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Ellie yanked Constance partially behind a leafy palm. “This!” she replied with an urgent wave at the crowd. “How are we supposed to find the sign of the sun disk somewhere in the funerary temple of Hatshepsut while we are on atouristexpedition?”
“We’ll just sneak off,” Constance returned easily. “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to go make sure they packed some dates.”
She abandoned Ellie to take a peek into the lunch basket.
Adam stepped into the lobby. His eyes found Ellie from the other side of the complaining crowd, and he crossed to her side.
His shoulders were broad under his white shirt and suspenders. After a moment, Ellie realized that instead of speaking to him, she was staring up at him like a drowning woman looking at land. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to act like a reasonable person. “No jacket?”
Adam shrugged. “It’s an outdoor excursion.”
“That’s just an excuse,” Ellie pointed out.
“Complaining?” He flashed her a grin. “At least I haven’t lost my shirt yet.”
Ellie flushed at the memory of precisely what lay beneath Adam’s shirt. “You might do with a hat.”
“Forgot to put it on the shopping list,” Adam replied.
“What if you get a sunburn?”
“I gave up worrying about sunburns a long time ago.”
“That is because you still have all of your hair.” Sayyid sighed as he joined them, his dashing red fez perched on top of his close-cropped curls. “If you were starting to look like a monk on the top of your head, you might feel differently.”
“I think bald men can be very dashing,” Constance asserted as she came back over and slipped her hand gallantly through Sayyid’s arm.
Neil stepped into the lobby, his jaw dropping as he looked over the tourist-cluttered scene. “Who are all these people?”
Constance’s mouth widened into a dangerous smile as her eyes locked onto Neil’s figure. “Were you hoping for something moreintimate?”
Ellie blanched with horror as she recalled Constance’s illicit designs on her brother. She opened her mouth to protest, but only a strangled noise came out.
Adam frowned down at her with a flash of concern.
“Oh, there’s the horn for the ferry!” Constance innocently blinked her long, thick lashes. “We’d best load up.”
She blithely strolled away, tugging Sayyid along with her. Neil morosely followed, blinking with dismay at the noisy crowd.
“Did I miss something just then?” Adam asked, lingering behind.
Ellie closed her eyes. “I would really,reallyrather not talk about it.”
Adam raised an eyebrow, and Ellie forced herself to follow after their friends.
?
The heat of the day was already beginning to rise as they walked to the nearby quay, and for the first time since her arrival in Egypt, Ellie found herself actually standing on the banks of the Nile. The river was broad at Luxor and busy with boats, from quickly darting single-sail feluccas to an elegantly appointed sixty-foot dahabeeyah that lay at anchor a little way off the shore. The columns of the Luxor Temple rose beside her, and beyond that, she could see the modern, Western-style facades of the American, French, and English consulate buildings, flying their colorful respective flags.
The hotel’s ferry was a brightly painted steam launch. Ellie found herself comparing it to the much smaller and more ruggedMary Lee… which she had last seen plummeting over a waterfall.
She and Constance boarded just ahead of the American family.
“I sure am excited to see another one of those pagan tombs,” the gentleman drawled as he walked up the gangplank, his pearl-wearing wife trailing in his wake. “I bought a real nice little statue off some kid at the last one.”
“Is that right, Mr. Swingley?” Constance cast a nervous look at Ellie, whose knuckles whitened where she gripped the railing.
Adam joined them as the Swingleys moved on. “Pretty hot,” he noted.
