A Bride for the Taking

His eyes fastened on hers. ‘But you still don’t believe me,’ he said softly, ‘do you?’

‘Does it matter?’

The muscle moved in his jaw again. ‘No.’ His voice was chill. ‘No, it does not. Just so long as you do as you’re told, we’ll get along just fine.’

Dorian shrugged her shoulders, then bent down to get her shoes. ‘I’ll do whatever makes sense,’ she said.

When she straightened up again, she found Jake watching her, his hands on his hips.

‘You’ve pushed and pushed,’ he said softly. ‘And now I’m warning you, Dorian. Don’t push me any further.’

She flushed. ‘I might give you the same message.’

‘You’re to stay right behind me,’ he said, ignoring her remark, ‘and you’re not to say a word. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Jake’s mouth tightened. ‘We’re going to make straight for the trees. Once we’re in the forest, try to put your feet exactly where I’ve put mine.’

Her mouth opened in the start of another quip, but she thought better of it.

‘OK.’

He nodded. ‘Let’s go, then.’ He took her hand and drew her towards the door, and then he stopped. ‘One last thing. If anything happens to me, don’t stop. Just keep heading for the trees. That way, you’ll stand a chance of making it.’

The words, and the way he said them, stopped her short. ‘Jake,’ she breathed, ‘Jake, wait a minute…’

He bent and kissed her, hard and fast, then drew back and gave her a quick smile.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Down the steps and let’s hit the ground running.’

And, since he still had her by the wrist, that was what she did.

* * *

The trees were further away than she’d thought. She was panting by the time they reached them, and she put out a shaky hand.

‘You’ve got to let me stop and catch my breath,’ she gasped.

‘Shut up,’ Jake hissed.

She groaned as he tugged her after him until they were well within the dark forest. Branches whipped into her face and pulled at her hair like witches’ claws. When he finally whispered that they could take a break, she sank back against a tree trunk and drew great gulps of air deep into her lungs.

‘Better?’ His voice was low.

‘Yes,’ she puffed, and then she was sorry she had answered because it made him take hold of her hand again and push her deeper into the woods.

This time, she didn’t waste breath begging him to stop, she just kept going, stumbling on rubber legs. It was all beginning to seem brutally real. Jake’s behaviour was more than cautious. He was—he was behaving as if the forest really might be dangerous.

They stopped suddenly, and his arm snaked around her and drew her tightly into the hard curve of his body.

‘Stay perfectly still,’ he hissed into her ear.

Dorian did more than that. She stiffened, her body becoming rigid. There were sounds in the brush. Voices. Voices. Men’s voices, speaking in a strange language. There was a guttural savagery to the voices that—that…

She buried her face in Jake’s shoulder and he held her close, his hand stroking her hair, until the voices faded away, and then he squeezed her hand.

‘OK,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s move.’

Each footstep sounded like a gunshot, each snapping tree branch like a whip. All she could pray now was that she’d been right, at least, about Kadar: that it was not terribly far, that reaching it would be an easy walk.

They came out of the forest suddenly, stepping with no warning from darkness into sunlight. Ahead lay an endless plain with a single, badly rutted dirt road angling across it.

Dorian blinked. ‘But—but where is Kadar?’ she asked in a breathy whisper.

It seemed to take forever until Jake answered. ‘Do you see that mountain?’

She did. It rose like a tiger’s tooth far in the distance.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But—but you don’t mean…’ She swallowed. ‘You can’t mean…’

‘I do mean.’ For the first time, there was a quality that just might have been compassion in his voice. ‘Those are the Cristou Mountains, Dorian.’ He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. ‘And Kadar,’ he said softly, ‘is on the other side.’

CHAPTER SIX

DORIAN glanced up at the sun. It had been high overhead when they’d begun their trek; now, it was midway towards the horizon. How long had they been at this, anyway? A million hours, by the feel of things. She was weary and sweaty, and the sole of her right foot felt as if it were slowly turning into hamburger. Her thin, low-heeled pumps had been designed for pavement, not for narrow dirt roads.

Jake had set an unrelenting pace, one she’d had trouble matching. But she’d been determined to do it, driven as much by pride as by the cold chill that seemed to have settled between her shoulder-blades, the feeling that someone might just trot out of the forest and come after them.

After a while, keeping up with him had become impossible. He had a long-legged, lean-hipped stride—it took almost two of her steps to match one of his—and finally she’d asked him if he could please slow down a little. By then, she’d fallen in just behind him and he hadn’t even bothered looking back when he’d answered her question with one of his own.

‘Can’t you keep up?’

She hadn’t been able to see his face, but then, it hadn’t been necessary. His tone had oozed cold disdain.

So much for compassion, she’d thought grimly, and she’d tossed back a quick response that had nothing at all to do with the truth.

‘Of course. I was just hoping I could have more time to enjoy the scenery.’

That, she’d noted with satisfaction, had caught his attention. Jake had stopped dead in his tracks and swung around to face her.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ he’d said coldly, ‘this is not a guided tour.’

‘No,’ Dorian had answered, trying not to let him see that she was breathing hard. ‘But it will be part of the dispatch I file.’

‘I told you, you aren’t going to be filing a story about this.’

Her smile had been sweet enough to lure an ant colony into a trap.

‘So you keep saying. But I will, eventually. You know that.’

‘Really?’

His voice had become a threatening purr and she’d hesitated, suddenly wary of angering him in this desolate place. But then she’d looked into that hard, implacable face and her courage had come back in spades.

Who was Jake Prince to think he could give her orders?

‘Really,’ she’d said, very calmly and very qui

etly. ‘Please don’t forget that it’s my job to tell WorldWeek’s readers about things that will interest them.’

Jake’s eyes had gone dark. ‘No,’ he’d said in a chilly voice, ‘I won’t forget it, Dorian. Not for a minute.’

And then he’d turned abruptly and marched on, never so much as sparing a glance to see if she’d followed him or not.

Dorian made a face as a branch snagged her cotton jacket. As if she had a choice, she thought as she wrested it free. How else would she find her way to Kadar, if not trailing ten paces to the rear of Jake Prince? Her mouth turned down. Ten paces to the rear was how he preferred it, too. She was certain he was the kind of man who liked his women docile and valued them slightly less than his favourite polo ponies.

She wondered, once again, just how long she’d been trudging along in Jake’s footsteps, following him mindlessly down this road like some—some servant girl out of another century. Yes. That was how she felt—as if they were marching not only towards Mount Cristou, but away from the present.

She had never seen a place where there were no signs of the modern world. Even back in Minnesota, where the plains stretched on unbroken for miles, there were bits of man’s handiwork to remind a visitor that the land had been tamed. Cars. Telephone poles. Houses.

But there was none of that here; there was just this ribbon of dirt stretching towards the mountains. And it was eerily free of other travellers. They hadn’t seen or even heard anyone since those awful moments in the forest.

A little shiver danced up Dorian’s spine. She’d asked Jake who those men were, just before they’d started walking towards Kadar.

‘Were they bandits, do you think?’

His answer had not been encouraging. ‘One side’s the same as the other, as far as we’re concerned,’ he’d said grimly.

She was more than willing to agree. If hearing those guttural voices hadn’t been enough to convince her that Jake had been telling her the truth all along, then the feel of this strange countryside would have done it. Maybe it wasn’t the sort of proof reporters were supposed to look for, but then, some of the best journalists she knew talked about having a ‘nose for news’, which was just another way of saying they’d learned to trust their instincts.