Plus, she’d never had any complaints about her cushy upholstery from her numerous suitors.
Cassie felt the heat of his hand at her waist, the pressure of his hip resting against her pelvis. She was disoriented, lost. All senses distorted. Thrown off balance by the lack of sight.
That had to be what this feeling was all about. It couldn’t be anything more.
Could it?
Sounds were either too distant or too close, smells too sharp or too muted. The lingering cinnamon taste on her tongue was too immediate and too raw. The texture of his nubby jacket beneath her fingers too authentic and yet at the same time too surreal.
Her mind spun topsy-turvily.
For the moment, she forgot there was a mummy lying in the courtyard with a knife in his back. She forgot all about the botched party and the missing guest of honor and the nervous horde surrounding them. She forgot about everything except the feel of this stranger’s virile arms around her and the echo of his sexy voice fading from her ears.
She was lost in time. Lost in the moment. Lost in the dark. It was the most erotic sensation she’d experienced in recent memory. Her reaction to the stranger was potent.
Whoa. Wait a minute.
Hadn’t he called her by name? He couldn’t be a stranger. He must know her. Who was he, her mysterious protector?
The pulse in her neck kicked.
At that precise moment the lights flickered on, and she found herself in Harrison Standish’s arms.
Holy crap.
She stared at him.
No, it simply could not be. She could not be having such stunning feelings for this geeky intellectual who dressed funny. Somewhere, somebody’s wires had gotten seriously crossed.
Harrison peered at her curiously through the lenses of his dark-frame glasses as if she were an interesting fossil he had just excavated.
“You,” she whispered.
Immediately they jumped apart as if they had received a simultaneous electrical shock. Cassie couldn’t have been more disconcerted if she had discovered she’d been French-kissing a boa constrictor.
Harrison glanced at the ceiling, the floor, out the glass door leading into the courtyard. Everywhere but into her eyes.
Everyone else seemed startled by the light as well. People stood around blinking and rubbing their eyes and shaking their heads.
And then Cassie remembered why she’d run screaming into the museum in the first place.
The mummy. His cryptic message. The knife.
“Murder,” Cassie croaked. “In the courtyard. There’s been a murder.”
The mummy lay in the courtyard, barely breathing. In his palm he clutched a half-dollar-sized copper circle that exactly matched the ring in the museum display.
He had to hide the amulet. The consequences would be dire indeed if he failed.
Because
they
were coming for him.
They
would stop at nothing. And
they
would assassinate anyone who got in their way.
The pain was so blinding he could barely see, but he could not get caught with the amulet. Desperately, he tried to raise his head, to look around for some kind of hiding place.
His gaze fixed on a bright red shoulder-strap purse resting against the stone bench.
There. Perfect.
Not much time. Hurry, hurry.
But each tiny movement jarred his back, stabbed throughout his entire spine. His body throbbed and ached and burned. He drew a shallow breath and his lungs cried out.
Fight it off. You can’t fail.
Gritting his teeth, the mummy pulled himself up on his elbows and dug them into the cobblestone walkway. Painstakingly, inch by awful inch, he dragged his body forward.
He didn’t know if the streetlamps had flashed off in unison or if he had suddenly gone blind, but all at once he could not see.
He bit down on his bottom lip, urging himself onward. Go, go, go.
In the distance he heard noises, loud voices, crashing sounds. But he wasn’t concerned with that. One thing dominated his mind.
Get rid of the amulet.
The pain was so agonizing that he didn’t know if a minute had gone by or if it was a millennium,