Page 44

“You didn’t. Hurt me, that is. And I don’t have to understand a thing, Your Highness.”

He spread the map on his crossed legs. Firelight played over his face, making him look tough and mysterious.

Annie swallowed hard.

He didn’t look tough and mysterious; he was tough and mysterious. Tough in the best possible way, with that strong, hard body and all those lean muscles; mysterious because she had no idea what he was thinking—except to be pretty sure that if it was about her, it was nothing good.

“Declan?”

“Hmm?”

What are you thinking? Is it about me? Do you hate me? I couldn’t stand it if you hated me.

“Do you know where we are?”

He looked at her, then at the map. “Yes. We’re on a mountain.”

“I mean,” she said carefully, “do you know where we are. In Syria? Tharsalonia? Qaram?”

“No.”

“No what? No, we’re not in any of those places?”

“No, I don’t know where we are. I have an idea, but not enough data to be sure.”

She nodded. She remembered how careful he’d been about data when he’d hacked into a bunch of Top Secret files to help Chay Olivieri find the man who’d been stalking Bianca, who was now Chay’s wife.

Precise. Goal-oriented. Committed to facts.

Was that part of the reason she’d never told him the truth about herself? Because the facts that had brought her into his life were too ugly to share?

She cleared her throat. “I—I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”

“You didn’t get me into anything. My unit was assigned to handle the situation.”

The situation. Surely, she was more than that to him.

“Declan?”

He looked up again, a scowl on his face. “What now?”

“I know you must have questions.”

“The only questions I have are the ones that deal with getting us out of here.”

“I meant—I meant that you must also have questions about—about me.”

“Why would I have questions about you? I know all I need to know. You’re some kind of hot prize with a lot of guys competing to get past me so they can win you.”

She flinched.

Okay. He’d been a little rough, but he was in no mood to be kind. Yes, he’d wanted to hear her story, but making the fire, then foraging for whatever food he could find had given him time to think.

He didn’t need to hear her story. All he needed was to contact Recovery Base, arrange for a pickup and make it clear that for whatever reason, the princess didn’t want to be returned to Qaram or sent to Tharsalonia.

She was a twenty-first century Scheherazade and he was living proof that a man could fall for the tales she told and, in the process, lose his grasp of reality.

He’d never thought about being with one woman to the exclusion of all others until she’d come along, and look what that ridiculous idea had done for him. Weeks of missing her, then trying to get over her, all of it leading to that disaster with the blonde a couple of nights ago, hell, to the disasters before that.