Page 35 of Over the Edge

She stared back at him, shocked into stillness. He took a step toward her and sanity returned to her all in a rush. “Not here,” she whispered urgently. “We’d be arrested.”

“Right. Religious law,” he mumbled. “I’m pretty sure we lost our tails. Do you have any idea where we are?”

“I have a rough idea. Problem is, our tails may not need to follow us. The gossip network is active enough that they may be able to figure out pretty quickly where we’ve gone.”

“No help for it,” Trevor replied. “We have to go to your family’s house eventually. We’ll just have to rely on our cover story that we’re here for the wedding to explain our presence.”

She exhaled carefully. That man made the mere act of breathing hard. “This way.”

“Need me to get three paces in front of you?” he asked dryly.

“Not in this district. It’s not as conservative as that last one.”

She led him to themohallahher family had lived in for the past several centuries. They turned one last corner and she spied a tall pair of wooden gates painted bright turquoise. “Blue gates, ahead on the right,” she murmured.

“Got ‘em.”

Anna pulled the rope hanging beside the gate and a bell clanged. They waited for upwards of two minutes before the gate creaked open. A tiny, elderly woman swathed in black peered out from under a headscarf much like hers.

Anna rushed forward and threw her arms around her grandmother. Growing up in Nebraska, she’d had only her mother and no other family, and she was more emotional at this reunion than she’d expected.

“Grandmother, this is Trevor Westbrook.”

“He is not your brother,” her grandmother declared immediately in Zagari.

“No, ma’am. He is my fiancé. I did not get a chance to explain that to you on the phone before.”

“You are a good girl, yes? No hanky panky? You two are behaving?” At least that was what Anna thought the word meant that her grandmother had used. She was vividly aware of Trevor looking back and forth between them as they spoke the ancient tongue rapidly.

“Of course we are!” Anna exclaimed. “We would never do anything against my family’s customs.”

Her grandmother harrumphed, but seemed more or less appeased.

“Trevor, this is my grandmother, Hania Malik.”

He bowed over Hania’s hand, kissing it gallantly, and murmuring, “Assalaam-o-Alaikum.Daadi Malik.”

Where on earth he’d learned that formal greeting, Anna had no idea, but it charmed the socks off her grandmother, who practically cooed up at him. He offered his forearm to the elderly woman, who took it with simpering and rapid fire Zagari to Anna about how handsome and polite her fiancé was.

Anna followed them inside the aged stone house, which bore a few more smeared concrete patches on the walls than she remembered from the last time she’d been here. The home was L-shaped and built beside a central barnyard. An ancient barn made up a third side of the yard, and a tall stone wall with the blue gate completed the square. A few chickens pecked at insects in the dirt, and a goat grazed on the far side of the yard. As she recalled, Hania made fresh yogurt from the goat’s milk.

“Let us drink tea,” her grandmother declared.

Anna poured and served the tea, which was just as well. It kept her hands busy, and she was going to fidget until she had a private word with Trevor to explain the assumptions her family was operating under.

“Food! You must eat!” Hania announced when their teacups were empty.

“It’s all right,” Trevor tried. “We ate earlier—“

“Don’t stop her,” Anna interrupted in English. “Hospitality is a big deal in this part of the world.”

“Right. It’s one of the five pillars of Islam, isn’t it?” he replied.

“Bingo.”

Some of the sharply pungent yogurt, flat bread, and a spicy rice dish were brought out by a servant. Anna murmured to Trevor, “The rice is called pulla-o. That’s probably lamb in it, but don’t ask. I think of it as spiced mystery meat.”

“Got it.”

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