Dark Oil by Nora James Read Free Book Online

through the makeshift airport. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the hangar was more crowded than the tarmac had been when their plane first arrived. The absence of women was noticeable. They were probably kept at home.
    Every man in the building stared at her white skin, her blue eyes. Some of them even whispered to her in a dialect she didn’t understand, as she walked by. She told herself she was safe in the company of her colleagues, but her heart hopelessly thumped in her chest.
    Lara kept her eyes fixed to the ground, making sure she followed Jack as closely as she could without touching him. Every now and then she turned around to check Ismael was behind her, and each time he comforted her with his smile. He was watching over her.
    By the time they had crossed the shed and reached the front exit, she felt she had run a marathon. They were finally out in the open, and although it was hotter than in the terminal, there was a little air movement. She could breathe.
    Jack turned to her. “So? First impressions?”
    â€œI’ve never been to a place like this before.”
    She’d never had to for work, and she guessed tourism was virtually non-existent here. Still, she felt bad she’d spent thirty six years on earth, in a cocoon of consumerist comfort, without any real understanding of how most of the world lived. It was a feeling she hadn’t expected: undeniable guilt.
    He glanced at her casually from the corner of his eye. “We’re all shocked by it at first. It’s like war-torn countries. You see images in the papers and on TV. But only the people who’ve been there truly relate to it. Now you get to see it with your own eyes.”
    He was spot on. There was no doubt about it, Jack was perceptive. She barely had to speak and he seemed to know what was going on in her mind. She wasn’t used to that in a man. Tim wasn’t like that. She had to explain things to him, sometimes over and over. It wasn’t because he was stupid—far from it—but he had his own set views of the world. And, she suspected, he was capable of switching off when she spoke. Jack, on the other hand, kept his ears open and his eyes on her. As a matter of fact, she’d never known anyone else like Jack. Not that she’d been close to many men. She’d had only one boyfriend before Tim.
    Ismael directed them to a brand new four-wheel drive. He climbed in the front with the driver and Lara found herself squeezed between Martin and Jack in the back, the dividing wall between their testosterone-fuelled, competing egos.
    While Martin was at pains not to touch her, crossing his arms and legs to try to avoid it, Jack seemed to sprawl out comfortably. In all fairness, he was bigger than Martin, and if he’d squashed himself against the car door it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. Still, he seemed awfully relaxed about it.
    She smelled his cologne again, mixed with the muskiness of his skin, and this time didn’t turn away. In fact, to be truthful to herself, she liked it, certainly much more than all the other smells she’d been subjected to that morning.
    â€œSorry, Lara,” Jack said finally, “it’s a bit squashed in here. At least we haven’t far to go. It’s just up the street.”
    â€œIt’s OK,” she answered, not wanting to make a fuss. The poor man wasn’t intentionally pressing his thighs against hers. “Maybe we should have walked,” she said, quickly adding before he could object, “then again, probably not in this heat.”
    As the car navigated its way around the huge pot-holes in the dirt road, Lara peered through the dusty windows at the roaming skeletal goats, the piles of rubbish and the general desolation of the place. There were hardly any people in the street, just a young, tall, thin man moving across the sand with ease, his blue dwana swaying with his rhythmic steps. She found