwinding his nuggety fingers so she could see the grubby coins resting on his palm. ‘For you, special price.’
He named that price as she peered at the two small discs, wondering how she could tell if they really were coins from that ancient city, wondering if Sam would care if they were fake because they looked as if they could almost be real. But they were way out of her price range anyway. ‘Too much,’ she said, almost regretfully, knowing that her meagre budget would never stretch if she started impulse buying on her first day, only for the man to immediately halve what he was asking.
‘Very special price. You buy?’
Wariness warred with temptation. Converted to Australian dollars, what he was asking for now in Turkish lire was a fraction of the spending money she’d allowed herself. She could afford them—just—if she didn’t splash out on too many other souvenirs. Still...
She flicked her eyes up to his face. ‘How do I know they’re genuine?’
His free hand crossed his chest, as if she had offended him. ‘I plough them myself from the ground. In my field.’
She could believe he had. His hands certainly looked as if they had endured a half-century or more of hard manual work, and his grizzled face seemed honest enough. But still... ‘And nobody minds if you dig up coins at an archaeological site? Especially like somewhere famous like Troy?’
He shrugged. ‘There are too many coins. Too many for the museums.’ He shoved his hand still closer, his brow more creased, and halved the price again. ‘Please, I need medicine for my wife. You buy?’
* * *
So the rabbit had been snared by a different kind of hunter.
Kadar had imagined her long gone, the way she’d all but fled from their brief encounter, but there she was, talking to an old man across the plaza, those red jeans like a flag and her blond hair gleaming even in winter’s thin sunlight, and he once again felt that familiar spike of heat to his groin. He’d bet that if she looked his way, he’d see a matching flare of heat in her blue eyes.
A shame she was so skittish.
He phoned his driver and told him he was ready, while he casually watched the interplay
