her actual travels, and what was left was barely legible, but it was the words a young woman so long ago had penned in ink on the front page—follow your heart—that had lodged in Amber’s sensible brain.
And whether it was because she shared a name with her great-great-great-grandmother, or because the young Amber Braithwaite’s anticipation was infectious, that seed had grown, until she’d known that one day she wanted to experience for herself the exotic capital that had fired up her ancestor’s imagination more than a century and a half before.
Follow your heart.
Cameron had thought she was mad to even suggest it.
‘Why would you want to go there?’ he’d asked her. ‘Bali’s much closer and it’s cheaper.’
‘But nobody goes to Bali in January,’ she’d reasoned. ‘It’s so humid.’
‘Trust me,’ he’d said, and to her eternal shame she’d not only put her dreams on hold, but she’d trusted him, all right. Right up until the time she’d come home early from work and found him shagging her supposed best friend in their bed.
A supposed best friend who’d begged for forgiveness and told her it would never happen again because Cameron wasn’t even that good in the sack.
Thanks for that.
No, it was about time she followed her heart. And she didn’t have to explain any of that to this man.
‘So maybe I didn’t have time,’ she simply said, downplaying the whirlwind of emotional fallout from the double betrayal that had accompanied that time. It had taken a week before shock and the self-pity had turned to anger, and then it was a no-brainer that she would head to the one place Cameron was never likely to go.
It wasn’t until she’d buckled herself into her seat on the plane and taken a deep breath that she’d had clear air to think. So, admittedly, there hadn’t been a lot of time to brush up on the finer points of Turkish law or the hazards she might encounter along her journey.
It had been enough to know she was finally fulfilling a dream to visit the country that had bewitched her great-great-great-grandmother more than a century ago. ‘Maybe I had other things on my mind.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he suspected she either hadn’t bothered or she didn’t give a damn what laws she might break in someone else’s country, so long as she got what she wanted.
She gritted her teeth, wondering when exactly the desire she’d witnessed in his eyes had evaporated—in the officious and overheated surrounds of the police station, or when she’d admitted she’d been intending to buy the coins? But did it matter what he thought of her? She’d probably never see him again after today—she’d probably never see him after lunch. What did she care?
Except that she did.
‘I’m surprised you’d risk being seen with me, given my propensity to commit random acts of stupidity.’
He actually had the nerve to laugh. ‘Oh, I know there’s no chance of that.’
It was the laughter more than the certainty that got her hackles up, though the certainty ran a very close second. ‘How can you be so sure? You hardly know me. You have no idea of what I might try next.’
‘It’s the reason you got out of the police station with just a warning.’
Her head snapped around. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I heard them talking—there’s been a surge in reports of coin sellers and the police are planning a crackdown. There was talk of making an example of you to deter other tourists from trying the same thing. A pretty young tourist charged with trafficking in antiquities—that would get the attention of the world press.’
She gasped. She’d felt she’d come close, but she’d been blissfully ignorant of by just how much. ‘So why didn’t they?’
‘Because I told them that until your departure on your tour tomorrow, I would guarantee your good behaviour. I promised that they would have no more trouble with you while you were my responsibility.’
His responsibility? She stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You told them that? Who the hell do you think you are? I don’t need someone to be responsible for me. I don’t need some kind of babysitter, least of all some man I’ve barely just met!’
He didn’t look remorseful. But then she suspected this man was incapable of doing remorse. ‘You would have preferred, I take it, to have been charged and to be languishing right now in a Turkish prison cell?’
Well, no. There was that. But still...
‘No, I thought not,’ he said, reading her answer in her expression. ‘Come,’ he said, taking her arm in his before she could protest—before she could do anything, really—urging her forward once more along the busy street.
She hated him then for his arrogance. For his supreme confidence that what he was doing was right.
And she hated even more that he was holding her too close.
Much too close.
She could feel him all the way down from her shoulders to her hips, every step they took creating a friction that became more delicious by the second—more evocative—every brush of their clothes giving her another burst of the heat that came from being in close contact with him.
Arousal warred with outrage, and she cursed him for his ability to both infuriate her and excite her. How could it be that his touch wanted to make her lean into this man’s strong body, the very man who’d not only insulted her, but quite clearly doubted her integrity and imagined himself some kind of babysitter?
What kind of fool was she?
‘So this is actually duty for you, then, taking me to lunch.’
This time it was he who stopped, jerking her to a standstill and snapping her to face him on the side of the pavement this time, so they weren’t blocking everyone’s way. ‘I take my responsibilities seriously. I said I would ensure you wouldn’t get into trouble while you were in Istanbul before you join your tour group tomorrow morning, and I will do what I promised,’ he whispered, the note in his voice dangerous, his dark eyes intent and focused hard upon hers, before he paused and lifted a hand to her cheek and ran the barest trace of his fingertips down the side of her face, a touch as gentle as it was electric. ‘But who said duty has to come at the expense of pleasure? Because I suspect our time together could be quite pleasurable, if you would allow it to be so.’
The shudder started at her cheekbone where his fingers grazed her skin and reverberated down her body until it rolled out of her curling toes, its scorching trail leaving her in no doubt what he was offering.
And then he shrugged and dropped his hand away. ‘But if you want me to stop at duty, then just say the word. If you decide it is not pleasure you wish for, then I will keep my undertaking to the polis and ensure you do not get into any more trouble before you join your tour. But I will not pursue you. I am not in the habit of pursuing unwilling women.’
A tram rattled past, pedestrians walked by
