CHAPTER ONE

      ‘ALL right, I give up—I’m lost.’

      Alex Marshall grinned wryly—half an hour alone in the Egyptian desert, and already he was reduced to talking to himself! He wasn’t a man who was given to conceding defeat easily, but the road that was quite clearly marked on the map as a single, straightforward route now divided into two, and there was no clue to tell him which one he should take.

      Standing up behind the wheel of the dusty Land Rover, he lifted his binoculars and scanned the surrounding landscape. The morning sun was rising rapidly into the hot blue sky, baking the yellow hills and tumbled scree to oven temperatures. Neither man nor beast could survive out here for long…

      So it came as quite a shock to realise that he wasn’t alone; he was being watched, from close quarters. She had risen like a mirage out of the rocks at the side of the road, the very last thing he would have expected to see in this God-forsaken wilderness—a cool English blonde.

      His first thought was that she had a great pair of legs— they started somewhere down in the desert, and ended in paradise, and were clad in a pair of faded, dusty denim jeans that fitted their slender length so well she looked as if she’d been born in them. He couldn’t wait to get a look from the back.

      The T-shirt that topped them was just as nicely filled, but the eyes that glittered at him from beneath the brim of a floppy cotton sun-hat were the sort that could flash and turn you to ice, even if the thermometer—as now— was climbing way into the hundreds. Apparently she didn’t welcome his appreciative survey.

      ‘Hello.’ He tried a smile, but somewhat to his surprise it didn’t seem to have its usual effect. She had put her sunglasses on again, but he could still feel the frost from that steady gaze. ‘I…seem to be having some difficulty with my map. Could you tell me how far I am from Taqato al qabrin?’

      ‘You’re there.’

      ‘Here?’ He glanced around in surprise. There seemed to be nothing but a jumble of rocky outcrop. ‘Where? I don’t see any village?’

      ‘It isn’t a village. In Arabic, Taqato al qabrin means Crossroads of the Tombs.’

      ‘Oh…’ He looked up at her, a little puzzled by the frigid hostility in her tone. Granted, his initial appraisal had been rather too obvious, but with a shape like that she must surely be used to an occasional crass male reaction. But apparently she was the type who didn’t much care for the male reaction, he reflected, studying her more discreetly. Pity—she could have been quite a looker if she made the effort.

      He’d put her in her late twenties, five-ten in her stockinged feet, and certainly not above a hundred and twenty pounds. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up, and the strands of hair straggling from beneath her battered hat had been bleached to straw by the sun.

      And the way she was standing there, feet aggressively apart, hands on hips, was positively masculine. But the impression created by the strong brow and determined chin was somewhat belied by a very pretty nose, and a hint of soft vulnerability about her mouth.

      Alex frowned. Just what was a lone Englishwoman doing out here in the middle of nowhere anyway? In all his discussions with the Ministry of Industry and Resources in Cairo she hadn’t been mentioned—he had been given to understand that the area was completely unpopulated.

      ‘Are you living out here?’ he enquired quizzically.

      She shook her head. ‘Working,’ was her terse response. He lifted one dark eyebrow. ‘I’m an archaeologist.’

      Ah—that might explain a number of things! It appeared that she was better informed than he was. ‘I didn’t know there were any archaeological sites in the area,’ he remarked, trying hard to win even just the shadow of a smile.

      ‘Well, there is,’ she retorted, not unfreezing by one degree.

      ‘I see.’ He switched off the ignition of the Land Rover, and climbed out. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

      As he moved towards her, she stepped quickly back, defences bristling. He slanted her a look of sardonic humour; if she was worried about him, what was she going to make of a mining-camp housing upwards of fifty men plonked right on her doorstep? Mind, she looked more than capable of taking care of herself, he reflected drily—he’d back her against a bunch of sexstarved quarry-men any day