Mahmoud was bundled up in the windbreaker he carried in the trunk, but he didn’t look any too happy. “I have a spare tire,” Peter said in an acid voice. “I just don’t have two. You’ll note that we have two flat tires?”
Mahmoud gave him a snarky smile. “I noted,” he said, his voice a perfect mockery of Peter’s icy tones. “So you want to tell me why we’re out in the middle of nowhere, with no mobile service, no highways, no towns? I don’t think I remembered that the sky could be this dark. Reminds me of home. Without the bombs and ruins and terrorists, of course,” he added fairly.
Peter gave him a sour look. “I don’t think I need to justify my decisions to you.”
“Don’t need to,” Mahmoud said cheerfully, “but Genny will give you shit. It’s good to see you’re pussy-whipped.”
“I am not pussy-whipped.”
“It’s not a bad thing if Genny is the p ….” He stopped at Peter’s quelling expression and grinned. “Yeah, I know, she’d kill me if she heard me talking like that. What I meant to say was, if you’ve got someone like Genny you need to listen to her.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed in the last three years since your ungrateful carcass was dumped on me, I do listen to her. And I’d tell you this was simply the first time she was wrong, but I can’t even say that. She’s right, I shouldn’t be here, I can’t fix things. But irrational or not, I needed to come.”
“See,” Mahmoud said. “That wasn’t so hard.”
Peter growled low in his throat. Mahmoud drove him mad. Like all teenagers he was obstreperous, confrontational, superior and obnoxious. Peter had had no choice in accepting him into his household, and he’d kill anyone who tried to take him away. Mahmoud might have little use for Genevieve’s husband but Peter had long ago accepted the little monster as his son. Even if Mahmoud disagreed.
He sighed. “We were going on back roads so we couldn’t be traced. I told you, the CIA is watching for signs of Killian and Isobel, and we need to be careful.”
“They’re coming back?” Mahmoud kept his voice neutral, but Peter knew what he was thinking. Killian had been the first reliable male in the young Mahmoud’s life. It didn’t matter that Mahmoud had pledged to kill him as soon as he was old enough – in Mahmoud’s world that constituted a solid bond.
Besides, he’d passed that pledge on to Reno when he’d first arrived in England, and as far as Peter knew Killian was in no danger from anyone but the CIA. And of course any country where he worked undercover and managed to bugger up most of their operations.
Peter took a deep breath. The countryside smelled different in France, even in a winter-dead season. It smelled like fresh herbs and grapes and the hint of salt breeze from the sea over sixty miles away.
“I hope he’s not coming back. I told them to stay away – too many people still want him dead, and they’re willing to pay good money for his murder. In particular the CIA have a jones for him, and they’d go through anyone to kill him. Innocent or guilty, young or old, they’ll kill to get him. I warned him, and for our sake I think they’ll stay away. If he does show up you keep your distance.”
Mahmoud grinned. “Yes, abouya.”
Peter didn’t bother to ask him what that meant. He’d used it a number of times, and he had little doubt it was Mahmoud’s way of insulting him. “We’re going to have to walk, pal,” he said.
“You walk. I’ll stay in the car.” Mahmoud reached to the passenger door, but Peter grabbed his arm and hauled him back.
“You signed on for this, kiddo. You get to suffer along with me. What do you think, head back the way we came or go forward?”
“The last village we passed was too small for a mechanic. The last one with a gas station was more than 25 miles back. And don’t tell me someone will give us a ride. If you wanted seclusion you chose wisely. I haven’t seen another car in at least an hour.”
“Good,” Peter said. “That gives us time to bond.”
And he didn’t need a dictionary to translate Mahmoud’s surge of profanity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was dark when Beth awoke and for a moment she was swamped with panic, disoriented, a scream rising in her throat.
She managed to stop it as memory came back. They were no longer on the miserable roll of the ship or in the constant movement of the car. They weren’t tied up, awaiting death. They had gotten away.
A farmhouse in France, he said. She vaguely remembered him carrying her, and she could feel her face heat. She had just let him. In fact, she’d curled up against him, putting her arms around his neck, seeking his heat, seeking his strength. God, she couldn’t allow that to happen again.
In retrospect, she couldn’t believe he’d let her come with him. Why? The sooner she got home the sooner he’d get his goddamned money. It didn’t matter that during their poker game he’d lost all his winnings for the simple chance of spending the night with her. One would hardly think her pathetic skills were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and she had every intention of paying him that money, and more.
So why was she here? Or to be more exact, why had he kept her here? She knew perfectly well why she had chosen to come. She had realized it when she was trapped in that narrow alleyway, and it was like Pandora’s box. Once opened, you couldn’t stuff the secrets back in. She thought she was in love with him.
There were hundreds of reasons for her delusion, she reminded herself, sitting up and finding the small lamp on a table by the bed. He’d saved her life countless times, he’d fed her, bound her wounds, protected her, delivered her out of danger. Time and again he’d come to her rescue, and then he’d ended up making it abundantly clear that despite her lack of experience, she was most definitely not frigid. He’d given her something she had refused to believe existed. It was only reasonable that she’d want more, and she’d want it wrapped up in fantasies of love.
She was a practical, sensible woman. She could see her weakness quite clearly, understand how she could imagine herself to be in love with him. She’d get over it, once she was back in civilization, once she was away from him, she’d return to her normal, unbesotted self.
Fuck that. She was tired of being reasonable, being sensible, doing the smart thing, the wise thing, the safe thing. She saw MacGowan quite clearly – his sweetness and his savagery, his avarice and his generosity. The first thing he’d done when she’d met him was untie her and give her his precious bar of pure Colombian chocolate. He was a bundle of contradictions, and he knew as much about love as she did. Which was absolutely nothing.