Uncover Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Synopsis:

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Author's Note:

  Linda's Bio

  Uncover Me

  by

  Linda Barlow

  Publisher: Linda Barlow Books

  Copyright 2014 by Linda Barlow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  www.lindabarlow.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9893070-5-5

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Author's Note: Uncover Me is a capture fantasy romance (romantic suspense). It was inspired by a novel that I wrote many years ago (Hold Back the Night). It has been completely rewritten. The current version is much darker than the original, with stronger language and scenes intended for mature audiences.

  I enjoy reading dark romance, but I wouldn't really call this novel dark. Semi-dark? Dark-lite? True dark aficionados will find it mild, but traditional romance readers might find some parts objectionable, so let the reader beware.

  Nick Gabriel, the hero of Uncover Me, is a friend of Kate, Stephen, Max, and Jeff, whom some readers may recognize from my Night Games collection of romances, but this novel is a standalone and not part of a series.

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  Linda's website: http://www.lindabarlow.com

  Synopsis:

  ELLIE

  All I did was take a few pictures. I didn't realize I was witnessing a crime.

  I was hoping for a kick-ass adventure when I set off on my dream vacation. Instead, I've fallen in with a ruthless band of thieves.

  Kidnapped, bound, and ordered to submit, I'm stuck on a sailboat with the sun-bronzed pirate who caught me photographing his antiquities-smuggling operation. He doesn't want me tagging along any more than I want to be here. But that hasn't stopped him from finding a use for me.

  NICK

  She thinks I'm hard-assed. Dominating. Cruel. But I've got a dirty job to do. It has required months of scheming, a billionaire's yacht, and a shitload of priceless stolen artifacts.

  I'm not about to be distracted by one inconvenient redhead. Even if she is supremely fuckable and oh-so-sweet when I have her on her knees.

  I can't allow her to mess up my plans. She might not like the way I'm treating her, but she'd better get used to it. There's no place in my life for softer emotions, and no space in my body for a heart.

  Chapter 1

  ELLIE

  With his wind-tangled yellow hair and his tall, golden body, he looked like an ancient hero or a mythological god. But his weapon was that of a 21st century thug. Staring down the muzzle of his gun, my first thought was that my mother was bound to say, "I told you so." My second was more somber—by the time Mom had anything to say about the matter, I'd probably be dead.

  She had been against the idea from the beginning. "Single women don't ride off on motorcycle tours of Turkey," she'd told me. And she ought to know; she'd spent much of her professional life in the Middle East, working on various archaeological digs.

  "It's reckless," she'd lectured me as we'd dined two nights before in the rooftop dining room of her Istanbul hotel. Through the windows sprawled the lively city where East truly meets West, the only city in the world built upon two continents. In the half-light of dusk, I could see the mosques and villas that dotted the green hills of Asia across the Bosporus. "The Turks still look askance at young women traveling alone."

  "I'll be fine, Mom. Don't forget that this is my adopted country."

  "Even so, it's not wise. Lately I've been hearing reports of smugglers operating on the western coast, lawless ruffians running everything from guns and drugs to art objects. It's not the most sensible way for my daughter to be spending her vacation."

  I swallowed a delicious stuffed grape leaf, and then poked my fork into my Circassian chicken. I love Turkish food. I'd missed it. "It's not precisely a vacation. I have an assignment to shoot some pictures for a travel website. And I've been wanting to return to the ruins I remember visiting with you—Perge, Ephesus, and especially Troy."

  "Really?" Mom leveled her all-too-shrewd blue eyes at me. "You're sure you're not running away?"

  Jeez! I attacked a stuffed eggplant. Was I running away? I preferred to believe I was finally living out my dream of being a free spirit. An adventuress. For that, I needed an adventure.

  "Is it forbidden to inquire what happened to Mark? I thought you two were pretty serious."

  "We broke up." I didn't want to discuss Mark—or think about him, either.

  "What went wrong? You'd been together for quite a while. I thought things were settled."

  "Turned out I wasn't ready to settle down. Why the big fuss? You're single. You travel the world, going wherever your work takes you. You're independent and accountable to no one. Why should you object if I do the same?"

  Mom leaned over and stroked my hand. Her face was vulnerable in a manner that I had rarely witnessed. "Because it's a lonely life. I want something better for you."

  Whoa, that was a surprise. I squeezed Mom's hand as hard as I could. I noticed with some alarm that her skin was older and drier than I remembered. She was pushing 50, and, as far as I knew, there was no significant other in her life. I'd always thought that she liked it that way.

  "I've got time, Mom," I told her. "Please don't worry about me."

  She patted my hand briskly, and changed the subject.

  "I hope you've brushed up on your Turkish," Mom said the following morning as we said our farewells on the edge of a noisy Istanbul street. I was off to rent a motorcycle and Mom was heading to the airport to fly back to Ankara, where she was doing some research on the Hittite collection. "I know you used to speak it fluently, but it's been a while since you've had any practice."

  "I hung out with a Turkish friend yesterday. I'm rusty, but it's coming back fast."

  "Well, iyi yolculuklar," my mother said. Bon voyage. As I hugged her, stepping out of the way
of a honking, careening taxi and nearly bumping into a man grilling shish kebab on the sidewalk, Mom added, "Be careful. Don't get into any trouble."

  Of course not, I'd assured her. What sort of trouble could I possibly get into?

  The trouble started at dawn. I'd stuck my head out of the flap of my tent and squinted at the early April sky, which was rosy with the promise of the kind of day wayfarers yearn for—warm but not too humid, breezy and fresh.

  Scrambling out of the tent, I stood and stretched, gazing out toward the Aegean, enjoying the sparkling view of hills and rocks and sea. It was a pleasant change. My plane had landed a few days ago in Istanbul in a rosy-brown haze, my view of the city distorted by dust, diesel fumes and the belchings of the numberless factories that had transformed the country into a modern, industrial society. Clean air was getting to be something of a luxury in Turkey. I sucked it into my lungs, reveling in the light scent of olive trees and wildflowers.

  Scooting back into the tent, I dressed, then took down the tent and stowed it with my sleeping bag at the rear of my bike. I sat down in a small olive grove to eat a quick breakfast consisting of the crusty bread, white cheese and black olives I'd purchased yesterday from a village along the road.

  I would have liked to make a fire and warm some water for tea, but since I was not camped in an official campground, I decided against it. I'd had some engine trouble with my bike the day before, and dusk had fallen before I reached the campground where I'd intended to spend the night.

  When I finished my quick breakfast, I checked my camera battery, and then spent several minutes checking my various lenses. I hoped to reach Troy today and photograph the ruins. After twisting the telephoto lens onto the camera body, I went to the edge of the olive grove to shoot several pictures of the grassy hills that sloped down to a peaceful, sheltered bay. What a lovely spot. The dawn sun was slowly climbing, although it was out of sight behind a hillock at present. The water was glowing apricot and gold with refracted sunlight.

  I got several excellent shots. My view of the Aegean was marred only by an occasional scrubby bush or outcropping of rock. The entire area seemed untouched by human activity. Yet I knew that humans had wandered here for millennia. There were ruins all along the Aegean coastline, the remains of Greek, Roman and Selcuk Turkish cities. Not far from here, according to Homeric legend, Menelaus's army had marched to invade Troy. Warriors might well have landed here before beginning their assault on that ancient city. Their warships would have been decked out with colorful sails and fully equipped for battle.

  The whimsical image had barely crossed my mind when a sail rounded the rocky point to the right of the bay and directed its course landward. I felt like a magician with the power to call up an object from my imagination and give it form.

  But the illusion was dispelled as the boat drew nearer. It was real. A single-masted sailboat, it was graceful as it cut cleanly through the rough sea. A beauty. I aimed my camera at the yacht. Through the telephoto lens, I could see the figures of two men, one at the helm and the other moving about on deck, pulling in the sails as they neared the shore. The first man was dark, the other golden haired. The dark one could have been a Turk, but the man with the wavy gilt hair and sun-bronzed skin had more in common with the god Apollo.

  Many modern Mediterranean guys were dark-haired. This fair-haired man might be a foreigner. Twirling the dials, I focused on him. He was in his late twenties, I estimated, with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes and an austere, yet sensual mouth. For some reason his face startled me. It wore a cold expression, yet something about its lines hinted at underlying wellsprings of emotion. A beautiful face—the sort one rarely gets to photograph, because in real life such a face simply doesn't exist. An angel's face.

  But, no, the hardness around his mouth confirmed that this was a fallen angel. I seriously doubted that a dude with that face and body would ever be angelic.

  He was directing operations on the yacht. When he yelled something, the other guy turned the yacht farther into the wind, decreasing the boat's forward motion. As the blond man leaped gracefully to the bow to stow the jib canvas, my camera lens followed. Although he was tall, he wasn't brawny—he was on the slim side, in fact—whipcord lean. He was dressed in faded jeans and a black T-shirt that pulled taut over the supple muscles in his chest. I couldn't help but admire his long legs and the graceful, economical way he moved.

  I needed to photograph him, too. Right now, with the early-morning sun bathing his skin and the wind ruffling his hair. I had to freeze his hard, cold grace in a golden moment of time. I got a couple shots of him tying down the sail. If he'd been a model and this a professional shoot, I'd have dressed him elegantly in a flowing white shirt with an open throat and black leather pants. Pirate-style.

  He strolled back to the helm to consult with the dark-haired man. The wheel turned, the boom shifted, the craft came about. It tacked in toward the rocks at the most sheltered corner of the little bay. Were they going to land? I lowered my camera. I was perhaps a hundred yards from the water, standing in the lee of a gnarled olive tree. Although I had an excellent view of the sailboat, I doubted if anyone aboard could see me, and my motorbike was out of sight behind some rocks.

  I moved deeper into the olive grove. I knew I ought to get on my bike and go, but I wanted to get a couple more pictures. The sound of an engine coming from somewhere behind me startled me. There was a narrow dirt road back there; I'd ridden along it on my bike. A car was on its way down to the bay. It stopped on the slope overlooking the water, and a fat, balding man got out.

  My escape route was cut off. The man from the car was signaling the yacht now, waving his arms in the air. When he got an answering signal from the gilt-haired man, the newcomer turned back to his car. Using my powerful lens as a telescope, I saw him open the trunk and lean inside, then emerge moments later with a good-sized wooden crate in his arms. He lugged it down to the shore just as the sailboat dropped anchor in the bay and sent a rowboat in toward shore.

  I let a breath whistle out of my constricted chest. I must have stumbled onto a rendezvous of some sort. I had a bad feeling about this. I huddled deeper into my shelter. I've heard reports of smugglers operating on the western coast. My mother's words echoed in my brain. Was my golden god a thief?

  The rowboat came ashore with both the men from the yacht. The blond man gestured as he talked to the newcomer; the subject was clearly the contents of the wooden container. The fat man kept casting furtive glances around, seeming anxious to be gone. But the blond man looked cool and self-possessed as he tapped the surface of the crate, indicating that he wanted it opened.

  While the fat man returned to his car to fetch a crowbar, I quietly changed the setting on my camera. I was going to document this transaction. I was witnessing a crime.

  Apollo, as I had begun to think of him—wrongfully, I knew, since Apollo was the god of light and truth and this man was a crook—skillfully wielded the crowbar. The crate opened down the front to reveal a dusty stone statue.

  Although I was no expert, my mom was a famous archaeologist, and she had taught me a few things. The piece, a half-clad figure of a woman, appeared from a distance to be an antiquity. Roman, perhaps, considering its drapery. It was somewhat stylized rather than lifelike. It looked reasonably well preserved.

  After kneeling and running his hands over its curves with more care and gentleness than he might have shown a flesh-and-blood woman, Apollo nodded to his young sidekick, who carefully resealed the crate. They turned to the fat man, who was mopping his brow with a handkerchief. A wad of bills changed hands.

  "They are smugglers," I muttered. Having been raised by Sybil Matheson-Heath, I was furious about what I was witnessing. These criminals were removing precious antiquities from Turkish archaeological sites and smuggling them out of the country. I knew that Turkey had suffered greatly from this sort of crime. For hundreds of years, the nation had been stripped of its priceless historical relics by avaricious treasu
re hunters like these.

  I yearned to erupt from my olive grove and challenge the men. But that would be suicidal. Clenching my fists, I assessed my adversaries once again. The youth was not particularly intimidating, but the fat man looked unpleasantly dangerous, and as for that cold sun god, there was no way I was going to tangle with him.

  So instead, grimly, I used my camera. The whirr of its mechanism seemed loud, but I knew from experience that this was an illusion, induced by the adrenaline rush that made all the senses more alert. They could not hear me. They had no idea I was here.

  The crate was loaded into the rowboat, and the blond-haired man stepped back on shore to confer once more with his associate. Their faces were close together, and they had both turned slightly, so they were looking roughly in my direction. I focused carefully, trying to get a clean shot, one I might later be able to blow up for the police. I'd heard that facial recognition technology was good nowadays.

  Just as I was about to click the shutter, the climbing sun burst over the scrubby hillock directly behind the men. Its white brilliance poured through my lens, obscuring my shot and for a few instants blinding me.

  "Damn!" I lowered the camera. I would get no more pictures from this angle.

  Shading my eyes with my palms, I continued to watch the smugglers without the aid of the telephoto lens. I had to squint against the sun, which was why it took several seconds before I realized that the men had stopped conversing. They were staring at my small grove of trees. The fat man was pointing with one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other. I flattened myself in the dirt. Surely they couldn't have seen me?

  Calling out a sharp command to the dark, slender man, Apollo began to run up the hill toward me. Frozen, I watched him come. I must have given myself away. But how? I jerked to my feet, my camera swinging from its strap. Sunlight glanced off the lens, and then I knew. When the sun had crested the hill and blinded me, its reflection must have flashed from the olive grove, revealing my presence just as plainly as if I'd stood up and waved my arms.