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“And I have clearlynotheard enough about you, which I hope will be remedied shortly.” Constance flashed Ellie a dagger-pointed look before returning her attention to Adam. She assessed the firm curves of his biceps like an art scholar might a Greek statue.

Adam extended his hand to Mr. Mahjoud. “I’m Adam.”

The hand was work-roughened, the palm of it crossed by the still-red line of a recent cut. The wound was accented by a frankly uneven row of pinpricks from a line stitches that had only recently been removed.

Ellie felt just a little bad about those pinpricks. Then again, she had never been exceptionally handy with a needle.

Mr. Mahjoud eyed the hand skeptically as though worried that it might smell like the bag beside his flawlessly polished shoes. He finally accepted it with an air of resignation. “Abubakr Osman Mahjoud.”

Adam bent down and gave the stray cat a rub between its orange ears as though loath to leave it out of the introductions. “Hi Kitty.”

Ellie hurried to regain control over the situation.

“Constance, I am afraid that I have not come to Egypt purely for social reasons,” she announced. “Mr. Bates and I do hope to impose upon your hospitality for the evening, but we must arrange travel to my brother’s excavation at Saqqara at the first opportunity. It is imperative that I speak to Neil as soon as possible.”

Thanks to Adam’s snoop through Professor Dawson’s notebook, Ellie had deduced that he and Mr. Jacobs had an interest in her stepbrother’s dig… and yet, it was not the thought of convincing her brother of the threat posed by those two villains that left her nerves feeling rattled. She was rathermoreintimidated by the prospect of informing Dr. Neil Fairfax that she had spent the last six weeks traveling across half the world in the sole company of his best friend—a man who had once convinced Neil to put a stuffed emu on top of the King’s College Chapel.

For a good portion of the voyage to Egypt, Ellie had puzzled over how to explain her connection to Adam in a way that would not send her brother into hysterics. But how could she—when she wasn’t at all certain of the nature of their relationship herself?

“We can take the morning train to Saqqara,” Constance declared. “That will get us there before lunch.”

Adam flashed a disappointed look back at the old man with the camels, one of which promptly spat onto the pavement.

“It will give us a little time to catch up,” Constance finished—and shifted a pointed look to where Adam gazed longingly back at the dromedaries.

Ellie swallowed thickly and wondered just how much more complicated things were about to become.

“Shall we, then?” Constance prompted, flashing Ellie a smile as threatening as a knife blade.

??

Two

As they rodethrough the streets of Cairo, Adam Bates found himself squished onto the carriage bench next to Constance’s extremely well-dressed bodyguard. Mr. Mahjoud managed to look both fussy and intimidating at the same time. The man was tall enough that Adam actually had to look up a bit to meet his eyes, which was pretty unusual for someone of his own not-insubstantial size. Couple that with Mr. Mahjoud’s air of pained disapproval, and Adam felt like he was back at Cambridge telling his tutor that he had once again accidentally set his exams on fire.

On the other side of the carriage, Ellie sat with her face plastered to the open window. Her eyes were wide, drinking up every bit of the city that she could see through streets crowded with donkeys, horses, carts, and other conveyances. She was probably picking out the respective ages and architectural styles of every building they passed. Adam would likely hear all about it the next time they had a quiet minute together, unless they got…distracted.

Then other things would happen. Things Adam definitely wasn’t supposed to be doing with the sister of his best friend.

That he hadn’t done evenmoreof those things was entirely due to the fact that he and Ellie had barely had a moment alone together since they left the Cayo District.

After collecting their bags from the hotel Adam called home, he’d hitched them a ride on a fishing boat from Belize Town to Jamaica, where they slept out on the open deck with the captain and his eleven-year-old nephew. It’d rained the whole time. Adam put that down to the fact that it had been his first time on a boat since Ellie had tossed his lucky rock into a waterfall.

He supposed he ought to be grateful the drizzle hadn’t turned into a hurricane.

On the steamer from Kingston to Alexandria, they’d stayed in separate cabins. Adam had shared his with a pair of German engineers who spent the whole trip arguing about struts. Ellie had been paired up with an elderly widow who’d gone to the islands to alleviate her rheumatism.

Adam now knew more about steel alloys than he had ever wanted, but he counted himself lucky, missing rock notwithstanding… because the minute Adamdidfind himself alone with Ellie, pure and unadulterated lust took over his brain.

When he’d run into her in the empty hallway outside his room on the boat to Egypt, he’d just stopped to ask her if she wanted to try playing some deck skittles—and before he knew what was happening, he had her up against the wall with his hands on… well, things he definitely wasn’t supposed to have his hands on. They’d only barely disentangled themselves before the Germans turned the corner, shouting at each other about wind shear.

Then there had been that little incident in Ellie’s stateroom. Adam had poked his head in to let her know it was time for lunch, since she had a habit of forgetting about things like the fact that food was a requirement for survival once she started scribbling in her notebook. Only he had happened to notice that Ellie’s elderly roommate was sound asleep on her bunk, snoring lightly and evenly.

Somehow, Adam found himself taking a step inside the room as the door fell quietly shut behind him. Ellie rose from her desk, eyeing him like a starving man might look at a hunk of steak… and then he was kissing her furiously and silently in the middle of the stateroom with an old lady dozing two steps away.

Ellie had her fingers in his hair, tugging and tangling there as she devoured his bottom lip. Adam’s hands gripped her hips, kneading the firm, smooth flesh he could feel through the fabric of her skirt. He didn’t even realize he was pushing her backwards until she bumped up against the desk.

The resulting friction sent a bolt of explosive, mind-numbing pleasure shooting up into Adam’s brain—and also knocked over Ellie’s ink bottle. It had thankfully been capped, but it still rolled off the desk and onto the floor.