Wade

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Author Note

Chloe Madison first saw the tall American at the Kashi stadium after a public execution. It happened as the throng, most of them Taliban militia officers, was leaving the sports arena.

The program had been a full one—the removal of the right hands of two thieves, the whipping of a woman who had refused the marriage arranged by her father, and finally the hanging from the goalpost of a man who had struck a holy mullah. The few women present were huddled together near the segregated section where they’d been seated while waiting for their men to push their way through the crowd to collect them. Chloe, waiting with her stepsister, heard her stepbrother’s harsh call. Sickened by the barbarous spectacle and also by the suspicion that she’d been brought here expressly to see the woman punished, she was off balance as she swung around to locate him.

It was at that moment that the stranger shoved into her. She stumbled, caught her sandal in the hem of the voluminous burqa that covered her from head to foot and fell to one knee.

Immediately the stranger was beside her, grasping her cloth-covered elbow as he spoke in English. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt? Let me help you up.” Then in a lower, almost inaudible rumble, he added, “Your dad sent me to get you out of this hellhole. Meet me tomorrow in the Ajzukabad bazaar.”

It was a shock to hear her own language spoken after so many years in Hazaristan and amid the babble of Pashtu that was the lingua franca of a country with several different tribes and their dialects. Chloe lifted her eyes and met the man’s gaze from behind the small rectangle of crocheted mesh that allowed her to see. It was an act of outright provocation according to all the precepts drummed into her these past few years, but she couldn’t help it.

He looked down at her with clear, steady purpose, this American in his jeans, neatly pressed white shirt and engineer’s boots. His broad shoulders filled her view. His chiseled, hickory-tan features, clean-shaven so they appeared ridiculously easy to read compared to the bearded males around her, were set in lines of determination. Shadowing the mint-tea-brown of his hooded eyes was an unnerving concern.

Seconds ticked past, stretching endlessly. The last time Chloe had been this close to a male person not of her stepfather’s family, the last time she’d known casual male contact of any kind, was as a California teenager almost twelve years ago. His nearness was overwhelming, his grasp searing in its intimacy. She could catch the almost forgotten scents of American deodorant soap, warm denim and clean male. The combination touched some powerful chord of memory, bringing the flashing images of loud music with a hypnotic beat, dune buggies in unlikely colors, hot sand, cold ice-cream cones, coconut-scented suntan oil and clean ocean breezes. It was a vision from a time when she had been young and free. So young, so incredibly free. Before she could stop them or even guess they would come, tears rose into her eyes.

“Chloe! Imbecile, get up at once.”

That command in the harsh, unmistakable voice of her stepbrother struck like a lash across Chloe’s nerves. She snatched her exposed foot back under the turquoise blue cloth of her burqa and lowered her gaze. Wrenching from the American’s loose grip, she struggled to her feet within the hot, cumbersome folds. The American put out a hand again as if to steady her, but she stepped away from him. Moving swiftly, she rejoined Ahmad and her family. Her stepsister Treena reached to draw her nearer to where she stood with her husband, Ismael. A shiver for the close call rippled along Chloe’s nerves. She could have been beaten for the exposure of skin above her ankle, might still be for appearing to encourage male attention.

The American took a hasty stride after her, as if he meant to insist on an answer to his suggestion.

“Be gone, infidel,” Ahmad said with a growl in his voice, blocking the way with a hand on the knife in his belt and his turbaned head set at an arrogant angle. “You are not wanted here.”

“I was just apologizing to the lady,” the American said. “Didn’t mean to knock her down.”

Ahmad’s English was rudimentary since he scorned to learn the language of a people he considered to be demon-ridden aggressors. Without so much as a glance in Chloe’s direction, he answered in his own tongue. “She does not require your apology as she received no injury beyond the filth of your touch. You will not know because you are a foreign dog, but it is forbidden to look upon our women, much less lay hands upon them. Do it again, and your ignorance will not save you.”

“Even a cat—or a dog—may look at a queen.”

Chloe stifled a gasp at both the American’s apparent understanding of Pashtu and the challenge in his reply. Ahmad would not recognize the English saying, but would understand the defiance all too well.