Sandra Hill by Hot, Heavy Page B

he’d come up behind her. “Must you always sneak about like a … a …”
    “Troll?” he inquired.
    “Yea, a troll.”
    “Normandy, huh?”
    Under all that dirt on her cheeks, he detected a blush.
    She was lying through her teeth. “What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,” he remarked, almost to himself.
    Her response was to raise her chin haughtily. “What matters it to you where I go once you take me to Baghdad?”
    “Uh … about Baghdad,” he started, easing down to his haunches beside her.
    “What?” She was immediately alert.
    “There’s been a change in our original plans. We expect to have an additional person on our flight back. And our extraction site might have to be closer to the terrorist hideout. There’s a chance we will have to leave you behind.”
    She gasped in outrage, then turned and shoved him backward. Climbing over him, she began topummel his chest and face. “You … will … not … abandon … me,” she shrieked, punctuating each word with a punch.
    He put his hands over his face, laughing. Geek and Pretty Boy were laughing, too. “You hit like a girl,” he accused her, which was a silly thing to say.
    “A girl, you say?” Rising up on her hands, she hit him in the balls with her right knee. “Do I kick like a girl, too?”
    He saw stars before he rose to his full six-foot-four and glared down at her. He barely restrained himself from cupping himself to ease the pain. “If that’s the way you try to get your way, no wonder you’re lost in the middle of camel nowhere. Big mistake, sweetheart!” With those words, he picked up his backpack and walked down the back corridor of the tunnel. Throwing it to the ground, he lay down, facing the wall. He was so angry he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep, and he needed all the rest he could get before they started out again.
    He sensed her following him before he actually heard her.
    “I am sorry,” she said, standing at his back.
    “Go away.”
    “Sometimes I let my temper get the best of me. Hah! I always let my temper rule. My father used to say …” He could swear she gulped then.
    “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your temper or your father or any other bloomin’ crazy thing you say or do. Just leave me alone.”
    “I cannot.” Now she dropped down to her knees.
    “Look, I don’t hurt women, but I’m afraid I’ll give in to the urge to throttle you if you keep bugging me.”
    “I have a proposition for you.”
    “This oughta be good,” he muttered, turning over to face her. “You are a piece of work, lady.”
    “Is that good or bad?”
    “What’s the proposition?”
    “If you and your men will get me to Baghdad … and from there to my homeland … I will reward you generously.”
    He gave her a once-over survey which pretty much said she had nothing he wanted.
    “Don’t be a lackwit,” she said. “I didn’t mean
that
. I meant that I would pay you in coins … gold coins … chests of gold coins. All you have to do is deliver me back to my people. My fighting men will come out of hiding to help me rid my estates of Steinolf and his evil warriors.”
    Ian rolled his eyes.
    She stared at him expectantly.
    “Where did you say you come from?”
    “Uh, Jorvik.”
    “Jorvik?”
Liar, liar!
    “Yea, the Saxons call it York.”
    He burst out laughing. “So far, you’ve said you live in Russia, Norsemandy and England. Which one is it?”
    She waved a hand airily. “It does not matter which. I can get home from any of those places.”
    “And then you will hand over a pigload of gold. Just like that.”
    “Yea. Now you understand.”
    Delusional, that’s what she is. Or a scheming witch who will change sides as it suits her in the war on terror, regardless of ethics.
“No, you understand this. I will take you to Baghdad
if I am able to
. But it won’t be so you can fly off to Leningrad or London town. Youwill be considered a terrorist suspect, subject to the interrogation