CHAPTER 3
Meanwhile, Teren had no idea that Nolan was confronting his own feelings about this unexpectedly shy woman who had met him at the airport. He just couldn’t shake the intense, burning connection he felt with her. She looked like a white lotus that stood out in the Khartoum airport, littered with males in jalabiyas or business suits. He’d sensed where she’d be standing before he’d even laid eyes on her. And there she was, leaning against the wall, out of the way, hiding as it were from the overwhelming number of men here at the huge airport.
The simple, white cotton tob she wore was shapeless, purposely designed to hide her figure from men’s prying eyes. Nolan didn’t agree with the practice, he never had, but he knew they also wore the long, shapeless gowns—both men and women—to be comfortable in the suffocating heat of the region. This part of the world was ruled by Sharia law, which subjugated women and made them chattel, controlled by their husbands and male relatives. They had no separate identities and were not allowed to be independent in any way. Nor could they explore the myriad aspects of being a woman. Instead, they were relegated to being broodmares, to bring in a new generation of boys who would be brought up learning not to allow women their place at the table. They suppressed and controlled them, more or less, depending upon the country and its laws. However, not all Muslim countries embraced Sharia law.
Teren’s head was wrapped in a white hijab of soft, fine silk that hid most of her sable hair. The edges of the hijab were hand-embroidered with gold thread, which highlighted the gold within her hair when she moved her head slightly, the window’s light behind her glinting through a few escaped strands.
Teren Lambert wore no makeup, but she had no need for it. She was truly a natural beauty. Nolan’s heart lurched as he connected with her soft dove-gray eyes once more. The photo of her at the mission briefing back in Virginia was a shadow compared to seeing her in person. She had a narrow face, high cheekbones, and a broad, unlined brow. Her large, intelligent eyes were the centerpiece of a stunning, exotic face.
Nolan made the mistake of allowing his gaze to drop past her straight nose to her lips, and he wasn’t disappointed. This woman had a lover’s mouth; that was all there was to it. A mouth made to worship, to part, to taste, to join, and feel her returning lushness and fire as a woman. There was no mistaking her earthy sensuality. So often in the past, Nolan had intuitive hits that had saved his life seconds before he could have been snuffed out of existence. This time, he used that internal radar of his on Teren.
She stood casual and relaxed, her hand on a white straw purse across her right shoulder. She reminded Nolan of a lean, languid cheetah roaming the red deserts of Sudan. But there was nothing weak or fragile about her. He could feel her inner strength and somehow knew that life had thrown a lot at her. Instead of being crushed by it, she’d survived it, and now she was thriving.
Nolan was always drawn to women who were warriors. Now, seeing Teren hidden in her tob, he wondered, as he slowly threaded in and out and around the men leaving customs, if others saw Teren as a warrior, too. Nolan doubted it. His peripheral sensing ability was off the charts and had been honed by years of life-and-death dances here in Sudan and Ethiopia as an undercover operator. But he sensed all of her—the understated elegance, the way her slender hand with those long, long graceful fingers hung relaxed at her side. She reminded him that women were like flowers: bright, beautiful, to be looked at, appreciated, each with her own intrinsic beauty.
Nolan shifted his appreciation to Teren’s wide, flawless eyes framed by long, sable lashes. Her eyes reminded him of soft, gray diamonds, dawn light moving through them. Eyes that saw a lot, he guessed, because earlier she was far more alert than she appeared, as she relaxed against the wall.
And she was hiding. Nolan could feel it. Perhaps that tob gave her a feeling of safety. Nolan could understand how Sudanese women, brainwashed since birth to hide their bodies from lustful male eyes, would feel naked without the protection of the long garment that hid them from neck to ankle. Was that why she was hiding? Teren had been in this country for seven years and maybe she’d had some bad experiences. If so, the tob would be a useful shield to hide behind. Nolan wanted to protect her after sensing how raw and threatened she felt.
No man in the airport made any moves toward her, although a number of them took second and third looks at her as they passed her by. She kept her eyes downcast, as a good Sudanese woman would do in such a situation. But every once in a while, to Nolan’s satisfaction, her gaze would automatically sweep the area around her. That was good. It showed the type of vigilance that she’d continue to need with Uzan prowling around like the hyena he was, somewhere in the area. Until he and Captain Taban could find the bastard and break up any strategy he had against Kitra and Teren, she was at risk.
As a Delta Force soldier, he’d often come to the aid of defenseless women, children, and even animals on occasion. He sensed hurt and pain in this woman: she felt like a minefield to him, and he was reluctant to take a wrong step with her. He felt she’d close up and never allow him entrance into her personal life. And Nolan wanted to manage to slide past her shields and know Teren on a deeply personal basis, right or wrong.
She was bringing out every masculine reaction he had within him, and like the cheetah he imagined her to be, had Teren run from something? Because the main survival skill of that graceful African animal was to outrun the enemy that wanted to bring it down.
Who had brought Teren down? His mind clicked over her file, but he could find nothing in it to indicate what he sensed around her now. That bothered Nolan deeply, because in the briefing room he had made an unexpectedly powerful connection with her. Now that connection was strengthening at surprising speed. He was more than glad to be her bodyguard while he was here in Sudan. She needed one, because he knew that Uzan would target her. But was someone else targeting her too?
Teren wasn’t the helpless type, and Nolan knew she was not a fragile person, but something devastating had happened to her. And because of it, she was glad to be hiding in the tob—at least for now. Nolan knew that Kitra was a walled village, as many villages were in Sudan. The enclosure kept out lions, hyenas, and other predators at night, while also protecting the village’s cattle, camels, goats, and sheep.
Did the walls of Kitra give Teren that additional sense of safety she needed? What Nolan couldn’t put together was why someone in her late twenties, as young, beautiful, and vibrant as she, would hide here in central Sudan at a charity. She had the skills to hold a high-paying job as an IT person anywhere in the world. Why was she here in the middle of this godforsaken, struggling, third-world country? What drew her to Kitra and why did she stay?
The questions he had for her were many, and all were personal in nature, which wasn’t supposed to be any of his business. He was to maintain an arm’s length emotionally from her in order to do his job of guarding her, nothing less.
As Nolan approached her, he saw her cheeks grow even more pink, her full lips parting as she lifted her chin, calmly meeting his gaze. This close to her, Nolan instinctively inhaled deeply, drawing in her female scent. It stirred his lower body to vibrant life. He was glad to be wearing the heavy, sturdy bush trousers he always wore when in Africa. The zipper would keep his erection well hidden from the world, not to mention the short-sleeved bush jacket he wore over his tan T-shirt, which fell below his crotch.
Nolan hadn’t known what to expect from meeting Teren, but what was happening between them on a nonverbal level was emotionally charged and exhilarating to him. She was such a sensual creature; he knew it as soon as he’d shaken her hand. He felt it, saw it in her wide, trusting eyes, in the perfect shape of her mouth, in the way she moved away from the wall to stand confidently before him. Nolan did not sense Teren was wary of him. And that was good.
He’d been hired to put himself between her and any dangerous situation that threatened her life, and that meant being willing to take a bullet for her.
Now, as he spoke her name, he saw her eyes change, widen for a moment, looking even more intriguing. Nolan could drown in the quiet pools of her eyes, be lost forever in her.
“This way,” she called to him, gesturing ahead.
“I see it,” he called over his shoulder. Teren was making him feel again on levels Nolan had never hoped to regain. It was her. That sense of being a woman tied strongly to the land, her hands in the warm, fertile soil of this planet. Those things appealed strongly to Nolan. Maybe it was his ancient Irish background, his mother teaching him a love of the land, the emotional and familial ties to it, that Earth was a living being, just like them.
Nolan moved his gaze slowly, absorbing and memorizing everything around him, whether cars or people. The sound of jets taking off shook the hot afternoon air, the obnoxious odor of jet fuel always present.
Spotting the hafla, the fender dented and rusted, Nolan felt right at home. Most cars in Africa had had the shit beaten out of them: the drivers were terrible, and only tough vehicles survived, just like the people who survived on this dark continent.
Halting at the vehicle, he moved aside as Teren came closer, their bodies nearly touching as she slipped the key into the lock, opening the passenger-side door for him.
He dropped his duffel bags on the flatbed. As Teren stepped back, he took the laptop she offered him, placing it gently on the plastic seat between them. There was a light film of desert grit across the plastic.
“There are some ropes down on the floor,” she told him. “You can use them to tie your duffel bags to the frame of the hafla.”
Grunting, he spotted and grabbed them, then turned, meeting her gaze. “You’ve thought of everything.”
She moved aside, holding the passenger door open because the breeze was strong. “Out here, if you don’t, you’re screwed.”
He chuckled, appreciating her dry humor. Quickly looping the ropes through the canvas handles and then tying them to the white, badly chipped metal frame, he said, “Yeah, out here you need a safety net, and if you don’t have it, you’re in dire straits for sure.” Nolan saw her mouth curve faintly, her eyes glinting with silent laughter. That mouth. He was already in such deep trouble with Teren. “You want me to drive?” he offered, standing with his hand on the cab of the vehicle.
“No.” And then she added with sarcasm, “At least with the Sharia law here in Sudan, women are still allowed to drive, unlike in Saudi Arabia. Hop in. There’s no air-conditioning, so you’ll need to keep the window rolled down or die of heat prostration.”
Nolan chuckled and allowed her to pass him. She moved with such confident grace. There was nothing passive or scared about Teren Lambert. She hid herself well; the way she carried herself now that she was outside that airport was a surprising but welcome change. Nolan needed this woman to be strong, brave, and confident, because Uzan was a murdering thug who would kill her if she didn’t know how to think through a crisis. And that was an area that Nolan needed to test, to see how Teren felt about it. Judging by her carriage, her shoulders thrown back, chin lifted at a saucy angle, he had a competent warrioress on his hands. That was good. It could mean the difference between living and dying—for both of them.
He opened the driver’s-side door for Teren and she gave him a grateful look, awkwardly slipping inside and closing the door. As she rolled down the window, she pulled off the hijab, dropping it on the seat between them. Nolan felt pleasure in seeing her long hair as she removed the tortoiseshell comb, the long sable strands escaping, framing her oval face and strong chin. The sunlight glanced off it, catching the amber among her shoulder-length tresses.
“I’m going to change my looks,” she warned him with a grin. Reaching over to the glove box, she drew out a black baseball cap, a set of dark wraparound sunglasses, and a thick rubber band.
“Okay by me,” Nolan murmured, curious.
Teren quickly gathered up her hair and fashioned it into a ponytail, pushing it over her shoulder and placing it between her shoulder blades. Settling the dark glasses on her face, she pulled the baseball cap on, keeping the bill low. “When I go into Khartoum, or anywhere outside Kitra’s gates, I become a chameleon of sorts,” she explained, shoving the key into the hafla and starting the engine. “Most people can’t tell if I’m a man or a woman when I drive the streets of Khartoum or the dirt roads to and from a village. There’s very little chance of me being turned in to the police for being a woman, because in seven years, I’ve never been caught pretending to be a man behind the wheel.”
His mouth twitched with amusement, and he said, “I like your strategy.”
She drove out into the roadway, pressing down on the accelerator to keep up with the crazy taxi drivers who zoomed in and around other cars waiting to pick up passengers at the terminal. “It serves me. Being a woman here in Sudan has its own challenges. This is one of ’em.” And then she glanced over at him, seeing that he was putting on his own pair of sunglasses and settling a dark green baseball cap on his head. Almost laughing, she said, “Gee, we could be twins, Steele.”
He laughed and sat back, elbow resting on the doorframe, the hot air circulating through the cab. “I like your style, Lambert.” He saw her lips twitch, but she said nothing, paying attention to the darting kamikaze-like taxis and speeding, shiny black Mercedes trying to escape the confines of the airport.
Nolan felt her laughter, and it seemed Teren was shedding some of her serious demeanor now that they’d left the airport. He understood the stresses of her being a white, American woman, the wrong color of skin and gender for this part of the world.
As a man, he could get away with being Caucasian because there were plenty of American businessmen in Sudan, especially the oil company executives who had a great interest in the production of Sudanese oil in the south of the country. Half of Sudan was red clay and grasslands. The lower third was hot, steamy jungle where oil had been discovered. A pipeline now crossed Sudan, passing close to Khartoum on its way to Port Sudan, where oil tankers from around the world sat waiting in line to have their vast bellies filled with the thick, black crude.
But a white, American woman here in Sudan? He understood Teren’s safety measures: hiding her hair, making herself look mannish to avoid any kind of unwanted interest by others. And he knew that Sudan had plenty of militants, like members of ISIS, prowling the perimeter of the country as they tried to get a foothold in the slums of Khartoum. He also knew al-Qaeda was chipping out a foothold in the capital’s economically deprived areas as well.
Fortunately, the Sudanese government didn’t want either terrorist faction on their turf, so they were quietly using their police force and undercover military people to root out the murderous bastards.
Nolan kept quiet watch as Teren turned the hafla onto the major highway leading out of Khartoum. He knew from studying the maps prior to landing that Kitra was located on a small highway off a larger one. The fact that it was paved told him of Kitra’s importance to the country. Most roads were dust, full of potholes, and were driven at a very slow pace to prevent axles from being broken.
“If you’re thirsty,” Teren said, jabbing a finger toward the glove box, “I put some bottles of water in there for us.”
Touched by her thoughtfulness, Nolan opened it and took out a bottle. The water was warm, but he didn’t care. “You want some?”
“Please.”
Nolan opened the bottle, handing it to her. The hafla was a standard shift, something most Americans didn’t know how to drive anymore. She needed two hands to drive and shift gears. Once the hafla was in drive, Nolan took pleasure in watching her lift the bottle to her lips, tipping her head up, exposing the slenderness of her throat, and drinking deeply.
“Thanks,” she said, handing the nearly emptied bottle back to him.
Their fingers touched and Nolan felt a tingle from their momentary contact. “I’ll finish it off, okay?” he offered.
“Sure, I don’t have any viruses or bacteria. I’m clean.”
“I’m not worried.” He grinned.
She flashed a look at him, then smiled. “I’m glad you have a good sense of humor, Steele.”
“Call me Nolan if you want, but I’ll answer to anything.” Because he wanted that familiarity, that closeness with Teren, he had to cultivate her trust.
“Okay, fair enough. Call me Teren. I don’t stand on much ceremony unless I’m forced to.”
“A woman after my own heart.” His skin riffled when she gave a full laugh. It was as if she were touching him with just the sound of her smoky voice. The sensuality surrounding her was palpable in the cab.
Nolan recognized that Teren was not a flirt—that was part of the draw to the “earth goddess” kind of woman he favored. The soil was fertile, alive, creative, and alluring, and so was Teren.