Caught Between by Rima Jean Read Free Book Online Page B

was a good idea. Maybe she should skip it tonight as part of her "Luke detox" program. She stood in the foyer of the ACMER building, biting her lip and considering, when Felicity pulled her from her thoughts.
    " Marya, you have company," Felicity said with a disapproving sigh. Marya smelled Ash before she saw him standing at the door, his hands in his pockets. Cedar wood and lemon. He grinned at her, his cheeks dimpling adorably.
    "Hello, love," he said. "I thought I'd drop by. Is it a bad time?"
    She beamed and rushed to him. Before she'd completely thought it through, she'd thrown her arms around him. "Ash! It's so good to see you."
    He chuckled softly in her ear. "Wow, you are happy to see me. A better reception than I could have hoped for." He ran his hands down her back gently. The gesture was strangely intimate, and Marya snapped back to reality. She pulled away, her face hot.
    "I'm sorry, I..." she smiled sheepishly. "It's been a rough couple weeks."
    He grinned. "I can imagine. Would you like to come out with me tonight?"
    Marya said "yes" before he finished his sentence. "Let me just grab my bag."
    She rushed to her room and strapped on her purse. As she walked out, she nearly bumped right into Shannon. "Shannon, will you tell Amy that I've gone out for a bit and not to wait up for me?"
    Shannon frowned. "Sure. Where are you going?"
    "Out," Marya replied as she headed out the door. She was very aware of the curious stares of her hostel mates as she and Ash walked down the hill together to his car, their arms touching. Let them talk. She smiled to herself as she slid into Ash's BMW.
    "Where are we going?" she asked, clicking on her seatbelt.
    Ash didn't bother to put his on. He turned the stereo up and winked at her. "Ready to see some of Amman's night life, Marya?"
    They drove into Amman's wealthy west district, Abdun, where swanky restaurants and nightclubs lined the streets. Ash smiled at Marya's awed expression. "The young generation is restless. We hunger for a Western lifestyle. We are becoming the Middle East's new 'Sin City'."
    After parking the car, Ash led Marya up a set of stairs and into a bar that throbbed with music and lights. Marya's eyes widened as she took in the chic, young clientele -- women in their late teens and early twenties wearing skin-tight jeans, stilettos, and slinky tops; young men like Ash, wearing their money and eyeing the women. And they were all beautiful. Marya self-consciously touched her hair, which had air-dried into a wavy mess. She wore a plain white t-shirt and khaki pants that pooled around her sneakers, and not a drop of makeup.
    Ash pulled out a barstool for her. "I'm way under-dressed," she said to him. "You should have warned me."
    Ash glanced at her clothes and shrugged. "You look beautiful. Natural." He gestured subtly in the direction of the girls, who were shaking their hips to Flo Rida. "They wear too much makeup. It gets to a point... You wonder what they're hiding."
    She took the beer he offered her and smiled. "Thanks. So what have you been doing with yourself since you've been back?"
    He grinned. "This, and more of this." He took a swig of beer. "How about you? Tell me what the dig is like."
    So Marya told him everything. The beer loosened her, and she told Ash about Ducharme the Nun, about her hostel mates, about Yusef. Ash laughed heartily at the story of Yusef and the watermelon, at Marya's recounting of the girls' battles for the 5-minute showers. She didn't, of course, tell him about Luke.
    "Come," he said, patting her leg. "I want to introduce you to some friends."
    He took her into some sort of VIP room, with a red satin couch and low tables. Three young men and two women sat on the couch, drinking and talking. Ash embraced each of them, fake-kissing on both cheeks, European-style, and introduced Marya. "My American girlfriend," he called her, with a smile.
    She listened as they spoke in Arabic, catching only half of what they said. But half was enough for