Whirlpool by Elizabeth Lowell

Author:Elizabeth Lowell [Lowell, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061756047
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-11-16T12:53:54+00:00

29

Karroo

Tuesday

Laurel awoke in darkness. Disoriented, still half asleep, she couldn’t remember where she was. The air in the small bedroom was still and cool. She was dressed in a light cotton shift and covered by a smooth sheet. She didn’t know how long she’d slept.

There was no clock in the room. The only hint of time came from the narrow border of harsh white light that outlined a heavily curtained window. She studied the light. There was a fierce quality to it, as if it had been forced through a crystal prism and magnified to laser intensity.

Desert light.

Slowly she began to remember bits and pieces of the previous night. The cool white light of the moon had outlined a severe landscape of dry mountains and rolling dunes. She’d seen them as the jet banked and landed on Risk Ltd.’s private strip at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains.

Risk Ltd.

Cruz Rowan.

Her father and the Ruby Surprise.

The images came flooding back to her, and with them an urgency that brought her upright in bed with her heart pounding and gunfire echoing in her mind. She felt again the chill of the cement floor hard against her body while Cruz’s weight covered her, holding her down.

Protecting her.

Then she remembered the warm, gentle pressure of his thumb on her mouth, and the hot, urgent pressure of his kiss.

With a swift motion she peeled away the sheet and surged out of bed. The tile floors of the room were smooth, clean, almost cold beneath her bare feet.

“Better than my cement workroom floor,” she told herself.

But her heart was still beating too hard, too fast. Some of it was fear. Some of it wasn’t.

“I wonder if Risk Limited has any way to protect foolish women from getting involved with men like Cruz Rowan,” she said under her breath. “Probably not. There just aren’t enough men like Cruz to make a business out of it. Too bad. I’m going to need all the help I can get. A country divided soon falls, and a woman divided soon falls in bed. Or in love.”

Her own words startled Laurel.

No. Not that. No way.

No “like mother, like daughter” for me.

She went quickly to the window and yanked the heavy drapes apart. A blazing yellow-white cataract of sunlight burst into the room. Blinking rapidly, she waited for her eyes to adjust.

Finally a dry, rocky landscape condensed from the blinding light. There was little else to see. Except for the scattered buildings of the compound and a macadam runway lying like a dead black snake rigid under the weight of the sun, the desert was empty.

She was isolated, alone, a stranger in a strange land.

Her hands tightened on the drapes as she struggled to understand why she’d trusted Cruz Rowan so much that she’d come to this desolate place with him.

I was in danger.

Was I really?

Again she heard gunfire in her mind, felt the jerk of Cruz’s body as he took the bullets that had been meant for her.

Right. I was in danger.

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