David smiled wryly. “Force du Sable. Sauvage’s men. The best damn private army in the world.” He blew out a huge breath and grinned. His eyes were alive with light. “Ladies, I think we made it.”
“I think we did,” she whispered.
“Yaaah!” he cried, whacking her camel on the rump. And they galloped over the last stretch of sand into Al Abèche.
A week later Dr. Watson gave Kamilah a clean bill of health. According to him, she’d fared exceptionally well. He credited this to the fact Jayde and David had arrived as a team to rescue her, restoring her faith in the world.
David stroked his daughter’s silken hair. Her eyes smiled up at him. Warmth spurted through his chest. “You sure you don’t want another bedtime story.”
“Daddy,” she said. “You’ve read nearly all my stories. I have to get new ones now.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m making up for lost time, sweetness.” He tickled her in the ribs. “Just one more? Huh? Huh?”
She squealed and giggled as he tickled her.
“The Little Mermaid, maybe? How ’bout I read you that one.”
She stilled, her eyes suddenly dark and serious. “Nope. I don’t need that one anymore.”
He sat up in surprise. “You don’t?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t like the ending of it anymore.” She grinned. “I can make my own happy endings now.”
Emotion pricked hot behind his eyes. “Yes, sweetness, that you can.” He kissed her and closed the shutters. “Good night, baby.”
“’Night, Daddy.” And again his heart squeezed at the sound of his child’s happy little voice. He made his way out of her room.
“Daddy?” she said as he was about to close the door.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“Will she stay?”
He was silent for a while. “I sure hope so. I’ll let you know in the morning.”
David made his way out onto the terrace. The moon was rising and the swells were slow and languid out over the ocean. Jayde stood at the end of the terrace, the hem of her white dress ruffling in the breeze around her calves, the tendrils of her hair blowing with the warm wind. He slipped his arm around her waist, and together they stared out over a horizon as clear and vast as the future that lay before them.
“Jayde,” he said. And inside he quaked. Because he was terrified of what she might say when he asked her.
“What is it, David?” Her eyes were so big and so green. He wanted to wake up to those eyes every morning for the rest of his life. He wanted to drown in them forever. “Jayde, if I asked you to stay, would you?”
Her eyes searched his in silence.
His heart balled into a knot. He wanted this above anything else in the world. He wanted her at his side forever. He wanted them to be a family.
She sucked in her breath.
He braced, waiting for her words.
“David,” she said, “out in the desert, I said some things. And you said it was the jinns talking…”
His stomach bottomed out.
She lifted her face to his. “It wasn’t. It was me. It was me talking from my heart, me stripped of every damn defence I’d ever built up around myself. In those dunes I pleaded with you to never leave me. I also told you I intended to stick around.” She smiled. Her eyes shimmered. “I meant it, David. All of it…if you’ll have me, that is.”
Tears filled his eyes. He grasped her face with both hands and kissed her hard. Then he stopped, backed off. “What about MI-6?”
A wicked twinkle lit her eyes. Her hair billowed softly out behind her in the jasmine-scented breeze. “I have a new job.”
“What?”
“I work for Sauvage now,”
“I don’t understand.”
“He wants me for the North African intelligence and research team he’s putting together. It’s part of a new service he will be offering his clients. The mercenary business is shifting more and more into this field. He says I can do the bulk of my work out here, as long as I make myself available for client briefings and meetings in London and at the Force du Sable base on Sao Diogo.”
His face was priceless. She’d rendered him speechless. She loved him right now more than anything in this world. This powerful man who’d become her one weakness was the very person who had made her whole again. He’d put the feeling back into her soul. He’d given her life. Real life. In all its messy guts and glory.
“How long have you and Sauvage been in cahoots?”
She chuckled. “A lady has to have some secrets, no?”
He took her face in his hands. “Damn, I love you, woman. You truly were a gift from the sea,” he said. “Marry me, Jayde. Be my happy-ever-after.”