Read Online The Ambassador's Wife by Jennifer Steil - Free Book Online

surrounding houses. In a city of white-robed men, he wore a navy pin-striped suit with a sunflower tie. He was hard to miss.
    Miranda had been walking with her eyes to the ground, both to avoid the gaze of the men and to keep from breaking an ankle on the uneven stones. The five plastic bags she was carrying, bulging with the heavy orbs of pomegranates, onions, tomatoes, and oranges, had started to cut into the skin of her wrists, and she was eager to get home.
    Just in time she saw Finn in her path, though one of her bags, carried forward by momentum, swung wide and hit him in the leg, causing the man next to him to jump and fidget with something underneath his jacket.
    â€œSo sorry,” she said, curious as to who would choose to shop the Old City markets in a pin-striped suit. “I hope you don’t bruise easily.”
    He laughed. “Actually, I get lost easily, which is why I’m standingin your way. Do you have any idea where I might find the silver souq? I’m looking for a gift.” He spoke in English.
English
English, though she thought he’d been speaking Arabic with the man beside him when she socked him with a pomegranate.
    â€œIt’s kind of impossible to give you directions. There aren’t any street names.” He looked disappointed. “But I could show you? If you’re willing to follow me into the labyrinth?”
    â€œOnly if you promise to lead me back out again.”
    â€œCall me Ariadne.”
    â€œSomehow that’s not entirely reassuring.”
    â€œTheseus made it out okay.”
    â€œBut he was such a horrid man in the end. It always made me sad, that story.”
    It made him
sad
? Greek myths made him
sad
? What kind of man goes around confessing something like that? She liked him already.
    Miranda glanced at the Mazrooqi man standing at Finn’s left shoulder, who was frowning at her. The intensity of his gaze sent a slight shiver down her back.
    â€œWas I interrupting? You were talking—”
    â€œOh no, Mukhtar is just…He’s…Well, we have plenty of time to talk. Don’t worry about him.”
    Miranda shifted the bags in her hands and took a step forward. “This way.” For a moment they walked in silence, Miranda aware of Mukhtar’s presence just behind them.
    â€œForgive my rudeness,” he finally said. “I’m Finn.”
    â€œMiranda. Tour guide to the stars.”
    He smiled. “I’m hardly a star.”
    â€œNormal people don’t walk around with a bodyguard. Even here.”
    â€œUm,
bodyguards
, actually. I think I’ve got ten with me today.”
    Miranda glanced around them, but Mukhtar was the only one she could identify. “They must be good,” she said.
    â€œOh, they are.”
    Miranda turned to study him for a moment. Curly, honey-brown hair, hazel eyes, dimples in both cheeks. “So. Do-gooder film actor, Russian oligarch, or the foreign minister of a Western country?”
    â€œNothing so thrilling, I’m afraid.”
    Miranda waited for a moment, but he didn’t say anything more. “Come on, you’re really not going to tell me?”
    â€œAnd lose my air of mystery? Never.”
    â€œDo you want to actually get to the silver souq, or be left to wander a maze of twisty little passages until the end of time?”
    He paused to consider this. “I’m just trying to avoid being written off as boring and stuffy before we’ve had a chance to talk.”
    â€œYou have your chance to talk right now. I’ll give you until we find your gift, but I’m not leading you home until you tell me who you are.”
    â€œDone. That is, if you’ll do the same.”
    â€œThe same?”
    â€œTell me who you are.”
    She smiled. “I don’t want to be written off as Bohemian and flaky before we’ve had a chance to talk.”
    â€œFair enough. So. Talk.”
    She took him the long way. The