The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

Now he’d married Sam on impulse as well because...because he wanted her. Because the moment the possibility of her marrying someone else was raised every nerve and muscle in his body protested at the thought of another man having her. It had been as fierce as grief and it scared him enough to say yes without thinking it through and now he was paying the price, but what was worse—so was Sam. He hated seeing her like this, hated being the cause of it.

‘Sam...’

‘You lied to me, Edge.’

‘I didn’t lie...’

She held up her hand and it was more powerful than a blast of wrath because he would have preferred that she be Sam and yell at him.

‘You lied. I thought...of all the people, I thought I could trust you, Edge. I always knew there were limits to this union  , but I never thought I would not be able to trust your word.’

‘Sam.’

‘Leave me be. Go talk to your lawyers and see if they have learned anything more about Rafe. That is what matters most now, no? We can talk...later. I’m tired.’

She sounded exhausted and he felt it. He felt beaten.

He turned and left as he was bid.

Chapter Twelve

The temple gates groaned and heaved like a wounded beast trying to rise.

Khonsu placed a hand between Gabriel’s shoulder blades and shoved him forward. ‘Don’t believe anything you see inside, young Gabriel. Remember Seth tricked Osiris himself. A dung beetle stands a better chance than you.’

—Lost in the Valley of the Moon,

Desert Boy Book Three

Sam turned over in the darkness, wishing she could sleep, but her thoughts were pounding away like Ayisha smashing chickpeas and sorghum in her pestle. Smash, smash, smash. The same thoughts over and over and going nowhere, catapulting her between fury and despair.

She didn’t know where Edge had gone or when he would return. If he would return. Perhaps she should not have sent him away. Twice.

But his lie burned and burned.

Edge is Mr Bunny.

Edge is a liar. By omission, but a liar. The worst kind of liar—a stupid liar who didn’t even have enough respect for her to realise she would find out. She almost wished she had discovered he had a mistress...

She turned over again, grinding her teeth. No, that wasn’t true. But it felt equally a betrayal.

The bastard! The son of a flea-bitten, mangy cur of a... No that wasn’t fair. Dogs were far more reliable and faithful.

And loving.

What a fool she was to trust him—fool that she was, she’d read into his quiet and calm all manner of depths that he did not possess in the least. She’d truly believed Edge would never betray her. Her world had always stood on shaky ground. Growing up, she’d never known where they might be the next year, whether her mother would succeed in pushing back the veil of pain or whether she and her brothers would be mostly left to their own devices.

Like the desert of ever-changing dunes, she could never know from year to year what the landscape would look like, but even in a world built upon shifting sands there were some constants. Or so she’d thought. Her sense of stability should not depend on him, but losing that bedrock that was Edge... It left her adrift. Threw her back years and years to when they’d been plucked from England without explanation and then not long after she began to understand Venice they’d been plucked up again and taken to Egypt like so many sheep. She and her brothers and Edge had come together in that unpredictable adult world.

She’d believed without question that Lucas and Chase would defend her up to and through the very gates of hell. She believed Edge would take her seriously even when he wanted to strangle her, would watch over her even when they wished each other at the devil and would never ever lie to her, even when she’d wanted him to. Ever since she could think rationally she’d concluded he and her brothers were the only beings on this earth she truly trusted.

Had trusted.

She’d needed to trust him and he’d taken that away from her as well. She didn’t know where that left her world.

She could kick herself for being such a fool. No. She’d rather kick him. He was a sneaksby, a coward, an inconsiderate lump of cloddish muck you scraped from a camel’s hoof. She wished she could push him off a thousand temple roofs and he would land on a bed of spiky sabaar...

She froze as the connecting door between their rooms opened slowly and the wall glowed with candlelight from the dressing room.

She had not even heard him return, damn the man for moving so stealthily.

She closed her eyes very slowly, as if the mere motion of her eyelids could be detected. There was nothing she could do to relax the tension in her body without being obvious, but she hoped he understood the silent message and went away. If he thought he could waltz into her bedroom as if he’d done nothing worse than returning late from his club...