Safe with a Stranger. Linda Conrad

with. They called a spade a spade. They were loyal to a fault, and always more than generous and fair. Her father was a good example, and Josh, too, appeared to be among the best of the breed.

      Josh shot her a wary look over the top of his own water bottle. “You ready now to give up those explanations?”

      “I think maybe there’s only time enough for the bullet points—the headlines. Okay?”

      He nodded and sat back against the door to wait.

      “You know, I’m really not sure who those men were who attacked us.”

      Josh narrowed his eyes and frowned.

      “Well, I thought I knew, but…” She took another sip of water. “Okay. Okay. Here’s the background.

      “About three years ago I married a Middle-Eastern man whom I thought I loved. He was…” Clare looked over at Josh and realized her original lust-filled thoughts about Ramzi had been so far off the mark that it would sound ridiculous trying to explain. “Well, anyway, he wasn’t what he appeared to be. For the first six months or so things seemed great between us. I continued to work—”

      “What kind of work?” Josh interrupted.

      “I’m a reporter. Magazine bylines mostly. I was working for the Oil News Monthly when I met him. And since he was also busy at the time working as an undersecretary for OPEC, I just kept on doing what I’d been doing—traveling and getting interviews for my job.” She took a breath as gentle memories snuck into her mind and threw her out of rhythm for a minute. “We’d meet up on our weekends off and for whirlwind vacations in places like Corfu and the beach resort on Phuket, Thailand. It all seemed…terribly romantic.”

      “Uh-huh. So what happened?”

      “Jimmy.” Clare snapped back to reality in an instant. “I mean, I learned I was pregnant with Jimmy and everything changed. My husband insisted I quit working until the baby was born and he took me back to his home country…ostensibly to met his family and have their doctors check me over. He claimed their physicians were the best that money could buy. I knew he was concerned for our baby’s health, so I agreed.”

      “So what really went down when you got there?” Josh finished his water bottle and stashed the empty under the seat.

      This was where the truth was more than a little embarrassing. Clare wished she could fudge on the answer, but fudging wasn’t the way she’d been raised. It wasn’t who she was. So she straightened up in her seat and set her chin.

      “For one thing, I found out that I hadn’t done quite enough of a background check before I got married. Apparently I was so smitten, I forgot the first rule to getting a good story. Check your facts. It turns out that my husband already had a few current wives stashed away back in his homeland.”

      “A few? Current? How many?”

      “Eight.”

      Josh’s eyes widened. “So what did you do when you found out? Did you divorce him then?”

      “I would’ve. Or I would’ve left and come back to Texas to have my child. But by that time Ramzi had fixed things with the local authorities to keep me in his country and married to him for as long as he wished. Women have no rights there. They’re their husband’s property. I finally woke up and realized what a mess I was in, but by then it was too late. Not even the U.S. State Department could help me.”

      “This sounds like a bad movie plot. How’d you get free?”

      Her life did sound a lot like a grade-B movie now that she thought about it. She decided to speed up the rest of the story.

      “Ramzi suddenly became willing to divorce me when the baby was a year and a half. In fact, he wanted to have me deported. To be sent home and out of his way. But he wasn’t about to let Jimmy leave the country.”

      Josh looked a little confused. “He wanted you gone…without your baby?”

      “Yep. He convinced a judge that his other wives could do a better job of raising Jimmy in the Abu Fujarah tradition.”

      “And a judge bought that? That a mother shouldn’t be allowed to raise her own son?”

      Clare remembered how incensed she’d been. “The judge was one of Ramzi’s cousins and was probably on his father’s payroll.”

      “Your ex has rich parents?”

      “Very. They control most of the oil in their oil-rich nation. And they control most of the people there, too.”

      Josh’s eyes narrowed and his lips drew together in a thin white line. He seemed to be taking this story personally, and Clare wished she understood why.

      “I’m positive Ramzi will try to find Jimmy and take him back to his country,” she told him in a rush. “I don’t think Ramzi gives a flip about what happens to me, but Jimmy is his only son. I know he wants him and probably won’t rest until he gets him back.”

      Would Josh think she was terrible for taking her son away from his father? Maybe. And maybe she felt a little bit guilty about that herself.

      “I wouldn’t mind letting them visit with each other,” she added. “But I can’t lose my son forever. I can’t.”

      

      Jimmy stirred in the backseat. Clare got on her knees and leaned over to check on her son. Josh needed a moment to let her story sink in. But as he turned to glance back at the baby, he caught a view that stopped him cold. Clare’s fashionable khaki slacks had pulled tight against the rounded curve of her bottom, and he was lost in a sudden flash of fantasy.

      The outline of her bikini underwear was easy to trace under the slacks. Lordy mercy, but it had been forever since he’d seen a woman’s underwear. Or since he’d taken that same underwear off and enjoyed the fruit of the woman beneath. He hadn’t even given sex much thought lately, he’d been so wrapped up in other problems. To be more precise, since before he’d been in that firefight back in Afghanistan. The one that had taken his buddy’s life and landed Josh in the hospital and out of the Rangers for good.

      Forcing his eyes away from the temptation in front of him, he tried to focus on the problem at hand. What would he be doing if he were in Clare’s place? Then again, what would he have done if he’d been in her ex-husband’s place?

      If he’d been in Clare’s shoes, he would’ve done the same thing as she had. No question. But if he’d been in her ex-husband’s place, well…Different culture or not, Josh would never try to tear a child away from its mother.

      “So you think those goons at the bus station were sent by your ex to kidnap your son?” he asked as Jimmy quieted down and she turned back around in the seat.

      She nodded and set her mouth in a determined line. “Yes. At least, I did until they started shooting. I can’t believe that Ramzi would actually allow anyone to shoot at and possibly harm his son. Whatever else he is or does, my ex-husband loves Jimmy. I’m sure of it.”

      “But you have no other ideas as to who those two suits might’ve been? Other than working for your ex, I mean.”

      “None at all.”

      “Then I think we have to assume that’s who they were. I guess it’s possible they weren’t really shooting at you back there. Maybe they were aiming at the truck’s tires. I did notice they weren’t the best shots in the world.”

      Clare actually smiled at that, and Josh’s heart skipped a beat. Man, he’d never been so taken with anyone so fast in his life. Too fast or not, he knew in that instant he would do just about anything to keep her and her child safe.

      “Okay. So, let’s talk about what you want to do from here,” he said with a little determination of his own clear in his voice. “You need a plan.”

      

      An hour later they sat in a parked Lucille outside