A Reputation For Revenge by Jennie Lucas Page B

broken heart.”
    Another woman tossed rose petals into the fragrant water. “But the desert healed him.”
    A broken heart?
Kasimir?
If she hadn’t already heard his story about his lost love, Josie would have found that hard to believe. With a shiver, she pictured him, all brooding lips and cold eyes… and hard, broad-shouldered, muscular body, towering over her. A man like that didn’t seem to have feelings. She would have assumed he didn’t have a heart to break.
    But now she knew too much. An orphan who’d been stabbed in the back by his beloved older brother. A romantic who’d waited to lose his virginity, then fallen for his first woman, even planning to propose to her. If she’d known Kasimir when he was twenty-two…
    Josie shivered. She would have fallen for him like a stone. A man with that kind of strength, loyalty, integrity and kindness was rare. Even she knew that.
    She knew too much.
    Now, as she left his tent, she looked out at the twilight.
Stop having a crush on him,
she ordered herself. She couldn’t let herself get swept up in tenderness for the young man he’d once been—or in desire for the hard-eyed man he’d become. She couldn’t get caught up in the romance of the desert, andstart imagining herself some intrepid lady adventurer from a 1920s movie matinee. Kasimir was
not
some Rudolph Valentino-style sheikh waiting to ravish her, or love her.
    No matter how he’d looked at her an hour ago.
    I never should have kissed you. I was wrong. Josie, I’m sorry.
    She pushed away the memory of his haunted voice, and hardened her heart. She couldn’t completely trust him—no matter how handsome he was, or how he made her feel. There was something he wasn’t telling her. And she wasn’t going to stick around to find out what it was.
    The air was growing cool in the high desert. She saw the darkening shadows of dusk lit up by torches on both sides of the oasis. It looked like magic.
    She’d find a chance to escape. And this time, she wouldn’t just run off. She’d figure out a plan. She’d seen horses on the edge of the encampment. Perhaps she could borrow one. She’d never been much of a planner. Bree had the organized mind for that. Josie was more of a seat-of-your-pants type of girl.
    She’d figure it out. She’d seize her chance. Sometime when Kasimir wasn’t looking.
    Josie looked for him now, turning her head right and left. She pictured his handsome face, so intense, so ruthless. No wonder, under the magnetic force of his complete attention, she’d once felt infatuated—at least before she’d realized he was a liar and kidnapper. Her brief crush wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. With Kasimir’s chiseled good looks, electric-blue eyes and low, husky voice—and the sensual stroke of his practiced fingertips, rough against her skin—any woman would have felt wildly attracted. But her crush was over now. Her hands tightened. She wasn’t going to let him stop her from doing what she needed to do.
    But it couldn’t hurt to be fortified with dinner before her escape. Her stomach growled. Calories would give her energy,which would give her ideas. Josie looked around for the dining tent. The sun was setting at a rapid pace.
    A man in an indigo turban bowed in front of her. “Princess,” he said in accented English.
    Princess…? She blushed. “Oh. Yes. Hello. Could you please tell me where Kasimir—Prince Kasimir—might be?”
    The man smiled then gestured across the encampment. “You go, yes? He waits.”
    “Yes, of course,” she stammered. “I’ll hurry.”
    Josie went in the direction he’d pointed. She wasn’t sure she was going the right way, until she suddenly saw a path in the sand, illuminated by a line of torches in the dusk.
    She followed the path, all the way up the spine of the tallest sand dune. At the top, she discovered a small table and two chairs on a Turkish carpet, surrounded by glimmering copper lanterns.
    Kasimir rose from one of the chairs.